Astarta Holding PLC

Hello and thank you everyone for joining today's call devoted to the nine-month results of Astarte. We started with the P&L overview. Our top line was down by one-fifth on account of low revenues in agriculture and sugar production. In agriculture, due to lower harvest of last year, which we are selling as well as sugar, lower volumes of sugar sales. In soybean processing, our top line is stable and we have a good increase in cattle farming. Profitability this year is lower at gross level of 35%. At EBITDA margin, it is stable year on year, but we do have lower results at the bottom line of net profit of 44 million euros. We also show our results without IS41 impact in our PNL, and here the margin is at 28%. Switching to cash flows and balance sheet, we have lower operating cash flows, but largely stable if we exclude working capital changes. Our investments are more than double on last year, because we are actively developing the soybean processing segment. We are on track with launching the new plant next year. We also had significant investments in the agriculture segments. including replacing the field machinery. Still, the leverage is at acceptable level of 1.5 net debt EBITDA. Agricultural results are still affected by lower harvest from last year, and this is mostly evident in our lower volume of sales of corn. As we grow less corn and devote more acreage to strategic crops such as soybeans and sugar beet, which we process in-house, and less growth in corn, but we also are traders of grain. The new line in our key crops is related to soybeans, and this is reflecting trading activities because we process soybeans at our crusher, but we also started building our procurement volumes for the multi-seed crushing plant that we plan to build within next couple of years. The pricing situation was favorable on the grain side and that can be seen in corn and wheat. It was also favorable in the oilseeds area, but soybean prices were down this year. If we are talking about physical volumes, we are still in the process of harvesting our key crops, such as sugar beet, soybeans and corn. The weather conditions were very difficult this year, not just during the growth stage, but also during the harvesting stage. Crops are collected much later. and our sunflower seeds harvest. This is the only late crop for which we have already final results, which are lower on the yield basis of 2.1%. At the same time, we completed winter crop planting already, and our plant acreage for wheat is at 40,000 hectares and grape seeds at 15. Regarding the overall market sentiment, we mentioned that there was a price uptick favorable for us, although global prices were stable or declined for wheat recently. There was a positive convergence between domestic and international prices, meaning that Ukrainian producers obtained more. On average, corn prices for Ukrainian growers were up by almost 50% and wheat by one third. Logistics through seaports operates at good levels, around 3-4 million tons per month. and that allows Ukraine to export grains and oilseeds without any delay, although the harvest is coming at a much later time during this season. Sugar, we are still in the process of selling last year sugar volumes, which is reflected in the nine-month results, with EBITDA margin at 17%. But as we speak, we are already three quarters done in the sugar producing season this autumn with all five plants operating and already 234,000 tons of sugar production, largely in line with last year, despite the later sugar beet harvesting. Exports brought 44% of the revenues. The volumes are lower because of the uncertain situation with the trading regime with EU. The autonomous trade measures or total free trade in sugar unfortunately came to closure and we have a new or renewed mechanism under free trading quarters for sugar in place until end of this year at 40,000 tons and 100,000 tons annually for several years until 2028. These volumes of trade with the EU are much better compared to the volumes which were in place before the war, but unfortunately several times lower. than Ukrainian potential. And that means that Ukraine has to react to the lower global and domestic sugar prices and reduce acreage. This year, sugar beet acreage was reduced and we expect further reduction around 20% for next year. Global prices are currently declining due to better estimates for the EU, better harvest in Europe, as well as more positive output focus for Brazil. That also affected Ukrainian sugar prices, which for this season we see converging with European prices. Soybean processing is stable on the revenue side, but there is contraction on gross margin as soybean meal prices declined by nearly one-third. But soybean prices as raw material were down only by 9%. These prices were somewhat upset by soybean oil growth, but it still resulted in a lower margin of 20% at gross level and EBITDA margin at 13%. There is a renewed push from the government of Ukraine to motivate crushing of oil seeds in Ukraine as opposed to exports of raw materials. There is a new export duty of 10% in place for soybeans and rapeseeds from this year. And that should help the domestic processes, such as a starter, to have higher availability of soybeans and rapeseeds. Therefore, our strategic direction to expand soybean and oilseed processing remains intact. We are preparing to launch soybean protein plant from next year to launch production next year. And we also started working on the multi-seat crushing project, which we announced also last year. Cattle farming is also a segment which we developed quite actively. There has been an increase in volume of production and the herd year on year, including for the last quarter. Profitability is lower, and that is also related to the recent change in the trading regime between Ukraine and Europe. But still, as an industrial milk producer in Ukraine, we are mostly winning market share from backyard households, and we continue to increase production and obtain good prices for our product. This is in a nutshell regarding our nine months results and we welcome your questions. If it is possible, we would like to see the questions in the Q&A chart so that we can clearly see it.

Thank you.

Thank you for the first question from Carol. What is company prediction about sugar market in 26-27? Yes, I will probably repeat the points I made earlier, but also add some more color. What we are seeing now globally, there are production growth in sugar which is focused in Europe as well as in Brazil. But there are signs that Europe will reduce its acreage in the 26-27 season by 3-4% so that there is reduction in sugar output by 1 million ton. Imports into Europe are at the level of 2 million tons and Ukrainian imports are only 100,000 tons. Since EU is our closest neighbor, our sugar price is very much linked to the prices in Europe and our fortunes are also very similar to those sugar producers in Poland and Germany. Downward trend currently continues. This is a cyclical business and currently the prices are at four-year lows. We've been through this cycle in 2018 and 2019. how the Ukrainian sugar industry responded to this usually by reducing acreage like our European peers do so we largely expect approximately 20% in sugar beet acreage reduction next year and that will become visible by April next year, and hopefully that will support the domestic market. For global markets, we will obviously see what developments will take place in Brazil, India, and obviously the EU. We don't see any more questions in the chat box, but we would welcome them via email or you can call us anytime. We can organize meetings and explain more should there be any more questions. With this, we would like to conclude the call. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.