Good morning management, analysts, bankers, investors and distinguished guests. I would like to give you a warm welcome to our first analyst meeting of 2022 for quarter four of 2021 results presentation and once again we meet each other virtually. I hope you are well and safe and sound. Today our event is divided into two parts. The first part would be Thai Union Group Quarter Four Results Announcement which will take approximately an hour with 30 minutes afterwards for the Q&A session. Following that we will have a 15 minutes break and then will follow by Thai Union Seafood Results Announcement. The executive joining us today for the first part would be our President and CEO Mr. Thiraphong Chansiri.
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Our Group CFO Mr. Ludovic Garnier.
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And then our Investor Relations Manager, Kalvalee Thongsomaung.
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As usual, Khun Thiraphong will present to you the key highlight and recent development and then follow by the financial result with Khun Ludovic and then Khun Kalvalee would then continue with the financial result by business unit. Khun Thiraphong then will end the presentation part with the 2022 Business Outlook. Any question you may have please feel free to type in a chat box and then for the better experience we would encourage you to use the standard headphone. The one with the wire not the one with Bluetooth or the wireless one.
For foreign investors, please click English interpretation function on Zoom and mute the original audio, and then you know reverse it back when Ludo is speaking to listen to the English again. For the presentation, please feel free to download in the IR section from Thai Union website or in the chat box. Our team will keep sending you the link so you can always have the access to the link. Without further ado, allow me to begin the presentation.
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Thanks a lot, Khun Thirapong. Good morning, everyone. I'm very happy to be with you today. Just to share first of all, some first feedback on the Q4 numbers and because Surapong already mentioned this one, so I will be quick on this one. We are very happy with the performance in Q4. For us it's an all-time high. Sales we are exceeding THB 38 billion. The gross profit margin is also very stable, very consistent compared with Q1, Q2, Q3, exceeding the 18% is a bit unusual for us. In Q4, you know, we always have a push from our frozen business, which is always a bit dilutive in terms of gross profit margin. But still we did succeeded in maintaining a high gross profit margin also in Q4.
The OP is only increasing by 2%, that is THB 2 billion. Overall, I think it's a very good performance also, very consistent with Q1, Q2 also and Q3. Of course, we are impacted in the SG&A with all the increase of the freight costs and logistic costs. We will get back to this after. The share profit is recovering mostly thanks to Red Lobster, which is generating less losses compared to last year. We will detail that a bit further. However, Avanti, which is our second very large associate company, is decreasing a bit compared to last year. They are facing with some shortage of workers in their factories, plus also they are facing with a large recall in the U.S. We talk already about this one in Q3. Bottom line, 1.9 increasing by 32.
The numbers is excellent. Maybe just one last thing to mention on the top line is the impact of FX. We are benefiting from the depreciation of Thai baht in Q4, same situation as the rest of the year. The impact in the top line is around 5%. If you do remove this FX impact, the sales are still increasing by more than 10%. The double-digit growth is a bit unusual for us, and we are very happy about this one. You will see also something very interesting in the category. Then you see that every category are growing. We wanted also to present you a quick overview of our achievement on the Blue Finance, and I think this is one of the key achievements where we are really proud this year.
On the right you will see all the different activities that we have been doing all along the year. We have been refinancing something like $800 million of sustainability-linked loan and also debt on this one. We did issue some SLL and SLB. I don't need to remind you what it means. You have here the wording. I think you are familiar with that now. It was the first time something like this was issued in Thailand. It was also the first time for us to issue and to raise some money in Japan. We received a lot of questions, a lot of interest, and a lot of excitement regarding these refinancing activities, and I think the goal is to have by 2022, half of our debt being linked with sustainability.
By 2025, the goal is to move to 75% of sustainability-linked loans or bonds. We did also for the first time a credit rating from the Japanese credit rating agency. We did receive an A-. We are very pleased with this one. This is equivalent to the Thailand sovereign rating. Very happy about this one. We did also receive an A+ rating coming from the Fitch Ratings. This is kind of usual. We are used to this one. Overall, this is one of the key achievements we have been doing this year. Really a lot of progress in this area. Just our usual overview since 2017, and here you can clearly see the progress.
You can see that over the last eight quarters in a row, we have been growing in terms of top line. Of course, we know that part of this one is explained by the FX. The FX in 2020 and 2021 is much more favorable compared to what we had before. Still, the performance is very interesting over the last eight quarters. Also look at the gross profit margin. In 2017, 2018, we were around 13%, 14%. We told you, "Okay, we will work on this one, and we want to improve the situation." You can see now since Q2 2020, we almost deliver every quarter gross profit margin around 18%. 18% for us is very high. We told you beginning of last year, anything above 17% we would be happy.
Now we want to deliver a bit more, so we are happy with this 18% of course. Part of the reason of this one is explained by the logistics cost increase. We do increase our price in order to absorb this logistics cost. You have an increase in the gross profit margin, but then you have also an increase in your SG&A percentage just below. Look at the net profit margin. We are at 5% in Q4. I think this is very interesting if you compare to all the Q4 before, we are really exceeding this one. Again, in Q4, we always have a push from our frozen business in terms of mixed products because of Christmas and because of different activities. Usually the Q4 is a bit less profitable.
Here we did manage to maintain the profitability, the net profit margin above the 5% and I think this is a very good success. We are still facing a lot of challenges in terms of supply chain. You have here now our graph that we presented in the beginning of the year. The container cost from Thailand to the U.S. is still very high, almost 5 x what was existing before COVID-19. The lead time from Thailand to the U.S. is still also very high. We are still looking for the improvements. We see very small improvements in terms of operation, but so far in terms of number, in terms of cost and in terms of delay, we don't see a real significant impact.
We did communicate at the end of Q3 that the impact over three quarters was something around THB 900 million and you can see the impact in Q4 is even higher. It's almost THB 700 million. The situation in terms of cost is not improving. It's even deteriorating further. We are still facing these issues. It will continue to affect us in H1 2022 for sure. The question is, will it improve in H2 2022? We do expect to see some improvement happening in the second half of 2022. We also mentioned at the end of Q3 that we are facing some challenges in the packaging and also in the ingredients. I'm sure you've heard about the aluminum and the steel inflation and on the ingredient, it's mostly the oil. We are using a sort, a lot of sunflower oil, for instance.
Here we are, we are facing very significant inflation. Of course, what does it mean for us and the solution for us to try to mitigate this inflation is to have some very strong commercial discussion with our customers, with the suppliers and with the retailers in order to pass through this tariff increase. We are right now in the middle of this process. It's not an easy task of course. There is one good thing, which is all the food companies are facing the same inflation issue. Everyone is requesting for some price increase. I think there was a lot of communication also in the newspaper, in the press. Everyone is in the same direction and everyone understands that we are facing kind of a unique situation. We are not scared about this one.
I think for us it's a usual challenge. It's not easy, of course, but we are really used to do that. Now we hand over to Khun Kalvalee to go through the fish price and also the category view.
Thank you Ludo. [Non-English content].
Thanks a lot, Khun Kalvalee. Just our usual slide in Red Lobster. Maybe we start with the left. The quarterly performance of Red Lobster. We have a share profit in Q4 amounting to THB 147 million. We are largely improving compared to last year. Last year it was THB -321 million. No surprise. You remember Q4 is always the lowest point in terms of seasonality for Red Lobster. We are strongly improving compared to last year. The second line, now you know this one. We have some share profit from the lease accounting THB 100 million. It will be the same adjustment going forward, but the amount will be reducing year after year. All the other line, other income, interest, expense and income tax are improving compared to last year.
Bottom line, the contribution from Red Lobster in Q4 is just at breakeven compared to a loss of THB 200 million last year. If you move to the top right, you can see the share of profit for the full year. You can see here the real improvement compared to 2020. Of course, 2020 was a very unique year because of the first wave of COVID-19 in the U.S., and Red Lobster had to close many restaurants during that year. We did generate in 2020 a loss of THB 1.2 billion. If you remember a huge loss at Red Lobster. In terms of operation, you can see very clear improvement at THB 178 million compared to last year. Strong improvement. We are still a bit behind the level of 2019 and 2018, where the profit was around THB 1.3 billion-THB 1.4 billion.
However, keeping in mind one thing in our 2021 numbers, we have been benefiting from some support measures from the U.S. government. We will elaborate a bit on this one in the adjustment, but we did benefit from something like THB 120 million with what we call PPP loan forgiveness. In fact, your real reference point of share of loss from operations should be something around THB 300 million. I will get back to this in the guidance 2022. The second line, you know what is this one. THB 637 million for the whole year lease accounting adjustments. The net impact total on the share profit is around THB 800 million in 2021. Strong improvement compared to 2020. Of course, we want to increase further in the years to come.
There is one watch out, which is here on the bottom right. You can see here we do see a challenging start for Red Lobster in 2022. Of course, we are facing the Omicron variant in the U.S. A very different situation compared to 2020, where we had to close most of our restaurants. Here we have almost all our restaurants being open. We had to close all of them in Canada, which is something like 20, 30 restaurants in Canada for a few weeks. But now they are reopened. However, there is a clear impact on the guest count. The guest count number is decreasing not only on Red Lobster, but also for the whole restaurant industry.
We are also facing the same situation that what we mentioned in Q3, some inflation on the costs, also some inflation from on the labor cost and still some shortage in the number of workers in the restaurant. Overall, 2021 very strong turnaround compared to 2020. We are happy with this one. Challenges to come in 2022. I will elaborate more on the strategy from Red Lobster in the next part. Now I hand over to Khun Kalvalee for the numbers.
Thank you, Ludo .
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ขอบคุณครับ เรายังดำเนินการต่อเนื่องเหมือนเดิมในปีข้างหน้านี้นะครับ โดยเรายังเน้นธุรกิจ Core ของเราหลักๆ ก็คืออาหารทะเลกระป๋องนะครับ แล้วก็อาหารทะเลแช่เยือกแข็ง และรวมถึง Pet [Non-English Content]
Thanks a lot, Khun Thiraphong. Just a quick update on two new joint ventures that we signed and we did agree in Q1 2022. It has no impact of course in 2021. The first one on the left is just the follow up. You remember we did the acquisition of 10% of RBF in H2 2021. We have Avanti also, which is one of our historical partner in India and here we did agree on the joint venture. The three of us in India for we will start with a commercial company and then depending on the success for this company, we will build a factory or not. Here the idea is to be able to distribute in India some product made in Thailand by RBF. We have a lot of expectation behind this one seems to be very promising.
Of course, we need to see the first results. We have minority share in this one, only 19% for us and the majority partner will be RBF and then Avanti will own 30% of the shares. The second one is in Thailand. Here JWD is one of our historical partners. They are the experts of managing the cold store for us. We did sign the joint venture with them. One of our largest factory TUM will build a new cold store together with them, and they will be managing the cold store for us. I think for us it's good news. It's one way for us to secure our raw materials. You know that in our business it's absolutely key.
Now in terms of impact on the business, it should be quite limited in the future. Just a quick update also on our SPACE-F and CVC activities. SPACE-F, we are now in batch three. Here, you remember, this is SPACE-F, our incubator and accelerator. So we have 19 new startups just joining, half and half between the accelerator and between the incubator. Very exciting, again, projects, and we hope to help them growing and to learn also from them. If you do remember, the idea and the goal behind SPACE-F was to be able to build an ecosystem around innovation around food tech or so startups.
On the bottom, we mentioned it, this one, the CVC, you have here the whole portfolio, that we did or Thiraphong already mentioned, the new investment we performed in 2021, so I will not elaborate on this one. As you can see, the, in terms of majority of investment are right now in the Alternative Protein. However, we also want to grow more in the functional nutrition and also in the value chain technology. Here we are having some very nice discussion. Just to give you a quick highlight, Flying Spark, which is one of our first CVC investments, a company from Israel, is right now building a factory in Thailand. We are very happy with it, with that.
We will partner also with them, and the idea is for Flying Spark to provide some ingredients to our PetCare business and also to some other companies in Thailand. This is exactly the way we want to go. We want to partner with the CVC activities. We want to learn from them and also to accelerate in terms of innovation. Moving to Red Lobster. Red Lobster, I think I told you that we were facing some challenges at the beginning or at the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022. You can see here, maybe I start with the guidance for next year on the bottom left. The guidance in terms of operation is to be between THB 350-THB 450.
Here you can see in this column we put 400, which is the midterm in our guidance. If you compare to 2021, of course it's a deterioration. The reporting numbers for 2021 is 178, but I told you we are benefiting from some one-off in 2021, and we don't expect this one-off to happen again in 2022. Again, this one-off were around some supporting measures from the U.S. government to the whole restaurant industry. And I told you that if you do remove these supporting measures in 2021 impact, then the your reference point in 2021 will be around 300. Yet, we are still planning for a deterioration, an additional THB 100 million loss at 400, because we are facing all these issues, this inflation on the COGS and also on the labor cost.
There is one good news, which is on the lease accounting adjustment. It was the first time we did record this one in 2021, so there was the full impact of 2021 and also a bit of catch up with 2020. We do expect this impact to decrease in 2022. Again, for you to remember, it's a pure accounting adjustment. There is no cash impact at all behind this amount. Bottom line, the net impact we do expect to have on the share profit is around THB 800 million, okay? Which is very similar, very close to what we delivered in 2021, but much better compared to 2020, where the loss was around THB -1.2 billion. Of course, we're not happy with this one. Right now we are in some priorities.
You can see on the top right, we are working on some immediate actions on how to address the Omicron variant in the U.S. We have some initiative, of course, to increase the guest count, and I think the COVID-19 situation is improving in the U.S. They have less and less cases per week, so the people will get back to restaurants. We took also some cash preservation measures, and we keep also our very strong measures on how to protect the safety and the health of our employees. On top of this, we are working also on some medium and more long-term strategic initiatives. We push a lot in terms of quality in order to have some great food. On this one, we push a lot also in terms of execution.
We want to really improve the experience of the consumers getting back to the restaurants. We want to make sure that they will be served very quickly, and they will be happy about their experience on this one. The off-premise is one of the success we have. Over the last two years, it has been developing and growing a lot. We want to keep this off-premise business to be much more significant compared to what it was before COVID-19. The focus on the value is also something which is very important. We told you that it is one of the key trends coming from the COVID-19. The people are really focusing on the value. What does it mean? We did launch several initiative, like the Shrimp from the Sea or the Ten for Ten Dollars lunch.
You have many things here in order to make sure we bring some quality products at an affordable prices for the consumers. Marketing also, we did change our marketing spending. It was mostly focusing on media and TV before the COVID-19, and now we are doing much more on the digital activity, TikTok, and also some other stuff in this one. Good things happening in Red Lobster. Of course, we want to improve. We would like to have a better guidance for 2022, but we want to be a bit conservative on this area because right now the whole restaurant industry, not only Red Lobster, is facing these kind of unique challenges. However, we do believe that in the midterm, we will succeed in turning around the picture in Red Lobster.
Just a quick update on the 2022 guidance for the whole group. Here you have the guidance for 2022. Just for you to remember, of course, 2021 was a record high year. Record high year in terms of sales, gross profit and OP and also net income. We are still planning for further growth in 2022, so the sales target is between 4%-5% top line growth. The gross profit margin target is to be between a range between 18%-18.5%.
In terms of SG&A, we believe the situation with the high SG&A margin will remain high. Next year, we will still be facing these logistic costs, and we want to invest more in terms of marketing activities next year because we are launching a lot of new products. Interest rates, we don't expect any material change compared to 2021. It's quite stable from one year to another year. CapEx is something which is also very important. I think the last two years, we have really been increasing our target of CapEx. We have not been very successful in 2020 and 2021, and we had a lot of delay in some of our key projects. However, we do want to invest. We have a lot of very interesting projects right now, which are currently being built. Khun Thiraphong mentioned the protein factory.
We have also the new culinary factory being built in Thailand. We have also a cold store in Ghana. We have many very large projects being built right now. In 2020 and 2021, we were impacted by the COVID-19. There was a bit of delay in the building, but we are fully determined to invest, and we want also to show the confidence and the trust of the management within the future of the group. We are really determined to spend this money in 2022. The dividend policy remain the same. We want to pay at least 50% dividend payout ratio. I just get back on the first one on the sales. Four to five percent. We did achieve 6.5% in 2021.
6.5%, however, we have a large portion of this one, around 2.5%, which is due to the FX. If you remove the FX over the full year, we did achieve 4%. On top of this 4% organic growth in 2021, we want to achieve another 4%-5% top line growth in 2022. We believe it's a stretch. Of course, growing compared to 2021, which was record high, will be difficult. We have some challenges, but we are very confident for the future. Khun Thiraphong, anything you want to add on the guidance?
No.
Okay.
It's good.
Just moving on to the SeaChange. Just a quick update. You know, SeaChange is our sustainability program. I don't want to elaborate because we have been discussing a lot about this one, but you have the four pillars we have been working around. We have all the commitments we have been taking over the last few years. We have been quite successful in meeting with this requirement. There is one new thing maybe for you, which is on the greenhouse gas emission. We will announce in Q2 2022 our ambition. That was the last one which was remaining. Apart from that, the sustainability, the sustainable packaging, the tuna commitments, will remain this year, and we will continue to keep this one as part of our core business. Pongpan, I think we are back to you.
We are done with the-
Okay.
-presentation.
Thank you very much, Ludo, for the presentation. Now let's move on to Q&A. Please keep those questions coming, and I will manage for the executives to respond to them. Okay. We have the first question. Sorry, excuse me.
Yeah, just to add on this one, just to make it very clear, we did not close any Red Lobster activities, no. We just closed our lobster activity, Thai Union Canada. There is nothing related to Red Lobster in Canada. Indeed, all the impact were already taken into consideration in our numbers. We don't expect any further impact in our numbers.
Okay, moving on to sustainable financing. How much can we save for the financing cost as we move to sustainable financing in our long-term targets?
On this one, I think first of all, we start already from the financing cost, which is a bit low already at TU. We did manage quite well over the last few years. The expectation is we can save a bit more, few basis points from dozens of basis points in terms of interest rates. It will not be huge. Why? Because our baseline is already quite low, plus we have already a track record in terms of sustainability, which is very strong. However, we do believe that moving more into Blue Finance is something we have to do because it's going in the right direction, and we are doing well when we push in that direction.
Okay, maybe just talking about the targets for each core business or each businesses, can you please give a breakdown growth target? Okay, maybe a follow-up question is on the overall growth target. Is this more on the foodservice side? What about for the gross margin and the SG&A to sales target? Is it also on the conservative side?
I understand we will have help from one, cost savings, two, contribution from the higher margin new businesses, and three, from the operating leverage impact as the sales grow.
I think on the gross profit, I think we are targeting between 18%-18.5%. If you do remember, 2020 is a new record high for us at 18.2%. Basically we want to confirm this performance. I don't think it's really conservative when we plan to grow compared to your best performance ever. For sure, we are implementing right now a lot of measures on how to improve our cost in the factories with further automation. You need to keep in mind also that we are facing with inflation on the packaging, on the ingredients, and also on the raw materials. It will be a challenging one. For the GP, I don't think it's a conservative assumption. I think it's a stretch one.
On the SG&A, you could see all over the year that the logistics costs have been really on the increasing side, and we don't see an improvement. We are expecting some improvement already since Q1 2021, it did not happen. Here we prefer to be a bit cautious on this one. Plus, we also want to invest a lot in marketing. We told you that in the supplement activities, for instance, we are launching some new products. There will be some marketing investments behind. The two key drivers for the highest SG&A percentage next year will be, first of all, the logistics cost, and we do expect this one to remain very high all along the year. We do expect the marketing cost also to be increasing compared to last year.
Of course, we have the new protein business and we will have some contribution coming from the new businesses. Right now the scale is not that huge. We said yesterday that the combination of our three new businesses, ingredients, supplements, and also Alternative Protein, was something around THB 900 million. Keep in mind that behind some of them, like the supplements, it's a completely new business for us. We are launching a new trademark, so we need to have a lot of marketing activities behind. Overall, we believe our assumptions are in the right range for the growth profit and the SG&A.
On the next question, for the freight cost impact of THB 1.6 billion in 2021, does this imply that Thai Union's profit, if there had been no freight cost issue, it would be THB 1.6 billion higher than reported?
I think it's a bit quick to do like this. We would have loved to. I think there is one good thing, which is the THB 1.6 billion is clearly the impact of additional costs for us, but we have been discussing with all our customers, with all our suppliers on how to pass through some of these tariffs. We don't say how much we did finally manage to pass through to our customers. The net impact is not minus THB 1.6 billion. Of course, for us it was a very negative impact on the business, also in terms of lead time between Thailand and the U.S., and this is why also we have such an increase in our inventories.
I think overall, if you look at OP, because if you look at the OP, you will see the net impact. We have been very successful overall in 2021, passing through this 1.6 billion THB tariff additional cost to our customers and retailers. It's not easy. I can tell you it's ongoing discussion with the customers. We are also trying always to optimize our operation and to see how we can decrease this amount. You could see with the Q4 numbers the amount has been increasing a bit more. We don't see really the improvement in terms of operation.
Okay. Moving on to the FX assumptions. What are your underlying assumptions for the baht to U.S. dollars in 2022? What is your view on the FX? The second part of the question is how much cost increase, so in terms of packaging and raw material, have you seen so far in 2022 compared to last year?
On the FX, our assumptions for the USD is THB 32 for one dollar and THB 38 for one euro for 2022. On the FX we will see. Right now we are still in this range, a bit better. We are around THB 32, THB 33 over the last few weeks. Of course you are aware of the situation in Europe and all the tension between Russia and Ukraine. There could be some volatility. There will be for sure some volatility in the FX in 2022. Again, we are used to that. You know that in 2020 and in 2021 we have been quite lucky with the FX because the Thai baht has been depreciating. We do expect the situation to continue in 2022.
We don't expect some very significant change compared to the situation we have been facing in 2021. Of course now in our baseline we have already this positive effect, so maybe we will not benefit from some additional FX positive impact in 2022. On the cost increase on the packaging and raw materials, very difficult to give an overall number. We do see some inflation, first of all, on the packaging, and you have heard about the aluminum, the steel. Depending which packaging you are talking about, you could have some increase, which are double-digit by far. Sometimes it goes up to 30%, 40% or more. On some specific products we have some very large inflation.
We have also the same on the ingredients with some very strong inflation on some oil business. For the time being, we don't have such a high inflation on the raw material. Contrary I mentioned that we don't expect to see a very high inflation on the raw material. Okay? Of course, it's something we closely watch out. You could see that in Q4 there was an increase in the fish price, but it's not completely unreasonable. We do believe that with our strengths, with our expertise, we can discuss and can manage with our customers. Again, it's not easy. The good thing again I mentioned is all the food companies are facing with the same situation. We are not the only one to request for some price increase to our customers.
Just one last point, maybe on this one. We always try to optimize, and we work on our recipes to see how we can decrease and mitigate the impact of this inflation. That's why we do believe our Gross Profit Margin, we are quite confident we will be able to maintain a very high performance in 2022.
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For the next question, could you please share what is driving the increase in SG&A sales ratio next year?
Sure, maybe I can take this one. First of all, you could see we always talk about the logistic cost and you could see the impact in Q1 and Q2 was something around THB 200 million. In Q4 2021 it was increasing to THB 700 million. We do expect these very high costs to remain in 2022. The first explanation is we do expect the very high logistic cost to remain during the whole year. The second explanation is we are determined to increase further in the marketing activities. I mentioned to you about the supplements. We are the new brand, we are the ZEAvita we are launching in Thailand. There will be some significant marketing activities for the first time in Thailand.
Plus also we believe after the normalization happening in 2021, we want to push further for our branded business in Europe and also in the U.S. We have here again some plan to invest further. We have some new products that we believe would be very interesting for everyone. We have clearly the desire to push further for the marketing and to support the sales in 2022. These two key topics, the logistics cost by far is the explanation number one and the explanation number two is the marketing activities.
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[Non-English content ] What has been your price increase in the fourth quarter of 2021 and to which product in particular? Also, do you expect that we will have the same price increase trend in 2022?
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You know, I think it's about the same, right.
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[Non-English content] Moving on to some questions on i-Tail. In addition to the U.S., Japan and China, are there any regions that you plan to expand i-Tail to?
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Okay. Another question on i-Tail is how much net profit contribution in 2021 or in terms of percentage to TU?
We don't provide any numbers specifically on i-Tail. You maybe had the opportunity to attend at the end of last year a specific session organized by Khun Thiraphong and also i-Tail management. We did share some numbers regarding top line and also gross profits. At this stage, we don't provide any specific numbers in net profit contribution for i-Tail. You will see in our segment information the contribution coming from PetCare, packaging and Value-Added product and PetCare is clearly the majority of this number. You can already get a view on the sales and also the gross profit. Clearly we mentioned that already several times. For us, this is one of the most profitable segment that we have within TU.
Okay. A question on Red Lobster. Will they require any capital increase?
Sure. At this stage, there is no discussion in this direction. Of course, you know that there were some losses over the past few years, but there is absolutely no discussion going in this sense for 2022. Clearly, the intention for us is to turn around the business. I told you we have a bit of challenges over the last few months, but the whole year 2021 was a huge improvement compared to what we had before. At this stage, there is nothing, no plan like this in our plan.
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Okay. A question on our gross margin assumption. Is it true to assume that the 18.5% gross margin assumption, which is the high range, is for the assumption that the inflation impact for TU is high. For example, raw material will be higher than it is now. The 18% is the case that all raw material prices are not higher than what Thai Union is seeing at the moment.
I think there are different things behind this gross profit target. Of course, you're right. The assumption regarding the real inflation of the raw materials or the ingredients and packaging is one of the first assumption. You're absolutely correct. Our ability also to pass through this inflation, this tariff increase to the customers will be a second very important topic and very, very large assumption. If we are successful in this one, then we will be in the high range of the Gross Profit Margin. If we are not, then we will be in the low range on this one. The execution also in our factories and the fact we can deliver and we have all our factories up and running the whole year, and we hope that we will not be affected in 2022 by the COVID-19.
You know that in 2021, we had a few months where we had to close some of our factories and it has a negative impact, of course, in our cost. We do expect the situation to improve and not to have any stoppage of activities in our supply chain in 2022. Depending on these three last topics, the first one, the real inflation coming from all the direct materials and also our ability and the success or not of the commercial negotiation with our customers. The last one, the execution of our supply chain. That will be the three key topics to be defined if we will fall and if we will end up with a high or low range of our gross profit margin.
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If we compare the 2022 guidance to our 2021 actuals. The gross profit margin is the same. SG&A is the same. Red Lobster is the same. The sales growth would be 4%-5%. Could we assume that the Net Profit growth would be 4%-5% as well in 2022?
We do not provide any specific guidance regarding net profit. I think gross profit margin and SG&A we expect to be the same around 2021. Keep in mind also in 2021 we benefited from some very large FX gains. The line just below the OP, and of course it's very difficult to predict what will happen in 2022. For me this is one of the key topics that we have the key uncertainty depending on how are we in terms of FX gain, we will be able to deliver some growth bottom line or not. I think the key message you understood and you heard from Khun Thiraphong is we are confident for next year. We are very happy with 2021 performance, we are very ambitious and we want to push, push further in this direction.
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Okay, we have a question on managing the freight cost. I believe Khun Thiraphong and Khun Ludo already answered this. Please allow us to move on to the next one. Could you update the situation in India for Avanti?
Sure. It's a listed company so you can get back to their local communication if you want to get all the details. What we share is this year they have been facing with different issues. The first one is shortage in terms of labor force in the factories. Of course, India was affected by the COVID-19. On this part I think the situation is really improving. There are less and less cases, no COVID-19 cases and the situation is really under control. I do expect that the operation will improve next year. We told you that it was one negative one-off happening for Avanti in 2021 and there is some specific communication on their side about this one. They had to face with a significant operation in the U.S., a recall in the U.S.
Now we believe all of the impacts are included in the numbers and we don't expect this situation to happen again next year. We are quite confident that next year Avanti will be able to get back to growth. On the feeds they were also facing with some challenges due to the inflation. We are facing exactly the same challenges in our feed business. We do believe that next year their feed business and the frozen business is very dynamic will get back to growth.
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[Non-English content] For the next question, will we be affected by the situation in Russia?
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Maybe final question. This is on RBF. Now that the share price of RBF is declining. Do we have any policy to increase the holding in the company?
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[Non-English content] I think there are no more questions from the floor so let me pass it back to close the session. Thank you very much executive for all the answer to the question. Before we move on to the 15 minutes break allow me to give you a little bit introduction before Thai Union session comes up. The session for TFM will last around an hour with the Q&A included. The link is the same so you can remain on this link or you can rejoin in the same link. We also have an English interpretation for the session as well.
You know the English speakers feel free to join and the executive who will be running the session would be Mr. Rittirong Boonmechote President of Global Frozen and Related Businesses and Mr. Bunluesak Sorajjakit TFM CEO and Mr. Sukson Wongchuwong, TFM CFO as well. I hope you will enjoy the session as much as you enjoy this session and see you next quarter.
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Thank you so much. Have a good day. Stay safe.