ASTARTA HOLDING PLC

ASTARTA HOLDING PLC

6.64
EUR
+0.25
(+3.91%)
-1.49EPS
259.39MMarket Cap
Nov 19Next Earn

Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptAugust 28, 2026

Pavlo Popov

Higher revenues, sales volumes in the agricultural segment which allowed us to compensate slight decrease in the revenues in the other segments. On the profitability side, as cost of sales were going up and there was a price correction in the market, gross margin halved to 20% and EBITDA margin came down to 15%.

The bottom line was also affected not only by the operating results, but by the forex movement of €4 million which gave us a loss at the bottom line. Going to the cash flows, our focus remained on maximizing operating cash flows which were helped by working capital release as we accelerated sales of grains and oilseeds.

We kept our investments at maintenance CapEx levels save for residual investment into the SPC, but lower profitability led to increased leverage currently standing at 3 times net debt EBITDA. Going into agricultural segment results, one can see higher volumes of corn, wheat, and sunflower seeds, but lower average prices compared to the previous period for all crops across the board.

If we are looking at our harvesting results, we see higher yields for winter crops, the harvesting for which we already finished, at 5.4 tonnes per hectare in wheat and 3.1 in rapeseeds. We continue harvesting for late crops and the results will be known later during the year.

If we are looking at the market situation, we see already a much widening differential between global and domestic Ukrainian prices because of the difficulty of getting grain out of Ukraine. 90% of soft commodities used to be transported via Odesa deep ports, and these now do not operate at full potential.

We see the alternative capacity at maximum 2.5 million tonnes per month which was a recent estimate by the Ministry of Agriculture, but the real Ukrainian needs for its annual harvest is 5 million tonnes per annum. That resulted in significant decline for corn and wheat prices ex-works in Ukraine, and the price differential between international, domestic ex-work prices currently already exceeds €100 per tonne.

Sugar, the processing season hasn't started yet. We're still selling stocks from the previous one.

We have higher sales volumes and exports at reasonable levels with MENA region being the key export destination, but of course Ukraine wants to utilize fully its EU import quota of 100,000 tonnes. Profitability is much lower than last year due to higher logistics cost.

Part of sugar exports is also done by sea, switching to Danube and other alternative routes have its cost. What we expect in terms of prices for next year, the situation might look brighter because the adverse weather conditions in Europe mean that there could be a deficit of sugar in the EU, so that might provide an opportunity to increase quota for Ukrainian sugar next year.

There is adverse weather conditions in Brazil, we have to see how the situation will work out, but for the first six months, we see 20% decline in average prices. Soybean processing is a stable production and sales picture.

We see stable prices, but profitability is lower due to higher energy and logistics costs. We are putting the last CapEx into the SPC project this year, and we hope to launch it relatively soon.

In terms of the market outlook, domestic crushing looks favorable despite 20% acreage downturn because of the limited export routes. Very briefly on cattle farming, the price is down by 25% which created a very big one-off biological asset revaluation hit of €5.5 million, and that translated into negative EBITDA.

We sold milk domestically, but in terms of byproduct meat, we continue to be one of the leading exporters of live cattle out of Ukraine, and that generated 8% of the cattle farming revenues this year. This is all in a nutshell in terms of the presentation.

I can see that there are already questions in the chat box. The first one is coming from Marek Leśniak: Fair value of biological assets in agricultural produce increased in second quarter by €10 million versus 36 in second quarter '25.

To what extent was this driven by cost to sell component? Considering Astarta's and Ukrainian export volumes, are land transport routes, railway, trucks, a viable alternative to sea freight?

I'm going to pass the floor to Ms. Liliia Lymanska, the CFO.

Liliia Lymanska

The fair value of biological assets as of the end of June this year, of course, largely driven by higher logistics cost, if you mean this by cost to sell component. It is based on our estimation of market price of goods at the date of harvesting, as of the date of authorization of our financial statement to issue.

Pavlo Popov

Regarding the second part of the question: Land transportation routes, railway and trucks, a viable alternative to sea freight? Capacity-wise, as I mentioned, the Ministry of Agriculture considers alternative capacity to be half of what is required, up to 2.5 million tonnes per month as opposed to 5 required.

Whether this is viable, of course we'll have to use all capacities required. We also need cooperation from neighboring countries for transit of Ukrainian grain, and we are pleased to see that Romania is the friendliest towards Ukrainian grain transit, and it has been announced recently that the port of Constanța takes Ukrainian cargo as a priority.

Even this capacity requires good cooperation on European level, and we hope that this full potential will be realized. Next question from Marcin Nowak, several of them, I'll start with the first one: What is Astarta's plan towards selling 2026 agriculture volumes with limited capacity of Black Sea terminals after recent strikes?

This question is to Mr. Viacheslav Chuk, the commercial director.

Viacheslav Chuk

Yes, good afternoon everyone. Thank you very much for your attention to our results.

In replying to this question, I would say that we would use the routes we were using at the beginning of the full scale invasion. It was transit routes to ports of European countries, and of course we will use railway logistics to direct processors of the oilseeds we are not processing by our own to the European continent.

I would say that we have stable contacts with the partners on EU territory, and we are maintaining this relationship. Actually it will be slower pace of export, but stable from the perspective of volumes month by month.

Thank you.

Pavlo Popov

Related question from the same block: Do you plan to resign from trading in third party volumes until export capacity increases?

Viacheslav Chuk

Actually, we are right now in the process of pumping up our volumes. As soon as we see this logistics as stable, we are willing to help our ecosystem of farmers also to export these grains.

Depending on how we fix our own pace of export, we will try to take some volumes also of third parties.

Pavlo Popov

How it will affect agriculture results? I think I mentioned it that the price differential between global and domestic prices is now just over €100 for the market in general, and that can be an estimate of the cost of logistics at the moment.

If we look at the picture for '23, '24, we hope that this price differential will narrow and converge again as Ukraine is working towards resuming its maritime corridor. Next question is from Karol Adamski: Where are we with soybean crusher facility construction?

We are in the last year of a three-year program of CapEx in our project. We hope to launch the facility this year, but we would not commit or comment on particular date given the security situation in Ukraine.

Please bear with us. That's, unfortunately, the situation we are now in.

Is Astarta direct export product outside of EU, Ukraine, or company are using middle broker or company that take product from Astarta storage directly?

Viacheslav Chuk

Thank you very much for the question. We are using mainly our direct consumers and buyers or ABCD names, mainly...

The

Pavlo Popov

global traders, yes.

Viacheslav Chuk

...global traders, yes.

Pavlo Popov

Is the acquisition of [Vidrodzhennya i Rynok Moloko?] still on table for Astarta?

We postponed this acquisition given the current market environment. Next question from Marcin Nowak again: What is the expected time needed to restore terminal capacity?

Has Kernel provided any timeline? We cannot, unfortunately, comment on something which we are not in control of.

This question should be directed at Kernel, unfortunately. I don't see any other questions coming.

I'll just wait for another 10 seconds, and if there are no more questions, we will complete this call. Thank you for your interest and for your support, and we'll talk again after the 9-month results.

If you have any more questions, you can drop us an email or we can set up one-on-one calls. Thank you.

Bye-bye.