Thai Union Group Public Company Limited (TU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Thai Union's Analyst Meeting, the fourth and full year -- the first quarter and full year of 2024. My name is [ Nonwan Kidwa Tai-san ], and I will be your MC today. First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce our new product, which is the special souvenir for you guys. This is the product from our joint venture between Thai Union and Thai Beverage. Sea tuna essence in 2 new flavors, L-Theanine Plus Kyoho Grape and Lutein Plus Berry. This tuna extract soup is made from naturally sourced deep sea tuna and processes by using nanofiltration technology to produce a small molecular size proteins that are easily absorbed and utilized. Now I would like to introduce our key speakers. First, Khun Thiraphong Chansiri, our President and CEO; and followed by Mr. Ludovic Garnier, our Group CFO. And last but not least, Khun Pinyada Saengsakdaharn, Head of Investor Relations. Today's section will take around 1.5 hours, including Q&A and followed by a 10-minute break before TFM results announcement. Without further ado, I would like to invite Khun Thiraphong to begin the presentation.

[Interpreted] Yes. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, analysts, all of the executives of the financial institutions who are present today and also online. I think this morning, there was quite an early rain. So we have to thank everyone for joining us in person today. I know it might be a bit of traffic. So today, we are updating Thai Union's performance in the fourth quarter and the performance in 2024. 2024 is a year of change due to the slowdown of the economy globally, whether it's a pressure due to geopolitics or high inflation and even to the changes in consumer demand. So however, we were still able to create a much stronger performance, we were able to -- sales rose by 1.7% year-on-year of THB 138,433 million. So this is year-on-year. The reason for the slow growth is because of THB 144 billion cost of tuna is reduced by THB 136,153 million. At the same time, the shrimp cost has increased. So in the beginning, it's 18.5% is a good gross margin up to a point where we are quite satisfied and much in line with our plan to move to more than 20% changes. So you can see in each quarter, we are able to attain almost 19%. It's a good direction. Our net profit is THB 48.45 million. And I think last year, it was a great year due to our cash flow management and also the inventory management and the balance sheet which is very strong. We're able to have -- we take out the curve is 6,000 -- THB 60 billion, and we're able to buy shares back. Now we are spending more than THB 1 trillion. So our share has fallen quite a little bit. But because we took out the curve and almost THB 6,000 billion -- or THB 60 billion, I'm sorry. Now we also have increased our dividend payout in the last year, which we have just announced. This is about 60% overall, it's THB 0.35 per share. Then overall, the outlook in 2025, we can see that the GDP has grown, 3.2% is projected growth. The pressure, as mentioned, is about the trade war tension, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, also uncertainty around the U.S. election, the Fed rate cuts as well as the FX volatility. However, in 2025, we have a positive -- more positive outlook from the past year. As you can see, we have undertaken some transformation for about a year. We kicked off our organizational structure, a new on the 6th of January. I think everyone can see the cost of last year. It's more than THB 700 million, but you can see the benefits from this reorganization beginning to come out in 2025 and 2026. And I think it's going to move across to 2027. Last year, we had a main branding platform, first in Europe, which is in the branded companies and the frozen company, especially in Thailand. I would see these 2 main businesses will develop quite well. So if you look at the numbers, apart from the transformation cost, SG&A, which may seems a little bit higher than normal is from freight costs and another part is from investment in the marketing costs. I think from the beginning right now, we will move towards this direction to see our brand having marketing about 4.5% or 5% but formally, it was less than 3%. What I'm quite satisfied is our P&L shape is going to be changed to have our branded brands to come in with good gross margin as well as investments in the brand. This is going to be what we are going to be undertaking the next year and this year. In 2025, what we need to follow is the trade policy of the U.S. Today, that is still unclear. I think we still have to monitor closely. I don't think there's going to be anything that's going to affect Thailand immediately or negatively. However, we must not rest on our laurels. We have to follow this quite closely. So in general, in 2025, you can see the sales and all dimensions are positive, 1.7% year-on-year from our finances. The growth is Ambient OEM that still sustains very good growth. And in the gross margin of the Ambient business is still quite strong. In terms of our brand in the U.S., Chicken of the Sea is sustaining very good growth, top line and OP. So we are quite -- have confidence that Chicken of the Sea will have good growth. Petcare as well will be -- has come back quite strongly from last year, whether it's the income or the profit. EBITDA last year is about 160,000 -- 12 -- THB 13,000 million. So if you look at the onetime transformation costs, our profit rests more than THB 56 billion. So our growth is more than 20%. So it's great. And our net debt to equity, even though there is dividend paid out, payment for Perp and also buying our shares, our [ debt to equity ] is less than 1x, 0.94, still considered quite good. Net debt equity, I think will fall, will decrease continually. We will follow on our cash flow and the CapEx investment, CapEx will not be too much. This is something that we are quite comfortable with. In the fourth quarter, I think we have quite strong growth. I don't think there's anything to worry about. The income has reduced a little bit due to the exchange rate, which is -- has gone down by 3.6% and our beginning profit is 3.6%, about THB 15 billion, mainly the cost has reduced the transformation costs, as mentioned, the transportation costs, which have increased. Our profit is -- net profit has reached THB 1.2 billion. It's normal, almost attaining THB 1.5 trillion. Our dividend on this page, you can see that the payout ratio remains at 5.7%. So it's 3x dividend rate on the 28th February, record date is March 3 and payment date is April 25. Dividend yield is still quite high. The share is quite low, is 5.6%. In terms of our transformation program, the 2 projects in 2025 target is we hope to have USD 50 million in year savings. This will cover our costs, which still remains in 2025. Our project tailwind, the target is about USD 17 million in terms of OP uplift, quite okay. Project SONAR, we have undertaken quite a lot, fit for growth, cutting down on personnel, refreshing our resources, we're still doing well. procurement is still good. However, in order to recognize our bottom line, this would be recognized after we do all the procurement. At present, we only have contracts which we have attained our target already. So now our operations needs to procure more, manufacture and sell. And so we will recognize our bottom line. I don't think there's anything to worry about at the moment. I know the analysts today may not be interested in the results of the transformation that we have undertaken. You would like to look at the cost and the -- however, I would like to point this out, the transformation is the largest one we have ever taken. We have changed our personnel, our mindset and our operating measures. We are very determined to work to attain our targets in 2030. So hopefully, the drive today will result in better performance in the future. In the next slide, good news. DJSI, we have to maintain rank #1. This is the fourth time and the fourth year that we have been selected to be #1 in the food product industry for 2024 DJSI announced DJSI rating. We have attained A of the ESG rating again. So the details, maybe I would like to have our CFO explain this. Thank you.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Khun Thiraphong, and good morning, everyone. Very happy to be with you today. I will start with just a few key highlights first on the Q4 and then on the full year. So you can see the organic growth Khun Thiraphong mentioned is 1.7% in Q4. We are very happy to generate an organic growth. This is 2 quarters in a row. So this is a positive news for us. And Khun Kwan will elaborate where does it come from. But overall, we are very happy with the top line development on the Ambient and also the Frozen categories in Q4. I think the gross profit margin also in Q4 was a good news for us, 18.7%. This is the highest GP margin over the past 14 quarters. So I think this is good. Especially the ambient is recovering. We told you normally, we expect the ambient to be in the range of 20% to 22% of GP margin. Now we are just below the 21%, and we do expect some further improvement to come in the next quarters. Frozen also, usually, we mentioned a range to between 10% to 12%. And here, we are slightly exceeding this guidance. For the full year, also, you've seen the solid organic sales growth. The GP margin is record high, 18.5%. So we are happy. Just for you to remember, in our 2030 strategy, the improvement of our gross profit margin is one of our key targets. So here, achieving the best ever performance for TU, I think this is a good thing. The Ambient sales also are record high. And we told you at the beginning of the year, we want to regain some volumes in '24, okay? So the good news is here in the Ambient category, we clearly regained some of the volumes. So very happy about this. Khun Thiraphong mentioned, this is happening mostly in the U.S. in our brand business and also in our OEM business. Talking about the Frozen business, the Frozen business has been reducing. Again, we told you last year, we have been -- we wanted to rightsize this business. We are at the bottom of it. So we do expect the Frozen category to be back to growth next year. Petcare, for those who attended the analyst meeting last Friday, the growth was in line with the expectation, very nice recovery in '24 and fully in line with our expectation. One thing also I wanted to mention on the free cash flow, we achieved a record high performance in '24. We have quite a strong EBITDA performance. This is the second best ever performance we have. Our net working capital change is positive. This year, we have been benefiting from the fish price decrease and our CapEx were really under control, eveb a bit too soft from my point of view. So overall, the free cash flow, we are very strong and very happy with that in the full year. So moving to next slide. Here, this is our 5 years track record. So you can see in terms of top line, we are dropping a bit in Q4, mostly because of the FX. If you remove the FX, the organic sales is growing. And look at the gross profit margin development. I think clearly, in '23, we are facing some challenges because of hyperinflation in 2023. We can now say in '24 and especially since H2 that this is behind us, and we are extremely happy with that. Bottom line, we are still in the range of 3.5%, 4%. We want to have more here, and we elaborate where does it come from after. So just a quick focus also. I mean, this chart, we try to give you the split in our top line growth between what is coming from organic, which is a light blue; and organic, which is a dark blue and what is coming from FX. And you can see at the beginning of the year in Q1 and Q2 '24, we were benefiting from very positive FX impact. But the organic was almost 0 or even negative in Q1. In H2, we had the opposite situation, okay, meaning now we have some negative FX, but the dark blue now is positive. It was 3.1% in Q3 and 1.9% in Q4. And of course, we want the organic growth to be positive. And if you look at the full year, the full year, we have a growth by 1.7%, and it's almost half-half between organic growth and FX growth. So very happy to see the dark blue becoming positive in '24. This is clearly our own ambition. Just a quick note on our raw material prices. The tuna prices were aligned with our expectation. You can see for Q4, they were at THB 1,530. Overall, the whole year have been between THB 1,300 to THB 1,500. This is what we call within our comfort zone for you to remember, we call our comfort zone THB 1400 to THB 1,700. We had a bit of increase in January, THB 1,540. We do expect a bit of inflation for the whole year '25. We expect the average fish price to be around in the range of THB 1,580 for the whole year. So still within our comfort zone. We don't expect hyperinflation like the one we've been facing in Q2 '23 for the tuna prices. Regarding the shrimp prices, it's a bit of a different story. You can see in Q4, the shrimp prices went up to THB 167 per kg, which is very unusual. Normally, in Q4, you always see the shrimp price going down. Here, it was very unusual. It was going up to THB 167. And this continues a bit also in January. You can see January, the shrimp price are around THB 171. Where did it come from? A few things. First of all, there were not a lot of shrimps being available because of the very low shrimp price at the beginning of the year and also in '23, many farmers decided to stop the operations. We had to face also some flooding in Thailand and also in India. So because of this one, there were a low volume of shrimps being available and then the shrimp price went up. We do expect some normalization to happen in the year '25. However, on average, for the whole year, we expect the shrimp price to be inflated compared to the year '24. Salmon was also a bit exceptional. It was low in Q4. In the previous quarters, it was around 100. Now in Q4, increasing a bit, increasing in January. So over the past 2, 3 years, we have seen always the same scheme. And that this is beneficial for us. We have a better visibility now on the salmon price. And the salmon price in January is around NOK 112 per kg. On the FX side, we have seen quite a bit of development over the past few months. You have seen the Thai baht strengthening versus USD versus euro. So in Q4, the average USD is around THB 34, while it was THB 35.7 last year. So this is the key driver for the negative FX impact in our top line. Same situation also for the euro. The average was THB 36.3. Last year, it was THB 38.3. So here -- and the same for the GBP and the yen is also weakening versus Thai baht. So overall, we can see the Thai baht strengthening. And this is why you will see also for '25, we do expect the same situation to continue. We do expect a significant negative FX impact in our top line in the year '25, okay? More to come in our guidance '25. Just a quick update also on the logistic cost. Over the past few years, the logistic cost and especially the transit time also between Asia and the U.S. has been a point of concern for us. So a few things. First of all, you can see on the table on the top left, the prices of the container went down a bit in Q4. However, it was still increasing compared to last year. The transit time in Q4 is around 45 days between Thailand and the U.S. So it's very stable compared to Q3, yet it is still increasing compared to Q4 '23, where we were at 33 days. And you can see overall, the Red Sea issue are still there. So we still have to use also the line around Africa. You are, of course, aware of all the tensions between the U.S. and China. Every day, we have some new news on this one. So it's a very dynamic situation that we closely monitor. The strike -- the risk of strike in the U.S., I think, is behind us. They found some agreement. It was a point of concern for us in Q4. It seems to be less of an issue. The container shortage -- we faced some container shortage at the end of the year '24 and especially many importers, they were anticipating a potential tariff increase by Trump. So many people have been importing much more in Q4. And that's why at the end of the year '24, we have been facing a bit of congestion of the containers at the ports in the U.S. So what we have seen is clearly, we have seen an increase overall of our freight cost, not very large in Q4, but still in the high range. We closely monitor this one. But I do believe that over the past 2 years, we have been managing quite well the situation. We will have to continue to monitor again in '25. But for the time being, we believe the situation is under control. So moving to next slide. So here, we talk about the ratio, our inventory days. So we have some good news. You can see aligned with the improvement of the performance. You can see the return on equity, the ROCE also both of them are improving. I'm very happy about the inventories development. You can see we really dropped compared to 1 year ago. 1 year ago, the inventories amount to THB 50 billion. Now we have THB 44 billion. And the inventory days also are declining from 167 to 152 days, okay? So very clearly, very happy about this one. Different situation across our businesses, but overall, the trend is positive. There are a few components for this one. The first one is that was really our intention to decrease our net working capital. You know that during the year '23 and '22, we had to invest a lot in our net working capital because of hyperinflation and because of the logistic issues. So clearly, that was one of the direction to say in '24, we want to decrease, and we were successful. The fish price also helped us. Of course, last year, the fish price was higher on average for the whole year. Now that the fish price -- tuna price is decreasing, this is helping us. And you can see the impact in our net working capital. It was THB 53 billion in '24. Now it's only THB 46 billion. Again, we have a drop in our net working capital, and this is very positive for our free cash flow. And then I just want also to attract your attention on the ratio on the top right. One of the most important for me is net debt to EBITDA. We were at 3.59x at the end of Q3. We are increasing a bit, but we are still below 4x at the end of Q4. The only reason for that is the conversion of our Perp, okay? So of course, when we convert the Perp, you lose the very nice accounting treatments, you take it out from the equity and then it increase your net debt. That was expected. But very happy that despite this big change, we are still below 4x at the end of the year. Net debt to equity, we told you our comfort level is between 1:1.1. So despite all these changes, we are at 0.94x at the end of the year. So I think we have a very strong balance sheet at the end of '24, and we want to make it even better for the next year. So next slide is our net debt bridge. Our net debt has been increasing a bit. In the year '24, we were at THB 51.5 billion at the end of '23. We ended the year at THB 53 billion at the end of '24. The key components, first of all, I mentioned our record high free cash flow, THB 11.7 billion. This is the best performance we have been ever doing. The EBITDA was strong at THB 13.4 billion. This is the second best ever performance. The change in net working capital, you can see the box in green, THB 5.2 billion. This is linked to what I explained on the inventories. And our CapEx, THB 3.5 billion were below our expectation, okay? And I believe it was a bit too soft. The issue we have to catch up a bit next year. So you will see our guidance of the CapEx for the year '25 is increasing a bit compared to this number. And then the amount of tax, the amount of interest, the amount of dividend, I think this is business as usual. And then you can see on the right, you can see 2 boxes in red. The first one is the share buyback, okay? So this is the third program we did launch in 2024 for an amount of THB 3 billion. And then you have the Perp conversion, okay? So when you convert the Perp again, it moves away from your equity and it goes into your net debt. So if you add the 2 together, we have an extraordinary of THB 10 billion -- THB 9 billion, THB 10 billion in our net debt in '24. However, we managed to increase only by THB 1.5 billion overall, thanks to the very strong free cash flow generation. We had some positive one-off also. I just want to remind you that in Q1 '24, we sold LDH, our associate, and this is THB 900 million green box that you can see here in terms of cash in. But overall, we are positive about that. I was talking about the share buyback. We have been very active over the past 3, 4 years. We did announce the fourth buyback -- share buyback program just before the year-end. The execution started already. This will be executed for the first 6 months of 2025. As of today, we roughly did THB 1.3 billion outside of THB 3 billion in terms of numbers of shares, we did buy back 109 million shares outside of 200 million shares. So here, a few considerations for this one. We decided to implement this program because we knew our cash flow generation has been extremely strong in '24. We were also unhappy about the share price development, and we always want to show our support to our shareholders. And that was the key criteria for us to determine to initiate this for share buyback. I got some questions already regarding any fifth, any sixth share buyback, we will advise, I think, depending on the cash performance. We have been very active over the past 4 years, but this is a clear demonstration of the trust and the confidence of the management within our future. Our usual update regarding also the maturity of our debt. At the end of '24, you can see we have something like THB 8 billion of existing short-term loan. And then we added almost THB 10 billion on top of this. We had some bonds coming to maturity at the end of October for THB 3.5 billion, and we have the Perp for THB 6 billion that I already mentioned. So at the end of the year, '24, we have roughly THB 17 billion short-term financing, which is a bit unusual for us. Usually, we have less. And we have THB 12 billion coming on top also in maturity in the year '25. So we have quite a large refinancing program. We want to wait mostly for H2. Right now, the interest rates are going down, and we want to benefit from that, okay? So some portion, a small portion will perform in H1, but the majority of that will be performed in H2. The key, again, to explain to you why did we decide to call for the Perp. The Perp interest rate was around 5%. If we decided to continue with the Perp, then the interest rate would have gone up to 6.25%, okay? We could have decided to refinance with a new Perp. But given the market condition, it would have been between -- we expect 5.5% to 6%. So the choice we've made was really to try to protect our cash flow. We have already a strong balance sheet. So we decided to refund and to call for the Perp but to replace it with traditional funding. Of course, we lose the very nice accounting treatment. Of course, the interest expenses will now flow to our P&L instead of the balance sheet. But we do believe we can afford that because our balance sheet, again, is very strong, and there is no impact also in our credit rating. Of course, we will monitor very closely the interest rate situation, and I do expect the majority of the refinancing to happen in H2 of the year 2025. One topic also one update regarding the BEPS 2.0. I think this is the first time we have been talking so much about tax over the past few months, and I know it was a concern for some of you. So just for you to remember, the BEP Pillar 2 is a new rule, which has been implemented and adopted by Thailand. The way to do it is you need to do the calculation country by country, okay? So in every country, you will sum up all your activities. And then you will see what is the profit before tax that you have and also the tax you have in this country. There is one watch out is it's not an accounting result. It's a tax result. So between the accounting result, you can see in our numbers, there are quite a bit of restatements. So sometimes it's not apple-to-apple. So you have to be a bit careful about that. And here, in each country, you need to reach a minimum of 15%. So we've been doing some analysis in the year '24. The key topic for us is really Thailand. Thailand, we have a lot of incentive program for the tax exports. So when you look at the -- all our activities in Thailand, we have already some activities which are at 20% tax rate. We have some activities which are mostly selling domestic. We have some other activities like i-Tail, who are selling the vast majority of their products. So for these activities, the effective tax rate is between 2% to 3%. So at the end of the day, we have a blended rate for Thailand, which is between 8% to 9%, okay? So here, we had to calculate the difference with the 15%. And the impact we expect for the year '25 is between THB 300 million to THB 350 million, okay? This is a growth impact. We do expect there will be some compensation measures from the government of Thailand or from the BOI or from the revenue department to be announced during the year '25. So far, we don't have any guidance. We try to help them. Of course, we try to do a bit of lobbying on this one. But so far, we have no clue. We will continue to monitor during the year '25. If there is any compensation measures, then the amount that you can see here will be dropping a bit depending on the compensation measures. And now I will leave Khun Kwan to go through the business performance.

[Interpreted] Yes. Good morning, everyone. I will talk about the business performance by categories. Our first slide will tell you about the performance in 2024 sales, the breakdown. You can see that the Ambient, it's still high-performing category, around 49.4%. It's a tiny reduction from last year of 46.9%. Frozen has fallen around 4% to 30.5%. So the U.S. demand has actually decreased. For PetCare, it's 12.6%. It's a tiny increase from 11.1% last year. And the, last is value-added is quite stable at 7.5%. Now if you look at the high-margin category, you can see the value. There are 2 value-added sales, around 20% of the total portfolio -- so it's much very well in line with our target of 2025 so that there will be the sales contribution of 25% to 30% in the 2 categories. Next, I'm going to take a deep dive into the performance of quarter 4 in terms of Ambient. The income is 1.5 million in quarter 4, Ambient sales increased by 1.7% year-on-year. So it's very strong, mainly to the 6.2% year-on-year rise in sales volume. However, this is part of the FX translation that offsets this growth. But if you focus on the sales volume, you can see the growth is 6.2%, mainly from -- in Q4 is a low base in Q4 compared to last year, it has fallen by 11%, but now there is a strong recovery. And secondly, you can see the strong recovery in the Middle East market compared to last year or 2023, they had a situation on the hard currency. And thirdly is a higher demand from the U.S. market. This is due to our promotion push, as mentioned by our executive that we will spend more on our marketing, advertising and branding our products. So if compared to Q-on-Q, you can see that the sales and sales volume has fallen by 10.9% Q-on-Q, mainly due to the seasonality effect. The gross profit margin gradually improve through 2025 to about 20.6%, which is the highest level in the past 7 quarters. The gross profit margin is affected and driven by the increased global demand and also the lower raw material costs that we have already stocked in our inventory. So our gross profit margin is very much in line with the target guideline, 20% to 22% that we have been pushing. The full year of Ambient in 2024, we've achieved record high sales and very -- THB 68 billion is recorded, increased by 7.1% year-on-year, driven by the sales in U.S., Canada and Middle East. As for the gross profit margin, it rose slightly to 19.1%. For Frozen in Q4 of 2024, our sales volume is -- has declined by 4.7% year-on-year. This is a weak demand in the U.S. market. But if you look at the sales in Europe as well as in Thailand, they have better and stronger sales. However, if you look at the sales volume, in total, it has gradually growth for the second quarter in a row, it's increased by 7.6% year-on-year, mainly by the feed market business. So for Q-on-Q, you'll see both the sales volume and income rose due to the seasonality impact. Quarter 4 is a festive season in the foreign markets. And this trend, you will see quite clearly in every quarter. As for the gross profit margin, it slightly improved to 12.1%. It's in the range what we have determined of 12%. But if you look at year-on-year, our gross profit margin has fallen by 2.3% year-on-year. This is due to the favorable shrimp prices. It's low. So our material cost is low. Therefore, it's THB 134 per kilo. But in Q4, the price has increased THB 167 per kilo. For our frozen sector, you can see our rightsizing situation completed since last year, and we hope that the frozen category will sustain better growth again. In terms of income, it's THB 46 billion, a little bit more than THB 46 billion. We hope that it will keep continued growth. But if you look in terms of income, it has fallen by around 11% due to the segment in the U.S. But if you look at the chilled salmon and the feed business, you can see a better growth, for gross profit margin is at 11.7% increase. For the Feed business, I would like to recap before the Thai Union Feedmill recap, our sales reached 5 billion -- THB 5.3 billion and increase by -- GPM has improved significantly by 18.7%. Therefore, our net profit has increased by 512.8%, so more than THB 535 million. Our PetCare sales continue to grow in fourth quarter compared to year-on-year increase -- slight increase due to the high base of the PetCare business because the customers restocked fully already in Q4. But if you look at the sales volume, you can see it declined by 3.1% year-on-year. This is due to the port congestion that we faced. It's container management, we have been congested in the ports. In terms of Q-on-Q, you can see that the PetCare has increased both the income and the volume itself, 6.3% year-on-year and 8.2% Q-on-Q, mostly due to seasonality. In terms of gross profit margin, you can see that the gross profit margin increased by 2.7% year-on-year to 26.1% in Q4 due to the strategy that ITC has focused on in creating more premium product. The premium product in quarter 4 has increased by 4.5% and formally, it was 53%. For PetCare for the full year, you can see that the increase is around THB 18 billion, which is a great growth year-on-year, much in line with the ITC that mentioned around 15.5%, 14% to 16% year-on-year. That was the projection. The key driver is the premium product mix, as you can see in the market in the chart as well as solid recovery in the U.S. and higher demand in Europe and Australia. For the gross profit margin for PetCare and for ITC, it achieved an all-time high at 28.5% and also much in line with the guideline provided at 26% to 28% for 2024. And the last segment is the value-added. You can see the sales volume increased for the sales -- for the value-added sales decreased, I'm sorry, by 4.3% year-on-year. This is due to the weak consumption in the U.S. market for the value-added products. Another part is from the price of all the segments, which has fallen per unit, except for the packaging. In Q4 of 2023, you can see that there are nonrecurring income and which we shows, therefore, the lower demand this year. The sales, GPM declined by 23.5% due to the packaging. The GPM, as mentioned, declined in Q4. It's temporary because we opened up a new factory, the Protein Hydrolysate which started operation in Q2 of 2024. For the full year, for value-added, the income is around THB 10 billion. This is due to the value-added sales growth. Gross profit margin has fallen similar to the fourth quarter, the effect from the new factory, which has incurred more costs. In the last section, I would like to pass on to Khun Thiraphong to present the outlook for 2025 guidance.

[Interpreted] Thank you. For 2025 guidance, we are focusing more on the top line growth with improved profitability. We want to uplift our gross profit margin continually. However, we still expect the first quarter to become softer performance expected to year-on-year. For the total year guidance, we expect our sales growth to grow by 3% to 4% year-on-year. However, if you look at the organic growth, we expect the growth of 6% to 7% increase, but there will be offsets compared to the fourth quarter. You can see that the negative FX impact because of the stronger Thai baht, we expect a negative impact of about 3%. If our exchange rate, the baht becomes weaker, and I think that our sales growth will be better. Our gross profit margin, our guidance is around 18.5% to 19.5%. We want to drive it higher to about 19.5% or more. This is something that we will attempt for. SG&A to sales is around 13% to 13.5%. There will be transformation costs of around 0.7%. And we will invest more in terms of marketing expenses in the various brands globally. Effective interest rate, there's no change. For CapEx, it's still low THB 4.5 billion to THB 5 billion. The dividend policy is 2 payments of at least 50% dividend payout ratio. This is a rough outlook. As mentioned, we hope that the various categories that we improved from last year will become stronger this year in terms of our brand in Europe and also the Frozen business. The Ambient in general, we expect to have stronger performance. I think we should monitor in terms of i-Tail. i-Tail has a positive improvement for the sales and the margin. We expect that they have quite a challenging target, and they might grow -- in terms of OEM, we will try and look for new products much better than what they are doing now. And M&A is very active. So it is something that we need to monitor closely again. For Feedmill, you will see that they have developed very well and it becomes normalized. The profit is around THB 500 million. So it's a positive change. They are able to control their costs. And of course, the shrimp production in Thailand is now much better. The price is quite high, and it will affect our business positively for the shrimp feed. What is expected is the expansion of the market in Indonesia, they have better market share now. We are expecting more in the future. For the Thai production, you can ask them. They will push on different sort of feed for fish feed as well. What is quite satisfactory is the export to Vietnam. There is good tendency. From what I've seen, the market, there are still gaps in the market. We do not need to set up a factory there. Export from Thailand should be adequate, especially with the quality of our products and the R&D of the sales service and there is more technical support. So the shrimp feed market, I think, is quite positive in terms of outlook in 2025.

Thank you very much to our management for the presentation.

[Interpreted] Thank you, everyone. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]