Almarai Company (2280) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Call of Almarai. Today, we have with us the senior management of the company. The meeting will consist of 60 minutes, starting with a short presentation followed by the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Without any further delay, I would hand over the mic to the management for their initial presentation and comments. Over to the management.

Thank you, Mohammed, and welcome to Almarai Q3 Earnings Call. First, I would like to thank Rajhi Capital and Muhammad Saad for hosting and organizing our call today. I assume all of you have downloaded the earnings presentation. For those who haven't, please go to Almarai website, Investors page, and you will find the document. Before we start, please pay attention to the disclaimer on Page 2. Now over to you, Danko, for the presentation.

Thank you very much, Mohammed. Good morning or good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm happy to be with you again here for the third consecutive quarter release in '24. I hope everybody is doing well. I will go through the presentation like we normally do a little bit of market dynamics, then we look into the business performance and financial performance. And a few more charts that I think might be helpful for you before we move into the questions and answers. On our first main topic on the market dynamics, we have a few more releases that we've done on Bakery segment and also on Juice. We actually celebrate our 25th year in the Juice category, being #1 today, it was a journey to get to that point. But we've launched in this quarter 2 flavors, Alphonso Mango and Strawberry Pomegranate that I recommend you all to buy. It tastes really delicious. We continue to drive our market. If we move to the next chart, there is scope for growth, both in the category, either by growing the category or even taking shares. And you can see that we've got August '24 Nielsen data, our latest update on where we are in our core categories. There are a few ups and a few downs. But overall, we are holding our #1 position, which is key for us strategically. So it's nice to see how we continue to develop in the respective category. And I'll go more into the composition of the growth that we have soon. But let's first go to the summary, which we normally show on our business performance. So overall, a solid 9% growth in the third quarter, SAR 412 million or SAR 5.2 billion turnover in the quarter. I will spend more time about where and what in a few moments. Our operating profit increased 15% with another SAR 100 million approximately, partly due to the revenue growth, but also stable commodities. We do see some signs in the front that I will talk a little bit about, but it is helping us for sure, if we compare it to last year. Favorable mix is also helping us. And then a very effective management of our overhead costs. We are driving overhead costs. They are increasing versus last year, but to a lesser extent and very much in line with the plan that we were expecting it to do. On net income, we grow even a bit further. So even though we have units outside KSA with different tax rates that are adding to the tax rates, we see that the overall tax is increasing because we are actually increasing our profit. So that is mitigated with a reduction of what we see in our interest costs that are stable or even slightly below last year, doing a good job on the borrowing side, and I'll talk a little bit more on the balance sheet. You have that below here, you can see that the balance sheet and cash flow highlights, very significant reduction in the working capital position in Q3 and '24 versus last year same quarter. We are spending more on CapEx already in line with plan, the SAR 234 million adds up to a significant amount this year compared to last year. I'll speak more about that. But it's in line with our plan and what we are expecting to see, but the swing that we have on working capital also gives us a very good free cash flow. The swing is SAR 823 million. But as you all know, we compare movements, and we shouldn't do that. But it's good to see the SAR 316 million of cash flow coming in, in our business. So dissecting a little bit the growth by country. On the left there, you see the proportions by country and the absolutes. And then on the right, you see the growth contributed by each country. So SAR 412 million, the lion's share of that obviously comes from KSA, SAR 240 million. But it's very nice to see we also have essentially growth in all our countries with UAE growing 14% or SAR 56 million. Jordan doing a really good quarter with 22% growth, and I'll speak a little bit more about Jordan a little bit later on. Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain doing very well. There's a slight decline in Egypt of SAR 10 million in Saudi Riyal. If we look at their underlying growth in Egypt, it's about 57% growth in local currency. So the impact you see here is the devaluation that drags it down a little bit, although they delivered good contribution in the bottom line. And then others, we are doing international business, mostly in Long Life and Foods category that are driving good growth in the quarter. So all in all, good growth in all countries. Looking at categories, the same trend. All categories are growing. On the left, you see the absolute and the proportions. But on the right, very strong delivery of our core Dairy category in the quarter. Fresh Dairy growing SAR 107 million or 6% is very good, but also Long Life Dairy, growing also in almost the same amount, about SAR 97 million or 24% growth. So very strong delivery on the Dairy category. Juice the same, SAR 75 million more or a 19% growth in the quarter. And Foods then growing 11% or SAR 60 million in the quarter. Poultry selling as much as we can produce, 6% and bakery, 3%. Overall, all categories growing in the quarter, which is nice to see. If you look where are we growing, in which channel. Also here, you have a positive delivery. We maintain our strong position in traditional trade and we are growing with about SAR 260 million out of the SAR 412 million in traditional trade, that's 9%. But we also see now a stronger growth coming from Food Service and growing another 9% in the quarter with the SAR 70 million part. And then Modern Trade growing SAR 61 million or 6%. Overall, the Other and Export continues to be the international sales that is doing very well as well, growing at 11%. So essentially, a good quarter to communicate because we are seeing good growth in our core categories, countries and channels. And that's nice to be able to do so. We continue to have a good trend, and I'll speak a little bit more about that when we have our year-to-date numbers. If we then move into the financials and what it means for the bottom line, I'll give the word to Ikram to speak a little bit about that.

Thanks very much, Danko. I'll move to Slide 14, where we can see the key pillars for the 17% growth in our net income or let's say an increase of SAR 84 million on a like-for-like basis. As you've just seen for the last 3 slides, Danko talked about the key sources of revenue growth on the previous slides. And this volume-led revenue growth is the biggest contributor to our profit growth and this is where the first bar of SAR 202 million of net income increase is coming through. Please note, this was also positively impacted by country and product mix as we talked earlier. If I go to the next bar of SAR 67 million of adverse price impact, that mainly relates to trade spend and discounts to support the volume growth. Then you can see the stable commodity trends are adding SAR 64 million to the quarterly profit. And then the higher operational cost of SAR 102 million relates to mainly diesel and volume-related OpEx. Funding and other costs added SAR 13 million for the quarter, which is mainly driven by tax expense from non-GCC countries, which Danko alluded to earlier, and it's a positive sign to demonstrate the turnaround performance of both Egypt and Jordan. Let me now move to Slide 15, where I can discuss in detail the key trends or key financial performance for the quarter. We've discussed 9% revenue growth in detail, so let me focus more on the operating profit and net income. Operating profit grew by 15% at a much higher rate than revenue growth mainly due to efficiency programs, driving cost control and stabilized commodity costs. Net income grew at 17%, slightly higher rate than operating profit, as the funding cost remained stable for the quarter, driven by lower average debt balance during the quarter. The benefit of this lower debt balance was partly offset with higher funding costs compared to last year -- funding rate compared to last year. Let me now move to Slide 16, where we discuss the business performance by segment. The summary commentary is given on the slides, but let me give you some key highlights segment by segment. The first segment, Dairy & Juice. The biggest segment for Dairy & Juice for Almarai good news is that it contributed the most growth on the top line of 11% for Q3. This was driven mainly by Long Life Dairy in percentage terms, 24% growth in Long Life Dairy and Juice of 19% growth. Due to this strong revenue growth, the profit growth for this segment was even higher at 21%, as you can see at the bottom of the slide. And as a result, the net income margin for Dairy & Juice segment improved from 9% last year to 10% in the current quarter. Next segment I would like to talk about is Bakery segment. Bakery segment had a very decent top line growth of 3% on the top line and 5% on the bottom line. Given that Q3 is usually the most profitable quarter for the Bakery segment due to back-to-school activity. Bakery net income margin remained at a very healthy rate of 18%, similar to last year. So the third segment, and the last segment for Almarai is the Poultry. Poultry top line growth of 6% was also volume-driven, and poultry sales reached 66 million birds for the Q3 2024. 66 million birds mean Almarai is selling more than 5 million birds every single week in the quarter, which is, again, another milestone for Almarai and a great performance for the Poultry segment. The profit growth of the segment of 17% and a net income margin of 14% are driven as a result of efficiency gains at the factory in farm and the higher volume throughput as we discussed earlier. I would now like to discuss Danko to take us through the business performance for the first 9 months on a year-to-date basis. Thank, over to you, please.

Thanks Ikram. And I'm not going to be that long, but just to go to the summary of year-to-date Q3. I think consistent delivery, I want to reiterate, we are seeing our strategy being deployed into our actuals, first quarter was 8% growth. Second quarter was also 8% growth. And then now on the third quarter, we had 9% growth, bringing the year-to-date to about 8%, so SAR 1.16 billion of turnover increase. And you see the same trend on our operating profit growing slightly more at 11% or SAR 239 million with an EBIT of SAR 2.4 billion, and net income also growing and then slightly more with 12% to about SAR 1.88 billion. The EBIT margin year-to-date is about 15%, and the net income margin is 12%. So strong delivery in the consistency of our business and deploying our strategy. The working capital is the same as you saw in the third quarter, it's just balances, but you can see here that we are spending more on our capital investments just like we plan to do, a very strong delivery on the free cash flow as well of SAR 942 million more than last year. And you'll see that also when I start talking about the net debt numbers and where we are in the current position. There's no change. When I look at countries, categories or channels, so we can click that through, but they are showing the same indication where we are in a very positive territory, having growth in all of them, with the exception of a little bit of the international sales that we do on farming, the alfalfa sales, which has no effect on our bottom line, essentially, it's the surplus that we are selling for export, that's why the year-to-date is negative. But overall, the rest is just very positive for us, and we continue to be strong in believing in delivering our strategy also going forward. Do you want to say anything on the profitability, Ikram, please feel free to do so, briefly, only, it's the same, different story...

Yes. Slide 23 is exactly the same trend, Danko. Very quickly, the volume and mix is the SAR 438 million is driven by the revenue growth, as you talked about. Pricing is a result of trade discounts, but offset by Egyptian pricing earlier in the year. Commodity costs and good procurement is giving us SAR 133 million saving. Cost as a result of our volume growth and funding and cost we've talked earlier, and we have one-off issue last year. That's about it. The next slide also, gentlemen, and we've talked earlier as well. The main story remains that operating profit growth -- our efficiencies and cost control are helping us deliver a much stronger operating profit despite diesel cost and the one-off issue that we impacted last year. That's the main story that's running the team on operating costs. If I go through by segment, again, very similar to what I talked about in the quarterly results as well. In summary, I would like to focus on the bottom left-hand side of the slide, you will see the margins have remained pretty much the same for poultry. They remain at 14%, Bakery, 16%, similar to last year. Our Dairy & Juice, driven by a very strong Q3 performance. Now we're delivering much higher at 12% net income margin compared to 11% last year. And as a result, there's more stronger growth in our EBIT margins, which Danko will talk about in later slides. Danko if you can take us through the balance sheet and the EBIT margin evolutions. Over to you, Danko.

Yes. And before I do, I just want to flag up, we talk about stable commodity costs, and I'm sure those listening to this call also follow what's happening on commodities worldwide, and you've seen reductions in corn and soy. And that's clear that we are benefiting from that Alfalfa the same. But what we are seeing is some warning signs in the ingredients component and what's happening with the old price. So when we look at it overall, please don't assume that we're having a radical reduction from the significant inflation that we highlighted to you in the earlier years, whereby we did significant pricing. So we see a slight residual benefit as our commodity costs overall shows the benefit. But we have segments for which we are a bit concerned of what will happen. And the same, obviously, also applies for the price of diesel. So as we go in going forward, the expectation is that we have to be mindful about what's happening on commodity and whole. Now moving into the balance sheet and the investments that we do. You see the capital investment is now up to 16% of our turnover, SAR 3.366 billion. It's part of -- a majority of it is part of our poultry expansion plan. But as you know from our announcement with the SAR 18 billion that we're going to spend on investment in the next 5 years, it also is investment that we are doing in our core categories and in dairy for UHT, new lines that we are producing and also supporting our business in logistics and IT. So overall, we are expecting to see capital investments be fairly high in the next 5 years, but also with the corresponding benefits in both our top line and bottom line. So the thing you're seeing here is investing in the future, and it's coming up to a level now where we are indicating, and it's very clear, hopefully, for everyone that it's a conscious choice that we feel very confident about. On the other hand, when it comes to current assets and we look at the management of our receivables, payables and our inventory, you see the reduction here to SAR 3.8 billion. We were at SAR 4.3 billion at year-end, but we've been at even higher levels. We are now back to levels that are a little bit more normalized. The 18% could go even further. But our objective has been to get more focus in releasing cash from our current assets. And I think we've done fairly well. And that's more evidence when you look at the operating cash flow with working capital movements in the next chart, where -- you can see on the very right side there, the rolling 12-month cash flow we have in Almarai is now up to SAR 6.45 billion and it has not been higher than that for a very long time. And you can see that it corresponds to the 31% we had in 2021. But the absolute cash flow delivery was lower because we had lower turnover. We now have higher turnover. So it's a very strong delivery and it has benefited to our leverage position. We are using a lot of it, but we're also repaying some parts of the debt. So if we go to the next chart, you can see a little bit more in detail the SAR 5.7 billion is the cash flow from the business, the working capital benefit that we see now on the rolling 12 is SAR 800 million beneficial to us, giving us the SAR 6.4 billion that I mentioned in the previous page. We do spend it on planned property equipment investments that we have done also that we have announced, SAR 4.3 billion; biological assets, about SAR 0.9 billion. And so we are using a lot of it. We're also reducing our debt with about SAR 0.5 billion from the 12-month period that we compare to. If you use September last year, we are about SAR 0.5 billion lower in our net debt. And the funding cost, we talked about the dividend you are aware of, and then there's just the residual SAR 100 million there on others that we have as well. So looking at the metrics, what does that mean for us? Yes. Well, the net debt trend continues down even though we are investing heavily, our EBITDA is increasing. And in the third quarter here, we have 2.06 as the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio. And then the net debt as a ratio of our total equity is continuously coming down. We are increasing our equity as we increased our retained earnings but we are holding our debt firm to the comparators that you see, the '23 number there of SAR 9.4 billion is the year-end comparison. But compare year-on-year, September, it's SAR 0.5 billion down. So good numbers on the left side. On the right side, also very positive to see this is a rolling 12 months comparison as well. So our EBIT margin is 14% and our EBITDA margin is 22%. If we look at it year-to-date, we're actually at 15% EBIT margin and 23% EBITDA margin. So a good restoration of our profitability to a level, which is, I think, competitive if you compare it globally in our performance. Now I'm not going to spend too much time on our maturity profile, nothing has really changed from previous announcements. We have a good maturity profile over time. And also on the dividend, I'm not going to say too much about that either, it's static. So I'll leave that one. And then before I open the floor for Q&A. Just another point when I mentioned about Jordan, you saw yesterday, we announced the acquisition of a company in Jordan called Hammoudeh Food Industries, a very strong company in Jordan with over 50 years in the Dairy and Cheese business with very strong brands. So the announcement is an acquisition with a consideration of about SAR 263 million or $70 million. This is in line with our strategy of growing in our core markets and core categories. Dairy and Cheese is a core category, Jordan is part of the family of our core markets. And it gives us better ability to serve customers in Jordan, and it gives us benefits in discussions and shelf space discussions and discussions with our customers, but also, it gives us benefit in operations with manufacturing facilities and the product range that we can leverage also in Almarai in total. But the primary focus is obviously to make sure that we make a bigger success in Jordan. All of that financed through internal cash flows and obviously, all of this is subject to regulatory approvals in the 2 countries for something we just have to wait a little bit longer, but my expectation is that it should not take too long for us. And my -- our expectation is that there are -- it's all going to be clear and with no issues. And hopefully, we can conclude the deal in the very near future. So a very exciting acquisition that we do in Jordan that will have benefits for Jordan primarily, but also for Almarai as a whole. Okay. With that, I think that's enough for us. Why don't we open up for the Q&A sessions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Mohammed Al-Rasheed. [Operator Instructions].

This is Mohammed Al-Rasheed from Ashmore. I actually have just 1 question regarding the Poultry segment. So we noticed that on a quarter-over-quarter basis, despite the drop in revenue by 4% and the drop in revenue by around 8%, net margin has expanded by around 80 basis points on a sequential basis despite the increase in depreciation. So was that driven by more benefit of commodity costs within the Poultry segment? Or have you received more government subsidy during this quarter compared to last quarter?

I have to admit, Mohammed, it was a little bit difficult for me to hear the question. Do you think you could repeat it again? And perhaps not so fast because I'm getting old, and it's hard for me to follow.

Yes. Sure. So basically, it's regarding the Poultry segment, quarter-over-quarter decline in revenue by around 4%. Yet, your net income was almost flat as your net margin expanded by 80 basis points on a sequential basis. So I just wanted to understand whether this was driven by lower commodity costs? Or have you received more government subsidy were beared during this quarter compared to last quarter?

Well, first of all, on Poultry, we are not receiving more or extra subsidies. All of that is essentially what we are entitled to, whether we were receiving exactly what we are intended to or not, that's a different question. But we are not getting anything extra. It really comes down to tremendous efficiencies in the poultry processing facility that I would say is the real enhancement on margin. It was a hard journey, I would say, if I look at it historically on Poultry, we had to invest a lot to increase quality and output in the facilities that we have. Now when we are doing the poultry expansion, and we are going up to 450 million birds. What I can see from the team, it's a very strong management team who have good ability to drive efficiency higher. So across the board in terms of the KPIs, when we look at the performance and what's actually driving cost per unit down or output per processing facility higher, it really is that learning and the ability to do it right and being very meticulous in that ability. They also know that there is a pressure in the fact that we're not able to meet the demand fully in the market. So we are expanding the capacities. But I would say that management team have been driving supply chain efficiencies in a way that I find truly impressive, but also is yielding a higher profitability on the turnover that we are seeing. So that is primarily what I'm seeing in terms of the enhancement we do. In terms of pricing, the Alyoum brand is premium priced. It doesn't affect us. We don't do significant discounts. I think there was a question about why the net pricing is a little bit lower. We are supporting brands. We are also supporting a longer journey of taking ownership for Long Life Dairy. So we are investing in those through trade support. On Poultry, we see that the consumers are more than willing to pay for the quality that they receive. So it's not really a pricing issue at all in terms of Poultry. So hopefully, that gives you a good sense of the Poultry category.

Our next question is from Usman Siddique.

So on the strong growth in Dairy & Juice segment. So for Long Life and Juice, we understand there was a low base coming in from last year because of some disruption in plant. But we have been witnessing a strong growth in fresh dairy segment. Can you explain the reason for this? Is it consumer shifting from Long Life to Fresh Dairy? Because the population growth is pretty much lower than the growth in Fresh Dairy that we have seen.

Yes. That's an interesting observation. Thank you. Yes, we did have supply disruptions, if you remember, last year in the third quarter, but not to the extent that we are growing over 22%. Long Life Dairy has not grown also at the expense of Fresh Dairy. We are growing in both categories, but there are different stories to the different categories. When it comes to Long Life Dairy, we have launched a new formula that we believe is superior to what we have done in the past, but also in the market. And we are seeing consumer preferences picking that up. It's very competitive in that segment on the Long Life Dairy, as you know. And therefore, for us, it's more important to be winning the consumers' preferences than anything else. So we are in there for the long run. But a lot of the uptake that we've seen in Long Life Dairy is related to consumers picking up our products, having preference for our products, which is a very positive sign for us. And here, growing in that category at the expense of others' market shares is maybe the strategy compared to when you look at fresh dairy where we already have a very strong market share position. And here, it's different, but it's actually a consumer preference, again, essentially just buying more of our products. We do some extensions on flavors. We are selling more on those extensions, but we are preserving the category. We do not want our fresh category to decline at the benefit of Long Life Dairy. We think there is room enough for both those segments within the dairy category to grow. So a little bit different on the fresh one, where we're just seeing true pickup in our growth and our ability to produce and supply is also there, of course. But on Long Life, it is more about our positioning in the market and the reformulation that we've done and also a determined way to find the right distribution channels in Long Life Dairy, something that we did not focus on too much in the past because, as you know, we come from Fresh Dairy. But today, when we look at it and how to gain a competitive position in Long Life Dairy, it's about the product, the formulation, the consumer preference, the distribution, all of that, we are focusing on to make sure that we are winning in the marketplace. And it's not at the expense of Fresh Dairy, as you can see.

All right. My next question is on the growth in Traditional Trade segment. That segment has been growing higher than the Modern Trade. So can you explain a little because what we see that the Modern Trade is -- the penetration of Modern Trade is increasing, but that has not been reflected in the growth of Almarai when we see by distribution?

Yes. No. I think, again, you come down to execution. Traditional Trade is something we care a lot about because of our share, but also because of -- it's much more difficult to make money in Modern Trade, if you think about the way it's been structured also outside of Saudi or elsewhere. The Traditional Trade, it is vast. It's a large scale of distribution reach, but it's also about execution in our sales force. And here, a much more stronger focus has been done on traditional trade, where the execution is simply better than what we've seen in the past. There is a lot of focus that we should grow all our categories, but a little bit like with fresh dairy, not at the expense of traditional trade. We want to make sure that we hold that position. It is very difficult, I think, for competitors to reach all the Traditional Trade, the way we do it. We have that distribution reach across the Kingdom but also in the whole GCC. And then it comes down to how you do your route planning, how you visit your customers, how many calls per day you do and the replenishment of that. All of that is important to us. And how we are investing in the different kinds of stores, all of that is part of an overall program that the team is working on, and I'm seeing the results of that in the numbers. So it's great execution from our team and more can be done for sure. I am thinking we haven't just scratched the surface here. But it really is a great execution from the sales team on the traditional trade. And they are not, as you say, big shifts in habits or patterns of Modern Trade growing at the expense of Traditional Trade, not in Saudi Arabia, a little bit more when you look at GCC, you see the trend increasing on Modern Trade.

Our next question comes from Mr. Abdulaziz.

I have [indiscernible] questions. One is on the growth in Kuwait. So you're at about 14% of the yield and not far from that number [indiscernible] question is whether this growth is [indiscernible] acquiring shares from other competitors. And my second question is on the supply issue based last year, basically how much of today's growth across categories is related to that production issue and how much was actually like-for-like growth?

Yes, I have to apologize, again, I did not hear your first question. Ikram, if you heard it, you can feel free to...

No, I think I also struggled. I can understand the second question, but not the first. Can you please repeat the first question?

Sure. So basically, on Kuwait how much of growth is coming from the market overall growing and how much can be attributed to market share gains from competitors?

Can I ask you, did you refer to Kuwait or did I misunderstand you?

Yes, sir, Kuwait.

Yes, Danko, I think he is referring to Kuwait.

Yes. On the growth that we are seeing in Kuwait is a combination of category growth and market share growth. It's not 1 bigger than the other, but both of them. It is also about some of the disruptions that we had last year affected Kuwait because of the deployment that we had to do in terms of priorities. But I would say there's nothing stronger than the other in Kuwait. It's just good growth coming both from market share and the category is growing and gaining customers in Kuwait. It's important for us. We are spending a lot of time making sure that we have good customer reaching in Kuwait. On the second question, you are right that there was supply disruptions last year. It becomes very difficult for us to say exactly what's the number because we are encouraged to see the growth that Long Life Dairy is doing today based on efforts and activities that were not there last year. So if I try to say how much of our 9% growth was impacted by the disruption, it -- we're not able to do that exactly. I would just give you a range that it could be between 1% to 3%, somewhere in that range. But I won't be able to say exactly how much because our focus are more about making sure that the activities that we've done in those categories that had a onetime impact last year are growing successfully irrespective of that disruption. So it's, for me, not a comparator issue that we are growing so well in Long Life Dairy or in Dairy Foods or in Fresh Dairy or in Juice, it's really about what we're doing in the marketplace today that is driving the growth. But somewhere in that range would be the impact that we otherwise probably would have had last year in terms of the top line.

I would move on to Taher.

Again, congrats on a solid set of numbers. Two questions from my side. The first question is really on the cost and margins. Danko, you've mentioned earlier in the call that corn and soybean, alfalfa continues to be quite favorable in terms of global commodity cost movements. But you mentioned some concerns about other ingredients. Can you just elaborate on the general trends on your key commodity cost items in terms of where you're seeing these concerns? And I think the relative question becomes how confident are you of sustaining the year-to-date margins? You've mentioned, I think, 23% on EBITDA and 15% on EBIT. So do you think there is further room for margin expansion given this backdrop? So this is my first question. And maybe the second question is really on the poultry dynamics. It has been an amazing journey on the top line, on profitability, on margin expansion, on utilization and you are putting money into an expansion. Just maybe high level, are you concerned about upcoming supply in the market like how will the shape of the fresh poultry market will look like 2, 3 years down the line because you're investing in capacity, and we're seeing also maybe other players investing in capacity, and you always have the importers who are quite cost competitive. So maybe just few high-level thoughts about how will the poultry market look in 2, 3 years? Are we concerned about an oversupply situation or you think demand remains quite intact to absorb any additional capacity coming through?

Okay. Well, thank you for your acknowledgment, Taher. In terms of worries that I see, I think it's important to correlate to what's happening globally. We are all depending on an oil price in the sense of derivatives. If you go in and look at the plastic and the packaging, what it means for us in terms of pricing next year, it's very hard to predict where oil prices will be, and we will have to make our assumptions. But we were sort of working on assumptions that would not expect significantly higher oil prices. So that is one correlation that worries me. The other one is diesel and the fact that we continue to be very dependent on diesel, not only in our distribution, but also in our manufacturing units, in our farming units, we use diesel a lot. And that is cost worry that we have to mitigate one way or another through efficiency or ultimately through pricing. They are offsetting. But -- and then in terms of the ingredients, I think if you go in and look at the world market prices today for butter, you'll see that they're up to about $7,000 per tonne, and historically, it's been much, much lower than that. And that seems to be because of some constraints in Europe and therefore, the demand and supply for anything that you're buying from outside is affected by that. We have the benefit of being a vertically integrated dairy business. So a lot of our cream is being produced from our milk, but not all of it. So we have to buy butter as well. And all of that causes a worry for me when I look at it for next year. And when you take it all -- all in all, the reason for my flagging was that please do not expect that to see a radical reduction in commodities because it's easy to talk about OTC commodities that are being traded in the market like corn and soy and you see that they're significantly down. But if we look at it in totality, it is not as good as one would expect. So those are the worries that sort of keeps me awake at night. The good margins that you're seeing year-to-date, the 15% and the 12% on the EBIT margin and net income margin, you should be aware that we have seasonality effects also historically in the fourth quarter. So we tend to be a little bit softer on the bottom line on the fourth quarter, without giving you any forward-looking statements here, I don't normally do that, as you know. But if you look at our seasonality, please expect that also into the equation.

But Longer term, these margins are -- look sustainable? I mean given where we are today in the commodity cycle and the healthy volume growth that you're seeing?

Yes. No, we have been saying that, and that's no sacred that our -- our business is in the fast-moving consumer goods industry, having EBIT margins of about 14% to 16%, it's something we aim for as we compare ourselves also globally to our peers. So having that is necessary for the risk profile of this kind of category for having investors to invest in our business and getting the returns that they are expecting. So no, this is a good benchmark for us, and we are happy to see that we've gone from 12% to 14%. We've sort of restored it from that significant inflationary pressure that we had in '21-'22 for which we had to do pricing in '22 and '23. So that should be something we are working towards ongoing in terms of your return expectations. On Poultry, I think -- just a few words. Maybe Ikram can add a little bit also. But we are in a very fragmented market today. We see the category growing. It's a healthy protein just like it is with the seafood product. So it's an alignment with the Saudi vision of promoting more healthy protein consumption, both in the seafood area, in the poultry area. So we see the category growing. So we are not afraid of the demand. In terms of the supply, there are many players who want to be in the market. And some of them are only working in poultry. We have the benefit of a diversified portfolio. So we can outlast short-term pricing activities you see in the market. And also the buildup of our brand comes back again to our strategy of quality you can trust. People should trust when they buy our product, it's the best product in the market, and we work very hard and we are investing very hard to do so. So I don't really see a restriction in that sense, even if there are many players, maybe there will be a consolidation in the next 3 to 5 years of players in the market. But our positioning as #1 in fresh poultry gives us significant scope to continue to grow. We don't see that there are restrictions in that context. As long as you provide the quality people can trust, they will buy our product. We feel confident about that. Maybe, Ikram, if you had any other point on that, please feel free.

I think you've covered it. It's an import substitution play driven by high quality to the consumers, which we have seen. They are readily willing to pay for that pricing as well. We have continued to see the imported product pricing today, frozen poultry is at the same price as fresh poultry, as we speak today as well. So we do see a viable future. And there could be some disruptions, but there could be industry consolidation. But we are very excited about our investment in poultry in the future that will bring with.

And we also have, I feel, a strong responsibility in the Kingdom of providing poultry at high quality, take that responsibility very highly as well. So we feel confident about the future in the Poultry segment.

Our next question comes from [indiscernible]. Apologies if I pronounced your name incorrectly.

[indiscernible] Capital. Congrats on the results. Just 2 quick questions here. I wanted to discuss the acquisition of Hammoudeh Foods. I'm curious, Danko, what is the geographic reported segment for Jordan within what you report?

Okay. Thank you, [Brennan]. Let's see if I understood your question on -- we do report the country revenue. We don't report the country profitability, but that's part of the segment reporting that we do. They do deliver good profitabilities. They are not at the same levels as within the GCC countries, both Egypt and Jordan are dilutive in terms of margin contribution simply because it's a different kind of market. If you look at GCC, you have high disposable incomes and it's completely different value propositions that you're having in the GCC part of our territories. But they are delivering good profits both on, let's say, the [indiscernible] business and the Egyptian business that we have. So what we are providing input in terms of our segment reporting, we show revenue in Jordan, but we omit to show individual country profitability. So that was your question, [Brennan]?

Right. Yes, exactly. Because you report KSA, the other GCC and then just a third one that is other. I was just curious which one that Jordan falls under?

[Brennan], you can see on the screen as well right now. We do report by country as well. You're referring to the financial statement...

Yes, the financial statements. Yes, correct.

Yes. But we go a step further than the financial statement, you can see on the screen as well. And we do disclose it every single quarter. You can go to our website and you can get the split for the last, I think, 6, 7 years on the same dimensions. So Jordan did SAR 579 million, as you can see on the top left-hand side of the screen on a year-to-date basis.

Okay. Fantastic. And then there's a last quick 1 to stick in here. Same topic, did you think that Hammoudeh would boost the top line and grow market share or was this more of a driving efficiencies, a chance to gain more scale with factories, real assets, maybe some type of distribution advantage?

I think it's both, [Brennan]. I know it's both. We have assumed that there are revenue synergies but also cost synergies. In Jordan, we also have farms, and then we have fairly integrated supply chain. And we can see that there are synergies in terms of infrastructure that we can work on. I don't want to say too much of that at this point in time. But clearly, there are cost synergies that we can drive in the supply chain area, in the labor and overhead area for which we will do. But it's more important really on the top line. And there, it's about our strength versus the trade, our ability to get shelf space becoming a much more relevant negotiating partner with your customers, the stronger you are, the bigger you are, the more you make them profitable with our product. So I think the positioning of us in acquiring this business in a core category reveals the revenue synergies fairly obviously that we expect to grow even more than if you take the 2 parts separately. So here, I see synergies that are fairly obvious to us in terms of top line notwithstanding the fact that we can also drive efficiencies even more. And it's important when you are in a market like Jordan, where profitability levels are somewhat lower to the GCC that you can drive synergies. That's also why we acquired the 48% of partnership with Pepsi last year, I believe, or was it in February this year, I have to admit I forgot now, I think it was last year, whereby we can do a lot more between Almarai and Jordan and between Almarai and Egypt, when it comes to sourcing opportunities when it comes to distribution opportunities, all of that taps in to driving cost synergies that we can do in the core markets that we are in.

I would now like to take a few set of questions that we have in the chat because there are a number of questions on chat. So there's a question from Mr. Adnan Farooq. What was the main reason behind the negative pricing impact?

Yes. I tried to respond to that in an earlier question that came that it's not necessarily a price decrease that we are doing in the market. It's supporting market share gains supporting our efforts that we are doing in -- particularly in the Dairy Food business and in the Long Life business. So we are doing promotional activities, we're doing what we classify as activities between gross to net in our revenue that drives volume more because we take a long-term perspective. So our list pricing is not necessarily changing. It's important for us to hold pricing given that we don't see commodity costs going down significantly. To retain margins, we keep a very close eye on the pricing that we do. So what you are seeing in the context of the year-to-date, it's a fairly insignificant dilution on pricing, which entirely relates to trade support that we do to drive volume for those categories, mostly in the Food category and Long Life Dairy category.

Then there's a question from Reem. The question is what is the market outlook in terms of demand and supply balance with the news of all players announcing expansions and imports not showing any slowdown?

Well, here we are. As you know, we don't do forward-looking statements. We are confident about the future. We see category growth in some categories more than others. There is a play to gain revenue, both by growing in the category or growing more and taking market share positions, but also within the play in certain categories, we see ourselves taking share in market share. Population growth is fairly -- it's growing, but it's somewhere in the 3% to 4% or in that range. And tourism is increasing. So all of that we are tapping into. We need an excellent Ramadan period here where the religious tourism is significant. So we had a good Ramadan period I mentioned to you in the earlier quarters. All of that contributes to our ability to grow our revenue more. So we don't necessarily see that as an obstacle for us. And in terms of supply, you all know what we are building as fast as we can in terms of poultry to make sure we can meet the demands that are out there in the market. And we have sufficient capacity for dairy, although we are expanding with a few lines that has to do with product expansions in certain technologies, same goes for packaging and so on. So that's more a little bit, I would say, the bread and butter of what we do. But we don't see any other significant constraints. The positive one that we have is obviously that we've launched ice cream and we have been having a fantastic response in the market here in KSA. And we cannot produce as much ice cream as the demand is, and we are looking into how we can accelerate that and also making sure that it sticks in the market. Almarai is in ice cream to stay. We have fantastic product offerings. And we also have technologies and awareness around the production of ice cream that runs very well with our dairy industry. So overall there, we are trying to meet the demand with the supply that we have, and there's more to come soon. You will see. Thank you.

There's a question from Pratik. He's asking other expenses and impairment losses have gone up in third quarter. Any particular reason behind this and would growth and other expenses be recurring in nature?

Nothing out of the ordinary. Ikram, can you add a little bit to them?

Yes. We just had land sale events in [indiscernible]. So it was just PPE sale events. There was just a one-off event that happened. It was not significant at a group level. But other than that, as you rightly mentioned, everything is pretty much in line. Usually, what have been all the profit and loss on sale of fixed assets goes into other expense or other income. So we just had just a higher loss on the sale of fixed asset. That's all.

There's a question for Anil. Can you please comment on the seasonality on G&A expenses?

Yes, G&A, if you mean what we call labor and overhead sometimes, I know the definition is a little bit different. But yes, we are growing, but we are growing our business. So we have to invest in the variable component. If you think about our reach, the fact that we have trucks, drivers, going and increasing the number of routes that we do. So as we are growing our volume, and as you know, the 9% that you saw, literally everything in that is volume, we also have to invest in our infrastructure to support that. So a very large component of that is variable, and it's variable at a lower rate than our growth rate. That's what I meant by the increase you see on our operational cost still enhances our margin. That's because we have, I would say, a strong culture of discipline with cost, but also driving efficiency programs in our overheads to mitigate some of this. The diesel obviously had an incremental impact. I think if I look at it year-to-date, it's about SAR 90 million incremental impact of cost that we have to swallow one way or another, and we are trying to mitigate it through efficiency programs. But it's very difficult given that we are consuming digital in a lot of our divisions. And how that evolves, we will have to see. But sometimes it's very difficult to do things about them without doing pricing. So we will see how that evolves in the next coming years. If it becomes a steady increase, then probably we will have to revisit how we are dealing with that. Anything, Ikram that I forgot there?

No, that is spot on. It's -- the growth is not going out of line in terms of our volume growth as well. So we're making sure that we keep a very good check on the cost control.

Thank you, management. Thank you for that very elaborate presentation and very detailed answers. I believe a few of the questions are still remaining. And I think those questions can be directed towards the investment relations, Mohammed Alkhaldi would be glad to coordinate with you. With that, I would recite the management for any closing remarks before you can end the meeting.

No. Just in summary, a solid quarter and 3 quarters in a row, you've seen the growth coming through and the profitability enhancement that we are essentially deploying our strategy. Thank you for listening in on this call. And I hope and expect you all to come back to us when we finish the full year in, I don't know when the call is somewhere in the end of -- beginning of February or end of January. Thank you very much. Take good care of yourself and talk to you soon.

Thank you, management. Thank you, participants. Have a great day. The meeting will now come to an end.