Earnings Labs

BrasilAgro - Companhia Brasileira de Propriedades Agrícolas (LND)

Q3 2023 Earnings Call· Sat, May 13, 2023

$3.78

-1.69%

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Transcript

Ana Ribeiro

Management

Good afternoon. We are here for our conference call for the earnings of BrasilAgro. We will be talking about nine months that ended on March 31st, representing Q3 of the year that ends on June 30. And I am here with our CEO, André Guillaumon; and our CFO, Gustavo Javier Lopez. And the announcements, if you wish to ask questions, please click on chat. If you want to send questions in writing, you can send through the platform. We are all connected. For those who are hearing us in English, the presentation is available in the chat in the English version. Once again, thank you for participating and I will pass the floor to André to begin to talk about what happened in this quarter. Thank you. Okay, André, you have the floor. André Guillaumon: Thank you, Ana. Good afternoon. Once again, a great pleasure to be with you and share with you this -- it’s always complex to understand an agro company every quarter. It’s good to see the whole year. But, yes, we have the quarterly calls. We will talk about what happened in the quarter, how the company is evolving in terms of operations, people development, all the points we have been talking about and to leave a lot of time for questions. So let’s go on to the first page. First nine months, net revenue, R$663 million, R$25 million in net profit, adjusted EBITDA, R$168 million, operational revenue in here the harvest, practically 100% of soybean in Brazil, we have some 203,000 tons in Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. And although it’s in the beginning of April, we did an important sale of farms, the remaining part of Araucária Farm and this when we show the numbers, you will see this in the annual numbers and this…

Gustavo Javier Lopez

CFO

Thank you, André. Good afternoon to all the participants in our conference call. Well, let’s see the main numbers. Here, we will present the nine months that ended on March 31st, our year begins on July 1st. When we see net revenue R$663 million due to the same factors that we explained in the previous quarter. The company is selling everything that remained from the previous soybean harvest. André mentioned 203,000 tons. This is what we expect. It’s almost all 100% harvested and in the future, 120,000 tons of corn and then a new period to harvest sugarcane. This drop in revenue, the main reason is lower amount of tons of soybean sold. We explained already in the same period of last year. We had decided to sell a lot of soybean because there was an uncertainty in terms of logistics. It was a good decision -- that’s one of the reasons also the price at the time, we decided to anticipate sales and this year we have -- we are a little slower in sales. Sugarcane, we already mentioned last year, we had begun with an average of 145 and we had a drop to R$1.14 and another problem that we mentioned this a reduction of 200,000 tons in sugarcane, which was the consequence of the fire that we suffered in the farm, which was -- which affected 1.4 million tons. So when we recognized the sale of farms last year, we had a lot of sales in Taquari Farm this year. We have a small sale already announced and also Rio do Meio. These are the reasons why we are having a drop in revenue. When we look at adjusted EBITDA, R$168 million. We see that the margin, EBITDA margin drops 23%, last year it was 45%. And…

Pedro Fonseca

Management

Good morning, André, Gustavo. Thank you. Two points. The first on the sale. André mentioned a lot, exchange improved a lot. Could you explain the company strategy to sell? What are you expecting? What are you -- when will you buy for 2023, 2024, the inputs, maybe the table that you gave us was very interesting. The margin per crop. What you are expecting in terms of margin per crop? Second point, an update on the recovery of the region where you had a fire in the sugarcane. What it will be the productivity for this area that had a fire and also how much do you believe you will capture from this price increase in sugar? And a third point very quickly, on the seed operations, seed production plant, whether this is your own? Is it outsourced the production of seeds, is it only for your own use or will you sell seeds in the future? Does it make sense to invest more in seed production? André Guillaumon: Pedro, we could stay here all afternoon talking about these three questions. I will try to be brief and I will try to help you. Well, 2023, 2024, yes, we are monitoring and we began to buy. We are seeing that there is a curve, Chicago screen 1,350, 1,380. The challenge we have today, when you look at what’s happening this year, there’s a giant increase in production and we had a drop in the basis. So the exchange, we have to do this with total price. It’s not only Chicago, it’s Chicago basis and everything. So we believe when you look at the curve basis next year, when we made this budget a year ago, we estimated the basis of 45 positive points. With the Chicago that is very similar,…

Pedro Fonseca

Management

Okay. Thank you. Very good answers.

Ana Ribeiro

Management

Thank you Pedro. Now Henrique from BTG.

Henrique Brustolin

Management

Good afternoon, André, Gustavo, Ana. Thank you. First a follow-up. To understand -- I’d like to understand your vision. The expressive reduction in the basis. How do you see this in the future and I know there’s a great difficulty in foreseeing? But what is your perspective for the next harvest. So I believe I’d like to hear a little more. Also a follow-up in terms of costs for the harvest 2023, 2024, could you help us to reconciliate the exchange, the drop in the price of fertilizer is there yet? Did this help the cost of production this year, looking at this amounts used at lower price, how should we think of the cost for 2024? And the last, you announced the relevant sale of Araucária Farm, what -- how do you see the market for land, the price of land is going up and should you buy or sell?

Ana Ribeiro

Management

André, before answering just let me join Helmot’s question, which is in line with Henrique. He sees that the company didn’t buy much land in the last few years in comparison with the sales, the land inventory dropped. What is the company’s strategy from now on? To lease land, because lease land because the price is very high or buy land in Bolivia and Paraguay or wait for opportunities with low price? André Guillaumon: Well, this question is the million-dollar question. Let me try to answer. Fertilizer drop, what you said Henrique is true in Brazil, it’s true in most of the companies and it’s not true in our company. Why is it different in our company? We are a company that transforms land. We have a lot of new land. In new land, you can’t reduce the amount of fertilizer when you are developing the land. So our dosage of fertilizers shouldn’t change much from last year to this year. The use of fertilizer will not drop a lot, because we are developing land also. So it should -- we shouldn’t see great changes. When we say there is a cost reduction fertilizer. Yes, we are not going to recalibrate the dosage last year, because we had new areas, we were not able to do this. For example, there is no area with soybean instead of 190, oh, I am going to use less fertilizer 100. We have many new areas and this year we still have some new areas like you saw in the slide, Panamby. So in BrasilAgro, the cost reduction in fertilizer, the dosage difference is small, a little, but very little difference in the dosage of fertilizer. The second, the future basis. This is an enormous challenge with the production we have. We will have…

Henrique Brustolin

Management

Very clear. Thank you.

Ana Ribeiro

Management

We have another question from Angelo . Please say your name. We can answer an extra question. Angelo, we can’t hear you? Well, we have no more questions. We had a record public, record number of participants and plus people watching us on YouTube. Thank you. We are very optimistic with the end of the year, in spite of this more difficult scenario in price and operations. I’d like to thank André, Gustavo for participating and I’d like to pass the floor to André and Gustavo for their final comments. André Guillaumon: Thank you, Ana. Once again, Ana, we will work. We will do our best to have more sales of farmland, although, we had a lot of sales. If you look at the net result of the sale, we will have very good EBITDA and net profit in the year when we consider the result of the sale. And there’s more to sell, there’s more to sell, more areas to work, leased areas, we are looking at some purchases and more sales. As I said, we will have. I say once again, we will work to make more sales this year in order to monetize this good moment with a lot of liquidity, capitalize the company and when the time comes we will buy. We always said this. The company is prepared to serve these good moments and capture the results. Thank you very much and I thank all those who prepared this material and participated with us. We wish you a good afternoon.