Alicorp S.A.A. (ALICORC1) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience in holding. We now have your presenters in conference. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to introduce today's first presenter, Gisele Remy. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We are very pleased that you could join us today. I am Gisele Remy, Managing Director of Productivity and Investor Relations Officer at Alicorp. As presenters today, we will have Mr. Alfredo Perez, Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Juan Moreyra, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Patricio Jaramillo, Vice President of Consumer Goods; and other members of the management team who will join us during the Q&A session. Today, we will be discussing the second quarter 2021 results after the financial results and earnings report we issued yesterday. If you have not received a copy of the earnings report, please visit www.alicorp.com.pe, where you will also find the webcast presentation to accompany our discussion during this call. Please be advised that today's call is for investors and analysts only. Therefore, questions from the media will not be taken. If you're a member of the media and wish to direct any questions to the company, please contact us directly after the call. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that forward-looking statements may be made during this conference call, and they do not account for economic circumstances, industry conditions, the company's performance or financial results. As such, these forward-looking statements are based on several assumptions and factors that could change causing actual results to materially differ from the current expectations. Thus, we ask that you refer to the disclaimer located in the earnings release prior to making any investment decision. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Alfredo Perez, Chief Executive Officer of Alicorp, who will begin the presentation. Alfredo, please go ahead.

Thank you, Gisele, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Alicorp's Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. First of all, I would like to thank once again all of our workers that continue navigating this pandemic in the frontline, assuring the availability of essential products in all the geographies where we operate. We're committed to your safety and will continue the strictest protocols until the pandemic is controlled. Also to everyone here in us today, we wish you and your families remain safe and healthy. I would like to start today by giving you an overview of the key events of the quarter, followed by an update on some of our strategic initiatives and then our consolidated results. After that, Patricio and Juan will cover our financial results with the business unit. At the end, before the Q&A session, I will take the floor again for an update on our guidance. Let's move on to Slide 5 to cover our recent relevant events. On July 26, an extraordinary dividend of up to PEN 0.585 per share was approved in a virtual shareholder meeting. Shareholders delegated to the Board the authority to decide the exact amount to be distributed, which may not be higher than the maximum determined during the meeting. And also the date of distribution within the next 12 months. Also, during the second quarter of 2021, we continue to experience significant pressure from cost increases. Commodity prices remained at a high multiyear level. For example, the soybean oil price, FOB Argentina increased more than 100% year-on-year and the wheat price in Mineapoles increased more than 40% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2021. In addition to the steep trend in our most important raw materials, the Peruvian sol accelerated its depreciation, losing almost 10% of its value year-on-year in the second quarter of 2021. Moving on to the sanitary situation. In our most important geographies, COVID-19 cases have reduced significantly during recent months, which has allowed governments to loosen restrictions aimed at containing the pandemic. In Peru, COVID-19 related debts are at the lowest level since the beginning of January. Furthermore, even though the percentage of vaccinated people is still far from the level required to achieve immunization, the vaccination campaign is accelerating. Currently, 14.5% of the Peruvian population is fully vaccinated, while 24% has received at least one dose. Now let's move on to Slide 6 to give you an update of the new Peruvian government, which took office on the July 28, the day which Peru celebrated its 200 years of independence. After a very disputed runoff, Pedro Castillo won the Peru presidential election with 50.1% of the votes. Mr. Castillo is a member of a relatively new left-wing party. Till now, we merrily share with you some of his first actions as he took office just 5 days ago. His inaugural speech as President was generally moderating tone, promising a responsible change in the economy, more resources for health care and education and an increase of investment in infrastructure. His Prime Minister, Guido Bellido, comes from his left-wing party Peru Libre. He has also appointed as Minister of Economy and Finance, Mr. Pedro Francke, who is better known in the investment community. And based on his presentations, a more moderate handling of the economy is expected. Mr. Bellido has publicly stated that the Ministry of Economy has all his support for the application of economic policy expressed in the Bicentennial Plan without corruption, published by Peru Libre prior to the runoff election, respecting the fundamental pillars of the economy. Mr. Castillo reaffirmed during his speech, his intention to install a constituent assembly to draw up a new constitution. However, this proposal requires a constitutional reform with the votes from 2/3 of parliament. This seems highly unlikely at this moment as 88 out of 130 members of the new Congress belong to right-wing and centrist parties and have expressed their intention to counterbalance the political and economic course during this term. Now let's move on to discuss our strategy in Slide 7. As we did in previous quarters, we will use this opportunity to share with you some of our strategic initiatives. You already know our strategic framework, as we have covered it extensively during our recent calls. Alicorp's corporate strategy is based on 3 strategic pillars: growth, efficiency and people. Pillars that got goals. Also, a couple of years ago, we determined 2 enablers that should help us achieve our objectives: digital and analytics and innovation. Today, we will focus on these enablers sharing with you some of our most exciting recent projects. Let's start on Slide 8 for more representative initiatives. We'll present to you the recent launches of 3 of our most representative digital businesses and 2 product innovation to develop our corporate innovation department. All of these initiatives have been developed in a completely new way through a hybrid model with lean structures and exclusive teams that allow agile and independent decision-making while at a time, leveraging on the capabilities and competitive advantages of our company. Regarding our digital initiatives, our businesses aim at putting Alicorp ahead of the digital transformation, focusing on the unattended needs of our clients and customers and going beyond our core products and services. Our teams are built by people with different backgrounds such as data engineers, data scientists, designers and front-end and back-end developers. In Peru, we have launched 2 digital ecosystems to strengthen our go-to-market competitive advantages and become strategic partners to our clients through integral solutions. Insuma is aimed at our B2B clients from the food service and bakery industries, while the idea is aimed at our mom-and-pop clients from the traditional channel in our Consumer Products business. Both offered an e-wholesaler platform, where clients can find not only Alicorp's products, but also products from third parties that complement our portfolio at competitive prices. In the case of insuma, our offer even includes fresh produce. These reduces transaction costs for our clients, and they can order any time everything they need, with delivery in less than 24 hours. In addition, our products include many complementary services, such as embedded finance, insurance, training and POS systems to digitalize their businesses. Moreover, for our mom-and-pop clients, we're offering integral advisory, helping them with merchandising strategy, the optimization of space and even the look of the premises, like the one you can see on our slide. Even though we launched these business only a few months ago, our first results are very promising. In the case of insuma, the average ticket has increased by 90% higher than that of our exclusive distributors. Also, we're seeing rapid growth with a number of new clients, in June being 8x higher than the average between January and April. Moreover, we have 80% repurchase between the clients that try our digital service. Moving on to diadia, we have doubled our relevance in the share of wallet of the mom-and-pops that are using our digital service. Furthermore, Alicorp's products have achieved 8% incremental sales, with 50% larger dropsize. All of these purchasing behaviors will lead to a more efficient sales and distribution network, maximizing value for Alicorp and its consumers as we scale up our efforts. Now let's move on to Slide #9 to cover what we are doing in our Aquafeed unit. At Vitapro, we have transferred experience in advanced analytics acquired in recent years in our salmon business to the shrimp industry. This endeavor is expected to transform the industry by increasing productivity, efficiency and profitability of shrimp farmers, our clients. It also complements our value proposition to clients, adding to our feed products and technical advisory services, new digital and data analytical tools. To this end, we have created a new business unit called Vitapro Ventures, a team specialized in digital technology. Under this organization, we have designed our Internet of Things and analytics ecosystem, which allows managing in a single platform, equipment such as automatic feeders and sensors cloud-based data, machine learning models and software for production management. We are in a client-based testing stage with very encouraging first results. Medium-size clients, for example, we have improved their productivity by up to 40% with 15% lower cycle days, maximizing our value proposition and generating important client loyalty. Next, let me introduce you to the new exciting launches from our Corporate Innovation Department on Slide 10. As you know, we decided some years ago, we needed to innovate how we innovate. Therefore, we partnered with IDEO to deepen our knowledge about the design thinking methodology and really put the client and consumer needs at the center of our decisions. This methodology constitutes the foundation of the development of Puro and Wow Mom, both of which are also run with our hybrid model, explained before in our digital ventures, combining an independent management for agile decision-making while at the same time, supported by all the capabilities that our company has to offer. Puro is a new brand of snacks, which targets consumers that are looking for a healthier diet without losing delicious taste. Our product combined 44% cacao with nutritious ingredients such as quinoa, cereals and dried fruits. This product line caters to an unsatisfied niche of our consumers expected to grow in the coming years. Moving on to Wow Mom. It started as a social media community in May 2020 and became quickly the most important digital community for pregnant women and new moms in the country with an engagement rate of over 17%, similar to the most famous local influencers. The interaction with the community gave us value information about this largely unattended group in the local market, allowed us to generate a relationship of trust with them, building equity value. In July 2021, our first product inspired by the digital community were launched to the public. We're very optimistic about the transformation potential of both our new digital ventures as well as innovation strategies. Let's now discuss our consolidated results for the second quarter of 2021 in Slide #12. The consolidated revenue grew 35.1%, while volume increased 11.4% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2021, mainly driven by the solid performance of our Crushing unit and the important recovery of our B2B, Aquafeed and Consumer Goods Peru units. This was partially offset by a small reduction in our Consumer Goods International unit impacted by economic deterioration and price controls. The evolution year-over-year reflects higher volume and partial translation of cost increases to price. On a year-to-date basis, volume increased 5.6% year-on-year and revenue 21.2%, explained by the same general trend and reflecting the positive trend of our consolidated top line on a quarter-on-quarter comparison. Moving on to profitability. Let's now review our consolidated EBITDA for the second quarter of 2021 on Slide 13. Consolidated EBITDA increased 2.1% for the quarter compared to 2020, explained mainly by the strong performance of our Crushing unit. Including the Crushing business, EBITDA fell 15.8% explained by the significant pressure from the increase in commodity prices, which translated into a reduction of the profitability of Consumer Goods Peru and Consumer Goods International business. It was partially offset by the encouraging recovery of our B2B and Aquafeed units, we were 2 segments most affected by COVID-19 crisis, but also because of efficiency and expense reduction efforts, which helped us to prioritize our SG&A in the context of cost pressures. Year-to-date EBITDA increased 30.8% year-over-year, boosted by the low base, which was impacted by COVID-19-related expenses in the last year. Moreover, year-to-date EBITDA margin gained 0.8 percentage points. Let's now review our consolidated net income for the second quarter of 2021 on Slide #14. Net income fell 47.4% year-over-year, explained by lower operating profit in addition to higher net financial expenses due to an increase in short-term debt related to working capital in our Crushing business as well as higher foreign exchange losses due to the valuation of the Peruvian sol and also some nonrecurring tax expenses. On a year-to-date basis, net income increased 91% and due to the low base impacted by nonrecurring COVID-19 related cost and expenses of last year. Now let me pass the floor over to Patricio, who will discuss the operating results of our CGP and CGI businesses.

Thank you, Alfredo. Let's begin with an update on CGP market dynamics on Slide 16. Coming off a very low 2020 base, impacted by severe quarantine Peru had during the pandemic, the Peruvian GDP grew 19.7% year-over-year as of May 2021, supported mainly by high mineral prices and the reduced impact of COVID-19 second wave expansion during the second quarter. Measures such as [indiscernible] and mobilization restrictions have softened as cases have declined in many areas due to an accelerated vaccination process with more than 200 people -- 200,000 people vaccinated every day. So far, Peru has applied more than 12.5 million doses to an eligible population of 24 million. The new President, Pedro Castillo, was announced on July 19, more than one month after June's ballotage. The political uncertainty during this period pressured local financial markets and accelerated the devaluation of the Peruvian sol as mentioned earlier. The new government inaugurated on July 28 by President Pedro Castillo, has 2 big challenges in the short term: one, continuing Peru's vaccination efforts expected to be completed by December this year; and two, regain investors' confidence in his ability to continue growing the economy in the context of needed reforms. Talking about consumption trends, we continue to see increases in overall volume consumption compared to last year's pandemic levels. As of May 2021, Kantar's basket grew 1.9% year-over-year explained by 0.3% growth in Foods and 9.1% growth in the Home Care segment. However, the upward trend is clearly disaccelerated compared to the first quarter, in which the Kantar basket posted a 5.8% year-over-year growth. Tiering down persists in key categories such as edible oils, pasta and detergents, coupled with higher demand for several private label alternatives in the modern trade. Raw material prices increases have also pressured consumer prices with important increase in edible oils, pasta and sauces. Within this scenario, we continued to recover market shares in key categories versus May, June 2020, with increases in surface cleaners, margarines, sauces, tuna and detergents in line with our target of regaining 2019 market positions by year-end. Regarding channel mix, we continue to experience a higher split in the modern channel when compared to pre-pandemic times. Supermarkets provide customers with a one-stop shop alternative that reduces frequency of visits and increases the average purchase ticket. Promotional activities with attractive discounts and higher assortments also provide channel advantages when compared to the traditional trade. Let's move on to the performance of our Consumer Goods Peru unit on Slide 17. Second quarter revenue increased 25.9% year-over-year with gross margins at 26.8%, down 7 percentage points versus last year due to higher commodity costs and a volatile exchange rate. As mentioned earlier on the call, year-over-year raw material prices have risen dramatically. As such, our edible oils, pasta, biscuits and sauces categories have been largely affected. We expect margins to recover in the year we ago as pricing and revenue management activities have been deployed along with communication efforts to reduce tier down. Also, several efficiency efforts have been deployed to maximize returns on promotional activities and sales incentives as well as reduce SG&A in this conference. Year-to-date gross profit increased 2.6% versus last year, while gross margin lost 3.9 percentage points. In categories such as edible oils, sauces and biscuits, gross profit increased 3.9%, 62.9% and 3.4%, respectively. It is also important to mention that last year's year-to-date gross margin results were negatively impacted by volume reductions due to production restrictions, which was partially offset by a temporary reduction of our Tier 4 portfolio. Finally, Intradevco's portfolio grew 26.2% in volume and 36.2% in revenue year-over-year, reaching PEN 22.7 million in EBITDA during the second quarter. Top line growth is driven by persisting trends of higher cleaning and personal hygiene habits adopted during the pandemic. Let's move on to Slide 18. Consumer Goods International market dynamics. Regarding Consumer Goods International, a top macroeconomic environment is still expected across most Latin American countries for 2021, with local GDPs only partially recovering from 2020's COVID-19 decline. Except for Ecuador, who just inaugurated President Guillermo Lasso's Government, political and social instability continue to be hot topics across the region, highlighting the upcoming Congress midterm elections in Argentina expected for later this year and continued social unrest in Bolivia due to transportation reforms. The progress of vaccination programs in the region is predominantly slow, which is delaying the full economic reactivation needed across many countries. While severe lockdowns have stopped, [indiscernible], travel restrictions and quarantines continue to be in place. Furthermore, the base consumption effect of strict lockdowns during second quarter 2020, which generated incremental volume due to pantry loading and increased at-home consumption for several categories, reflecting the current consumption trend across many countries, with Argentina's Kantar basket now declining 11.5% on a year-to-date basis. Strong [indiscernible] implemented pricing activities and actions are needed to offset raw material cost increases. However, local restrictions, competitive pressure that has reduced volume and fear of an accelerated tier down have limited our actions and pressured gross margins across key categories. On Slide #19, we will cover CGI's quarter 2 2021 performance. As a result, revenue in Consumer Goods International decreased 2% year-over-year, driven by a 14% decrease in volume, partially offset by higher pricing across several countries. Volume was mostly affected in Argentina, down 24% versus last year as pricing actions deployed to recover profitability, increased price gaps versus key competitors. Volume also declined in Bolivia due to increased oil smuggling from Argentina. Finally, our export business has also suffered declines versus 2020 as pricing actions aimed at compensating for higher costs, impacted pasta volumes in Chile and edible oils in Colombia. EBITDA for the quarter reached PEN 1 million. The largest impact behind this year year-over-year decline is driven by Argentina's results down PEN 23 million versus quarter 2 2020. Importantly, in 2020, we achieved a record EBITDA of PEN 18 million and 14.6% EBITDA margin in Argentina as a result of innovation, carryover pricing actions from quarter 4 2019 and the implementation of efficiency programs, mainly in manufacturing. However, since April 2020, the government imposed pricing restrictions have resulted in continuous margin dilution as we have been unable to offset inflation and devaluation despite several price increases and higher price per kilo innovation deployed. Bolivia also had an impact of PEN [ 90 ] million when compared to quarter 2 2020. As mentioned before, high volume base during last year's strict lockdowns, pantry loading and increased at-home consumption, coupled with limited pricing to partially offset oil prices, given a competitive environment where most competitors are backwards vertically integrated, discouraging from significant price increases due to higher crushing margins have impacted our EBITDA, mainly in Foods. However, within this scenario, our Home Care platform rose 30% and year-to-date versus last year. Now let me pass the floor over to Juan, who will discuss the operating results of the rest of our businesses.

Thank you, Patricio. Let's move to Slide 20, B2B update on market dynamics. Our restaurant industry continues its recovery as restrictions are loosened and consumers continue to go back to normal activities. Food and entertainment out of home, however, are still below pre-pandemic level. Our Food Service business revenue growth is outperforming the Peruvian restaurants GDP growth showing a recovery exceeding 2019 revenues. This has been achieved, thanks to our brand equity, solid customer relationships, prospecting new clients and price increases derived from the pressure of commodity costs. Using pre-COVID as a base, our B2B business reached 7% higher volume and 5% lower gross profit in the second quarter as clients favor lower-margin tiers as they reorganize and continue the recovery plan. However, our multi-tier strategy brand and service level, including our [ telecom ] assistance allow us to gain and maintain their preference. Let's move on to Slide 21, B2B second quarter 2021 performance. Revenue grew 73% this quarter compared to last year due to market recovery, client prospection and higher prices aimed to compensate higher commodity prices. Our Food Service platform grew 159% year-over-year on the back of the reopening of restaurants our bakery platform, which suffered from lower restrictions during the lockdown increased 29% year-over-year. It is worth mentioning as well that our digital initiatives are having encouraging results, being a source of additional support to our revenue. Regarding gross margin, B2B showed an increase of 0.6 percentage points year-over-year due to efforts performed on the top line as a favorable mix evolution, which could be more than offset pressure from raw material prices. EBITDA increased 4x against the second quarter of 2020, which was the quarter with the strongest impact due to lockdowns. This reflected in a 4.3 percentage point EBITDA margin gain. On a year-to-date basis, results are very remarkable as well with 8% volume growth year-on-year, 37% revenue growth and EBITDA declined by 2.6x. Let's move on to Slide 22, Aquafeed Market Dynamics. In Ecuador, shrimp exports have accelerated, with China only partially recovering in share within the export mix and the U.S. and Europe gaining share. As of June 2021, exports to the U.S. has increased 103% year-over-year, while export to Europe increased 34%, shaping a more balanced and diversified Ecuadorian free-to-go market strategy. To fulfill the demand from U.S. and European clients, Ecuadorian exports have increased their offer of value add and capital share on [indiscernible], which are preferred in these markets. This change in [indiscernible] offerings means that export did not correlate to production in the same way as in previous years. As a result, we estimate that although exports have grown 11% compared to last year as of June 2021, shrimp production has increased 23% in the same comparison period. These numbers have surpassed all initial growth expectations for Ecuadorian shrimp and demonstrated the potential and importance of these markets. International shrimp trade is recovering strongly. Demand, especially from the U.S., has surged in recent months, coupled with increasing signs of recovery from China and Europe as well. This positive demand scenario, together with COVID-related impact that have limited the availability of shrimp supplier from India, has translated into significant price increases. First, the international shrimp prices were already above pre-pandemic levels at the end of the second quarter 2021. Thanks to these new market dynamics, Ecuadorian street farmers are optimistic about future results and are also increasing [indiscernible] densities to improve farm yields, which also increases the demand for [indiscernible]. Farmers are also investing more in automation and new technologies, where Vitapro's new digital ecosystem has a strong value proposition. We are seeing as well that farmers are slowly gearing up towards more premium, where Vitapro is more important -- is an important market leader. Finally, farmers are investing in acquiring new land and improving industrial facilities in order to better cope with the new demand from -- new demand coming from the U.S. and Europe. Regarding the salmon feed business, exports of salmon from Chile dropped 1% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2021. And it is expected to keep falling throughout the year due to less price and small stockings in 2020. The demand side, as in the case of shrimp, the recovery of sales to the U.S. has been significant, mainly due to higher out-of-home consumption and increased sales through the legal channel. Furthermore, other important export markets are recovering as well. Due to this initial market recovery and the expectation of lower exported volumes from Chile for 2021, prices in the summer market have bounced back aggressively and are now above pre-pandemic levels. This increase in prices has incentivized farmers to rapidly start talking, and we expect a better export volume outlook for 2022. In order to win in this highly mature and consolidated market, Vitapro is continuing to deploy a differentiated go-to-market strategy, supported by new experimental center, agile services, performance [indiscernible] and medical diet as well as PatagonIA, our advanced analytical tool. Now let's move on to Slide 23, Aquafeed performance. In terms of business performance, the 15.7% revenue growth year-over-year is mainly explained on an increase in volume in our shrimp feed business unit and price initiatives introduced to compensate for the increase in the price of growth raw material. On a year-to-date basis, revenue fell 1.4%, which shows the significant quarter-on-quarter recovery. Gross margin increased 4.9 percentage points year-on-year in the quarter due to the tiering down of our portfolio, aligned to our client demand shift towards low-cost [indiscernible] and price increases in our raw material. EBITDA decreased 5.4% year-on-year mainly due to lower gross profit. The EBITDA margin decreased 2.3 percentage points also due to lower gross margin. It is worth highlighting that quarter-on-quarter EBITDA margin gained 1 percentage point despite commodity inflation, reflecting the recovery of the business units and the trend towards margin recovery in 2022. Year-to-date EBITDA fell 12% with a 1.2 percentage point margin reduction. Finally, let's move on to Slide 24, Crushing second quarter 2021 performance. The Crushing business had another notable quarter, mainly explained by the positive effect of raw material price increases and higher production of soybeans in Bolivia. Revenue increased 45% year-on-year in U.S. dollars, explained by higher prices as well as higher export volume of crude oil and meal exports, in line with higher commodity inventories from the summer season due to an increase of our market share of the soybean purchase together with a higher production in Bolivia. EBITDA increased 7.6x year-on-year for the quarter and 7.7x year-to-date due to the higher prices and volume. Furthermore, there was a greater recovery of accounts receivable from previous seasons. The business continues to focus on the strategic priorities such as developing a product line of agriculture inputs with [indiscernible] knowledge sharing activities, like our webinars, and offering best practices such as recycling, pilot for [ ploughing ] coming from agricultural inputs, packages, and productivity conference that aims to promote effective farming practices. Let's move to Slide 26 to discuss liquidity and our strong balance sheet. Regarding our debt metrics. As of the second quarter 2021, our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio increased to 2.7x from 2.2x as of the first quarter 2021. This increase was mainly explained by the financing of our working capital needs, mainly receivables due to our sales growth and inventories due to the higher cost of our main commodities, and second, our investments in fixed and intangible assets. Let's move on to Slide 27. Regarding our liquidity levels. As of June 2021, we grew our short-term line to fund our purchases of raw materials in our purchase leases for about $150 million. This is a temporary increase in our short-term debt as we expect to repay as we produce on sale soybean meal and soybean oil over the next month. As you know, we are a company that is focused on the continuous enhancement of all our processes. On the financing side, one of our top priorities is improvement of working capital and our cash conversion cycle. Until the end of the second quarter, our cash conversion cycle averaged 15 days over the last 12 months. Although this will present 3 more days than the last quarter, mainly explained by the temporary increase in our inventory in the Crushing business, it also showed a 7-day improvement when compared to the same period last year. We improved our cash conversion cycle through several working capital initiatives, including [indiscernible] for financing and sales of receivable taking advantage of the positive interest rate environment in our main markets. As a result, we closed the second quarter with PEN 1.4 billion in cash, which means that we help fund equivalent to 1.1x the principle of debt maturity over the next 12 months. Furthermore, we have committed credit lines in the amount of PEN 174 million and maintain available uncommitted grade line for PEN 4.5 billion. In addition, we have room to issue debt securities in the Peruvian market under our local bond program for PEN 1.6 billion. All the aforementioned actions and metrics were a result of our comprehensive and prudent financial strategy, which has been recognized not only by local rating agencies, which maintain us in the highest quarter rate in Peru, but also by all 3 global rating agencies, which have affirmed our investment grade rating with stable outlook. It is also worth mentioning that we engaged a second rating agency for our local securities in the Bolivian market that will allow us to increase our presence in that market. Finally, let me go back to Alfredo to wrap up today's presentation with a glimpse of what we expect for 2021.

Thanks, Juan. Let's turn to Slide 29 to give you some guidelines about our expectations for 2021. Although there is still a relatively high level of uncertainty for the year ahead, I wanted to share with you some key trends that we expect for 2021. In terms of revenue growth, we maintain our previous guideline expecting consolidated revenue to grow double digit for the full year. Furthermore, we expect all our business units to grow double digit, except for our consumer goods international unit, which should post high single-digit growth. Regarding EBITDA, we maintain our forecast of approximately 20% year-over-year growth, despite lower margins associated with higher commodity prices. Also in this case, we expect all our business units to post at least solid double-digit EBITDA growth, with the exception of our CGI unit. As for our investments for the year, we lowered our previous guidance of CapEx from $150 million to approximately $140 million as we continue to analyze our investment plan in the context of higher uncertainty and lower investments in the first 2 quarters. Thank you for joining us today. And now we welcome any questions that you may have.

[Operator Instructions] Our first audio question comes from Alonso with BTG.

I wanted to ask about the Consumer Goods business in Peru and the pressure on margins generally. Where do you see roughly them recovering? You mentioned there's some recovery probably in the second half of the year. Do you think you can go back to the '17, '18, '19 level? Or is it going to be something between this roughly 12.5% at the '19 level we've seen in the past?

Thank you, Alonso. I'll just forward the call directly to Patricio, who is on call. Patricio, go ahead.

[Audio Gap] Many categories such as edible oils, laundry detergent, laundry soap and pastas. We hope that our year to go would be higher than what we achieved last year. And then by the end of the year, perhaps we could reach similar margin numbers as we had in 2020. But this is mainly dependent on our ability to repass our cost price, which we have been doing. However, we also need to keep in line on what's going on with the volume. We have some competitive pressure. We don't want to accelerate tier downs in many of the categories, especially, I would say, in the more commoditized ones. But our efforts continue to drive margin growth in the year to go, as I mentioned before. We have taken pricing more than 60% in oil, more than 40% in pastas, more than 15% in our Home Care business. So those margins will start to recover, and this will start mainly in the third quarter and continue to go on towards the fourth quarter.

And then a second question, Alfredo, maybe on the extraordinary dividend. Is that just to remind me what you said you have one year to pay that extraordinary dividend?

That is correct, Alonso, up to one year. We'll be having a board decision soon about that as to, first, the amount and would be up to the number and also the timing of that dividend to happen. But yes, you're correct, it's up to a year.

[Operator Instructions] We do have a question submitted via the webinar. This is from [indiscernible]. Her question is, have we seen the full impact of higher commodity prices? How are your hedging policies working? And should we expect further price increase to compensate for higher input prices?

Thank you for the question. I'll refer the answering to first Lucho Estrada and also any further comments on the business from Patricio as well.

Thank you, Alfredo. Let me give some color in terms of the view of the commodity markets, based on the different conversations we have had with different trading companies and market analysts. As you have seen, we are facing -- every 10 years, the commodity markets show significant increases like the ones we are facing this year within the last 12 months, I would say. The reasons vary, every -- what we call, every super cycle, the differences vary as to why this is happening. In this case, we're right now in the middle of what we call a weather market, which basically is the different impacts on weather that are hitting the forecast of crops for wheat, corn and soybeans. We expect a lot of volatility in the market for the next 6 months and at this higher levels that we have seen. Regarding our hedging policy, we're actively using the limits that we have within the corporate risk policy that has been established a few years ago. And it's providing results in terms of both, I would say, from 2 angles: one, protecting the risk of the company; and two, with the market view that we have a position in the company and having in relative terms better purchases than the average of the market. And that's -- those are the comments in terms of the commodity markets. In terms of transferring into -- transferring the increases of commodity prices into products. I'm going to make a couple of comments on the B2B front, and then we'll refer to Patricio, if he wants to add more color. I think as he has mentioned before, we're trying to balance the fact of transferring the increase of commodity prices into our finished products, while avoiding tiering down. Tiering down is also happening on the B2B front as restaurants and bakeries are trying to recover. They're also being extremely cautious in terms of their own cost structures, and tiering down, it's beginning to show up on the B2B front as well. And the other important part balance is not to lose market share. So it's a balancing act that we have to do in terms of transferring increases on -- not only on commodity prices, but also the impact on ForEx exchange versus not letting market share go and versus trying to prevent an acceleration on the tiering down, which is happening, as I mentioned. Patricio, if you want to add some color to it.

Yes, sure, sure. Thank you, Lucho. Yes, I think that as we have mentioned throughout the call, our margin expectations are high. However, we need to keep in mind what are -- what's going on with increasing cost of raw material, the valuation has also played a significant role in our margin decline. And also, as Lucho mentioned, tiering down. But we are too looking at additional pricing actions in key categories going forward. I would say that our ability to recover margins will be centered on our ability to take prices or continued take prices, I would say, in 2 key categories, which has been mainly affected by raw materials. And that is certainly edible oils, which as Alfredo mentioned, has experienced more than 100% cost increase on a year-over-year basis. And also pasta, also as mentioned by Alfredo, with prices have increased more than 40% on a year-over-year increase. So those are, I would say, the focus of our price actions and revenue management strategies going forward so that we can recover less profitability on those categories and [Audio Gap] continue to grow our Consumer Goods Peru business.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Felipe with Scotiabank.

Great. A couple of really quick ones on the financial side and then maybe we can shift to a couple of strategic questions. But the first one on market shares. You obviously reported very good recovery on market shares. How far are you from being at the levels where you were before the plant shut down? And then the other one with gross margins, I think it was asked on the question before, but I didn't catch the answer on that. Do you think you've hit the bottom of gross margins? Or can it worsen a bit more before we see a rebound?

Thank you, Felipe. And again, I'll just refer first to Patricio, but also to Lucho to comment on your questions.

Yes, Felipe. On market shares, yes, as we have been pointing out through the presentation, I think that we have shown great recovery in key categories, and we're measuring all of those, not only versus 2020, but also versus 2029 -- 2019, I'm sorry. I would say that in close to 65% of those categories, we have either recovered that market share or even growing versus 2019. We still have some room to grow in some other categories, mainly the ones where we have net price takings versus our key competitors. So I would say that we still have a road to continue growing our shares, but we feel that we are in great shape to capture those 2019 numbers in the majority of the categories by year-end. We feel very confident of the recent results that we have experienced. As you recall, our May, June reading in 2020 was the lowest one that we had for last year. And since then, we have recovered in almost all categories. We wanted to highlighted surface cleaners, where we have more than gained 30 percentage points versus that period of time, margarine, sauces, bleaches, cookies and crackers. So I do feel confident that we're going to achieve those. And that is a significant, important, I would say, goal in the context of price that we have been leading in many of the categories.

Lucho, can you comment from your side on shares as well?

Yes. Yes. On shares, Felipe, we are already recovered in terms of the main categories that we have on the B2B front on [indiscernible] and industrial power for bakeries, as well as on oils and lard [indiscernible], the Spanish group. We are close, and we should be closing the gap in the next month for margarines and sauces. So we're confident that the market share recovery is in place. As I mentioned before, it's a balancing act because on the same token, we are working hard to transfer the increase on costs into our prices. We need to balance that with not losing market share and keeping our market shares, and in the case of margarines and sauces in B2B actually continue the recovery pace.