Ceres Global Ag Corp. (CRP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Ceres Global Ag's earnings call for the second quarter results for the fiscal year 2025. [Operator Instructions] I would like to remind everyone that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements that reflect current views with respect to future events. Any such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. For more information of the risks and uncertainties related to these forward-looking statements, please refer to the company's management discussion and analysis available in SEDAR+ at the company's website. I would now like to turn the call over to Tom Coyle, Interim President and CEO of Ceres Global Ag. Please go ahead, Mr. Coyle.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. As many of you know, I recently joined Ceres as interim CEO in December. However, I have worked with the company as a consultant and an independent director for several years bringing over 4 decades of experience in the grain trading industry. I am pleased to take this role at Ceres, and I'm working closely with our teams to ensure our performance is on track. We serve an essential role in the food industry. In an industry dominated by large global players, we are able to drive growth by acting nimbly to provide innovative and tailored solutions to Millers worldwide. As global grain markets become more complex with potential trade disruptions from conflicts, new tariffs or changing consumer demands, such as regen ag-sourced products, our role becomes even more critical. We have the people and the infrastructure to address these evolving markets. In the second quarter of fiscal 2025, despite challenging macro economics and harvest conditions, we delivered positive year-to-date results across all of our segments. Thanks to our strategic positioning and effective utilization of our extensive network of assets, our handle volumes increased by 12.5% compared to last year. In our Grain segment, joint ventures play a vital role by enabling our farmer direct origination strategy and serving as a key service for Ceres to reach producers and deliver unique value to our customers. Ceres joint venture with Farmers co-op in Deep River Falls, Minnesota, facilitates direct collaboration with growers, enabling the handling of diverse commodities and delivering value-added solutions for customers. Similarly, our joint ventures at BFE and Farmers Grain provide us with increased origination of our core products from growers in critical areas in North Dakota and Minnesota. It allows us to leverage the value of our terminal assets. Going forward, we are committed to further enhancing our operational efficiencies and fully realizing the potential of our assets. In our Supply Chain Services segment, we achieved record volumes in the quarter for the second quarter in a row with near record revenues. Industrial product volumes were even with what we saw in the previous quarter and fertilizer volumes set another quarterly record due to greater market penetration and timely delivery for fall needs. Natural gas liquids volumes through the gateway facility were similar to those in Q1 '25 and Q2 '24. With -- while lower fertilizer demand is expected to soften supply chain service volumes in the third quarter, we expect this segment will maintain its record pace for the rest of the year. Building on the high crush volumes from last fiscal year, our seed retail and processing continued to generate substantial year-to-date volumes. This success is primarily attributed to our team's implementation of operational efficiencies at the Jordan crush plant and effective trading and strategic positioning to service customers and our long-term -- and our strong local supply. Through the rest of the fiscal year, we are forecasting adequate local crush margins driven by ideal local production. Our ability to source local soybeans remains a key driver to enable Jordan to continue to crush at high capacity and realize adequate margins. I will now turn things over to Blake to review our financial results for the quarter. Then before we open the floor to questions, I will comment on the company's plans for the rest of the fiscal year. Blake?

Thank you, Tom, and good morning, everyone. Before I begin, please note that all dollar amounts expressed in today's call are in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise stated. For definitions and reconciliations of non-IFRS measures, including the reference adjusted EBITDA, working capital and adjusted net income, please refer to Section 8 of this quarter's MD&A. Starting with the financials for the quarter. Revenue fell by $62.2 million to $220 million for the same period last year. Gross profit was $3.8 million compared to $7.9 million in Q2 of last year. These results reflect the fewer margin opportunities we saw last quarter. Income from operations was negative $407,000 compared to $3.7 million in Q2 of last year. We had a net loss of $379,000 or $0.01 per share compared to a net income of $2.7 million or $0.09 per share in the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income were $1.4 million and negative $379,000, respectively, compared to $4.9 million and $2.7 million in the same period last year. We handled 28.9 million bushels of grain and oilseed during the quarter, an increase of 12.5% from Q2 of last year. Moving on to the financials for the first half of fiscal year 2025. Revenue fell 15.3% [indiscernible] $422 million compared to last year, primarily due to lower prices across our core commodities. Gross profit was $10.8 million, down from $22 million in the first half of 2024. We handled and traded 59.9 million bushels of grain and oilseeds for the first half of 2025, up 8.5% in the same period last year. Income from operations, $2.5 million compared to $12.8 million in the first half of 2024. Net income totaled $1.5 million or $0.05 per share compared to $8.9 million or $0.29 per share in the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income were $5.6 million and $1.8 million, respectively, compared to $15.5 million and $9.1 million for the first half of last year. Net trading margin was $13.8 million, down 43.1% from the prior [indiscernible] $3.9 million, up 9.5% from last year, mainly due to higher third-party storage and elevation. Our net fees and processing margin was $4.1 million in the first [indiscernible] same period of last year, primarily due to lower margins. General and administrative expenses were $8.3 million, down 10.7% as a result of lower insurance expense and lower incentive accruals in the first quarter of this year. Year-to-date, interest expense was $2.1 million, down from $5.3 million due to lower daily average borrowings on our credit facility and an increase in interest rates year-over-year. This was -- there was an income tax expense of $560,000 compared to an income tax expense of $812,000 in the same period in the prior year. At the end of the second quarter of 2025, we had $56 million of working capital. This concludes my review of our financials. For more information, please refer to our MD&A and financial statements for the quarter. I'll now turn it back to Tom to provide some comments on our outlook for the quarter ahead.

Thank you, Blake. Looking into the rest of the fiscal year as the warm weather -- as the weather warms in the second half of the year, our focus will pivot to planting forecast for the Corn Belt, Northern Plains and the Canadian Prairies. Our team remains attentive the climatic and crop trends worldwide to best position Ceres to capitalize on market opportunities. Preventative agriculture remains a key initiative in the grain segment to build strong relationships with our customer base as they strive to meet consumer demand. We had solid growth in the program in 2024 with a 6x growth in enrolled acres, and we achieved a 100% retention for our grower partners. As the 2025 planting period begins, we expect to increase both our acreage and farmers participation. Monitoring macro events will also be crucial. With the change in the U.S. administration, tariffs have become the major driver of pricing and volatility in our commodity markets, and we will continue to monitor them closely, evolving trade policies may disrupt existing trade flows between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. Currencies have also been impacted by the potential trade war and with the U.S. dollar strengthening against other global currencies. The stronger dollar and the weaker world currencies may weaken global economies and caused recessionary conditions that could ripple throughout markets. Deal political conflicts, including the Russia, Ukraine War and Middle East tensions add to market volatility. To manage these uncertainties, Ceres is proactively adjusting its trading strategies and market positioning to adapt to changing conditions. To conclude, Ceres remains committed to enhancing operational efficiency and fully realizing the potential of our assets while staying nimble to address changing markets. We will continue to look for creative capital-efficient solutions to increase farmer direct origination through strategic partnerships and achieve our vision of enabling customers to realize their supply chain and sustainability goals. On that note, I will open -- I would like to open the call to questions.

[Operator Instructions] We now have our first question, and this comes from the line of [ Ted Hillen. ]

Yes. Just a question on -- I mean how do you guys make money? What do you make money on? And how do you make money for shareholders? I mean one quarter you've got -- you're making $0.20. In the next quarter, you're not making anything like what's the driver here?

I would say there are a few drivers, of course. I mean, our core business is to originate grain from producers and market that to consumers. And in the middle of that, we're managing the logistics looking for opportunities to properly blend to give our consumers the quality that they want and to manage the logistics to make sure that we get things there on time. With that said, the variability can happen partly because of the -- because of weather and market volatility, part of it's seasonality. You have sometimes you're actually building inventories and then you're generating storage. And other times of the year, you're reducing your inventories and you're loading out and you're reducing your storage revenue. So I think the key answer to your question, I mean the core business we have is handling grain, storing grain, moving grain and then to provide tailored solutions for our customers, both on the farm end and also at the consumer end. And then in the middle of that, you just have a lot of variability and volatility, partly due to market, partly due to logistics. And as we mentioned earlier in our call today, partly because of the -- of politics as well.

Okay. But I mean you're talking about a low margin environment. So what are you doing? Are you cutting -- are you reducing headcount? What are you doing to in a low-margin environment? Are you reacting to it?

I think the key question, you've heard us talk a lot about our regenerative ag program. It's really quite a special program. And our -- you see the growth that we've got in that. What that does is create a new service for both the farmers and for the end customers. And it takes time for that to take hold and have an impact, but it certainly is providing a service to our customers, which is allowing us to have growth in volume, which we've seen this quarter, particularly in wheat.

I mean I asked that question...

We are always looking for opportunities.

Yes. But I mean, why can't you charge more money for these regen ag customers, they should be willing to pay more. They don't seem to be.

I think it's a long process. I think we're busy developing a really wonderful service, and there's a lot of foundation that has to be built in that process. And in terms of margins, as you talk about, it's really -- the market decides that. There are times and frankly, that there's just storage doesn't have much value. And so your storage revenue can be adjusted. There are other times that just pure competition. I'm sure it sounds like you know a bit about the industry. And at times, you just have a lot of competition, which can narrow margins. And so we do everything we can to be unique and tailor our solutions so that we can adapt to that. But it's not always possible.

All right. Now a question I asked Carlos before he left. I guess he left -- I don't know why -- it didn't seem much feature in the company. Like why don't you sell some assets because the company's asset rich, has a lot of good assets in various locations. The question I asked him was the Northgate. Why don't you sell a portion of that like you've done in other facilities to raise cash and pay down debt and just live up your trading revenues.

I guess my comment -- obviously, my comment would be that we are regularly looking at ways to be efficient about what we do to maximize return overall.

Right. What facility did you sell in Manitoba? Beausejour?

That is correct.

What was that?

Beausejour was a small seed retail operation that came with the acquisition of Delmar a few years.

Okay. All right. Okay, if you looked at the share price lately, like doesn't really performed very well. Is that a concern to the management and the Board?

I guess the -- it would be -- the simple answer for that is that we're always looking to create value for our shareholders. And we certainly would -- we're certainly hoping that the things that we do will eventually have a positive impact on our share price.

[Operator Instructions] It seems like we don't have any further questions. I would like to hand the call over back to Tom. Please go ahead, sir.

Well, thank you very much. We appreciate the questions that we've got today. We'll continue to be working diligently to maximize our opportunities and to create value for our shareholders. Thank you.

Thank you. This concludes our conference for today. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.