AGT Food and Ingredients Inc. ($AGTF)

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the AGT Food and Ingredients Inc. Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Harley Ulmer, Global Corporate Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Drew. Good morning, and thank you, everyone, for joining the call. My name is Harley Ulmer, Global Corporate Treasurer of AGT Food and Ingredients, Inc. With me today on this call are Murad Al-Katib, our President and CEO; and our Board Chair, Bill McFarland, who will provide some brief introductory comments. After a brief presentation, we will take questions with the call ending by 9:15 Eastern Time. We will be commencing on our Q4 and full year -- we will be commenting on our Q4 and full year 2025 results and outlook with the assumption that you have read the Q4 and full year earnings press release, MD&A and financial statements. A slide presentation, which supports today's comments is posted on our website, and we encourage participants to access the slides and to follow along with our presentation. Before we begin, I would like to make some comments about forward-looking information. In yesterday's news release and on Slide 2 of the presentation that we have posted on our website, you will find cautionary notes in that regard. We do claim the protection for any forward-looking information that we might disclose on this conference call today. I will now turn it over to Bill McFarland for his introductory comments.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. On behalf of the Board, I want to begin by expressing our appreciation to the investors who supported AGT's vision for the future by investing in our recent IPO. 2025 was an eventful year, sale of the rail assets, preparation for the IPO and the delivery of strong results in a fast-changing global business environment that tested our adaptability and our resilience as a business shone through. We have built a strong foundation for future growth and management is focused on delivering the business plan as outlined in the prospectus and in building a business for the long term that all stakeholders can be proud of and that will provide strong returns to shareholders. Our #1 priority is growing free cash flow, which will be delivered through strong execution of the business plan. A big thanks also goes out for the support of -- AGT has received from Fairfax and the efforts of Murad, Huseyin and all of our employees in transforming the business over the past 6.5 years. With that, I will turn the call over to our CEO, Murad Al-Katib.

Thank you very much, Bill. Great to be on the first conference call for AGT. What I thought I would do is just start off by just kind of giving everyone a quick review of, again, who we are today. And where I wanted to start was just to kind of talk about the themes that we have talked about throughout the IPO process. AGT is a global platform and an integrated supply chain for the production, sale and distribution of packaged foods, ingredients and staple food products made from durum wheat, pulses and other staple foods for our clients around the world. Our resilient business model has shown its evidence through the consistency of our earnings in what Bill referred to as a challenging environment throughout 2025. Our pasta and packaged foods and ingredients focus through well-known retailers for everyday consumption have led to consistent results and higher return modular CapEx projects, not M&A, will continue to provide us with our growth trajectory. We're going to continue with a very focused effort to capitalize on global food trends as an innovator in the better-for-you product category and in the staple foods categories of the client base that we have around the world. And I want to remind everybody, in a world with a lot of challenges currently in the Middle East and other areas of the world, we are a very experienced company in emerging markets and in our expansionary areas, including Asia, which, of course, is our focus on India. So when I look at the quarter end and year-end results, the company delivered strong consolidated adjusted EBITDA, consistent with our outlook, driven by strong performance in our Packaged Foods and Ingredients, specifically the pasta and better-for-you products. Broad consumer trends, including the value-seeking behavior of consumers with high-protein meal choices and the GLP-1 dynamics, which are changing the consumption patterns of consumers around the globe, which will ultimately be magnified by these drugs being more available in the coming years on a more affordable basis. These are all what I would call global demand tailwinds that are assisting the company in the growth of our portfolio on a go-forward basis. Strong pasta growth for a 20% growth rate for both revenue and adjusted EBITDA in 2025 is a highlight of our performance. 4-year CAGR for our pasta, semolina and bulgur, the durum wheat milling business and food manufacturing business is 17% of revenue. So this shows the gains we've made on both scale and breadth and depth of distribution around the world. The Value Added Processing segment, our growing staple food, pulse manufacturing food business has realized increased utilization and volume in the current year despite competition, tariffs and different disruptions around the world related to either port disruptions or different challenges in international shipping that have been experienced in 2025. We are resilient. Tariffs and other economic factors had an initial impact on our 2025 year, but we were able to adjust given our geographic and product diversity, and we ended Q4 on strong footing. We expect commodity prices to continue to fall for many of our commodities in 2026, which should lead to lower revenue, higher margins and less investment in working capital. In 2025, lower commodity prices impacted sales following the 2025 Canadian harvest, but the impact on our margins, as you can see through the consistent Q4 results, was minimal. The company's recent successful IPO strengthens financial flexibility and free cash flow generation, enabling our disciplined capital allocation and positioning the business for its next phase of growth. Now when we look at the overall results, we can see, again, the free cash flow profile of our company improved quite dramatically with the delevering event of the IPO that came in the subsequent period. So one of the things that we are illustrating in some of the comments that we're making today is that, again, the free cash flow generating ability of this company on a go-forward basis will be very adequate to fund not only our CapEx initiatives, our dividends, but allow us to have the free cash flow to ensure that our leverage profile remains at a very advantageous level. When we look at our Packaged Foods and Ingredients business, adjusted EBITDA grew by 6% to $96 million, supported by strong pasta margins in Turkey and the U.S. better-for-you pasta manufacturing business. If we exclude the South Africa business, which is a part of this segment, that segment had a challenging year due to unusual weather events, rain -- excessive rain at the wrong time in 2025. When we look at just the pasta and the better-for-you segment, the segment grew by 25% in 2025 or $14.5 million strong customer base, including Loblaws as well as North American, Japanese, local Turkish and Asian retailers and clients experiencing growth drove that growth, which we think, again, is an impressive part of the growth trajectory of this company. We are well diversified in this segment with our top 10 customers accounting for 60% of the volume of our pasta. And with the new plant in India, the effort will be on growing additional retailer relationships to ensure that we achieve balance in the distribution platform and we capitalize on the growth of the store brand strategy that we are pursuing. Now many of you who met us in the IPO process recall, we are a strong believer that store brands are powerful in the growth trajectory of everyday staple foods and everyday better-for-you food products in the consumers' share of wallet as we go forward. Now what is the strength, again, to remind you of the store brand strength. The store brand strength is they own the shelf. The stores own the planogram, the stores own the listing fees and the stores own the flyer placements, which is again why our manufacturing strategy in our packaged foods is showing the type of growth in not only sales and margins, but also we expect that the modular CapEx strategy will continue to deliver very positive results. For information, segment revenues, excluding South Africa grew by 3% from $630 million to $650 million. South Africa was down 12% in our revenue, but the total segment revenue was very consistent year-over-year. Turkish pasta revenues reached $203 million, supported by recent capacity expansions completed in 2025 and new lines at our Minot plant for gluten-free better-for-you pasta coming on stream in 2026. This will allow this segment to continue to grow. While the South Africa segment, we expect will be positioned for recovery in 2026. We have new relationships that are building momentum in the better-for-you segment in the U.S., including additional sales to established retailers like Whole Foods, products that we manufacture in Costco U.S.A. and other retailers where our retail breadth and distribution, not only in our brand, Veggipasta, but in the private label store brand strategy on the better-for-you is continuing to achieve trajectory growth forward. Our Veggipasta is listed in Whole Foods for 1 year. And as per our Nielsen data, we're #9 in the category in climbing. And additionally, out of all stores tracked by Nielsen, Veggipasta cracked the top 30 in the United States in the 12-month period, and we're anticipating to push towards a top 15 position on our Veggipasta brand in the United States better-for-you shelf-stable pasta category in 2026. In addition to our Veggi brand, AGT produces a significant amount of private label store brands and for well-known retailers and brands in the United States. And when the total volume of pasta sold to the U.S. was considered, AGT produced 5% of the gluten-free pasta sold in the U.S., a 36% increase in our volume from 2024 and the new line will allow us to continue this impressive growth trajectory in this category where we do see very significant growth trajectory forward. This should lead to double-digit growth in adjusted EBITDA in the near term in this segment. Margins in this segment in the packaged foods and better-for-you have increased to nearly 12% in the current year, and we're expected to continue to improve due to operating leverage in pasta manufacturing and growth of higher-margin better-for-you business unit, which has a much higher adjusted EBITDA margin, closer to 30%. And as our mix of business, driven by consumer demand, has a greater percentage in the better-for-you, our margin profile overall in the segment continues to increase. Full year segment revenues continue that trajectory towards the 12% to 13% range that we've indicated is our target for this segment in the near term. Shifting gears to our growing Value Added Processing segment. Full year segment revenue increased 2% to $1.7 billion, driven by Turkish shipments, Australian shipments. In general, EBITDA in this segment was down on a full year basis, but the business has adjusted EBITDA growth from $45.9 million to $114.7 million over the past 4 years based on a more diversified supply chain, less dependent on one geography as we source product from around the world, customers' products and global reach. I want to remind people, 2025, with the tariff war in the world was a challenging time. And when we look at that small decline in this segment, to us as management, we view this as demonstrated proof of the resiliency of this business. I remind people that AGT of old would have had a very material problem in such a geopolitically volatile environment. The AGT of today and the future is no longer dependent on a few products. In 2021, management estimates red lentils made up 60% of our business. Today, we estimate at 15%. So 2025 was even more challenging in the first half of the year, but our resiliency shone through. We saw margin improvements in the fourth quarter of 2025 as commodity prices declined, and we expect the commencement of this turnaround with high single-digit growth expected in 2026 and beyond. We should not ignore the material growth in this segment as it is a big part of the business. So in addition to increased capacity utilization, we do expect margin improvement through cost containment initiatives, and we expect that food security sales will continue potentially in a more robust basis in a post-Middle East conflict environment in the last half of '26 and into 2027. So when we look at the 2025 year, $839 million in food security sales, somewhat lower in quarter 4 due to the timing of shipments, however, our long-term trend in this is very good as AGT has strong relationships with multiple food aid providers, multiple foreign governments with direct relationships, and we expect demand for food inflation initiatives, food stabilization and aid programs in '26 into '27 to exceed the pace of 2025. The world order is settling again and food security is an important part of security and intelligence in regions like the Middle East on a go-forward basis. We have strong relationships with food security sales in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Algeria, Iraq, Bangladesh. Governments in all regions are expected to continue their focus. And in a time after a war, governments are always recognizing the vulnerability of their buffer stocks and the vulnerability of their food systems when there are disruptions caused by unexpected geopolitical events, which are very much in magnitude today. The war in Iran with its successful resolution may present new opportunities for a company like AGT with our geopolitical position, the position of our factories and our position as a major part of the production and supply of our staple foods in this region. We closely continue to monitor the conflict in the Middle East and its impact on global shipping lanes. And despite industry-wide rerouting and temporary suspensions to the Strait of Hormuz, we have proactively executed contingency plans to diversify our logistics routes, secure alternative capacity and support delivery of essential food products into the region or into positions that are close to the region to be able to deliver promptly upon resolution of this conflict. For information, Q4 revenue declined to $446 million from $544 million due to lower commodity prices and reduced producers selling in Canada and the U.S. Adjusted EBITDA did decrease to $114.7 million from $128.5 million year-over-year due to Black Sea competition, tariff uncertainty, product mix and different effects that we saw throughout the year in 2025. We do see the segment having strong resilient growth on a go-forward basis. I'm going to turn it back over to Harley for some comments on our financial performance. Harley?

Thank you, Murad. As Murad mentioned, the main item that we wanted to talk about on the financial performance today outside of the results that Murad just went over was the IPO. The IPO is a transformative event for AGT. Our equity has now been increased to over $1.2 billion, and the debt load has been reduced by $920 million compared to the December 31, 2025 statements that we released yesterday. We truly are a new company. Adjusted net debt to adjusted EBITDA is 0.3x today compared to 3.35x at December 31. We have secured a revised credit facility with $350 million available on improved credit terms, which will provide us with future flexibility on how to best use our current trade finance and debt facilities. And let me be clear, we have no intention in to increase our leverage going forward, and we expect to reduce overall financing costs in the future with excess free cash flow generated by the business. Additionally, as we think about net income going forward, we do want to call out that the Q1 IPO had a number of noncash items that are highlighted in the December 2025 statement. There will continue to be some carry-on effects in quarter 1 for the March 31, 2026 statements as well. There's a noncash finance accretion costs related to the conversion and settlement of the Fairfax sponsor notes that will form part of finance expense. And more noticeably, there will be a noncash $84.2 million charge for share-based compensation expense and G&A in quarter 1, that, again, is a noncash item and will not recur going forward and is related to the vesting and conversion of earn-out shares that were granted at the go-private time that were recognized now with an IPO. The most important part that we do want to highlight is that on a pro forma basis, after factoring in the reduction of debt, there will be approximately a $55 million reduction in the finance expense as we pay less interest to the lenders going forward. And we should have after the clearing of those above-mentioned noncash items, positive net income on a go-forward basis with strong free cash flow. Finally, the last point as many investors asked about it, you'll see that we do speak to hyperinflation, and we have reconciliations on Page 24 and 25 of the MD&A. We do not include those impacts in the presentation today as we want to stress again that we do manage the company on a pre-hyperinflation basis. The hyperinflation impacts, for an IFRS perspective, are noncash mechanical retranslations of the results. And from our perspective, do not reflect the true operating results of the entity. So that is why we give the investors and we give everybody as clearly as we possibly can, the pre-hyperinflation numbers in the MD&A. Murad will take us through a couple more points as we get to your questions shortly.

Thanks, Harley. So for this, I want to just kind of conclude by saying our Packaged Foods and Ingredients segment remains the fastest-growing part of our business, driven by strong global demand for pasta, pulses and better-for products across the U.S., Europe and emerging markets. We continue to scale our pasta sales, utilizing the recently commissioned capacity in Turkey, and we remain on track, both on budget and on time to complete our new India pasta facility, which will further strengthen our global footprint and cost base. And we can confirm that global retailer discussions are ongoing, and we have a lot of excitement from very material global retailers who are looking forward to the addition of this capacity into our product offerings around the globe. Margin performance in our Packaged Foods and Ingredients is improving as we benefit from scale, strong demand for healthier products from the protein-rich better-for-you pasta, packaged foods, including snacks and breakfast cereals. And additionally, we have added the line in Minot, which will provide additional adjusted EBITDA in 2026 and beyond. We're monitoring the capacity utilization of that, which is growing significantly to ensure that we're adding the next line to capitalize on the momentum that we've created. In Value Added Processing, global demand remains robust with Turkey continuing to serve as a critical food corridor supporting food security and other sales and the location of Turkey will become even more important on a response to the geopolitical crisis in the Middle East. In a world facing geopolitical instability of food and security, our integrated supply chain and our strong ties with government aid agencies are positioning us to meet the rising demand for affordable protein and fiber-rich foods while supporting future growth and free cash flow. And we expect that buffer stocks and stocks in the region in the Middle East countries will become a priority of governments, and we will respond to that priority. We are driving margin expansion by focusing on cost reduction. And across the business, we're capitalizing on exceptional growth in our pasta with our high-return modular CapEx, giving us that ability to achieve 3- to 4-year paybacks on our modular CapEx as we go forward. Now again, the investor feedback is strong affinity to the managed disciplined capital allocation and the ability to utilize existing capacity to generate better returns on deployed capital. Free cash flow generation and conversion is our top priority, enabling us to fund our growth, pay our dividend and reduce our trade finance facility. Now let me be clear, inside and in our Board, we have a saying in this company, never re-lever. And that will be a strategy is to ensure we keep generating free cash flow to reduce the consumption of cash flow to finance the integrated supply chain. We're diversified, and we believe that, that diversification is going to serve us well. And we expect that those strong returns and strong free cash flows will allow us to set a dividend policy in Q1 2026, reflecting our confidence in the business and our commitment to disciplined capital allocation. We're powered by a highly capable and experienced team and a proven track record of execution, our expertise, our commitment and our focus position us to deliver strong future results while building a resilient, high-growth business for the future. I want to remind you, the commitment of Fairfax in the IPO process and the commitment of founders rolling very material equity is giving investors a shoulder-to-shoulder team with an ability to align all our interests. I want to thank you for joining us on our first earnings call. And again, pleased to be back as a public company. Thank you for your interest, and we'll take questions from those on the call.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Zachary Evershed with National Bank Capital Markets.

Congrats on the quarter. Could you tell us a little bit more about those customer discussions for the Indian capacity coming online? How early are you hoping to have firm commitments for that? And maybe give us some indications of who you're chatting with.

Yes. So Zach, as you kind of would be familiar again with your experience and many of our analysts have experience in the consumer space, there's quite an involved process to ensure that we get into the order scenario with these global retailers. So what I can tell you is, again, we have a huge advantage in one side. We made it very clear, we have global relationships with retailers like Carrefour. We're supplying into North American retailers now, Loblaws, not only in our pasta business, but in our better-for-you category, including our Canada retail packing side. Our U.S. better-for-you pasta side is giving us strong retailer connectivity. Those discussions are now evolving into the Indian pasta offering. So where we are, I would say, now is sample exchanges are happening with many of the global retailers that we are targeting. And look, this isn't a shotgun approach. I would call it a rifle-and-scope approach. We know who the retailers are. We have relationships with them currently. So sample exchange has been done in a lot of cases. They know our quality because they're buying from us in the current environment. They know we're not a new producer. In cases of retailers that are relatively new to our durum wheat side, we have some already who have visited Turkey as the first step. So they'll come and visit. They want to see the manufacturing size, scale and sophistication. And frankly, Zach, we encourage that because it's something to see, right? The integrated nature of this makes it one of the largest, most sophisticated pasta manufacturing plants in the entire world that has met the standard of some of the major global retailers in the world, household names that you know are currently in our client list. So I would say that we have a very high level of certainty that we are going to be able to diversify those relationships. Europe with the free trade agreement with India will be a focus. And again, it wouldn't be a surprise that global retailers that are very well positioned in Europe, again, we mentioned Carrefour, we have large global retailers like Tesco and Aldi and others. So we'll be looking at those on a regional basis in Europe. And then in the U.S. market, again, 18% tariff is set. We'll see how the tariff environment evolves with the U.S. But again, Indian pasta with a low capital cost of construction, low operating cost, high-quality durum, we expect we're going to be able to compete there. And we also have our eye on Asia, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and growing demand in China, Zach. So again, we're feeling very confident in India being on time, India being on budget and having the customer base to be able to fill that in our '26, '27, '28 cycle, we've got to fill Turkey that we built, and we're going to start to fill India, and we hope that the Indian side will go even quicker than we anticipate.

Great color. And then for my follow-up, 2026 is going to be another year of abundant pulses, puts pressure on pricing on the top line. Can you walk us through your expectations of the impact on adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow?

Once again, as we kind of explained, Zach, we don't take commodity exposure. So declining commodity prices, I mean, when we're back to back, in particular in the Value Added segment, ultimately, I mean, a reduction in revenue on a percentage basis is going to lead to a percentage increase in our margins. And on a dollar cash flow basis, look, abundant supply, we're a manufacturer, we create processing margin through having abundant supply. Supply, just remember, in our case, gives us choice. We like to buy characteristics of particular products. Today, I'm having discussions with clients in the U.S. who want better-for-you pasta with a very low glyphosate count or no glyphosate. We can do that because we control that, the entire raw material supply chain right from the origination of the lentils or chickpeas that go into that better-for-you pasta that's on the store shelf in the United States or in Europe. So again, the abundant supply, we think it's healthy. We're expecting margins to be consistent on a percentage basis, we think we'll actually have an increase because of the reduced commodity prices. We think that we're going to achieve, as I said, mid- to high single-digit growth in the Value Add. In the better-for-you and the pasta side, look, we're targeting that double-digit growth, and we expect to have margin improvement in addition to that. Commodity prices, you're going to find over time, Zach, are going to become less and less a question on these conference calls. You're going to see when they go way up, we're going to deliver consistent margins. When they go way down, we're going to deliver consistent margins on a dollar basis. That's what we want to get to, and that's where we think we are.

The next question comes from Derek Lessard with TD Cowen.

I just wanted to maybe hit on the geopolitics a little bit. Could you maybe talk about the sort of the tangible impact so far? And how should we view the business, whether it's a headwind or a potential tailwind? And I have a follow-up as well.

Yes. So Derek, I think, look, we've got to be realistic. I mean there's going to be a -- what I would call a small potential timing impact in Q1 to Q2. So again, let's say you've got shipments that are en route into the region or let's say, they were en route to the Port of Vancouver or to the Port of Montreal. Those shipments are on hold right now, right? They're there. We'll either take them to safe ports nearby the Middle East so that they can get to their client as quickly as possible upon resolution of the conflict. But when I use the word minimal, again, I'm talking about what I would consider to be timing impacts. We don't expect the 12 months forward 2026 into the first quarter of 2027 to be materially affected on our forecast. We expect there to be some small timing adjustments on shipments that don't go in Q1, but they go in Q2. I can tell you that, again, we're very fortunate. We have adequate production capacity. We have adequate storage capacity. We have clients where the product is sold. So even I'm sitting today, Derek, in Mersin, Turkey, right near -- again, 12 hours from the Iran border. And I can tell you that production is going full bore here. And even if a truck is delayed from shipment today, we expect that truck to go next week. So I would expect, again, we're going to see a follow-on though impact, Derek, where, look, we're already getting calls from clients and even from governments in the region to say, we're concerned. Shipments are stopping, and from that perspective, we need to ensure that we have buffer stocks on a go-forward basis.

Yes. And I'd point out again that we seem to in the 2020 have -- had consistent reminders of the importance of supply chain resiliency. And again, AGT here, we're well positioned to take advantage of the different types of challenges that arise, and we have optionality where we can move product around from different parts of the world to meet the demand as it arises and deal with the changes as they occur.

What's your follow-up...

Yes. And I guess I'm going to follow on those comments, how about the -- I guess, your expected shipping cadence to areas like Sudan and Venezuela?

Sorry, Derek, you cut out just a little bit. Can you just repeat that one?

Yes. No, I was just -- I was curious on your shipping cadence, like we talked the Middle East, but what about in areas like Sudan and Venezuela?

Well, listen, I mean, right now, the Mediterranean region is not really affected. So again, normal shipments in Algeria, Egypt, kind of the Med region, Turkey, like there's nothing majorly affecting in that side. Venezuela is not a destination for us because of the regime prior to the change, there was just too much sanctions issues, Derek. Now we're waiting to see what the U.S. response is in Venezuela. We expect there could be some food aid demand that will come from there.

The next question comes from Luke Hannan with Canaccord.

Congratulations on the IPO. I wanted to ask about South Africa, Murad. You talked about some of the challenges there as it related to excess rainfall last year, but the forecast seems to be a little bit better moving forward. What's your overall expectation just as far as the productivity of that business in '26? Is it fair to say maybe you could do what you did in 2024 as far as just the EBITDA contribution there?

Yes. You know what, Luke, what I would suggest is, again, to be very granular on my forecast and the way I look at it, 2025, because of the weather event was a year of pretty material decline in that business. We don't think it's a permanent impairment. But Luke, what I always do is I'm always conservative on my forecast now. I expect South Africa to come part way back in '25 -- sorry, in '26 and all the way back by '27. So again, there's no permanent impairment in the business. It was literally just the South Africa business relies on local raw material for their packaged foods business. So the popcorn manufacturing business and then a lot of the stuff we do for the local retailers, including things like green split peas and sugar beans like the bean business, rely on local production in the case. Now as a result of rainfall last year and again, weather hasn't been so great this year, I'm expecting a partial recovery. So that will be better. But again, that's why we carved it out in our comments today, Luke, was, look, when you look at the segment overall, it looks very consistent. You're like, where is the growth? Well, strip out the South African constraints and what we're growing in is pasta and better for you. And the growth was very material, as I outlined in my comments. So again, South Africa, we're expecting to be consistent go forward. But over time, it's going to decline in importance as we grow the other two parts of this segment.

Much appreciated. And then for my follow-up, Murad, you did touch on red lentils in the past, it represented 60% of your business. Today, it's 15%. Is that still the most significant piece there? Or is there -- can you just break that down for us?

Yes. I mean, listen, again, I use the word management estimate. I mean, again, is it 14% or 16%. I mean, I'm trying to say it's very much lower concentration. Look, when I look at that value add today, chickpeas, white beans or all the bean varieties, value-added peas, split fava beans, split -- all of these products that are way more differentiated and then even just the customer base moves, like we were going so much into the wholesale markets in the past that when we had commodity volatility, what would happen is we wouldn't lose from the commodity side. It's just the margin compression. Today, we have so many products and so many segments of the market that we just move around. As Harley said, we move from different origins. We move into different categories. As I mentioned in my anecdotal comments, looking at glyphosate-free chickpeas that can go into the canning and the better-for-you pasta manufacturing in the U.S., look, I don't know if there's another company in the world that can do what we're doing here. This is the appeal to the global retailers. That's how we're going to create margin in the value add going forward. I like the business. In the IPO, I talked about better for you, better for you, pasta, pasta. But the value add is actually the hidden growth that we're going to see materialize over the next few years as we utilize unutilized capacity and we continue on the product mix change, Luke.

The next question comes from Steve Hansen with Raymond James.

Murad, I appreciate all the comments on food security and the size of the opportunity as we bridge into '27. But I just did want to circle back just quickly on the cadence playing out in '26. There's obviously some restrictions and movements in the short term in the region. Is it fair to say that we'll expect to see Q1 and Q2 down modestly before we see that recovery play out? I mean how far in advance do you get the tendering from the different food agencies to really show that ramp-up that you get confidence in it?

Yes. I mean, look, Steve, I -- again, I think there's going to be a modest impact on Q1. Again, I'm still of the mindset that we're going to have a resolution of this conflict in a nearer term. I can't tell you if it's days or weeks. But look, we're already hearing the initiatives by foreign governments to prioritize the delivery of staple food items once shipping resumes. So it's not only -- like when we say food security sales, don't just think the UN, ICRC, Red Cross, Red Crescent, think of foreign governments and what they're going to do and think about import priorities, port capacity priorities, we're expecting that this recovery by Q2, we should have it. Now again, if there's some sort of a prolonged part of the conflict that I don't know at the time of this call, we'll have to adjust our view going forward. But look, Steve, we expect that 12-month forward, you're not going to see a meaningful impact on our results on a negative way. There's just going to be some timing that might go along the way here. That's all I'm seeing at this point. Now we are, Steve, trying to get our cargo as close as we can. So again, you have -- cargo offloads, you're not -- what do you do with it? You take it to the safest port in the most logistically advantaged place that you have. Now here's what we have that other people don't have. This is where I said to my Board on my Board meeting. Look, we were built for this. AGT was built for a crisis like this. We're like calling, we have staff in different regions. We've got free zone warehouses booked. We got cargo arriving in a safe place. We're going to put it in storage and we can reload and ship it as soon as ports are open. Like that's not something that every Canadian company can do. So we're going to make sure that we're able to react quickly and minimize any material disruption on our earnings.

Appreciate that. And just as a quick follow-up. Just on the Distribution side, I know it's a smaller piece of the business, but I've actually been surprised at how strong that's held in just either on a volume basis -- it looks like on a volume basis anyways relative to pricing. I mean, should we expect that to stabilize here? We got the [ front quarter, ] there's still a lot of volume in the bins. How do we think about that cadence through the front half of '26?

Yes. Steve, to be honest, it's a small part of our earnings. But you know what, with the lack of kind of the railway business ownership now and kind of the high maintenance CapEx and the cash burn as a result of owning all those assets, which, by the way, was the right decision for this company. But we used the word now discipline right? We're finding opportunities, and we're making margin on it. It might be modest margin, but it actually derisks our supply chain. I'm expecting cadence to continue on that basis. Steve, we're focusing where we're making money. So durum wheats, some red lentils are going through that system. And even we've been having some recent success on high-quality milling wheats. There's flour millers in the world that are buying poor quality black sea wheat. They need to buy high-quality wheat from a place like Canada in order to blend up their bread quality. We fit that because on high-quality wheat, we can segregate the shoreline railway system and capture a premium over what maybe a grain handler is making. So we're choosing our spots, and I think we're going to continue to be disciplined. Don't expect it to be massive amounts of growth, but certainly expect it to be a small contributor.

And I understand there's time for one last questioner that will be John Zamparo with Scotiabank.

My question is just a broader one. And when we think about the price of oil potentially being higher for longer and the various impacts associated with that, I wonder outside of short-term supply chain disruptions, what are the impacts on AGT, particularly on the Value Added segment?

Yes. Look, John, I mean, certainly, shipping costs are a component, as we know. And when we look on the Value Added side, it's ultimately something that we have to be watching. At the same time, as we get into the more differentiated markets, John, like the less commodity, as I quote, you can't see me, but I quote, commodity markets. Those are so price sensitive that you have more difficulty passing through, right? In this case, when we're doing specific qualities that are going into canners, retail packing companies, look, the fuel surcharges and the increased freight is going to certainly be something that's a component, but it's not deal-killers. We are going to pass through, and then we have our origin advantage. Like we arbitrage all the time. We depend where we're shipping from. So again, part of my role here in Turkey this week is looking at our supply chain by truck versus by ocean vessel in the regional markets. So you know what, we're feeling quite strongly, John, that shipping costs are going to be up in the near term with oil. But again, if a resolution comes to the conflict quickly, we expect GRIs, general rate increases to be in that kind of normalized range once the crisis is resolved. So we'll do our best to keep passing that on. And I always say there's a few pockets. Farmers, we pay farmers to buy product. We have a margin and the buyer has a margin and the retailers, like ultimately, it's not all going to come out of my pocket. We've got to make sure we do our best to pass through. And the more differentiated product, the more ability we have to pass.

And it is early still, but we are monitoring the impact on the North American production of the producers because, again, their input costs there -- and it's energy intensive. So we expect like there's starting to be some noise in the early planting areas of North America where farmers are already seeing higher energy costs making an impact. So we're watching that closely. But again, if it resolves quickly, we expect that will resolve, but that's just another facet of the energy impact.

John, don't forget the other thing we're watching is fertilizer prices, right? With the oil prices, fertilizer -- as fertilizer prices go up, potentially farmers will grow to more pulses because they're low nitrogen fertilizer intensity. So we're watching all that. Again, look, we are certainly devastated by the war as everybody is watching it from afar. At the same time, AGT will be there to respond to help people that need food products as quickly as we can. So listen, I just want to thank everybody for joining the call. And again, we're going to stay focused. We're going to stay focused on execution. As Bill mentioned and as Harley and I have mentioned, free cash flow execution, better for you and pasta and continued supply chain optimization is our focus. We're excited. We're excited to be back in the public markets, and we look forward to working for all of our shareholders. So thank you very much for joining the call.

This brings to a close the conference for today. You can now disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.