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

Gisele, please go ahead.

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. We are very pleased that you could join us today. Speaking to you is Gisele Remy, Managing Director of Finance, Productivity and IRO at Alicorp. As presenters today we will have Mr. Alfredo Perez, Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Manuel Romero, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Patricio Jaramillo, Vice President of Consumer Goods and Innovation and other members of the management team who will join us during the Q&A session. Today we will be discussing the third quarter 2022 results after the financial results and earnings report we issued Monday. If you have not received a copy of the earnings report, please visit us at 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 are a member of the media and wish to direct any questions for the company, please contact the company directly after the call. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that forward-looking statements may be made during this conference call. 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 decisions. 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. Thank you for joining us today for our third quarter 2022 earnings call. We will start today's call by presenting some relevant external events impacting our business followed by an update on our corporate strategy and in which we will comment about our winning aspiration as well as key initiatives and strategic projects. We will then talk about the launch of our new brand in the Peruvian haircare space [ Amaras ] specifically designed for local consumers. Next, I will comment on our consolidated financial results followed by Patricio and Manuel who will cover our results by business unit and an update on liquidity and our balance sheet. At the end, before the Q&A, I will take the floor again for an update on our guidance for the full year 2022. Let's begin on Slide 5 to fill you in on some recent key events. First, Peru's annual general inflation rate reached 8.8% year-over-year as at September 2022, which is 50 basis points lower than a 25-year high of last quarter. The Food and Beverage component decreased to 13.7% year over year. Prices are increasing across the board in practically all categories, hurting Peruvian consumers who are still recovering financially from the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, local and regional election results may affect public investment levels in 2023. Despite positive trends in public investment growth in recent years, the Central Bank of Peru has estimated that because of new municipal and regional authorities, public investment will not have significant growth in 2023. Third, in Bolivia, our second most relevant geography in consumer goods, the Santa Cruz province is affected by a widespread strike given the postponement of the national census affecting economic activity, as this province is the wealthiest of the country. Now let's move on to Slide 6 to discuss our updated corporate strategy thing. Today, we would like to share with you our updated the strategic framework since our corporate strategy has been covered extensively in previous calls. Since the end of last year, we have undergone a diligent prioritization exercise, which is now reflected in the current strategic framework focused on key initiatives by business units. Let's start with our winning aspiration, which is we feed a better tomorrow with relevant value propositions for each of our consumers and clients in the Andean region, transforming markets with our leading brands, ability to innovate, efficient management and the talent of our people. In terms of where to play, as you already know, we are focused on the Andean region following the market segmentation of consumer goods units in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, B2B unit mainly in Peru, crushing unit in Bolivia and aquafeed unit in Ecuador, Chile, Peru and Honduras. In addition to this, we had to find a role for each business unit and each product category, which will allow us to prioritize investments across businesses based on return on investment capital and the potential for future growth. We intend to fulfill this aspiration thanks to strong and defensible competitive advantages related to go-to-market capabilities, differentiated products and brands and excellence in productivity, therefore, regarding our how to win, we'll focus on 3 specific fronts. First, differentiated products, brands and services through a multi-tier strategy. This front will allow us to deliver a differentiated portfolio with premium brands for sophisticated consumers achieving a substantial high margin as well as resilient brands to keep the volumes level stable in tiering down scenarios. Second, excellence in productivity. We have not only developed a challenging efficiency plan across all business units of the corporation, but also the productivity agenda includes transversal initiatives aimed at maximizing value on the industrial go-to-market, administrative and working capital. Third, flexible supply chain. One of our main competitive advantages is our distribution capacity, which allows us to reach numerous points of sale quickly, adapting to new market demands and conditions. Now we'll focus discussing the main key initiatives by business unit on Slide #7. Our first-class capabilities allow us to achieve our winning aspiration which is based on the careful selection of key initiatives and strategic projects that are being deployed in all of our business units. Furthermore, these projects are carefully aligned with our newest capabilities, portfolio management, technology and processes and sustainability. In our consumer goods unit, our efforts are focused on boosting our go-to-market strategy in the Andean region. In our main geography, Peru, we'll focus on accelerating growth in our home and personal care platforms, while scaling our digital age initiatives to reduce our cost to serve and expand coverage. In Bolivia, we aim to strengthen our home care business seeking to increase our competitiveness through local manufacturing. Regarding our B2B business, in addition to upgrading our go-to-market strategy through digital initiatives and strengthening our advisory services, placing our customers at the center of all of our efforts. We will explore new segments and categories and strengthen our cleaning platform in order to boost profitability by entering a higher margin segment and continue consolidating our leadership in the market. In aquafeed, the bet is focused on increasing the production capacity of our shrimp feed facility in Ecuador, where the market outlook is still positive for the following years. This, alongside our continuous business digitalization with advanced analytics, which is currently available to appliance will lead us to continue transforming the industry, enhancing our presence in the market and helping shrimp farmers increase their productivity, their efficiency and also the profitability. Finally, in our crushing business, we prioritize maximizing profitability by not only focusing on cash flow generation specifically during cycles of high international commodity prices, but also exploring less commoditized revenue streams in preparation for a normalized international commodity prices scenario. We trust that our ability to continue generating value for clients, consumers, shareholders and the society in general in order to continue feeding a better tomorrow. Let's now review our newest haircare brand innovation on Slide #8. A few weeks ago, along with our goal of delivering first-class value propositions and after several years of hard work and collective team effort, we launched our new personal care brand, Amaras, the first line of haircare products specifically designed for the Peruvian women. These launch will present a milestone for a company since global players and local competitors have not yet developed products with similar characteristics. This journey started with a very exhaustive research plan, where we discovered unaddressed consumer needs in this segment during a customer-centric innovation process. This is a clear example of our design thinking capabilities, which allow us to capitalize market opportunities through relevant innovation investments. Our differentiated value proposition combines the following features that will allow us to strengthen our position in the personal care market. First, we use local and nutrition ingredients that we're not pressing in products available in the market. Second, taking into account specific Peruvian consumer needs, we have considered local weather and water conditions in Peru. Both facts are fairly unique and have a significant impact on the performance of haircare products. Third, results achieved reflect the excellent work carried out by our different teams throughout the entire journey and ensure that we will continue to conveniently deliver top-quality products directly addressing the specific needs of our consumers. Let's now discuss our consolidated results for the second quarter 2022 on Slide #10. Consolidated revenue reached PEN 3.9 billion in the third quarter of 2022, outperforming by 21% the same period of 2021, mainly driven by the solid performance of our crushing and consumer goods Peru units. B2B, aquafeed and consumer goods international businesses also exhibited an important increase year-over-year as a result of price actions taken to partially offset the continuous cost pressures. On a year-to-date basis, revenue increased 30% year-on-year and volume 7.5%, reflecting higher revenue in all of our business units. Moving on to profitability. Let's now review our consolidated EBITDA for the second quarter 2022 on Slide 11. Consolidated EBITDA exhibited a 17% increase for the quarter when compared to the same period in Q1, mainly explained by the strong performance of our crushing unit and the recovery of our consumer goods Peru business. Aquafeed also exhibited a 3.5% growth in sols, 7.7% growth in dollars and continues to deliver remarkable results. This growth is partially offset by a decline in EBITDA in our consumer good international business, mainly explained by a noncash bad debt provision. Additionally, in the others section, we are reflecting the impact of assets we will no longer use as a result of our prioritization efforts. Year-to-date EBITDA increased 26% year-on-year, boosted by the remarkable performance of our crushing, aquafeed and B2B units. Let's now review our consolidated net income for the second quarter 2022 on Slide #12. Consolidated net income increased 31% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2022. Excluding the effect of discontinued operations, net income reached a 29% increase year-on-year. The effect of discontinued operations for the quarter, which is PEN 19.4 million mainly corresponds to our sponge and cleaning cloth business, which has been classified as available for sale and the results are reported in the net results from distant unit operations line. Year-to-date consolidated net income increased 55% year-on-year and 40% excluding discontinued operations. In line with that, we have mentioned in previous calls, it's worth noting that as we continue to simplify our business and prioritize key initiatives that generate the most value and return on invested capital, we will see noncash interest such as the ones we see in others and discontinued operations this quarter. Even though these noncash impact will impact our P&L negatively in the short term, we're confident that in the medium and long term, they will lead to healthier margins and more focused in key categories. Regarding our continued operations, the increase in net income is mainly higher operating profit of PEN 59 million, which is partially offset by the effect of our higher FX hedging costs in PEN 33 million. 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 14. For the third quarter of 2022, Peru's GDP is expected to grow 1.5% year-over-year, while private consumption will only grow 3.3%. Despite initial signs of a struggling economy and constant political turmoil, Alicorp delivered outstanding revenue growth of 23.5% year-over-year. We are consistently outperforming the market and continue on the right path of historical margins and volume platforms. The business strategy designed and implemented at the end of 2021 continues to gain traction, improving the performance of our business and strengthening our brands. As mentioned, we move forward on the recovery path in terms of volume and profitability. Financial performance in the third quarter significantly improved year-over-year, driven by effective revenue management efforts in terms of pricing and design to value strategies that help partially mitigate cost impact. These initiatives have allowed us to achieve a remarkable 37.2% growth EBITDA. Going forward, our business strategy will continue to be focused on increasing volume and defending our core brands in a more challenging economic environment. We will double down on advertising initiatives that highlight of product differentiated benefits and manage price gaps across tiers to maximize volume and profitability. We are already seeing positive results in several categories such as edible oils, pastas, detergents, cookies and crackers, and we are also deploying new smaller [ formats ] for certain key brands with lower out of pocket demands to maintain household penetration. Finally, our channel mix continues to show a strong traditional channel tilt representing 76% of our channel mix for this third quarter trending close to pre-pandemic levels. Regarding market shares we continue to see positive results for the June-August 2022 results we maintain or gain shareholder value in 67% of our categories. Additionally, compared to our November-December 2021 results, which was one of the most affected share platforms we have gained share in almost all of our categories. Moving on to innovation, as mentioned by Alfredo in the Amaras introduction, we launched our new personal care brand. Our first month has started very, very strong. We are confident that this brand will gain more and more traction as months go by and spearhead our growth in the personal care platform in Peru. Let's move on to the financial performance of our Consumer Goods Peru unit on Slide 15. For this third quarter, revenue grew 24% versus last year, predominantly driven by pricing initiatives in several categories to partially offset raw material increases in soybean oil, wheat and palm, better core value mix of products sold and a channel mix improvement more towards the traditional trade. Our gross profit increased 22% year-over-year with a higher gross margin per metric ton of PEN 1,739 versus PEN 1,470 the same period last year. In the year-to-date, revenue grew 16% and while gross margin lost 3 percentage points, gross profit per ton increased 5%. This is the first quarter in 2022 where our year-to-date finally surpasses last year's same period in all of our main KPIs, confirming our strong recovery. We will continue to focus on margins per ton as a guideline since the relevant increases in cost of goods sold significantly challenged the viability of maintaining and increasing percentage margins. EBITDA for the third quarter gained 37% versus last year and 6% on a year-to-date base versus the same period for 2021. For the third quarter, EBITDA reached the amount of PEN 166 million. Let's move on to Slide 16. Consumer Goods International market dynamics. Regarding our Consumer Goods International unit, we continue to focus on our homecare category expansion and strengthening our go-to-market initiatives to accelerate growth in Bolivia and Ecuador. In Bolivia, we're delivering significant top line growth in our homecare platform mainly driven by a 33% increase in volume. Also, we have taken several pricing initiatives in categories impacted by high commodity prices, such as lard and margarine while still maintaining price controls in oils. It is important to mention that we started the local production of liquid cleaners, liquid disinfectants and dishwashers facilitating flexibility, profitability and a reduction of working capital. This is another step towards fueling our homecare platform growth in this geography. Regarding our distribution model, our new decks in Cochabamba is up and running in addition to our other 2 decks in La Paz and Santa Cruz, previously discussed. Consequently we continue expanding our direct distribution of reaching more than 10,000 points of sales directly. In Ecuador, revenue grew more than 20% year-over-year, reaching monthly historic highs. It is important to mention that the possible goal of our go-to-market strategy has permitted us to reach more than 50,000 customers with purchase versus 5,000 customers that we had at the beginning of 2022 with presence in 80% of the modern channel. Finally, the launch of a 360 degree campaign [Foreign Language] have been successful in reaching volume gains. This has helped us achieve a 53% volume growth versus our 2022 monthly average. All in all, our go-to-market strategies in Bolivia and Ecuador are being deployed successfully. And this is a consequence of the experience and learning in Peru and extraordinary efforts of strong locker leadership teams that lever our capabilities. Let's move on to the performance of Consumer Goods Bolivia on Slide 17. Bolivia's revenue flat year-over-year in the third quarter of 2022. In our homecare platform, revenue increased 44% year-over-year and gross profit 29% reflecting the -- of the strategies deployed to increase the profitability and volume growth of this platform that continues to be our focus. EBITDA fell 79% year-over-year and 37% when compared to last year's year-to-date due to higher nonrecurring bad debt and SG&A expenses commented by Alfredo. Let's move on to the performance of Consumer Goods Ecuador on Slide 18. Ecuador's revenue grew 21% year-over-year, fueled by volume growth, pricing initiatives and gross to net efficiencies. Year-to-date EBITDA versus last year's same period remained flat due to higher SG&A expenses, mainly marketing and sales-related incurred to fuel future volume and revenue growth for the last quarter of 2022 and also for a very strong next year.

Thank you, Patricio. Let's move to Slide 19 for an update on market dynamics for B2B. The third quarter showed a slowdown in out-of-home consumption, the restaurant GDP, which has been growing at rates above 40% during the last month has shown an important deceleration. The recovery pace has been impacted mainly by the inflationary pressure on families, leading them to prioritize expenses. As a result of this context, we are seeing a market size growing in terms of restaurant GDP below our previous expectations. However, in this context, B2B has shown strong resilience by depending and in some cases, gaining market share. This is possible thanks to our multi-tier strategy, our customer-focused approach and the strength of our brands. Our focus for the next months will be to keep working on our prospection strategy that has allowed us to reach 1,500 more customers quarter-over-quarter to continue generating differentiation through various customer solutions and on the quality of our products and services. Let's move on to Slide 20 for our financial performance for B2B. Our revenue grew 16% this quarter compared to last year, supported by higher prices aimed at compensating the increasing commodity prices. However, our volume decreased 8%, primarily affected by a reduction of flour bakery volumes, which represent around 75% of this reduction and discontinued products, which represents 12.5% of the reduction. Regarding gross profit, the third quarter showed a reduction of 3%, primarily due to volume reduction. However, our gross profit per ton reached an improvement of 6% over last year. Third quarter EBITDA decreased 12% year-over-year, while year-to-date, we managed to grow more than 31% year-over-year based on our gross profit and SG&A control. Next, we will cover the aquafeed market dynamics on Slide 21. In Ecuador, shrimp exports grew 29% during the third quarter versus last year, mainly due to the recovery of demand from China. China continues to regain ground among Ecuadorian shrimp exports, although Ecuador still maintained significant volume exports to the U.S. and Europe, consolidating the trend for a more balanced and diverse base in terms of Ecuadorian export destinations compared to previous years. In July, 227,000 pounds of shrimp were exported from Ecuador, reaching a historic high. Furthermore, solid growth is expected to continue as we move further into 2022 and 2023. International trade for shrimp continues to improve despite some COVID-19 related restrictions in China and inflation in the U.S. and European Union. Despite this difficult economic conditions, Ecuadorian shrimp is in a good position to -- due to lower costs compared to Asian competitors. International prices for shrimp have decreased compared to 2021, but farmers are still able to make healthy profits. Rabobank has recently stated that there will be a price correction in the near term due to the recovery of production in Asia. This is expected to lead to a reduction in price, together with increases in the cost of production. We'll probably oblige the industry to search for cost efficiencies where Ecuador has a clear advantage. Despite recent concerns about the market outlook, we continue to see farmers maintain their production strategies that have boosted returns during the last few quarters. Thus, they are increasing pond densities, which also increases the demand for feed, investing even more in automation and new technologies, which includes Vitapro's new digital ecosystem, slowly steering up towards more premium diets where Vitapro is a market leader as well as reopening dry pumps and improving industrial facilities in order to offer more value-added products to better cope with growing demand from the U.S. and Europe. Regarding the salmon feed business, exports of salmon from Chile are expected to increase due to seasonality in the second half of the year. Additionally, there are concerns in Norway because the Norwegian government proposed 40% resource tax, which could come into effect in 2023. When the news of this proposed tax was announced, the immediate impact was the cumulative market value of Norwegian salmon producers fell by around $5.6 billion. Prices in the salmon market have fallen in the third quarter, mainly due to seasonality effects and more wild salmon in the market. Still, the price levels are very good and healthy for Chilean producers and their profits, which could incentivize farmers to continue sowing. To compete successfully in the Chilean salmon industry, Vitapro is continuing to deploy efficiency program and go-to-market strategy in order to capture new tenders in 2022. All in all, during the third quarter of 2022, we continue to see growth in both the shrimp and salmon industries and we expect this trend to continue throughout this year and into 2023. Vitapro continues to experience exponential growth, especially in Ecuador. This growth, plus our differential feed produce and strong brands allow us to continue generating value for Alicorp. Let's move on to Slide 22 for the performance of our aquafeed business. In terms of business performance, the 17% revenue growth is mainly explained by price actions implemented to compensate for the increase in our raw material prices and the tiering up of our portfolio to value-added feed mainly in Ecuador. While gross margin decreased 0.4 percentage points mainly due to price increases in our raw materials, gross profit per ton increased 18% due to the tiering up of our portfolio and price initiatives. EBITDA increased 8% year-over-year, mainly due to the higher gross profit. Next, we will cover the crushing business financial performance on Slide 23. The crushing business continues to perform robustly despite the volatile context. We would like to highlight that gross volume in the third quarter reached 399,000 metric tons, growing 10.5% compared to last quarter. Revenue increased 39% year-over-year in U.S. dollars, explained by soybean and oil and mill higher prices and a 6% growth in volume sold to third parties. As you know, reported results in our financial statements comes from the sale to third parties only. It is important to highlight that volume for internal consumption grew 2%, reaching 105,000 metric tons. As a result of our customer-centric strategy, the agricultural solutions team performed field visits to our clients during the different stages of cultivation, helping farmers improve productivity through appropriate techniques and the use of our portfolio. This new business already represents $3.8 million of EBITDA on a year-to-date basis, growing 71% versus last year, while helping us to strengthen our relationship with producers and reducing volatility in our crushing business. We expect this additional revenue stream to continue growing in the upcoming years, providing more stability to our crushing business, EBITDA in line with our strategic goals as Alfredo discussed earlier on. EBITDA increased $17 million year-on-year on the back of our ability to negotiate prices and our commercial team's effort in developing the business in a volatile market context. Let's move to Slide 25 to discuss our liquidity and credit rating. Regarding our liquidity levels, as of September 2022, we increased our cash position, which amounted to PEN 1.269 billion, PEN 444 million more than as of June 2022. In the third quarter, we closed a syndicated facility with 7 international banks in the amount of $220 million. Out of this, $100 million were devoted to improving our maturity profile by refinancing debt maturing in 2023 and 2024 to longer tenures. And the remaining $120 million remain as a 3-year committed credit facility that secures liquidity. On top of that, we refinanced $29 million of short-term debt to longer tenures and prepaid around $33 million in financial liabilities. As a result, as of September, our cash position, including the committed facilities, covers 1.51x the principal of debt maturing over the next 12 months. These actions show our comprehensive and prudent financial strategy, which is recognized not only by local rating agencies who have maintained our rating at the highest possible rating level in Peru, but also by both global rating agencies who have maintained our investment-grade rating. Moving to Slide 26 to comment on our debt metrics. In that sense, I would like -- regarding our debt metrics, our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio improved from 3x as of the second quarter of 2022 to 2.5x as of the third quarter of 2022. The decrease was mainly explained by a positive operating cash flow due to a proactive working capital management and an increase in our EBITDA over the last 12 months as a result of the good performance of our crushing, Consumer Goods Peru and aquafeed units. Furthermore, these leverage results also incorporate the disbursement necessary for our share buyback program initiated in July following its approval in our shareholder meeting, where we have repurchased 3.2% of our outstanding shares for a total of approximately PEN 150 million. As we show on the slide, consolidated leverage is also subject to the seasonality of our crushing business readily marketable inventory or RMI as the impact of RMI on our balance sheet has become more relevant than in previous years due to volume and cost of bean and seed increases. Nevertheless, taking into account these RMIs, which are ready to sell, are hedged and are -- and we could sell it in a fairly active market. With the traditional net debt-to-EBITDA ratio on the consolidated level stands at 2.5x if we consider RMI as a cash equivalent and subtracted from net debt, the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio in the third quarter would have been 2x. Finally, let me circle back to Alfredo to wrap up today's presentation with a view of what we expect for 2022.

Thanks, Manuel. Let's turn to Slide 28 to wrap up today's presentation with a glimpse of what we expect for our full year 2022 results. Despite the challenges faced in the last few quarters and the continuing pressure on our margins, our third quarter results demonstrated a positive performance. Furthermore, we find that our pricing strategies and design-to-value initiatives will continue to deliver positive results for the last quarter. Thus, we're updating our guidance for 2022. In that sense, I would like to comment the main assumptions behind our guidance. Despite challenging economic conditions with high inflation rates, which will continue to put pressure on families' income during the last quarter and next year, we're confident that our Consumer Goods Peru unit will continue its recovery. As you may recall, during the second half of 2021, this business was heavily impacted. We also see clear positive tailwinds for aquafeed and crushing, while B2B continues resilient despite the effect of tiering down a deceleration of the food service industry activity due to prioritization of family expenses as we mentioned before. Considering the aforementioned assumptions, we expect revenue to reach over 25% growth and EBITDA to reach a growth of approximately 25% without any possible nonrecurring items, which may be reflected in the fourth quarter of this year, coupled with double-digit EBITDA per metric ton growth versus 2021. CapEx guidance, excluding aquafeed remains the same, reflecting our prioritization efforts falling to USD 70 million. This represents an almost 30% reduction versus 2021 levels. Including aquafeed, CapEx guidance has decreased to $105 million given a phasing of payments in the plant expansion in our Ecuador business mentioned in previous calls. As for leverage, our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio should remain approximately 2.5x by year-end in 2022. This concludes our presentation, and now we welcome any questions that you may have.

[Operator Instructions] We have a voice question from Mr. Alonso from BTG Pactual.

Yes. Two questions on my side. I wanted to ask about -- I mean, your very good cash position. And how should we think about your dividend policy or I mean, for next year or potentially maybe if you plan to potentially announce an extraordinary dividend this year? And second, on the crushing business, I mean, this is supposed to be a fairly cyclical business and profitability is probably close to its peak right now. Are you seeing any signs of a change in trends in crushing or should we continue to expect very good levels of profitability maybe for another 2 or 3 quarters?

Thank you, Alonso. On the first question, our dividend policy, I'll switch it over to Manuel. And then on the second question on our views as to our crushing business, I'll ask Luis Estrada who heads our crushing Business also to comment on. So Manuel, please go ahead. I think, Manuel, you're on mute. I'll comment.

Okay. So regarding our cash position, what we're seeing is that due to our prioritization efforts that have been discussed in this call, Alicorp is generating more cash flow than what we were initially expecting. Today, our focus is the share repurchase program, where we expect to continue repurchasing shares. If we continue seeing this excess cash, we might distribute more dividends, but we would probably do so during the second quarter of 2023. Currently, we are not expecting to distribute any extraordinary dividends because there may be some additional investments or attractive opportunities that will require some additional investments. But we are carefully monitoring this situation and as soon as we have more clarity regarding these investment opportunities, we could distribute higher dividends in 2023.

Thank you, Manuel. Now to address the second question of Alonso, Luis, please, why don't you go ahead and comment on our expectation for the crushing business?

Thank you, Alfredo, and thank you Alonso for the question. In terms of our view on the crushing business in the future, it's going to really depend, Alonso, on what happens with -- not only with, I would say, with prices of commodities in the next quarters, but also price volatility. We're expecting price volatility to continue to be one relevant factor on the market. And we expect the commodity prices to remain volatile and at a solid platform where we are seeing the current values today. There's another factor that I think we're going to have to pay very close attention to, which is if there's going to be any future impact on weather and harvest of soybeans and sunflower seeds in Bolivia. Mother nature has been very generous with Bolivia in the last 2.5 years, I would say, which has not been the case in countries and neighboring countries like Paraguay or Argentina. We are monitoring very closely the impact of La Nina, which is a reality today on the southern hemisphere, which is impacting wheat harvest from Argentina and the next harvest after week in South America, as you may know, it's soybeans. So it's going to depend, I would say, on whether we continue to see supported prices on soybeans and the products, soybean meal and soy oil, but also whether coming harvest in Bolivia will continue to be a growing harvest as it has been in the last couple of years.

Okay. And just to follow up on your initial comment on price volatility. I mean when you have a lot of price volatility, can you take advantage of that? I mean, is that -- does that lead to a better margin generally or...

Yes. Yes, Alonso. We are very actively managing the position of the company and that implies us making, taking decisions on whether -- what's the view of the market when there's pricing -- price volatility and our approach lately and probably for the next month is going to be more active on taking optionality because we're at higher levels. So it's very not recommendable to take longer positions at these current levels, but most probably paying much more attention to taking positions on options.

And also, let me just add to Luis' comments that looking at the business with a longer-term view, our view is that it's still a cyclical business. So in high commodity cycles, high volatility levels, we will see these results, which this year are going to be record -- on record. However, as the cycles will come down, which most likely if we use history as an example, the profitability will come down. So we should expect that for the business going forward. But still, obviously, this year is a record, and we'll see what happens next year, as [ Luis ] mentioned as well. Thank you, Alonso, for the questions.

We have a few questions that came in via the text. The first one is from Mr. Gerard Fort from AFP Integra. Are you planning to keep raising prices in some categories to protect margins? And how do you expect to keep double-digit volume growth with this pricing initiatives in place?

Thank you for the question. I think it is mostly related to our consumer products business. So assuming that let me just ask Patricio to take over and answer the question, both on the price as well as the volume side. Patricio, go ahead.

And thank you for the question. Product prices will depend on how the cost drivers evolve, where we can see upward pressures and how the market takes them. Throughout the year, I would say that we have made efforts to avoid transferring 100% of the price increase of these factors to consumer prices and we will continue to do so as far as possible and still maintaining, as mentioned before, our revenue management initiatives and also our design-to-value programs to avoid doing that. The market, as mentioned before, is still volatile. We -- what we're achieving in Peru, it's not a double-digit volume growth. What we are achieving in Peru, it's a double-digit revenue growth. Actually, when you take a look at volume, our volume for the quarter grew almost 3.5% year-over-year. We will continue to see strong volume growth in Ecuador and this is mainly driven by our new go-to-market strategy and the deployment of new categories that we mentioned throughout the call. As said before, we entered the detergents category in Ecuador with our brand Sapolio and we also launched a 2-tier strategy within pastas within the Nutregal brand. So we will continue to see perhaps double-digit growth in volume for Ecuador. But in Peru, we're still seeing single-digit growth in terms of what we expect to achieve. So we will continue monitoring the market. Price of raw materials slightly fell in September, but still cost pressures continue, given recent news from Ukraine and the Russia conflict. So we will continue keeping our eye on the ball and seeing how those things evolve to continue recovering profitability as we have done throughout the quarter. As I mentioned before, throughout the quarter, we managed to grow our gross metric per ton almost 19% versus our third quarter 2021 and we expect that trend to continue going forward.

We have another question. Perhaps this was already just answered, but I will just read this out anyway in case there's anything else to add. This is from Alexandra Ramos from La Positiva. The good results in the category of consumer goods, is that resulting only in price increases or are there any other factors in play?

I think, yes, it was addressed mostly through Patricio's response and I think it is fair to say that we have conducted numerous efficiency efforts, leveraging off of different competitive advantages to make sure that we recover those profitability levels on a per ton basis that Patricio was referring to. So I think, yes, that will be the answer to the question.

And also, what I would like to comment additionally is that even though the increases that we are getting in the quarter are mainly driven by revenue, it's also important to mention that we are gaining market share or regaining our share positions in many of the categories that were impacted during last year. And as I said before, also, the introduction of a new category within a significant market size, which is Amaras within haircare is something that will drive growth in the upcoming quarters.

Perfect. Thank you very much for that comprehensive answer. [Operator Instructions] Okay. It looks like the call was comprehensive enough to warrant no further questions. I'll pass the line back to the management team at Alicorp for any concluding remarks.

Well, I first -- I want to thank all of you for participating in our 2022 conference call. We appreciate all of the questions and comments and as always, if you have any further doubts or questions about our results and anything else, please do not hesitate to contact directly. Our Investor Relations team will be readily available to make the answers available to you guys. So please, thank you again, and stay safe and have a great day.

Thank you very much. This concludes today's conference call. We'll now be closing all the lines. Thank you very much and goodbye.