Acomo N.V.

Good afternoon and welcome to the ACOMO Investor Call for the 2025 half-year results. We would like to thank you all for joining the call today. In this Investor Call, we will highlight and discuss the main drivers of the results for the first half of the year, next to a number of other topics and initiatives for the ACOMO group. My name is Jean-Marie Pretorius. and I'm Okomo's Group Risk and Internal Audit Manager, and I'm pleased to be the moderator for this call today. The Q&A session will take place at the end of the presentation. The platform is already open and available, so you are invited to submit your questions during or after the presentation using the functionality available on the Okomo website. Analysts will be allowed to raise questions verbally via phone during the Q&A session, Today, our Acoma Group CEO Alar Goldsmedding and CFO Miriam Fantil will guide you through our 2025 half year results. I would like to state that this call may contain forward looking statements. These statements, however, do not guarantee future performance and therefore no reliance can be placed upon them. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly correct or update any forward looking statement made during today's call, except as may be required under the applicable security laws. We will now continue with the 2025 half-year results. Firstly, we give the word over to the Okomo Group CEO, Allard Goldsmeding.

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us on today's call. The overall performance of our group in the first half year was very strong. as you may have read in our press release that was issued this morning. We achieved a record performance in both sales and profit, and our net debt to EBITDA leverage ratio significantly decreased. In today's call, I will discuss in more detail the business environment of the first six months, our overall results, and several initiatives we took. Mirjam will cover the financial performance in more detail. At the end, I will summarize the key takeaways. The environment our business operated in continued to be influenced by several factors. Firstly, market prices for a number of key products either increased or remained at high levels. Especially nuts and some spices increased substantially. Major nuts like cashews and almonds saw higher price levels of more than 25% versus same period last year, and walnuts and macadamia increased even more. Paper market prices were somewhat lower versus the end of 2024, but are still materially above the levels of one year ago. Desecated coconut market prices almost doubled versus H1 2024, and increased by more than 50% versus the end of last year, and are at all-time high levels. Cocoa market prices continue to be volatile at high price levels, although somewhat lower than at the end of last year. Due to the high price levels, there was some pressure on demand in the first six months, but not materially. The constant changing news regarding US tariffs on imports created uncertainty and affected the buying horizon and purchase timings of customers. This resulted in both postponed ordering in case of uncertainty about the actual tariffs and conditions, as well as accelerated ordering to be ahead of the date tariffs would be applicable. Our people dealt with constant changing customer inquiries and requests, which required to be fully up to date with the latest developments. I am impressed with how our teams dealt with these challenges. Our supply chains were impacted by the continued tensions in the Red Sea, leading to longer lead times for products from Eastern Africa and Asia to Europe. Another development that started to be reflected in our financials is the weakening of the US dollar. For the P&L, the translation effect on the operational results was limited in the first half year. In case the U.S. dollar remains at current levels, this may also affect consumer purchase power in the U.S., especially in case of the announced tariffs will actually be implemented. On the other hand, market price changes of raw materials may outweigh the impact of U.S. dollar movements. Given the economic environment, the overall financial results of the group for the first six months are very strong. Sales increased by 14% to €758 million, adjusted EBITDA increased by 85% to €68 million, and the adjusted earnings per share increased even more, with 143% to €1.36 per share. This performance proves the professionalism of our people to deal effectively with a constantly changing environment and the value we provide in the supply chains. Several important highlights of the first half year I would like to call out. Firstly, the performance of our spices and nuts businesses. In this segment, all our companies, Guts International, Kingnuts & Rathorst and Dailynuts, continued the growth directory, resulting in record sales and profits. This is a great achievement in a complex market with a wide variety of products and origins and underlines the attractiveness of this segment to us. Trarion Organic also reported a record half year supported by strong cocoa results. The major positive change in performance of the organic cocoa business that started in the second half of last year continued in the first six months of this year. A lot of focus was put on getting the beans in processed them into butter, liquor, and powder, and shipping these products to our customers. After the delayed shipments from the origins, we caught up during the last six months. The other desks of Trident also performed well, and the organization is well positioned to further develop the business. The edible seed segment was impacted by a poor performance in the US. Where the European business developed well and reported solid results, The U.S. organization was facing margin pressure and was not able to offset the lost export business. In addition, uncertainties around tariffs for imported ingredients further impacted volumes and margins. The focus going forward will be to develop the domestic business further under local leadership. The foundation of the U.S. organization is solid and provides a platform for healthy growth. Our tea business reported disappointing sales volumes. the customer landscape is changing and becoming more scattered, as major packers are losing position to smaller players in some cases. Despite the lower volumes, Van Ries Management, under the leadership of the new Managing Director and Van Ries Veteran, Robin Lavoie, was able to increase margins and effectively control costs. Van Ries will reorganize the commercial function into a coordination hub that further utilizes the unique global network and expands the multi-origin offerings to customers. Our food solutions business performed very well, especially as the team established a new wetland facility while continuing the day-to-day business. The new facility became fully operational ahead of planning, which is a big compliment to the SNIC Euro Ingredients organization. The increased sales and higher market prices for a number of products resulted in higher working capitals. Our balance sheet enables this increase and continues to be healthy. Based on the performance, the board has decided to set the interim dividend at 45 euro cents per share, which is an increase of 12.5% versus prior year. At the Capital Markets Day on April 7, we presented our strategic direction and our financial goals. The goals are around sales growth, delivering healthy margins, maintaining a strong balance sheet, and continuing to be an attractive dividend payer. The sales growth of plus 14% reflects the actual growth opportunity we have. The presented goal of 9% EBTA margin proves to be achievable as we realized this 9% over the first six months. The leverage ratio remains strong and the interim dividend supports our dividend distribution objective. Besides the financial goals, we also presented the building blocks that leads to these goals. The group's strategic vision is based on our value creation capabilities reflected in the shape of a tree and the dynamics of the markets we're active in. I would like to share a few examples of how we address these market dynamics. Last year, we acquired a nuts organization in the Nordics from Caldic. We incorporated this business into our daily nuts organization with the aim to utilize our existing expertise and create synergy opportunities. The two organizations worked together in expanding the business in the Nordics and were jointly present at one of the major fairs for product concepts and packaging for the private label industry. Our dailyness organization has insight in the latest food trends in relation to nuts and can provide a broader portfolio range to customers in the Nordics than the Nordics organization could previously offer. This resulted in a very successful fair. With the organic portfolio, Trident is very well positioned to further strengthen our better for people and planet profile. Through the agroforestry project in Sierra Leone, we can expand the production of organic cocoa and at the same time improve the sustainable land use and living income for farmers. Besides supplying ingredients to the food and beverage industry, SNIC Euro Ingredients also supplies own developed functional dry and wet plants. These plans are developed to meet specific requirements of customers. As we were facing maximum capacity for our wetlands production, a new dedicated facility was established in Belgium for the production of these wetlands. The facility became fully operational in the first half of this year and enables us to meet the growing demand for tailor-made functional solutions through flexible processing equipment. In the area of sustainability, we reached three out of four target scores that are related to our sustainability link loan. We took several initiatives to further progress, ranging from increased usage of renewable energy, an increased number of certifications, initiatives to increase living wage of farmers, and new agroforestry projects. Our aim remains to deliver long-term growth in a sustainable way. Now I would like to hand over to Mirjam van Tiel, our Group CFO, to take us in more detail through the financial performance.

Thank you, Allard. We have a diversified portfolio across five growth segments, active in over 100 countries. I want to start with a summary of the performance of each of the segments. Spices and nuts, edible seeds, organic ingredients, tea and food solutions. First, the spices and nut segments. A very strong performance with a sales growth of 16% and an EBITDA growth of 41%, with all companies within this segment contributing to the growth. As Allard already explained, we have seen higher market prices for most spices, desiccated coconut and nuts, which supported the segment's sales and profit performance. On the other hand, the higher prices put some pressure on demand. The Nordics business that was acquired in August of last year is included in the results and further strengthened the segment's footprint. Then over to edible seeds. First, good to know that our European seeds businesses had a solid performance. However, we saw a few dynamics that impacted our North American business. First, we have the restrictions in export markets for US-grown sunflower seeds, which we already saw in the second half of last year as well. Then second, the uncertainty around tariffs resulted in volatility in supply and demand. And last, we see pressure on our margin. As a result, sales of the segment declined with 7% and EBITDA was lower with 34%. Good to note that the performance in the first half of this year showed improvement compared to the second half of last year. The focus for this segment is to grow in the domestic market with proven concepts in sun butter, jammies and our wildlife portfolio and our strong partnerships for the co-manufacturing business. Then over to organic ingredients. A very strong sales and EBITDA performance. We see that the demand for organic products is picking up again, powered by the trend towards healthier and sustainable foods, which you see reflected in our performance, with improvements across the board in the organic portfolio. A large part of the improvement over last year is coming from cocoa, which is partly due to last year's results being materially impacted by hedge losses, but more importantly, by the strong result of the cocoa business with the momentum that we saw in the second half of last year continuing into this year. Included in here is a catch up of delayed volume from the beginning of last year as well. We have strengthened our fundamentals in a structurally tight market. Our team successfully completed sourcing the Africa crop season, ensuring supply to fulfill our demand for the coming period. Looking at the other products within the organic segment, the food business continues to demonstrate a good momentum and consistent growth. The organic nuts and seed business line has delivered a solid performance with volume growth complemented by a more substantial improvement in margins, contributing to stronger profitability in categories like nuts, chia and sunflower kernels. Also, our coffee business had record high sales. Then moving on to tea. The tea business is operating in a challenging environment. Some of the larger branded players are losing share and as a result we see a more fragmented customer base. Through improved margins and strong cost control, the impact of lower volumes was partly mitigated. To address the changing environment, our tea business will migrate to a new commercial model. For food solutions, we saw a record EBITDA performance in the first half of the year, driven by strong volume development for the dry and wet plants. Further commercial development was driven by a strong entrepreneurial spirit in R&D, combined with new long-term partnerships with customers. We are especially proud of these results, as at the same time, the new wet plants facility became operational, enabling higher production and sales. The new facility is also set to support skilled production for the coming years. And if we look at the overall P&L, combining all of the segments, we see that sales improved with 14%, driven by strong performance for spices and nuts and organic ingredients, partly offset by a decline in edible seeds and tea. The gross profit percentage increased from 13.3% to 16.9%, an increase of 3.6% points. Of this, 2.5% is coming from organic ingredients, mainly cocoa, and the other 1.2% from improvements within the other segments. This is driven by focusing more on value-added activities and also supported by the increase in market prices. General administrative expenses show an increase of 15%, mainly driven by higher personnel expenses. That results in an adjusted EBITDA of 68 million euro, which is an increase of 85% year-on-year. As a percentage of sales, the EBITDA margin is 9%, which is in line with our long-term ambition. Also important to note that in the first half of the year, the FX translation impact on the P&L was minimal. However, depending on how the US dollar euro rate will develop, we are anticipating a bigger impact in the second half. Then moving over to the cash flow. Cash flow from operating activities excluding working capital more than doubled versus prior year. including the changes in working capital and interest and taxes, we have a negative cashflow. So let's take a look at the next slide on how the working capital has developed over time. In the graph, you see that working capital declined towards the end of 2023 and started to go up again in 2024, and that continues to increase in 2025. The increase is mainly driven by the higher purchase prices, especially driven by cocoa, which almost doubled, cocoa nuts plus 80%, and also a lot of spices and nuts plus 20 to 30%. This is where the added value of Acomo is. Our inventory levels play an important role in our commercial policy. As a group, we have a strong balance sheet and a financial strength to invest in working capital. We still have more than enough headroom in our borrowing facilities. By end of June, we utilize 40% of our funds or approximately 50% based on the borrowing base, which then also brings me to the key ratios looking at our balance sheets. Our solvency ratio is healthy at 47%, although a decline versus prior year due to higher working capital. Driven by strong EBITDA performance, both in the second half of last year and this year, the leverage ratio improved to 2.1. Then over to my last slide. We hope you appreciate we are stepping up the communication and interaction with you, our investors. In April this year, we held our first Capital Markets Day. Based on our mission, Building Roots to Healthier Foods, we talked about our plant-based ingredients portfolio and how it links to current market trends. We talked about the value-added capabilities of the group and the role in a responsible and resilient supply chain, and the potential for scaling up organically as well as through M&A. I know many of you are able to join, but if not, the slides as well as the recordings are available on our website. Also, we are working on a new, improved website telling the ACOMO story based on the mission Building Roots to Healthier Foods. We expect to go live in the coming months. With that, I would like to hand it over back to Allard for closing remarks.