Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Thai Union's Analyst Meeting for the First Quarter of 2025. My name is Nornwan Kidot Paisan, your Emcee today. First of all, I would like to introduce our key speakers. First, Khun Thiraphong Chansri, our President and CEO, followed by Mr. Ludovic Garnier, our Group CFO. And last but not least, Khun Pinyada Saengsakdahan, Head of Investor Relations. Today's session will take around 1.5 hours, including the Q&A, and followed by a 10-minute break before TFM result announcements. Without further ado, I would like to invite Khun Thiraphong to begin the presentation.
Thank you very much. Hello to our analysts, the investors joining us as well. We have to apologize for having the meeting on Friday. Normally, we do not have a Friday meeting. Some of our directors were unavailable, thus we had to move it to Friday. We do apologize once again for any inconvenience. Today, it seems like we do not have many people here physically, but joining us online, but that is still good. For the First Quarter, many of you probably already know that we have economic volatility, we have sales policy issues, we have the geopolitical tensions, we have inflation, we have a weakening global economy, and we also have the issue of the reciprocal tariffs from the US. That was in the beginning of April.
Nonetheless, I believe that on behalf of the management, I would like to say that we are adjusting and we remain flexible. We will use our strengths, especially in the supply chain. We have our global footprint. We will maximize our strengths. I believe that our strengths in every area that we have will enable us to move forward solidly. We have taken many measures in the recent past year, in April and in May. We have been busier than ever because we have been shipping products out in a higher volume because of the window of the 90-day extension for the reciprocal tariffs. There are 43 days left for shipping to our destination countries. We have been very, again, very busy. We have been preparing our stocks, especially for our brand, Chicken of the Sea in the US.
We are building up our stocks at a higher level to enable us to be more flexible in the shorter term due to the economic uncertainty. Aside from this, we see the importance of transformation even more. We are lucky that we began since last year. Transformation is our transformation process has allowed us to have an organizational structure and processes that we are improving and ameliorating. We are focusing on our production costs. We are speeding up production, and we are giving importance to cash. We're looking at our balance sheet to enable us to remain strong in these various areas as much as possible. On the next page, you will see before we go into more detail, I would like to talk about our performance in the First Quarter of this year. You can see that our top line seems a bit weak.
It's reduced 10.3% year- on- year, but this is an organic drop of about 6.9%. The remainder is from the foreign exchange amounting to 3.4%. In the First Quarter, we do admit that every, whether it's the dollar, every currency, the pound, there's been change leading to our drop in the top line, our Gross Profit. We have done quite well, especially in the First Quarter, which is usually a quarter where we have a low Gross Profit Margin. In 2023, it was 15% or so. 2024 was a bit higher, but in 2025, we have been able to achieve 18.8%. This is something that is in line with our wishes. We have wanted to see our Gross Profit Margin continue to increase to reach or exceed 20%.
Our Operating Profits, our Adjusted Operating Profits, not including our transformation costs, which is a one-time item, has gone down by 24.7%, while our net profit has gone up by 8.9% year- on- year. In terms of our top line, the drop mostly is due to two or three issues. One is our exports compared to the First Quarter last year. The Middle East, we had a special, we reached special levels last year. There has been a drop because the Middle East, we're not seeing the numbers as big as they were last year. The second thing is our tuna raw materials are usually at a low level and increased in the Second Quarter. This year, however, our raw mats in terms of tuna were higher in the beginning of the year. Many of our customers, therefore, are using a wait-and-see approach.
They are waiting to see the drop in the raw materials. There has been a delay in our sales. In addition, we also have the shrimp as a raw material. The prices were quite high in the First Quarter, but our PetCa re business is something that continues to grow, even though it is not in double digits yet. In the First Quarter, there was a growth of about 5%, which is a positive. Our Feed for the First Quarter has also performed very well. Our Feed business is something that I believe will turn around and be on track. It will normalize. It will do well. We have a Net Margin. We will have a Net Margin in a satisfactory level. As for SG&A in the First Quarter, the increase has come mostly from our consulting fees for the transformation costs.
Another source is the increase in the funding for marketing support. I did inform you earlier that from this year onwards, we will support our brand more and more. In the First Quarter, we have used a lot in terms of funds due to our Eco Twist in the U.K. As for Net Profit, the growth in our net profit, the main reasons for this are we have our investment advantage, which has again been very favorable. We also have the taxes from transferring our advantage shares from one account to another. Therefore, we recorded this tax, and this is due to regulations. It's not because we wanted to recognize this, it's due to requirements. On the next page, you can see our transformation costs. In the First Quarter, it has about THB 287 million.
We want you to see the benefits as well, not just focus on the costs. The similar costs will end in this year. Therefore, we just need to wait it out a little bit longer, and these costs will not be—we will not have to worry about them anymore, and we will see a surplus, especially from next year onwards. I want you to take a look at our profit. It is dropping mostly because of our operating profit dropping. We have a foreign exchange negative figures, and the FX gain is $183 million, minus $183 million. We have our loans. We have our share profit increasing, and we have the deferred tax as well. Our net income, therefore, overall, without the transformation costs, has gone up by 8.9%. On the next page, I would like to inform you of some changes in terms of our share purchase program.
The board has allowed for a higher amount of money from $3 billion to $5 billion to also an increase in shares as well. Our repurchase program is still on track, and we expect it to conclude in June. This, again, has been approved by the board. Moving on, you can see our project owner. Our target savings is $15 million. In the First Quarter, we have recognized $1.3 million. The numbers are in line with the plan, and the number will continue to increase. We expect to achieve $15 million in savings. As for Project Tailwind, for our operating profit uplift, we're looking for $17 million. We have been able to achieve $3.5 million in the First Quarter.
Next, we let's look at our credit rating from the Japan Credit Rating Agency, or JCR. We have received a rating that remains at A, and it's a stable outlook. It's not negative. I believe that this is a sign that the rating agency is confident, the foreign rating agency is confident in Thai Union, and Ludo will report more on our success in issuing our blue loan, another round of blue loans. This is with the Asian Development Bank, which is a bank that is very strict when it comes to lending. We have received $150 million, and we also have other foreign banks, six banks that are joining ADB in issuing loans for us.
This $150 million in loans is a special loan that has a special purpose to be used for purchasing shrimp raw ingredients, sustainable shrimp, in fact, 100% sustainable shrimp. On the next page, you can see that we have also received the first top spot for Sustainability from S&P Global. We are in the top % from S&P Global for Sustainability. This is something that we have done well. It is one of our strengths. It is what diversifies us from our competition. We continue to work with global partners on this. We also have other businesses or other efforts that we have in terms of sustainability. We were involved in the World Ocean Summit in Tokyo. We were invited to speak at the event. When the earthquake hit, we also donated water, food, and medicine to the affected areas.
Now we'll take a look at the financial performance. I would like to pass things on to Ludovic to provide those details.
Thank you, Khun Phong. Very happy to be with you this afternoon. Welcome again. We will start, as usual, with our five years, four years pictures. Even if we acknowledge that in Q1 our sales are a bit soft, we are extremely happy with the gross profit margin development. If you know, remember, usually in Q1 our gross profit margin is always the lowest of the year because of the mixed categories. I think here we are very pleased with this one. We are just below the 19%. And then regarding the net profit margin, you can see we have two lines, the dark blue and the light blue.
The light blue is the reported Net Profit Margin, and the dotted line in dark blue is the Adjusted Net Profit. The difference between the two is on the transformation cost that we incurred in Q1. The next one, you can see we deep dive on the sales, on the top line performance. Here, the reported top line is decreasing by 10%, 10.3%. We are facing a significant FX impact that was expected. When we did release our guidance in Q4 last year, we told you that the negative impact from the FX would be significant during the whole year. Why? Because we were expecting the USD and the Euro also to be dropping this year. This is happening. We are not surprised with this decline.
But also, our organic sales have been declining across mostly the Ambient and the Frozen categories in Q1, while the PetC are category has been growing in Q1. Just to explain, having a deep dive by category, the Ambient sales are declining by 14% year- on- year. Just a few things for you to keep in mind. The first one is Khun Phong mentioned that last year, in Q1 2024, our sales to the Middle East were exceptionally high. They were very high because during the whole year 2023, the Middle East, which is a very large market for us, they did not have access to the USD. Okay, they were facing some currency shortage. In Q1 2024, they had access again to the USD. Here, we had a catch-up effect, which was exceptional. The baseline was very high.
Also, we have been facing a fish price, which was higher than expected. Usually, in our industry, in Q1, the fish price is always decreasing. This has not happened. When you have a kind of a mismatch between the expectation and the market situation, then very often, as mentioned already by Khun Phong, the customers, they will just wait and see to see what is going to happen. They delay a bit the orders. This is what happened. This has created some lower sales for us, mostly in Europe and in our OEM sales. Different situation for the Frozen business, Frozen declining sales also by 12% in Q1, mostly in the profitable, mostly in the US market. Two explanations from this one. First of all, the shrimp prices are very high in Q1.
You can see we have two quarters of very high shrimp price in a row, which is a bit exceptional. The demand is still very soft in the U.S. Okay, you know one of our key outputs for us in the food service business in the U.S., the restaurant industry, you can see in the numbers, the restaurant business is weak in the U.S. The demand is still very soft. Same situation compared to what we have seen before. However, the Feed business is doing very well. Okay, please stay for the next earnings call. You have TFM, which will be there. I think we have some very good news on this one. Finally, the PetCare, PetCare is growing by 5.5%. Maybe you did attend the ITEL earnings call.
Even if we expect something more and they will deliver more growth in the next quarters, they are growing in Q1 and the numbers are okay. Just a quick focus on the raw material prices. I think this is one of the key explanations for the soft performance in terms of top line in Q1. You can see the tuna price was around $1,616 in Q1, while we were expecting a drop in Q1. The good thing is in April, you can see the tuna prices are softening a bit. We are at $1,550. Just for you to remember, for the full year, our guidance is around $1,580. We maintain the guidance. Maybe it will be slightly lower, but for the time being, we're staying within this range. I want to draw your attention also to the shrimp prices.
On the top right, you can see in Q1 2025, the average price was THB 169 per kg, and it was very close to the one we had in Q4. Here, for two quarters in a row, the shrimp prices are extremely high. Okay, and when you are facing this situation, then the demand is very soft. Regarding the summer price, this is the opposite situation. We have a bit of softening. Okay, of course, the prices are increasing. This is normal for Q1. You always have this kind of seasonality. However, if you compare to Q1 2024, Q1 2023, the summer prices are lower, and this is a good surprise for us. Now moving to the currency, I think what we can say is overall, the Thai Baht has been strengthening versus all the currencies. You can see here the change versus dollar is almost 5%.
The change versus Euro is almost 8%. Versus GBP, it's a bit softer. It's 5.5%, and versus the Yen, it's 7%. Of course, for us, this is a key explanation from the very large FX impact that we have in Q1. Again, we do expect this effect to maintain the whole year. Just for you to remember, we told you in Q4 that the overall FX impact, we were expecting a negative FX impact for the whole year. No surprise, that was expected. The good news is the Euro is strengthening a bit since the end of March. Moving to our key ratio, you can see first of all, the inventory and the networking capital. I think we are under control. Overall, our inventories are increasing in Q1. This is always the case.
Okay, just for you to remember, we prepare Q2 and Q3, which is the high season for the sales, especially in Europe. We are building up some inventories. This is what we always see. There is no surprise about this one. I think in terms of Inventory Days and Net W orking Capital, we do remain under control. In terms of ratio, Net Debt- to- EBITDA, we are increasing to 4.5, almost 4.5. We do expect to remain in this level in the next one to two quarters and then to decrease at the end of the year. That should show some positive trend by the end of the year. Net Debt- to- Equity, we are still below one. For you to remember, our comfort zone is between 1-1.1. I think we are in a very good financial situation.
If we have a look at our net debt bridge, net debt is increasing from THB 53 billion to THB 56 billion at the end of the quarter. The ratio is around one. The key drivers, we have a negative Free Cash flow in Q1. Why? Because our EBITDA is a bit weak at THB 2.4 billion. We are also building up our net working capital, our inventories by THB 2.2 billion. Our CapEx remains under control with THB 900 million. The sum of the three, we have temporarily a negative free cash flow by almost THB 600 million in Q1. We also have the impact of the share buyback, which is THB 1.8 billion in Q1. Total, we believe our net debt to equity is still very strong. You can see also one thing which is interesting.
Our Cost of Capital is decreasing from 3.7% to 3.5%. Here we can see the impact of the decrease of the interest rate. Just a quick focus also on the Avanti restructuring. This is a bit technical. I'm sorry for that. Here we have been facing some changes in the regulations in India. We were holding our Avanti shares through two holdings, through Thai Union shareholding and also through our Hong Kong holding. There was some change in regulation in India, which forced us to sell the shares we were owning from Hong Kong to India. Okay, we don't change anything. We continue the partnership with Avanti. We have a very strong collaboration. You know, it has been a very successful joint venture over the past few years, and we continue. We don't change anything.
Our shareholders, our shareholding before and after remain exactly the same, 24% to 25%. We just transfer the shares from one holding to another holding company. We enjoy a nice tax effect. Why? Because usually when you have some investment in an associate company, you will have a tax value and a market value which will be different. In accounting, you have to record a Defered Tax Liability when you have a difference between the two. That was the case in the past. Now, with this transaction, the tax value and the market value is much closer. We do not have any more Defered Tax Liability to be recorded, and we can reverse what we had in the past. We do enjoy the one-time non-cash positive income tax from that, which is roughly THB 400 million, THB 380 million. Do not expect this to happen again.
Okay, now the shares in Avanti, they will remain in Thailand. We do not expect any other changes to happen. We enjoy this in Q1, but this will not happen again. Again, one-time non-cash transaction. Again, it does not change anything with the partnership with Avanti. The last one is the, and Khun Phong already mentioned this one, the ADB loan that we just announced yesterday. I do not know if you see the announcements. We are extremely pleased with this one. We have been working with ADB and different banks also over the past few months. This is the first time there is a blue loan which is being issued in Thailand by the seafood industry. This is also the first financing framework aligned with the Thailand draft taxonomy. Extremely pleased about this one. Here we are focusing mostly on the sustainable shrimps.
Okay, so this is mostly for our Frozen business. The idea is to increase the proportion of the certified sustainable shrimps. You know, we are using the ASC, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, some BAP also, and some AIP. All of this, the whole idea is to increase the sourcing, the sustainable sourcing for our shrimp business. Very pleased about this one. More to come. You know, we told you in 2025, we have quite a packed agenda in terms of refinancing. This is the first step, and we are very pleased to have this one. Do not ask me about the interest rate. As usual, we cannot share this one, but you know, we did manage to have a very competitive pricing for that. Extremely pleased and thank you to the team for achieving this one.
Now we let Khun Quan go through the business performance.
Thank you, Khun Ludo. ค่ะ ค่ะ สําหรับ For the breakdown by business unit, let's begin with the First Quarter. As we mentioned earlier, we have our—let's break down our entire profit. Profit sales, ambient is about 50%, almost 50%. The Frozen business is at 28.3%, and PetCare is at 14%, and Value Add is 8.1% of the total sales. You can see that right now our PetCare and value added businesses have sales contributions that are 22%, and this is in line with our ambition of reaching 25-30% by the year 2030. Moving on, let's begin with our Ambient business. In the First Quarter for 2024, we had a—we had a profit—we're seeing a profit of 14% drop year-on-year in sales.
There is also a 7.1% year-on-year drop in our sales volume. We are also seeing a negative FX impact. The FX impact is affecting every business category. As for tuna, the price of fish in the First Quarter, you can see it is $1,660 per ton. This is an increase which has led to our customers in the private label; they are delaying their orders, and we are going to wait to see what the situation is like. They are going to wait to see what the situation is like and then order, reorder again. The sales volume has dropped down by 7.1% year-on-year, and this is a result due to the major markets, the Middle East.
In the First Quarter of 2024, it was a high baseline for our revenue in this market because it was a period when the Middle East was recovering from a shortage of foreign currency. In Europe, there were lower sales in France, in the U.K., and also in Germany. This was because of rising fish prices. Our sales volume dropping here has been offset by orders that have increased in other markets thanks to our strategies that we put in place to support this effect. In our Frozen business, we are seeing a strengthening gross profit margin. If you take a look at year-on-year, it has gone up 2.8% to 19.4%. This is thanks to our sales efforts and our cost management.
Moving on to the Frozen business, after we did right sizing, after we implemented right sizing that began in 2023 and concluded in 2024, at the moment for our Frozen business, we have a new baseline. We have our shrimp products, our salmon products, and other seafood products, and they each have different sales structures and different profit margins. For the Frozen business in the First Quarter, we're seeing sales of THB 8.4 billion, and we have our private labels. The absolute amount in growth for the branded is growing, and the dropping sales are due to the shrimp sales that have dropped in the First Quarter due to the cost or the price of shrimp increasing by about 20% or so year-on-year. Our volume went down 2.7% year-on-year due to our private label drop.
If we take a look at an offset of this, the business, our TFM business, our Feed business has grown favorably, and this has provided an offset for the aforementioned incident. We are doing better in Gross Profit Margin has strengthened to 12.4%. This is, we're seeing improvement in our Feed and shell business. If we take a look at the shrimp prices at the moment, they are adjusting upwards, but they will, in the following quarters, we expect to see those prices drop. In terms of PetCare, we have sales at THB 4.174 billion, increasing; this is 5.5% year-on-year. This is mostly due to our sales abroad shipments to the US, for instance. The volume most strongly, we have the negative FX impact.
If we take a look at our premium mix, you can see that there's been an adjustment downward to about 48.7% temporarily. Compared to the First Quarter in 2024, we had a premium mix at about 55%. The market situation and the consumer demand has been changing. Consumer behavior, consumer behavior has changed, and our gross profit margin has gone down to 24.5%. It's dropped a bit. We have to, this is due to the premium mix. We had a higher base before, but it's now back in a range, within the range of 47% to 50%, in line with our wishes. Value-added business, the sales are THB 2.4 billion. If you look at our value-added packaging and ingredients and our byproducts, we have a drop in sales for the various brands as well.
Nonetheless, the sales volume has increased significantly to about 14% year-on-year. This is because of the increasing sales in byproducts such as our value-added products. The demand is quite solid, quite strong in the byproduct segment because of increasing demand from the consumers. We have 27.9% in the gross profit margin because this is compared to a higher baseline in 2024. I'd like to pass things back to Khun Thiraphong to provide the outlook.
Outlook for this round, we have adjusted our forecast a bit based on the 10% flat tariff in the U.S., from the U.S. 10%, this increase is increasing, it's implemented for every country. Therefore, we don't expect much effect. The retail prices, if the tariff increase is 10%, it doesn't mean that it's going to lead to a 10% increase in the prices in the markets. It'll be about 7%.
The price at the end destination will not be absorbing, will not see the absorption of the entire increase in tariffs. Most of our partners are conducting business as usual. Nonetheless, due to the uncertainty, our customers will probably, of course, be waiting, will take a more wait-and-see approach. Our sales growth, we've adjusted from 3%-4% down to 1%-3% due to the 10% tariff. Our Gross Profit Margin, we've adjusted it down a bit to be a bit more conservative from 18.5%-19.5%, adjusting down to 18%-19%. Our SG&A, we've increased it from 13-13.5% to 13.5-14% instead because SG&A will increase a bit. It might be due to shipping or other areas due to the increasing tariffs as well. CapEx is a measure that we have taken immediate action in.
We have reduced it from $4.5 billion-$5 billion down to $3 billion-$3.5 billion. We want to focus on cash until we arrive at a clearer situation. We will hold our investment for the moment in areas that are not necessary. The effect of interest rate, there is no significant change because we're seeing lower interest rates and we don't expect much effect. Therefore, we don't need to adjust this much. Our dividend policy will continue to be paid out twice and at least 50%. We would like to provide more clarity for you because people outside will say, "Thai Union's 38% of sales is going to be affected," but in reality, the products that are produced by Thai Union and sent to the U.S. are at 18%. 20% of the 38% is Chicken of the Sea Frozen, for instance. This is bought via other partners in other countries.
There will be no effect because we continue to buy from lower cost sources. The impact for us is 18%, not 38%, as many people may misunderstand. In addition to this, I would like to speak more about if the tariffs go up to 36%, if that is implemented, what measures do we have. I would like for you to take a look at this page first to see that the tariffs altogether, Vietnam, based on the information that we have at the moment. Right now, Vietnam is at 8.5%, Thailand is at 48.5% total tariffs, Indonesia is 44.5%, just 4% different from us. The Philippines might seem, might look like they have a much lower, they're facing a much lower tariffs. However, this country doesn't have a competitive scale in our industry. It doesn't have much of a share.
Ecuador may receive a lot of benefit in terms of tariffs because it's only a 22.5% total tariffs. Take a look at Ghana and Seychelles. These are two countries in our network that have the lowest, that are going to face the lowest level of tariffs, even lower than Ecuador at only 10%. If we take a look back at our businesses, let's look at them by category. For the ambient segment, we will increase our production capacity in Ghana. Ghana right now, it has the lowest cost outside of Thailand. Therefore, we stand to gain due to the lower tariffs there. We are also preparing things at Seychelles to be able to take advantage of that. Our lines in the U.S. as well, our production in America, we are also preparing things there in Georgia.
We will continue to monitor the situation, see how Thailand responds. We will probably have to reduce things in Thailand if we increase things outside of Thailand. These are the measures that we are taking. We should be able to manage things quite well because we have Ghana and Seychelles, we have ample production capacity there. We are also looking at Vietnam as well. If Vietnam has a higher negotiating ability or power, we are also ready for that. We are not overlooking that. In terms of the Frozen business, in Asia, there is Vietnam and Thailand and Indonesia and India. I have also added on, in the past year, India and Indonesia, they have faced anti-dumping tariffs. Many may have forgotten about this. Overall, Vietnam is also facing tariffs higher than Thailand. Let's take a look at Indonesia.
They have total tariffs at 35.9%, more or less equal to Thailand's 36%. India is facing 34.3% total tariffs. Again, this is not very different from the tariffs faced by Thailand. Ecuador seems to be at an advantage with only 13.8%. However, you need to understand that Ecuador only produces shrimp of a smaller size compared to Thailand or India. Ecuador's products are raw and commodity products. Our products are value-added. They are processed, they are cooked. Therefore, this is a look at the competition for us here in Asia. We want you to rest assured that there is not much of a difference. As for PetCare, ITL probably already provided a very good explanation. Our wet-based cat food, the major producing countries are China, Vietnam, and Thailand.
If consumers decide to buy dry products, more dry products, or middle-range products or lower-range products, there will be a difference. These countries produce premium products, and Thailand still has the lowest level of tariffs out of all of these wet-based food production bases. Lastly, Thai Union has faced so many crises in the past, like for instance, COVID. This is another new disease that we're facing. We believe that the measures that we used during COVID, we are brushing them off and adjusting them. Our focus is we're going to look at our production costs, our cash, and our transformation as well. We have reviewed all of our processes, and this is a good time for us to take a look inside and to improve, to become more efficient, more effective, more resilient, and more flexible.
Thank you so much for listening, friend.
Thank you very much, and see you next quarter.
ขอบคุณมากนะครับ.
Thank you very much.