Good day and welcome to the Akola Group Investor Conference for the three months of financial year 2025-2026 performance. I'm Simona from Nasdaq Vilnius, and I'll have the pleasure of moderating today's session. Thank you for taking time to join us today. Over the next hour, we'll provide you with comprehensive insights into Akola Group financial performance and recent activities outlook. Before we begin, a few quick notes, this session is being recorded and will be made available on the Nasdaq Vault YouTube channel shortly after we conclude. We encourage you to submit your questions using the Q&A function located at the bottom of your screen throughout the presentation. We'll address these during our dedicated Q&A session following the presentation. I'm delighted to introduce today's presenter, Mažvydas Šileika, the Deputy CEO for Finance and Investments, as well as the management board member of the company, who will walk you through the company's performance and answer your questions. Without further delay, I'll turn the floor over to Mažvydas. Please, the floor is yours. Good morning, everyone. Simona, thank you very much for the introduction. Welcome, everyone, to the overview of activities and finance of Akola Group for the three months of financial year 2025-2026. I would like to always start with a disclaimer. Please keep in mind that the presentation can have forward-looking expressed statements, but they are only the best case of assumption of the management at this point. My name is Mažvydas, and I will present today the developments through the three months of this financial year. If we look at the structure of the group, it hasn't changed a lot since the end of the financial year. During the three first months, we still manage 59 subsidiaries. We have merged the two companies, but after the reporting period, we have registered another one, and we have bought a small company, which is basically a company who was owning 250 hectares of arable land, and we were previously renting that. Now we have that in our portfolio. Rather than that, the group structure is not expanding, and we are still merging and making it more efficient. If you would like to, I would like to go to our snapshot, how we look at the end of the first three months. We managed to perform very well, and the EBITDA of the group stands at EUR 36 million, and it is more than, compared to last year when we had EUR 27 million of EBITDA at the same quarter, and it is well above our five-year average, which also stands at EUR 27.6 million. I would like to really congratulate the group and our colleagues and our team. We had really a successful quarter, I would say, really well balanced between our activities. With such a high EBITDA, we have a very good or even extraordinary EBIT margin. We managed to have almost 7%. Last year, we were close to 5%, and we are well above our strategic target, which is 3%. For sure, the first month of the first quarter of the year doesn't imply the future, but we started really very well. That also gives us a fantastic return on capital employed, which is close to 12%, and that's a first time after a long period of quarters when we are close to our strategic target of 12%. That gives us, those earnings and those EBITDAs give us $0.40 per share on a rolling 12-month basis, and with $0.40 per share, our price to earnings with latest pricing is just above four times. The stock is fluctuating between four and five times in the past half a year. If I would like to present to you then our balance sheet, it has increased year- on- year. The group's balance sheet now is above EUR 1 billion, and the composition hasn't changed much, but both property, plant, and equipment have increased, as well as we have more current assets on our balance sheet, which is mainly, you know, grains, which we hold on our balance sheet having increased year on year. We still have quite a healthy borrowing base ratio of 63%. That means that we have quite a lot of equity in our system, and, during last, or the last quarter, around EUR 133 million of readily marketable inventories were on our balance sheet. Our total liquidity position for this year is around EUR 480 million. We did around EUR 10 million in CapEx. We do not have new big projects going on now, so we are finishing a few previously communicated. Our debt for the end year is close to EUR 400 million, and 37% out of that is long-term. We are still very, short-term, debt-based company, which is partly covered by our readily marketable inventories. After a good last financial year, we have a solid, equity position, which is close to EUR 400 million, and that gives us a comfortable 35% equity ratio or capital ratio, and our 12-month rolling, basis EBITDA is even, EUR 120 million. Our net RMI adjusted debt is only just above two times when our target is four. This is probably the best debt to EBITDA ratio we had for a long, long time. Let's drop down to our earnings, and for the first three months, we have close to EUR 400 million in sales revenue. It is a successful quarter for us. The share between food and partners for farmers' revenue remained very healthy, around 70%- 30%, and we have traded more volume. In terms of volumes, we grew by 7.4% or 56,000 tons. The main contributor to this was our wheat trade. We had a big harvest in Lithuania, and we also have better positions in Latvia, which actually helped us to buy and trade bigger amounts of wheat. That also helped us to offset reductions in our other trades. We have lower feedstuff trades and, of course, lower input trades, which I will talk about later. In terms of revenue, we have grown by 2.6% or almost EUR 10 million. Biggest contributor is, of course, the food segment, which provided additionally EUR 16 million. Out of that, 11 is poultry and 5 is ready-to-eat and instant food categories. As well, in terms of value in euros, we have traded less in our partners to farmers segment. How does our gross profit look then? It's really looking fantastic. For the first three months, we have inked EUR 56 million of gross profit, and that stands out in the last four years. The share between food and partners for farmers remains, as well, very healthy, 42% and 53%. Year- on- year, the gross profit increased by 27% almost, or almost EUR 12 million, and the biggest, biggest contributors are partners for farmers plus EUR 7 million. That mainly comes from grain trade and, of course, a food segment, which provided another EUR 3 million, and that's mostly coming from poultry. You can notice that we have a record high gross profit margin for the first three months, EUR 14.2 million versus last year's EUR 11.5 million. Gross profit actually increased through all the segments except food. Food remained quite flat, because, apart from very good poultry results, we have somewhat decreasing profitability in our instant foods and ready-to-eat food segments. However, I would like to notice as well our first quarter usually is the best in terms of profitability. You can see that actually historically, so it evens out during the year. It is due to the seasonality, as we have quite intensive trade and sale of inputs to farmers and farming as well. Looking to our operating profit, we have another beautiful number, which is EUR 27 million of operating profit for the first quarter of this financial year. The share is also very balanced, 50%-50% almost coming from two main segments. EBITDA grew by 43% almost. The biggest contributor is partners for farmers, EUR 4.5 million, and then the food segment by EUR 2.5 million. If you would like, if you look to, if we look to the profitability, 6.8% EBIT margin, again, one of the best in the last four years. We have much, much more above our strategic target of 3%. It really indicates that we had an extraordinary, successful, successful quarter. How did our segments perform? One of our best-performing segments this quarter is partners for farmers. It had a really good quarter. In terms of sales, we have actually delivered less sales revenue in terms of euros. However, we traded more in terms of volume. Even though we had less inputs and less feed, we have actually offset that by better trade in grains and especially wheat. In terms of profitability, we have really a successful quarter in terms of our elevators, EUR 9 million gross profit. That is a really good result, and that is mainly resulted from higher quantities. We had a really large grain or bumper crop in Lithuania, so we had more quantities coming into our elevators. Out of that, actually, three, out of that also was a very big impact by our newest acquisition, Alagro Trade in Latvia. We have a standalone in Latvia bought more 117,000 tons of grain than we did previous year, so that's actually 15% of our total grain purchase. However, gross profit profitability, we have, we have a little bit lower. We had more cost on our side, and that's why it was actually squeezed. That came basically from volumes. Big harvest also resulted in good trading volumes and good trading activity in our grain segment. We have EUR 6 million in gross profit versus EUR 1 million last year. However, the forecast or the looking forward, it still remains quite volatile. The harvest quality throughout the Baltics is not the best, so that remains quite challenging. Going forward for the full outlook of the year, it is very hard to judge how we are going to combine the full year. However, we started quite strong. In terms of feed, we have unfortunately lower gross profit margin coming, year- on- year, but very different stories. Compound feed, we have a healthy demand, a healthy production. We did not produce less. We more or less have delivered the same result year- on- year. However, we have pressure in feedstuffs trade, and the pressure is basically on margins, and we have one profitable position in amino acids, which basically is a result of negative effects of the tariff policy of the European Union against China. If we look to inputs, the season started really very difficult. We had a late harvest because the season was very rainy, very humid, so that also impacted our sales of feed, fertilizers, and other micronutrients and plant protection. In terms of seeds, we have a bit lower quantities. However, we have remained with the same profitability. Fertilizers remain a trade which is still, we will still have to see how it goes because, of course, the application of fertilizers is not that favorable for farmers due to the price of grain comparison to fertilizer price. We will see how that develops. However, we have the carbon border tax coming up from January, which will change pricing for fertilizers coming not or coming outside the European Union. Machinery, solid recovery, but that was led by a very strong EU support program. That is why we have a really healthy first quarter, EUR 4 million of gross profit versus EUR 3 million last year, and we have a much better stock situation in the company. Let's go to food production. The driver of the last financial year still remaining very strong this year. In terms of revenues, we have actually delivered more by EUR 15 million. We have EUR 123 million this year. That was mainly driven both by poultry and ready-to-eat segment. In terms of gross profit, we have EUR 24 million. We have grown from EUR 21 million, but the main driver here is again poultry. We have a bit less satisfying results in our instant and ready-to-eat products as well as flour and breadcrumbs. When we talk about poultry, we have stable production and sales volumes. That has not increased much. We have still continuously improving broiler prices, so that is favorable dynamics for us for our main cost component. We have to maintain very strong focus on biosecurity because basically the high export prices which we are facing now are mainly driven by all the diseases and influenza in the European Union, and that is not given for granted as well. It is already in Lithuania in some cases, so we need to be very cautious on that. So far, we were good to manage that. Looking forward, you know, there are some indications of poultry price downward correction. You can already see that in some indices. However, that's not yet very big, but now we are going to a less favorable seasonal pattern for us. It's winter when we will have higher costs from heating, so we will see how that will contribute to our cost based on how this winter will look. When talking about instant foods and ready-to-eat foods, so instant food category, we have higher volumes and higher revenues. We have sold more because we are operating a new production plant in Alytus. Ready-to-eat category delivered, unfortunately, lower volumes and lower revenues. One of our main export markets, which is the U.S., has a bit of difficulties regarding the tariffs. It's now quite hard to export there. We need to work with them on how to price and how to pass the tariffs to the final consumer, either to have a healthy split. Unfortunately, the increase of volumes and sales overall for this segment was led by deteriorating profitability, and the prospects for this segment will highly depend on the ability for us to profitably employ the new production capacity we have both in the instant foods factory in Alytus as well as ready-to-eat. Flour more or less remained on the same level. We have lost one key account client which has actually finished operations in Lithuania, but we have funneled these amounts of flour to our internal production, so that was not a big change for us. However, our new coating system plant in Kėdainiai has started operations, and they are still getting back or not getting back or going on track. Now we have a bit of a challenge with, you know, higher quantities versus maybe a bit lower profitability, but looking forward, we see that we can balance the portfolio and come back to the profitability we have seen before in this segment as well. One of our smaller segments is agricultural production, but one of the most probably interesting ones. In terms of sales revenue, we have just slightly less than last year. In terms of volumes as well, we have produced a bit less wheat, however, more or less the same amount of milk. We have harvested everything for 2025. More or less the yields are the same as last year, and, but we overall increased the harvest quantities. We have sold around two, two quarters, of our harvest. What we see is that the prices are so far really very low, and that was the topic for the last half a year. Unfortunately, we also have a cost pressure, so year on year we see that our cost has increased per ton around EUR 20, EUR 20. However, we see that we have sown or we have done all the field work after the harvest in due time. It's hard to say how the sowings look. We have quite a lot of humidity, and that was quite late sowing, but so far, you know, we have this rain part under control. Milk production, we have more or less the same herd. Our milk per sales prices are 20% higher if we compare year- on- year. That's, you know, why, with the same quantities we have a better result and more or less the same profitability-wise. Looking forward, even though the local agricultural statistics look that the price, milk price, has not changed or is not decreasing, we are following the global markets where we see some corrections downward in the main products. However, you know, we are now going from very high product prices to a bit lower, so we will see how the milk price will balance out. So far, the main, the main driver for profit in this segment is milk. I will go through our ongoing projects, which you probably more or less know, but we are going on and we are pushing forward our investment in biogas in Lukšė. You can actually see how it looks more or less now, and we are hoping to start operations in the second end of second quarter, for beginning of first, beginning, sorry, of third quarter this financial year. We are also expanding our milk production capacity in two of our farms in Žibartoniai and Sidabravas. We are really good with timeline there. We will start opening these facilities at the end of this calendar year, and a few projects we have postponed. One of that is which we communicated to you as well. We have for now postponed our biomethane production plant in Kaišiadoris. That was around EUR 20 million investment at that time. That is now under review and consideration. Two new projects which we have communicated to you recently, a month ago, are around a combined EUR 90 million investment, but if we look at them separately, it is around EUR 20 million and EUR 70 million investments. One is in a new pet production plant, which we are building and looking at a business plan here, but one of the maybe bigger is the new feed production plant. We have a feed production plant which is now based in Kaunas, just in front of Žalgirio arena. This production plant would be a substitution for the one in Kaunas city. We are looking to expand in terms of capacity and, of course, to modernize and build a new factory in a good position somewhere in Lithuania, which then would change the existing one in Kaunas city. This is what these investments are about. The executive board is considering and building, and building a business plan for this one. When we will have the decisions made, we will, of course, communicate to the market in one or the other day break sheet. This is more or less, from my side. Please, if you haven't yet, subscribe to our news and you will follow all the latest developments. Rather than that, thank you, and I'm looking forward to your questions. Thank you very much, Mažvydai, for an insightful presentation. Now, indeed, we will move to our Q&A session, and as a reminder, please submit them in writing through the Q&A window or raise your hand to be unmuted. The first question was received in advance and is the following. Please elaborate on grain trade patterns and this segment performance, quality of grains received and market as such. Market is quite interesting, because we have quite high quantities in Lithuania, more or less similar quantities in Estonia and Latvia. However, going from Lithuania north, meaning Latvia, Estonia, we have deteriorating quality of grain. The quality of grain in Lithuania is not that good as well, but it's a workable condition. We have higher quantities, and that helped us to produce better result year- on- year in our elevator network. We have higher, larger quantities. That as well helped for our trading activity in the first three months. However, due to the quality issues as well as quite low overall grain prices, there is no big deficit of grain globally. The market going forward remains quite volatile. We had a first good quarter, but I'm really cautious going forward how the trades will develop later on in the year. Thank you. The next question received in advance is the following. Could you please clarify what the EUR 53.5 million in long-term trade receivables consist of? Additionally, when does the company expect these long-term receivables to be recovered? This receivable is our regular business. These receivables are from our farmers. Basically, we have a higher long-term receivable portion during the first quarter of the year because we have sold and we usually sell. This is nothing new to farmers with deferred payment terms longer than a year. It's usually maybe 14 months or 13 months, and when it's above a year, we have to classify them as long-term. If you would compare to and look at our books year after year, the amount changes, but we usually have a part of the amount which is long-term because basically we will receive the payment from the farmers after the harvest, and that is usually after 13 or 14 months when we sold. Thank you. We received congrats on the flying start to the year from one of the analysts and compliments on the new look for quarterly reports. Another question. In fiscal, quarter first, efficient procurement helped reduce trading costs and significantly improve gross profitability in grain and oilseed trading. Could you please elaborate a bit more on that efficient procurement? Basically, first, thank you very much for congratulations, and thank you very much that you have noticed our new look. We put quite a lot of effort at, our presentations and reports are user-friendly, so thanks for going that unnoticed. In terms of our trading patterns and efficient purchasing, I would only like to remind you that, you know, we usually, you know, have very different quarters depending on the price we sell for, also the cost of grains coming into the sales. I would really like to judge our trading activity in wheat and oilseeds maybe at least after three quarters of this year. You know, we have sold quite well so far. Our purchase price reflects the quality in the market. It is nothing more than that. We are buying according to the quality we receive. We find trades and profitable trades where that quality of grain is actually needed for specific production, feed production, and others. Let us, you know, maybe be patient and see how we go on because, as I mentioned before, volatility in the market persists. Quality of the grain is an issue, and, you know, there can be situations where we will have unprofitable trades due to low quality of grains. I do not want to speculate going forward because we still have quite a lot of grain which we still have and we need to sell in the future. Thank you. In fiscal quarter, first quarter, the production volumes of the group's poultry companies remained broadly in line with the previous year. Also, purchases from external suppliers declined by 23%. Could you please help us understand what purchases from external suppliers mean? Is that feed? No, this is basically we have partners, farmers who are breeding and producing broilers. We are basically breeding broilers ourselves, and we can do that, roughly 70%-80% of our need. The 20%-30% we need to buy in the market. That is only for Lithuania. We will have part, farmers who are producing and breeding live birds. We buy the broilers from them, and then we are using them in our production. This, quarter by quarter or every year, depends on our capacity, how much we can slaughter, how much we can sell, and it also depends on how much we are breeding ourselves. You know, depending on that, we are looking how much we need to buy in the market. This is a function of our production capacity, of our sales capacity, and how much we need to buy or outsource externally. Thank you. In flour and flour mixes, production volumes were stable. Sales to third parties fell by 28% after major clients' withdrawal. You touched a bit during the presentation, but could you please elaborate a bit more on that client name, reasons for withdrawal, etc.? No, I mean, I cannot comment on the names and so on, but basically, it's a bakery which has closed its operations in the Baltic market. They're not operating here anymore. That was not a big problem for us because we can redirect these quantities to our internal production. That's why the volumes and more or less the profitability and the selling price remained fine in flour, in flour segment. I just want to maybe emphasize that it's not we lost the client. The client finished operations in the Baltics. Okay. Instant food production grew by 20% year- to- year in the first quarter, while sales rose by 32% year- to- year. This implies growth in average selling price of roughly 10% year- to- year. Could you please indicate the reasons behind higher average selling price if that holds true? The reason for higher selling price is the mix of our products we sell and produce. Basically, we have produced different kinds of noodles for a specific buyer, because those noodles are bigger, bigger packs, they have a higher selling price. That's why we have overall not only increase in volume as well as increase in sales overall. That depends completely on our product portfolio, which we contract every quarter or half a year or year because the contract is different in their length. They can be shorter, they can be longer, and if we will remain with that production of that specific product or we will change that to a similar one so it can remain. If the portfolio will change to lower value products, smaller products, that of course will also impact our revenues in a sense. That is a function of our product portfolio which we produce and sell to our clients and they contract with us. Thanks a lot. In the first quarter, Instant Food and ready-to-eat products saw combined gross profit shrink by 53% year to year to EUR 1.9 million. Could you please provide a split between the two? Is it right that Instant Food had better dynamics in gross profitability versus ready-to-eat? We show the segment as one, so you should treat it as one. As you can see, that's the analytics we provide for the market. Basically, both of those segments did not have a good quarter overall, maybe a bit different reasons. In ready-to-eat, we have, for now, lower sales to one of our main previous markets, which was U.S., you know, and we are actively changing those sales to other ones. In terms of Instant Foods, which is basically our Instant Noodle production, we have continuing issues with production for the first quarter. We are solving that out and they are decreasing in terms of scale. However, that doesn't help us to be profitable in the way we would like to be. That took us longer than we expected, but we are, in a sense, dealing with that as it is. Thank you. Given the flying start to the year, EBITDA of EUR 36 million and lingering tailwinds in poultry, it seems reasonable to expect annual EBITDA above the group's target at the EUR 70-90 million interval. Would you agree? If not, what could derail the currently sound course? If we would judge the year by the start, probably you could say that, but we will, as soon as we have that visibility and opinion that we will be above our strategic target, we will issue that in the market and inform the market separately. However, for now, we see quite a lot of volatility going forward, and some risks. Some of them are connected with the grain trade, as well as before. The first quarter was very strong, so we have to look to the next quarters how it develops because the market is not easy in terms of quality, and we still have quite a lot of grain to sell. That is one of the reasons. The other reason is poultry prices, and coming winter. So far, gas prices are in a good level for us, but we will see how that changes during winter and how cold the winter will be, meaning, you know, how much extra cost from heating we will bear. The other thing in poultry is, of course, market prices. Will the market prices remain or start decreasing or change in upward direction? Those are two bigger reasons. The other reason is as well, our instant foods and ready-to-eat foods segment, you know, how that will the level, the, the develop. We expect them to start becoming profitable during the year, and that's very important for the overall performance of the group. I would say these are the main criteria and risks for the group's EBITDA performance going forward. One of the others is as well feedstuff trade. You know, we have pressure on the margins in feedstuff trade, and as well we have a difficult situation with the amino, amino acid trade. As mentioned before, it is a subject now of EU tariffs, and that position for us is not profitable anymore. Thank you. You mentioned that you had two-thirds of volumes presold for the 2025 harvest. Was this a profitable decision to you compared to what you could have earned on spot market? We haven't backed trade on that, but if you have, I don't know if you follow closely, but, for those who don't follow closely, the grain price in the last four or five months hasn't changed very much. It's more or less fluctuating in low levels. If you look maybe six or seven months ago, it even decreased, and it is lower year- on- year as well by around 15%. Year- on- year, it is lower 15%, and we have a bit higher cost on our end. We need to make some sales going forward. We cannot keep the grain for a long time. We have limited capacity to store them, as well as we need working capital, and the projection, you know, for grain price is also very different. We have made a decision that we continue selling by batches, and we will average out our sale price in the best way for the full year. Our strategy is to average out during this year on the sale price of grain. Thank you for your answers so far. We have still five questions to answer. What's the reason for postponing Kėdainiai coating system beyond meat and postponement? What is happening in this biogas market currently? We currently are executing our project in Lukšė. We decided that we want to finish this project first. We have quite a good learning path, you know, how to manage these projects and what are the main things there. The other reason is that we are also closely following, you know, the biomethane, green certificate market because, when you produce green methane gas and sell it to the market, you receive also a green certificate, and currently it is a very important portion of potential project earnings. We need, want to understand the mechanics and the market development there because the price of green certificate is fluctuating. If you would treat this project only on the basis of natural gas, which now costs around EUR 30, this project payback term is very long. It is more of an infrastructure project. We as a group, we always are aware of our payback times, and we do not have a lot of infrastructure projects. You know, that is why we do not want to expand our return horizon to this one as well. We are all waiting, you know, arguments there. On the other hand, you know, we have the manure on our hands. We have the manure coming from our bird production, which we also, it's a good way to transform and earn extra money on, and when producing biomethane. Thank you for your clarification. The next question regarding U.S. difficulties with tariffs and pricing there. What percent of expected volumes from new production capacities were planned for U.S. market? None. U.S. market is a legacy market. When we bought the soup production plant from AUGA, they had already a very big share of their existing sales to U.S. We took that over. We were working to expand that. We did not expand them too much. Basically these are legacy sales to U.S. market and to U.S. partners. It's not that we are not, that we are selling none to U.S., but the quantities have decreased because pricing for us and for them became quite difficult. It doesn't mean that we will not find a way going forward, but, in terms of new capacities which we built, none of them were planned to U.S. Thank you. How much volumes do you currently have in PFF division's inventories, that are not contracted and have to be sold in coming quarters? All the production more or less, by high percentage we produce as contracted, so we don't keep stock. The stock, the stock we have is only, you know, a buffer stock, maybe some stock of our own brand, Sunyan. But rather than that, the majority of our far, far most majority, 90% of our production in Instant Foods is produced when contracted. We do not produce to the warehouse. We produce to specific partners, specific clients, specific taste, specific label, and so on. We do not produce to warehouse our Instant Foods. We have only small stock of our own brand or buffer stock for roll-overs. Thank you. We received also one question about the shares. When will the share buyback program be activated? That is a very good question. Thank you very much. We will be very open with our share buybacks. We will communicate that to the market. We are now working on the strategy, and as soon as we decide how we go forward and make the decision, we will communicate as much as we can, promptly to the market, and you will be informed. The last one is like a recommendation or idea for you. You have mentioned that the poultry quantities are stable. Are you planning to expand in this category if it is as profitable? If profitability continues, but overall, if we see that the market balance is healthy, we do not want to make any short-term decisions based on, you know, the disease situation in Europe. Of course, we see that the return on investments in poultry are very good. So logically, that's the area where we would like to invest and expand. Okay, thank you very much. It appears we've successfully addressed all of your questions. On behalf of both Akola Group and Nasdaq Vilnius, I want to extend our gratitude to everyone who joined us today. Thank you, Mažvydas, for sharing such comprehensive insights into Akola Group performance. Your experience and transparency are truly appreciated. To our attendees, thank you for your engaging questions and active participation. It's been a pleasure having you with us today. As mentioned earlier, the full recording of today's session will be available on the Nasdaq Baltic YouTube channel. We will look forward to connecting with you again at future investor events. Until then, have a wonderful day, and thank you once again for your time and attention. Thank you very much, everyone. Goodbye.