Astarta Holding PLC

Thank you for joining the call today. We are pleased to report our financial results for the first six months of this year. I'm just going to go briefly through our key numbers. I think everyone appreciates that the external environment in which the business operates was very difficult this year. Nonetheless, we are pleased to report a good level of profitability in the first half of the year. We had significant increase in our revenue on account of agricultural produce. We will talk about this in more detail, but we managed to sell higher volumes of our grain before the war. We also have growth on the revenue in every other segment, which includes sugar, soybean processing and cattle farming. Profitability was down on the gross profit margin on account of the effect of the re-measurement of agricultural produce. This is the crops which are still growing in the ground as we report our results. If we strip the effect of IS41, which is a biological assets revaluation on our P&L, you can see also very solid margins on the gross profit and EBITDA level. Last week we also reported harvesting of our winter crops, which is wheat and rapeseed. The weather conditions were less favorable than last year and we can see that the yields are slightly down. Now going to the cash flows and our balance sheet, we managed to preserve our cash flows and preserve our low leverage. Operating cash flows before working capital changes in fact increased by 40% and our net financial debt was down if we take into account the significant cash balances on the balance sheet. Our investment program was limited to maintenance CAPEX, on comparable scale as of last year. The only difference is that last year we had divested a few of smaller assets. If we drill down to our segment results, one can see strong sales of corn in the first half of the year. That was before the war started. Then we continued our efforts on exporting our produce. In the second quarter, that was mostly overland, but Ukraine also worked on the seaborne routes reopening for Greater Odessa. And since August, we can see this route to be delivering the first million tons since opening. As we also explained during our first quarter results, given the logistical problems of exporting from Ukraine, we managed to adjust our crop mix for this year targeting lower acreage of corn and increasing acreage under wheat and soybeans and sunflower seeds which are processed domestically in Ukraine. When presenting the market picture, we are showing current prices on ex-works basis, because unfortunately when Ukrainian ports were shut, except for Danube route, the FOB market quotes for Ukrainian wheat and corn were not present. So here we present the statistics on an ex works basis. And as we mentioned, we see very encouraging growth in traffic through the greater Odessa port. Currently, the government authorities target increase in its capacity to 3 million tons. which looks achievable in light of the 28 days, 1 million ton turnover. Also, we can see an increase of volumes through deny ports. For July, the turnover was 1.4 million and the target is 2 million. So overall, according to the market consultancy, such as UkraAgra Consult, it is within reach for Ukraine to export 5 million tons per month going forward. Sugar was delivering better volumes in the second quarter of this year. During the first quarter, what results call, we explained there was some decline for one month of the initial military hostilities in Ukraine. Since then, we see not only retail volumes, but also industrial consumption of sugar recovering in Ukraine. And we also see a strong volumes and we also see better prices. Also, since the EU opened its doors to Ukrainian goods on a quarter-free, duty-free basis, there is an opportunity for the sugar players to export into the EU market. We also managed to export 4000 tons since the market reopening and we can see that this particular segment might be delivering strong in the second quarter of this year. It would be difficult to estimate of focus consumption of sugar in Ukraine, because that will depend on how many residents will return to their homes in the second half of this year. But in terms of the sugar output, according to Ukr Sugar Association, production is expected to be around 1.1 million tons. This is lower than last year and that will result in a smaller number of sugar mills operating. The estimate is 23 out of 33 sugar plants.

Soybean processing.

Again, we can see strong volumes of crashing as well as sales. Our plant operated on a non-stop level, except for the first two weeks of the aggression. And there was a strong demand domestically for meal. and oil from domestic poultry and livestock players in the market that allowed us to not only increase the volumes of production, but also to achieve higher profitability. That was due to stronger demand on the domestic side. You can see our gross profit margin widening by 100% and same goes at the EBITDA level. Since Ukrainian farmers anticipated difficulties with exporting grain, they increased acreage under soybeans. in line with what Astarte did, and we expect a good harvest at the acreage of 1.5 million tons this year. Kettle farming is also a beacon of stability for our business. This segment managed to increase production slightly and increase productivity yield per head of livestock. We had stable sales and the pricing was also favorable. That allowed us to increase our profitability. And we expect the demand to remain strong. We can discuss outlook in more detail during the Q&A session, but we would like to repeat that, of course, the current environment remains very volatile. And we it was it would be difficult to estimate any. Key trends, but what we promised to our investors and partners that we will never. We will still do our commitments under sustainability. We. restarted our project for improving our climate corporate governance and working on decarbonization strategy of our business together with EBRD and ENY. And we also continue a more dedicated program to the agriculture on decarbonization of agricultural activities, specifically with Syngenta. The summary of our sustainability assets so far you can find on the next slide. And we also continue our humanitarian efforts. helping displaced people and those who are affected by military hostilities. The number of partners of our project is growing, and this is the help which continues, unfortunately, to be in need for the millions of Ukrainians. If you would like to contribute or know the partner who can join this project, please contact us separately.

We are now ready to go into the Q&A session.

I don't see anything in the in the chat box, but we have. a few research analysts online. If you would like to raise your hand and ask your questions, please, you're very welcome.

Pablo, can you hear me? Hello? Yes, yes. OK, OK. Sorry question in the chat box.

No, I'm not in mine. OK. OK, yeah, thank you very much. Guess question. Have you already secured gas prices for the upcoming sugar campaign? At what gas prices? With high gas prices and lack of funds for working capital at the beginning of the sugar campaign, can you expect an extraordinary supply of sugar? Jakub, I will try to answer your questions, but some part is not very clear. Yes, we procured all the necessary, contracted all the necessary amounts of gas for the sugar processing season this autumn. And we are pleased to say that in hard currency terms, in Euro terms, it is not significantly higher than during the previous season. although many other elements of the course are going up. Lack of funds for working capital, perhaps this is an issue for smaller producers, but we do not lack funds for working capital. You can see from our press releases, communications that we keep drawing working capital facilities from local banks, which are also backed by multinational institutions. We are one of the boroughs, the most desirable boroughs in the country, so we don't have lack of funds. But because the acreage on the sugar beet was lower this year, and it may not be economic for some sugar mills to run, the sugar supply could be lower because not all mills will be operating.

Uh, so. Extraordinary supply of sugar.

There will be no shortage of sugar we compared to last year. In fact, there are some growing exports to the neighboring markets. If if by extraordinary supply you mean that there will be lack of sugar because small amount of sugar mills. Question from Marcin. A significant decline in local X works prices is observed. How it may affect agricultural segment in coming season? Marcin, I assume that this question is relating to the grains. Yes, X work prices for grains are falling because of the difficult logistics. However, we see that our seaborne capacity is growing. This is a big game changer. So we expect the FOP market and quotes to come back uh, very soon, uh, and that, uh, should, uh, increase the ex work prices. Um, uh, we, we have, uh, the commercial director, which is love Chuck is online. Uh, and I will ask him to add comments on this topic.

Thank you very much, Julia. Good afternoon to all. Um, I would like to add to Julia's feedback that, um, general of the market, those players who doesn't have exit to seaports or to dry ports will be affected by the lower prices. However, a startup being public company and with good reputation on the market already received quotas on the seaports and planning its selling through ports, not realizing current X work price in Ukraine, but looking for a longer destination and better pricing, including ports in Constanza, Turkey and other destinations. Thank you, Julia.

Okay, thank you. Next question relates to grains. Eric is asking total grain export capacity for Ukraine and detail the amount between Rail, Truck, Danube and Odessa. Obviously, these are moving targets, but today we put together the numbers, which were coming directly from the Ministry of Infrastructure, Ukrainian Railways, and it looks like in the 28 days of operating of three ports in Odessa, August volume was 1,000,000 tons. The target here is to grow to 3,000,000 tons. In July, Danube turnover was 1.4 million. The target here, which was announced by the ministry, is 2,000,000 tons. Train August volume was 1.2 million tons, which is only 17% of total cargo, because there are other cargos used by the Ukrainian railways. And trucks, July volume was 0.4 million tons. These are the actual numbers. reported recently by government officials in Ukraine. Does the interruption of production of fertilizers and high prices of those products affect the company? Well, we are one of the largest players and on one hand we are affected along all other peers in our industry. But on the other hand, because we procure large volumes, we have a more stable relationship with our suppliers. So obviously the pricing of fertilizers and first and foremost, nitrogen fertilizers, which are linked to gas prices, are increasing. But we have procured all the necessary volumes already this year. There was no interruption for our spring planting. and following field works. And we also have all the necessary volumes for the second half of this year. But of course, the high input costs, and that is not only fertilizers, generally drives the cost inflation for the industry. If we are looking at US dollar, cost per hectare. Depending on the crop, there could be 20 to 30% increase in the input costs. Another question from Marcin. Significant decline in local X work prices is observed. How it may affect agriculture segment in coming season? Would a starter be able to sell more volume since the start of the invasion? If it were accepting lower prices from traders? Again, I will start and then pass the floor to Vyacheslav. The traders, ABCD, global traders, which handle... the majority of the global trade worldwide were not present in the Ukrainian market at the beginning of invasion. So, the market is coming back only now on the trader's side with reopening of seaborne channels. So, That gives you the answer to the question that since the beginning of invasion, the traders were not here and that would not make a big difference to the early months since the invasion. Vyacheslav, would you like to add?

Julia, thank you. worth to mention that, uh, all players in Ukraine, which are present in Ukraine, um, have the same export routes as a starter has. So basically, um, even in case someone need to sell on X work, uh, it means that you need to export through the same route. So, uh, no, um, big, uh, potential to sell additional volumes, uh, to big names. because these big traders export through the same routes as we do.

Thank you. Okay. Second question from Marcin. Would a starter seller capacity be enough to cover all needs for spring campaign? I think the question is probably whether we have enough cellar capacity for the crops which we collected. Because we've just harvested wheat and rapeseeds. Yes, Astarte has storage capacity which is over 550,000 tons. We sold significant volumes of our corn at the beginning of the year. We have plentiful capacity to store spring crops of winter and rapeseeds. We also have secured additional storage capacity for late crops which are harvested in the autumn, which is corn, sunflower seeds, soybeans. And these additional capacities are silo bags, which do not require same stationary building for storage. We also have more storages which have been refurbished to store extra grain if we need to. But at the moment, with the seaports operating in Ukraine, even at current level, we believe that we will have no problem with storage.

A question from Kaizhetan.

How did the war affect wages and transportation expenses? On wages, There is no shortage of labor in Ukraine, despite mobilization of significant part of the workforce to the army and territorial defenses. Because agricultural industry in particular is considered a strategic one for the Ukrainian economy. most agricultural players are able to keep their workers for the key agricultural operations. As we reported publicly, out of several thousand employees working at a start operations, we have less than 300 people who were drafted into the military action. Also, another issue which should be mentioned is that Ukrainian currency, devalued since the start of the war and This devaluation reduced labor costs for Ukrainian businesses in US dollar terms. Transportation expenses, of course, are growing and devaluation of the local currency cannot help much here because what most agricultural players require is transportation for exports. And here the logistical costs of delivery on higher fuel costs is much higher. But again, we believe that such costs for exports specifically will go down with more choice of seaborn transportation. Seaborn transportation has not only lower cost of delivery of grain to overseas markets, but it also has a much faster turnover, which is days as opposed to weeks if we are talking about rail trucks. Next question from Jakub. A question about the cost of grain transportation. There are opinions that grain transportation through Baltic pots can be as high as $100. Can you comment on this amount? Because in second quarter, despite the low sales volumes, the cost of sales volume were surprisingly high. Has the cost of exporting grain by sea become more expensive after the opening of the grain corridor? How much did sea freight loading insurance cost increase? I will pass the floor to Vyacheslav to comment on the cost of transportation by sea. But just to note on the first half of the question regarding the Baltic ports, that was not a key transportation route for Ukraine before the war. And because of, specifically because of this high cost, Ukraine focused on reopening the greater Odessa port. The main port in the early months of the year was actually Constanța in Romania. And now I'm passing the floor to Vyacheslav again.

Thank you very much, Julia. I would like to add that mostly to Baltic ports, We go through Poland or Baltic countries. And the cost of logistics increased due to high traffics and time of movement of these wagons through the territory of both Ukraine and Europe. Adjusting of this situation, I think that we are still in the process of adjusting of logistic to the narrow corridor for the Western border. And those prices increased, sometimes increased twice from pre-war time. The same is to the sea ports and sea freight. I think that that's only the beginning of the adjusting of this routes because We see that freight also increased twice. We see that big demand from the exporters to the transshipment services. So it's early to say if the price is already settled, but it's obviously increased. Thank you.

Thank you. Question from Natalia. expectations on companies grain exports volumes in third and fourth quarter would we be looking solely for seabourn export opportunities or will consider alternative routes in the second half as well again i will ask which is love to add but you can see in the second quarter we were transporting about 15,000 tons per month through the overland route. And these are still quite significant volumes. So there is no reason to not continue at this high level overland. overland, but seaborne volumes will come on top. Vyacheslav, would you like to add?

Yes, Julia, thank you very much for introduction. I think that having the advantage of diversified business model, we as a company had some period of time to adjust and to find solutions on the Western border. It was to mention that Astarta took several points. First of all, we have containers which we signed for intermodal transportation of our goods to Baltic ports. And we use them actively right now. It works and it works even faster than with rail cars. We used to sign and to find and to sign good, reliable partner in Poland for the rail, European rail cars, and to find on the Western border, dry port where we can transload to these wagons and to move it faster. And we just recently started to use these opportunities. We did several contracts already to Baltic ports to Gdansk. We have good volumes now. of selling to the EU through this destination. And of course, we use the opportunity to take private wagons and to send them through general standard routes as others. Now, as of today, we see that we also used the new ports for the sunflower seeds. Uh, we made good volumes through Port Rényi. Uh, and as you already mentioned, this is one, there are two main ports there and this one of the main ports. And we did, we did good transactions there with sunflower seeds. Um, so, um, I think that, uh, it is also our possibilities to add additional volumes through this routes, despite the sea ports. On the seaports, as I mentioned, we also already took quotas in several terminals and in September we're already starting our shipment to ports.

Thank you. The next question is

for you Vyacheslav again, is there a risk of potential shortage of rail cars on the local market in coming season with resumed port operations?

Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Marcin, for this question. Good question, because still we have wagons which are standing in line to the western borders and there will be some part of time some space of time when it will be adjusting to redirecting to the ports. But I think it will be mostly some