Adecoagro S.A.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for waiting. At this time, we would like to welcome everyone to ADECO AGRO's 2026 Second Quarter Results Conference Call. Today with us we have Mr. Mariano Bosch, CEO, Mr. Emilio Eco, CFO, Mr. Renato Junqueira Pereira, Sugar, Ethanol and Energy VP, and Mrs. Victoria Cabello, Investor Relations Officer. We would like to inform you that this event has been recorded and all participants will be in the listen-only mode during the company's presentation. After the company's remarks are completed, there will be a question and answer section. At this time, further instructions will be given. Before proceeding, let me mention that forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of Adequo Agro's management and on information currently available to the company. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions because they relate to the future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industrial conditions and other operating factors could also affect the future results of a decoagros and could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forelooking statements. Now, I will turn the conference over to Mrs. Mariano Bosch, CEO. Mr. Bosch, you may begin your conference.

Good morning and thank you for joining ADECO AGRO's first half 2026 results conference. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA marked new records, reaching $258 million year-to-date and $173 million during the second quarter. reflecting the earnings potential and scale that our well-diversified agroindustrial platform now has. In fertilizers, stronger operational performance during the quarter resulted in higher production volumes, while higher prices and cost efficiencies supported further margin expansion. Given higher than expected prices during the first half, We expect the annual performance from this segment to be above our initial projections. In Brazil, the sugarcane plantation is in excellent conditions. The investments and work done over the years to improve cane productivity are paying off as weather conditions have normalized. Sugarcane availability is now driving the crashing volume growth, and this is also one of the reasons why we view the acquisition of Carapó Mill as highly accretive. We believe this asset will enable us to organically expand our sugar and ethanol operations by milling the surplus cane that our cluster currently has, while further strengthening our presence in the region. As we capture the operational synergies, we see potential to unlock value by increasing the crashing and consequently reinforcing our position among the lowest cost producers in the industry. Given its earnings potential, this expansion does not alter our deleveraging progress nor our target net debt to EBITDA for the full year. In food and agriculture, stronger productivity enabled higher cost dilution. Raw milk production has improved, supporting higher processed volume in our industries. As the new crop is being commercialized, margins should improve, supported by a more efficient cost structure. To conclude, I would like to express my gratitude to all the teams in ADECOagro. It is because of their commitment that we continue to achieve new milestones despite the different commodity cycles which we navigate. Thanks to our shareholders for their continued support. And now I will let Emilio walk you through the numbers of the period.

Thank you, Mariano. Good morning, everyone. Please now turn to page 4 with a summary of our consolidated financial results. As a reminder, we are presenting our numbers on a pro forma basis, assuming our fertilizers business had been part of Adeccoagro since the beginning of 2025. We believe this provides a more meaningful year-over-year comparison. Gross sales total $535 million during the second quarter. While on an accumulated basis, they reached $928 million. Despite higher revenues in our fertilizer segment, overall revenues remain in line across both periods, reflecting mixed prices and volume dynamics across our product portfolio. Adjusted EVTA set new high records. The main driver was the strong performance of our fertilizers business, which benefited from higher production, stronger pricing and operational efficiencies. Such performance more than compensated for the softer results in sugar, ethanol and energy and food and agriculture businesses, which I'll discuss in a moment. Let's move to slide 6 and review the financial and operational performance of the sugar, ethanol and energy segment. Despite experiencing above average rainfall, particularly in May, we crushed 3.5 million tons of cane during that quarter, up 3% compared to the same period of last year. This continues the positive trend we've seen since the start of the year. Cane yields have recovered thanks to the better moisture conditions. Although TRS levels remained below last year's, they have been improving steadily throughout the year. In terms of product mix, we continue to maximize ethanol production given its attractive premium of sugar. As a result, we reach 78% ethanol mix year-to-date. By comparison, during the first half of 2025, we maximized sugar production. This shift highlights one of the key advantages of our industrial assets, the flexibility to quickly change production toward the product offering the highest marginal contribution. On the cost side, production costs were negatively impacted by the appreciation of the Brazilian real. Excluding the FX effect, our year-to-date production costs in local currency remain in line with the previous year. Turning to sales, the decline we saw this quarter was mainly driven by lower sugar prices and lower sugar volumes sold, reflecting the change in our production mix. For ethanol, lower sales volumes were actually part of our commercial strategy. Following the sharp decline in domestic ethanol prices caused by higher market supply, we decided to start building inventories rather than selling at current market prices. As a result, we finished the quarter with about 41% of our year-to-date ethanol production stored in inventory, positioning us to capture stronger margins once prices recover. This follows the strategy we implemented during the first quarter when we sold inventories and current production while prices were at their peak, ahead of the new harvest. Overall, adjusted EBITDA reached $53 million during the quarter and $94 million year-to-date. The decline compared to last year reflects lower sales as well as lower consecana prices in the mark-to-market valuation of our biological assets, particularly harvested cane. Looking ahead, crushing is progressing as planned and we are still on track to achieve our full-year target. We continue to expect low double-digit growth in crushing volumes this year supported by greater cane availability. Now let's turn to slide 8 to discuss our fertilizers operations. Urea production increased 22% year over year, driven by higher plant utilization and importantly, zero downtime during the quarter. As a result, year to date, urea production reached 617,000 tons, remaining well above last year's level, which was impacted by 31 days of downtime Due to adverse weather conditions that disrupted gas supply as discussed on previous calls. On the commercial side, results benefited from a significant increase in international urea prices. Following the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, a region responsible for roughly 30% of global urea trade, prices reached nearly $800 per ton during the quarter. As we executed sales throughout the period, we were able to progressively capture the surge in prices. Accordingly, adjusted ETA more than doubled both in the quarter and on a year-to-date basis. In addition, higher production volumes together with operational efficiencies drove a meaningful expansion in margins. Although urea prices have moderated from the peaks reached in April and May, we still expect full-year EBITDA from this segment to be above our original projections. This outlook is supported by higher prices captured in the first half of the year, while most of our cost structure remains fixed. Please move to page 10 where we describe the performance of our food and agriculture segment. As of the end of July, we harvested 92% of the planted area, achieving yields above the prior campaign and producing more than 1.1 million tons of crops. We expect to complete the harvest season during this month and have already begun planting activities of our winter crops for the next season. In dairy, Processing volumes increased compared to last year, driven by higher raw milk production at our free-stall facilities due to better cow productivity. Looking at financial performance, year-to-date results still reflect lower commodity prices across much of our portfolio, along with higher costs in US dollar terms. That said, if we focus on the quarter itself, Both revenues and adjusted VDA improve year over year supported by higher production volumes and a gradual recovery in margins as we begin sales of the new harvest. We expect margins to continue improving over the next few quarters as the benefits of our cost reduction initiatives become more visible. In dairy, we also expect to continue growing processed milk volumes supported by the launch of new products under our consumer brands. Let's move to slide 12 and review our capital allocation strategy, starting with expansion capex. Year to date, our largest capital deployment was the final payment of approximately $400 million related to the acquisition of Profertil, which was completed during the previous quarter. At the same time, we continued investing in a number of attractive organic growth opportunities across our businesses. These investments include the expansion of our sugarcane plantations and biomethan operations in Brazil, as well as additional agricultural machinery and new cheese packaging line at our Morteros dairy facility. Before moving on, I would like to highlight that these figures do not include the acquisition of carapó meal, which remains subject to customary closing conditions. We expect the transaction to close in the coming weeks, with the purchase price paid in cash at closing. Given the estimated earnings contribution from the asset, we do not expect the acquisition to affect our deleveraging targets for year-end. Now let's move to page 13, where we present our debt profile. As we typically experience at this point of the year, net debt tends to peak due to the seasonal working capital requirements associated with our agricultural operations. If we exclude that seasonal effect, as well as the $58 million increase in readily marketable inventories during the quarter, net debt would already be below 2025 year-end levels. On a pro forma basis, net leverage surged three times, which remains consistent with our deleveraging path. and reflects the stronger earnings generation we are seeing across the operations. Despite the seasonality in cash needs and our commercial strategy to hold inventories for some of our products in anticipation of better pricing opportunities. Looking forward, we continue to expect leverage to decline as the BTA generation increases. On the liquidity side, our ratio improved to 1.9 times compared to 1.2 times in the previous quarter, demonstrating our ability to comfortably meet short-term obligations. Please note that most of our debt remains long-term and that its currency composition is closely aligned with our revenue profile, helping reduce foreign exchange risk. Finally, regarding shareholder returns, The first installment of our annual cash dividend, totaling $17.5 million, was paid on May 19, equivalent to 12 cents per share. The second installment in the same amount would be paid in November, resulting in a total annual cash dividend of $35 million. Thank you very much for your time. We will now open the call to questions.

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. If you have a question, please write it down in the Q&A section or click on Raise Hand for audio questions. Please remember that your company's name should be visible for your questions to be taken. We do ask that when you pose your question that you're picking up your headset to provide optimum sound quality. Please hold while we pull for questions. Our first question comes from Gustavo Troiano with Itaú BBA. Sir, your microphone is open.

Hello, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. And it's actually on Profercio and more specifically on the mismatch between production figures in the quarter and sales volumes that you reported for this quarter as well. And basically, I just wanted to hear from you what could be attributed to the usual seasonality of sales volumes and what could relate to maybe one-offs in the quarter, potentially driven by Urea price spike or something like that. And still on this point, maybe if after the first half, if we should expect Adequo Agro's Urea sales volumes for the full year to reach the 1.3 million tons for the full year concentrating volumes in the second half, or if there could be some downwards adjustments to sales volumes after what happened throughout the first half of the year. Thank you very much.

Gustavo, thank you very much for your question. I think this helps for a whole clarification of how we sell the urea. We produce 1.3 million tons per year, so we are going to sell 1.3 million tons in the whole year. Argentina consumes 2.5, so there is no way that we cannot sell the 1.3. So 1.3 is for sure something we will always be selling. And we could be selling all what we produce every month, and that is easy to do it. But we have a strategy where usually, and in general over the years, during... September, October and November is the maximum consumption of the urea from producers. So in general, that would be where the higher prices in the domestic market of Argentina we can find. So we try to concentrate more sales in that specific part. That is for the general years. This year in particular has, as you mentioned, this peak because of the war during March and April. So in April, we try to maximize the peak. That's why we are selling more than what we originally projected in the first half. So what you can see there is the first half. We sell more or less the average that has been sold in the previous years. But in this specific year, we were pushing to sell more. But in June, you may not remember, but in June, the price of urea went down as far as lower than the previous year. So lower than July and August. So during June, we had the lowest price of urea. That's why in June in particular, we decided not to push on the sales as we were pushing in April and May on what we had produced. That is specifically why this particular month or this particular quarter you are not selling all the production being sold. And we are happy with that decision because in June the price was lower than today's prices or July and August. So we have more... Thank you for the question.

That's clear, thank you very much.

Our next question comes from Mateus Enfield with UBS.

Hi, everyone. Thank you for the time. My first question on sugar and ethanol, you had in previous calls mentioned the expectation of a drop in cash cost of 10% to 15%, if I'm not wrong. If you could provide any updates around that level of cost efficiency or cost improvements for this crop, if you still think that that number is reasonable when you're looking to the entire crop? That's my first question. And then the second one on the acquisition of the Carapao mill, I understand there's potential synergies to capture higher crushing. My question is, what's the excess capacity or excess sugar cane that you currently have? and how do you think or how do you anticipate that costs move with a higher or a larger radius for sourcing once you end that plant and if you could sort of help us get a sense around that and then just to finalize on that on what's a reasonable outlook for crushing for that mill for 27 if it's already possible for you to reach four or four and a half million tons above the three and a half that the mill crushed last season. So those are my questions. Thank you.

Hi, Mateos. Thank you for the question. On the projection of the yield of the milling, the full milling for Carapo on 2027, we don't give that guidance and we want to close first and then we will explain more details on Carapo. On the rest of the questions, including some of the synergies from Carapó, Renato can take the cost and how the cost can be impacted with Carapó and what are the synergies also with Carapó. Renato?

Hi, Matheus. Thank you for your question. So as it was mentioned, we see carapó as an extension of our cluster in Mato Grosso do Sul. So we are going to adopt the same operational model there, and we will have the same competitive advantage. So our plan in the future is to do the continuous harvest. We're going to take advantage of the high production flexibility that the carapó also have, the high cogeneration potential. The ICMS tax rebate that is exactly the same as our mills in Mato Grosso do Sul. And we think that Carapó has the potential to increase the effective crushing a lot, almost double the crushing. This is because the capacity of Carapó is very similar to the capacity of Ivinhema. So if you consider the milling capacity, The sugar production capacity, ethanol capacity, is very similar to Angelica and even Emma Mills. We also think that you have a lot of opportunities to improve some KPIs and to reach the same level as you have in Mato Grosso do Sul. For example, industrial efficiency. We think we have 2% higher than Carapó. The use of time is also more than 2% higher. The cogen exports, kilowatts of energy per ton of cane crushed, we think we can improve. And also some improvements in agriculture, both in yields and NTRS. And to finalize the synergies, we think that we have a lot of synergies related to GNA. So we are going to keep the same structure that we currently have to also to use this in Carapó. And we are going to also to benefit from the logistics and commercial assets. So we're going to take advantage of the tanks that Carapó has, warehouse. So I think there are a lot of synergies to that we are going to get in the next years. Of course, part of the sugarcane, as Mariano mentioned, from the cluster we are going to send to be crushed in Carapó. Regarding the other part of your question, the cost, I think it's important to say that quarterly costs might have some temporary distortion caused by cost allocation and industrial seasonality. So it's our better to analyze the costs based on the year cost. But Even with this consideration, we think that it is still possible to reach the 10% reduction cost compared to last year. I think this is explained first by the cost dilution. We plan to crush 10% Aproximately 10% more than we crushed last year. We still have plenty of time to do it. Of course, it depends on the weather, but at this point it is still possible. And so this has an extra cost dilution. The leasing cost is much lower because of the Consecana price. The head count has been reduced. This is because of some efficiencies that we have been obtaining, especially because of the use of new technologies such as true row harvest machines, gruners. So we have decreased the number of harvesting fronts, so reducing the number of people working on those fronts. And this is more than enough to offset some diesel and fertilizer increase in costs. So we think it's still possible to have this 10% reduction.

That's helpful. Thank you.

Once again, if you have a question, please write it down in the Q&A session or click on raise hand for audio questions. Our next question comes from Pedro Gama with Citi.

Hi, Mariano and the aquagro team. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. So, on my side, I have two questions in the fertilizer segments. In the past, the management highlighted the likely expansion of the Profertil plant as a key growth avenue. However, during the previous weeks and months, a major Argentinian competitor in the gas sector announced an investment in a new greenfield urea plant in the same region as Profertil. Building on that, I'd like to ask about two questions. How does the perpetual current cash cost structure compared to the sphere that is vertically integrated in gas production compare itself? And is the unit cost different significance? And how does this affect adequate long-term competitive position in the Argentine region? And another question, given that the likely perpetual expansion is a brownfield project, should this be faster to implement and what are the key triggers or market conditions required for you to make a final investment decision? Is there any strategic urgency to bring this new capacity online before your competitor, thereby capturing a first-mover advantage in the domestic market, which usually has a higher margin than exports to Brazil, for example? Or could this expansion be postponed in light of the company's focus to the leverage? I believe these are the main points. Thank you.

Thank you, Pedro, for your question. Very important. 1. South America imports 10 million tons of urea. We produce 1.3 million tons. And the announcement is to produce 2.1 million tons. So there's still a lot of need of urea in the whole region. This announcement is to produce urea in four or five years from now. So there's still a lot to go. When you ask to compare the cost of production from one system to the other, still a lot to understand on what's the other cost. We know exactly what are our costs, but there are a lot of costs on the other side that still need to be understood. In terms of gas and the cost of gas, the gas is a very transparent market and we have to renew our contracts as we said before and we expect those contracts to be better in terms of prices and what they are today and we are Thank you very much. Many times we'll be a huge exporter of gas. So we are always going to be a buyer of gas at the cost of the export parity, as we've been always saying, that is going to be very competitive. So we still believe that we are going to continue to be the lowest cost producer. And when you think on the selling on the domestic market or on the export, depending on where, because with the logistics and the port that we have in Bahia Blanca, we are very competitive to go to Brazil as competitive as to go to Puerto San Martin, that are the northern ports in Argentina. So the differences between the domestic and the export market, when we think on the Brazilian market, is not going to be really relevant. So that is to understand what the impact of a new plant is in the whole 10 million tons that the region is importing. And then going to our own project that you were asking, we continue to understand, analyze, go in deep, do the engineering, work on the engineer. Thank you very much. So, we are still very keen on that project, we are very interested on continue to understand and also continue to understand what is the real cost of producing it, of building the plant and how is the best way to produce this plant or to build this plant Our next question comes from Lucas Ferreira with JP Morgan. The microphone is open.

Hi guys, thanks for the time. I have two questions. The first one on the commercialization strategy for sugar and ethanol. Renato, if you can talk about, in your view, what are the reasons for ethanol prices to be extremely low at this point and how the company is reacting to that, I guess, looking at your numbers you're carrying. A large amount of inventories to be sold later in the crop, so how much of a capacity you have to carry, if that's still the strategy that you guys are rolling for the second half of the year. And then on the sugar prices, if this recent rally in prices drives you guys to accelerate selling, and if this is already levels that you think are good enough to do a major acceleration of selling there in the market. And then if I may, a second question, more on the Argentina farming side. A bit of your outlook, considering that we have this strong onion coming in, the business has been more and more challenging the last few years. How much of a recovery in, let's say, normal, what you think is sort of a baseline yields for the crops? Thank you, Lucas, for your question. I'm going to ask Renato to answer the commercialization of sugar and ethanol and our strategy with sugar now.

Hi, Lucas. So starting with ethanol. So I think the supply of ethanol was high due to the progress of the sugarcane harvest and the corn ethanol. So that's why prices decreased a lot, especially in June and July. With this price, the part rate at the pump decreased as well. So the part rate is lower than 60%. And since the early August, we have started to see some signs that demand is picking up, so more liquidity. So we have already seen an increase in price compared to July. About 5%. Now what we are doing, and I think most producers in Brazil are doing too, is switch the mix to sugar. So this is going to decrease the supply of ethanol. So we think that the combination of a lower supply and a higher demand, I think the situation for the Q4 and Q1 is going to be better. That's why our strategy is to carry as much as ethanol as possible to be sold at this point. We have capacity to carry our production, especially because we have also switched the mix to max sugar. And of course, in a few weeks, we are going to have all the tanks of carapó that we can also use to store our production. And regarding to sugar, we think we are in a moment that the marketing is shifting from 3 million tons of surplus to deaths of about 2 million tons for different reasons in the most important production countries, India, Thailand, European Union and Brazil. And if you take this with the fact that the lowest stocks worldwide, so the use to ratio is still very, very low. If you think the whole picture, we think the price of sugar has reacted because of this situation. And of course, we are taking the opportunity that the marketing is giving us in these rallies to increase our hedging both in 2026 and in 2027. Today, currently, we are 7% hedged. in 26 at 15.7 cents per pound. And in 27, we are about 16% hedged at 17.4 cents per pound. This is not counting carapó production.

Thank you, Renato. And Lucas, finally, on El Niño that you were asking, on the impact in Argentina, we have an impact on the yields in general, where we expect normalization of yields or improvement of yield. And that's, of course, a welcome, and that is also including a benefit in terms of the whole cost structure that we have for the food and agriculture business. And even more important than that, because of El Niño, we are also seeing a recovery on the price of rice, that the rice is an important product that we produce in Argentina and Uruguay, so that will have an even higher impact. So, in general, El Niño for us is a positive scenario. On top of that, the needs of urea are higher in the whole agriculture of Argentina because of more rains. So, usually the consumption of urea in the whole country is higher because of El Niño projection.

Thank you very much, guys. Thank you, Lucas.

Our next question comes from Isabella Simonato with Bank of America.

Hi, Mariano, Emilio. Good morning. Thank you for the call. I have two questions. First, since we're talking about the food and agriculture business, right, this year You reduced planted area significantly, right, given the economics, but now we are ahead of maybe a more favorable scenario. Prices picked up a little bit, yields as well. If you can give us a sense, how can we think about planted area for the 2027 campaign? I think this will be very helpful. And second, I mean, back to the sugar and ethanol discussion, right? I think we talk a lot about The surplus of deficit in the sugar market, but we have been seeing indeed in the inventories declining right over the past few seasons, but that not necessarily has been translated into prices that we've seen in the past with similar level of inventory. Part of that, I believe, is China running a lower inventory or the trade flow that is still balanced with Brazil producing above 40 million tons. I mean, can you explain, I mean, in your views, what would actually need to happen globally for prices of sugar to go back to 18, 19, 20 cents per pound? Thank you.

Thank you, Isabella, for your question. Regarding food and the planted area, you shouldn't expect differences to this year. We are maximizing returns. We are being very focused on Thank you very much. What's the scenario or what should need to happen to go back to the 19 dollars per pound in sugar? Renato, if you want to add something to what you've already said.

No, I think it will depend a lot of the El Niño impact on the key countries. Of course, the impact can be higher or lower. So this switch from 3 million to 2 million deaths I think it can be higher depending on what happens in those key countries. For example, in India, we know that the stocks are very low. They are announcing some measures to avoid import sugar. But of course, it's going to depend on the monsoons that is going to happen there. In Thailand, the same thing. And even in Brazil, despite the higher I think there are a lot of interruption in the crushing. The TIS content, especially in June, was lower than everybody was expecting. The mix is going to is less I think the world has learned to deal with lower stocks. Maybe because of higher interest rates, improvement in logistics, but of course the fundamentals at some point has to prevail and price has to increase.

Very helpful, thank you.

Once again, if you have a question, please write it down in the Q&A session or click on raise hand for audio questions. Our next question comes from Tiago Duarte with BTG Pacto.

Hello everybody. My question goes back to the Carapó transaction and I think to Renato. Two things here, Renato. The first one, when we look at M&A deals in the industry, I guess one of the Historically, the most challenging aspect is the quality of the sugar cane that comes along with the meal, right? So my first question to you is whether you have a view on the quality of the cane that you're going to be harvesting coming along with the meal, the carapó meal, in terms of... Ezequiel Garbers, Renato Junqueira-Santos Pereira Thank you very much. Thank you, Tiago, for your question. Renato?

Okay, so Thiago, we think that the region is very similar to our region. So the potential to produce sugarcane is exactly the same as in IEMA. So the potential to have the tons per hectare and the kilograms of TRS per ton of cane is exactly the same. Of course, we are going to adjust some treatments. because we have different methodology to treat the sugar cane that they are using today. But we think that is something very quickly to fix and probably we'll have a better cane in the near future. And regarding the excess of cane that we have in the cluster, we think that we have already something close to between 500,000 tons and 1 million tons. that could be diverted to be crushed in Carapó for the next two, three years. But of course, in order to achieve six to seven million tons, which is very possible considering the industry that we are acquiring, Of course, we have to plant more sugarcane, so the only additional capex, important capex that we need to do to achieve these levels is to plant sugarcane. The industry is almost done, so few investments have to be made to achieve this level.

And just to complement Tiago, we visited the plantations and the plantations are in a good mood today, which is not something that has to be changed. Just a clarification.

That's perfect. And I think, Renato, you also mentioned that you see possibility or opportunity to improve the yields of the cogen in the mill. So the question there would be, there is also, you think, a capex associated with it in terms of improving the yield.

There are some capex, but it's a small capex. We are thinking about things like isolating the main equipments. We are going to improve the consumption of energy in the mill. So if you consume less energy, we have more energy to be exported. But those investments are not big investments like acquiring a new boiler. So we're not thinking about this type of investments, just some adjustments in things that we have already seen in our visits at the Mew.

That's perfect. Thank you.

This concludes the questions and answers section. At this time, I would like to turn the floor back to Mr. Bosch for any closing remarks.

Thank you all for participating today and we hope to see you in our next calls.

Thank you. This concludes today's presentation. You may disconnect at this time and have a nice day.