Earnings Labs

Adecoagro S.A. (AGRO)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Fri, Mar 20, 2015

$13.67

+4.71%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+4.32%

1 Week

-5.26%

1 Month

-4.04%

vs S&P

-4.15%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for waiting. At this time, we would like to welcome everyone to Adecoagro's Fourth Quarter 2014 Results Conference Call. Today with us, we have Mr. Mariano Bosch, CEO; Mr. Charlie Boero Hughes, CFO; and Mr. Hernan Walker, Investor Relations Manager. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded and all participants will be in listen-only mode during the company's presentation. After the company's remarks are completed, there will be a question-and-answer session. At that time, further instructions will be given. [Operator Instructions] Before proceeding, let me mention that forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of Adecoagro's management and on information currently available to the company. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions because they relate to future events, and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. Investors should understand that general economic conditions; industry conditions and other operating factors could also affect the future results of Adecoagro and could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Now, I'll turn the conference over to Mr. Mariano Bosch, CEO. Mr. Bosch, you may begin your conference.

Mariano Bosch

Analyst

Good morning everyone, and thank you for joining our call. Today we are reporting the operating results of the 2014 fiscal year. As you may have noted we had a great year. Adjusted EBITDA reached $215 million, that's 20% higher than 2013 and 50% higher than 2012. Our sugar, ethanol and energy business had a very good performance during the year. Our mills crushed at full capacity milling 7.2 million tons of sugarcane. As we always say, the energy piece of our sugar, ethanol business is one of the keys of our success. Co-generation represents an important part of our profitability and cash generation. Indeed during this year we exported more than 62 kilowatt hour per ton of sugarcane crushed, one of the highest ratios in the industry, and yet we believe there is still room to continue improving. During 2014, we planted an area of 36,000 hectares of sugarcane, a record of our industry. All the planting efforts over the last four years allowed us to crush at full capacity during 2014 and hopefully put us very close to full capacity during 2015 in line with the expansion of our Cluster's milling capacity. In this token, we are happy to announce that the construction of the second phase of Ivinhema mill is essentially finished on time and on budget. Adding 3 million tons of crushing capacity completed our 9 million ton cluster in Mato Grosso do Sul generating additional efficiencies and synergies which we believe will allow us to become one of the lowest cost producers of sugar, ethanol and energy. With the completion of these milestones, we finalized a seven year period of heavy CapEx investments that will commence to deliver attractive results while we continue enhancing efficiencies. In the farming business, we concluded the 2014 fiscal year with significant improvements in our crops, rice, and dairy segments which enhanced our EBIT generation. Our land transformation business once again delivered excellent results. We are now fully focused on the new 2014, 2015 season. Crops are looking excellent in the field. Harvest has started and we'll continue during the first and second quarters while we will face the challenging managing logistics efficiently. During 2015, we will place our main focus in execution and increase the efficiencies in each one of our value chains in order to enhance cash flow and generate attractive returns for our shareholders. Now, I would like to ask Charlie to walk you through the main operating and financial highlights for the quarter. Charlie, please go ahead.

Charlie Hughes

Analyst

Good morning everyone. I would like to walk you through a few slides that reflect the main operational and financial highlights of the year. Let's turn to slide four, where I would like to start by discussing our sugar, ethanol and energy business. If we take a look at the chart on the left, you can see that during the fourth quarter of 2014 our mills crushed a total of 2.3 million tons of sugarcane, 31% higher than the fourth quarter of 2013. On a full-year basis, crushing volumes reached 7.2 million tons, 12% higher year-over-year, and allowing us to reach full utilization of nominal crushing capacity. The increase in milling was driven primarily by, first, our focus in 2013 and 2014 of expanding our share compensation; second, a higher milling efficiency per hour resulting in an 8.7% increase in daily crushing volumes; third, average weather conditions throughout the year which allowed us to accelerate the harvesting pace; and fourth, a 12.5% and 3.1% respective increase in sugarcane yields and TRS content. Let's turn to the next slide to explain the increase in milling efficiency. The graph on the top of slide five shows monthly rainfalls at our cluster in Mato Grosso do Sul compared to the historical average. Rains during 2014 were mainly in line with the historical average, except for the month of July, September and November, in which excess rains caused some delays and harvest disruptions. Nonetheless, as you can see in the chart below, our sugarcane milling per day reached an average of 38.7 thousand tons, 8.7% higher than 2013. This is directly related to improvements and enhancements achieved in our sugarcane harvest, transport and delivery operations. Some specific examples are the use of combined simulators to train new employees which has resulted in significant improvements…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Rodrigo Coelho with Bradesco. Please go ahead.

Rodrigo Coelho

Analyst

Hi, good morning everyone. Good afternoon. My question is regarding the inventory levels of grains in the end of 2014, we noted that inventories increased materially like 3, 4 or double for some grains. Could you elaborate a little bit about what was the rationale for this strategy, was this a consequence of higher productivity in the crops or if you expect what is the outlook of prices that you expect going forward for mainly soybean and corn. Thank you.

Mariano Bosch

Analyst

Hi, Rodrigo this is Mariano, I’m going to please ask Marcelo Sanchez to answer your question. Marcelo?

Marcelo Sanchez

Analyst

Hi, Rodrigo, the increasing inventories that you're seeing at the end of last year mainly corn and wheat that was scheduled to be shipped during January and the first half of February and that was already sold by then. That's the reason why, I mean it's only the [physical] [ph] that you see in the position.

Rodrigo Coelho

Analyst

Okay, thank you. And could you just - you mentioned about your strategy regarding the depreciation of currency both in Brazil and Argentina. Are you carrying any hedging position for any of this currency especially for the Brazilian real or no?

Mariano Bosch

Analyst

Charlie, can you answer that question please?

Charlie Hughes

Analyst

Yes hi Rodrigo, we haven't hedged any real or Argentinean peso, so we're fully opened.

Rodrigo Coelho

Analyst

Perfect. Thanks a lot, congratulations on the results.

Charlie Hughes

Analyst

Thank you, Rodrigo.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Thiago Duarte with BTG. Please go ahead.

Thiago Duarte

Analyst · BTG. Please go ahead.

Hi, everybody, thanks for taking the question. Couple of questions on my side. First on the farming business in Argentina, I noticed that you had a favorable weather so far. And you put in the release that the development of the crops so far has been positive. Can you quantify a little bit what the impact you expect to be in terms of yields either in Argentina and therefore what type of profitability and I believe an improvement in profitability you might be seeing. Of course we have prices coming down in dollar terms, but as you noticed as you mentioned before there is a positive effect from the currency. So there are few moving parts here, but I’m particularly curious about the yields and how you see that translating in terms of profitability that would be my first question?

Mariano Bosch

Analyst · BTG. Please go ahead.

Hi, Thiago, this is Mariano. It's a good question, not easy to answer, we just started the harvest and as you know from when you start harvesting until you finish, there is a long way to go still and we’re focused there. So we cannot be very precise in the answer, but we can easily say that we would have - we most probably have more yields because the corps are really, really nice. But although we have hedged, we do have lower commodity prices here. So I don’t think that the more yields are going to be enough to offset a 100% of that lowering price that we are seeing.

Thiago Duarte

Analyst · BTG. Please go ahead.

Okay, that's clear. And my second question now moving to sugar and ethanol, you’re about to finish the phase of expansioning the Ivinhema mill, it was a great project we pretty much followed the entire process. Can you comment a little bit of what you believe can be in terms of profitability and in terms of efficiency? Is there anything there that you believe can be better or worse than you originally estimated? And in the end of the day what I’m trying to understand is, what you believe considering as you said the energy prices in Brazil remain very high. And what you believe your total cost of production or cash cost of production is effectively going to be this year and next year considering the co-generation in the Ivinhema?

Mariano Bosch

Analyst · BTG. Please go ahead.

Thiago, yes, of course you've been following all these projects and following it closely and we’re very, very optimistic on how this project is doing. Of course we were planning to be in a good position, but it’s becoming to be real. We do have a very high expectation on how efficient we can be here, because every time we spend time in the mill, we realize that we still have more opportunities to continue improving. Our co-gen and I mentioned that at the beginning of the call, our co-generation efficiency and that is measured as a megawatts per hour; megawatt hour per ton of sugarcane being crushed, it is a very important ratio. And when we compare the 62 that we have with the rest of the industry, that's a huge difference. So, that makes us very efficient as Charlie was then pointing it out. Also you can see the sugarcane is looking much better and the yield that we are obtaining on the sugarcane are much better. On top of that, we are increasing the season, we have already started in both mills and in a couple of days, we will be fully - full speed with both mills with all the second phase of Ivinhema finished. And so we're extending the harvesting season, extending the harvesting season means being much more efficient with all our costs. Today with a 100% mechanized, a 100% of our cost - almost 100% of our costs are fixed. So extending the harvest is being something that is being great and specifically for this region. On top of that, we continue to see that we can have more leases and more land and we can continue to be more efficient on our leases in that whole area, because we’re only competing with breeding cattle. So that’s why we still believe we’re going to be very efficient in this specific place, and we don’t know what’s that real place where we can reach in terms of a cash cost but we’re going to be for sure within the lowest, lowest cost producers of sugar, ethanol and electricity. Today if you run the numbers, we’re talking about cash costs around 26 cents of real per liter.

Thiago Duarte

Analyst · BTG. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Rodrigo Mugaburu with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Rodrigo Mugaburu

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi thanks. [Indiscernible] how conditions had evolved for rice since December, I'm trying to understand if conditions improve we could see a reversion of this $3.6 million you adjusted due to biological assets. And then my second question is on CapEx, on the 2015 numbers that you’re including there is there anything budgeted for land acquisition or M&A in Brazil. Thanks.

Mariano Bosch

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi Rodrigo thank you for your question. Regarding the rice - thank you for the question, in the previous answer to Thiago, regarding farming I was talking about the crops, now in terms of rice, the crops have excess water, and so the crops were not so good or what we’re harvesting is someway below what we harvested last year. So that's why you've seen that a biological assets. That may improve but not a lot, we’re in a mill for a harvest or finishing the harvest and we should be inline. What we’re improving there is most of the efficiencies and on the sale side, so we do expect rice in general to be inline the results of a rice inline to last year, because prices are offsetting somewhere in this lower yields that is regarding rice. On the CapEx projection that we just mentioned, we're not including there any new acquisition, we're not including anything that is not being committed yet.

Rodrigo Mugaburu

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

The next comes from Federico Rey from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Federico Rey

Analyst

Okay, good morning everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. Please could you comment just a little bit on the prices of land both in Argentina and Brazil. And what's your plans or conditions in term of farm sales? Thanks.

Mariano Bosch

Analyst

We believe that prices of land are always related to their returns of that land. So today in the region in Brazil, we don’t see clear reasons for the prices of land to change a lot because returns are inline to what the - to what they were in someway below because of lower commodity prices and partially offset by a weakened currencies in every country. So we don’t see many changes in terms of today prices of land. In Argentina in particular, it may change because a different expectations on how returns of land could change if there are changes in the policies in Argentina. So that's why for Argentina it's more uncertain. And regarding our strategy on sales, our strategy continues to be exactly the same that when we find someone, when we do a projection for a farm, where someone pays a price for that farm, where our projection give up low return, we make decision to sell that farm and we are located to something that where we can obtain a higher return on investment. That's continue to be our strategy, the same that has been in the last seven or eight years.

Federico Rey

Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] As we have no further questions, this concludes the question-and-answer section. At this time, I would like to turn the floor back to Mr. Bosch for any closing remarks.

Mariano Bosch

Analyst

So after several years of hard work and diligent investments, we have built a state-of-the-art cluster of 9 million tons of crushing capacity that has already started its milling season. As highlighted before, our crops and our sugarcane are in excellent conditions. So we believe we have a very promising year ahead of us. And during 2014, our main focus will consist of executing our strategy and deliver results and attractive returns for our shareholders. Thank you for following the call.

Operator

Operator

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