Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Thai Union's analyst meeting for the Q3 2025 results announcement. My name is Waranya Leejaturong , and I will be your emcee today. First of all, I would like to introduce our key speakers. First, Khun Thiraphong Chansiri, President and CEO. Khun Ludovic Garnier, our Group CFO. And Khun Pinyada Saengsakdaharn, Head of Investor Relations. Today's session will take around 1.5 hours, including Q&A session, and followed by a 10-minute break before we begin the TFM session. Without further ado, I would like to invite Khun Thiraphong to begin the presentation.
Hello to all of the analysts and the financial institutions who are joining us today. Today, we would like to share the results for the Q3 for this year.
We'd like to tell you that overall, it has been a quarter that the management is quite satisfied with, even though compared to last year, it may be a bit lower than the results from that period. Compared to the last quarter, we are seeing signs of development in a positive trend. This is especially true for the revenue. It might have gone down by 1%, but if we do not include the foreign exchange impact, then you can see that there is growth of 1%. This is the first time that we've seen growth in terms of organic growth. As for the margin, this is one thing that I believe is something that we continue to do well in. It's at about 19%.
The transformation program that we have in place is going according to plan, whether it's our Project Sonar or Project Tailwind. Aside from that, as we mentioned last time, the cost for the Project Sonar will end at the end of this year, and we will see a reduction in the fees increasingly in the next year. And as for Mitsubishi, their general offer, you probably all know that the program that they have launched in the two past months, it was unsuccessful, mostly due to the price that was offered. It was not as appealing as we had hoped for the shareholders to want to sell their shares to Mitsubishi. So far today, I have no other special updates for you. And of course, this program, they continue to pursue it, but the timing, we have no clarity at the moment there.
They are working internally on this, and they need to hold discussions within their board, and what's important is that it is an ongoing process. On the next page, you will see we take a look at the numbers. In the third quarter, our sales is at THB 34.5 billion, and this is mostly growth from the ambient segment, especially in Europe, which has led to increasing sales for us, and the gross margin is at 19%, and overall, the business that has had great performance is the feed business, and this is a business that has a high growth rate in our business at the moment. It has reached an all-time high, whether it's the margin, the net profit, or other figures, and this is a business where we are seeing strong performance results, and the trend continues upward.
It's a bright future for the business, and I'm sure that the Thai Union team will provide more details for you. It's another growth driver. We're also looking at Indonesia, which we have invested in already. As for the pet business, pet food business, it is also very strong, even though the margin might seem to have dropped a bit, but it is still a business that has created sales revenue for us and profit for us. If you look at the volume growth, even though it has not been according to our plan, it is still a double-digit growth, and we continue to see strong growth in that area. If w e take a look at the adjusted operating profit, you can see that it is at THB 2 billion, a little less from last year.
The adjusted net profit is THB 1.5 billion , a 7.2% drop year on year. Overall, I believe that we are quite satisfied to a certain degree. We have been successful in our management efforts, and we have been facing a lot of volatility, whether it's the tariffs or other impacts. On the next page, you can see the net profit that has softened compared to the adjusted. It has gone down by 7%. If we compare it to the reported net profit, it's gone down by 6.8%. This is mostly due to the drop in the operating profit. We have a forex gain that has helped a bit, as well as other factors. There isn't anything that you need to be concerned about or anything that is very significant. Next, we take a look at Sonar project.
The first three months, we have achieved savings at $12 million compared to our target for the whole year of $15 million. And this is something that we are confident to say that we are delivering the savings that we had as our target. Project Tailwind, AOP uplift, we have achieved to $15 million at the moment. And so Project Tailwind is also in line with the plan that we put in place, so there is nothing to be concerned about here. The Tailwind project will continue on until the middle of next year. It will continue on until 2027 in April, and we still have time, more than 12 months for this to play out. Aside from this, the cost reset program for Thai Union is something that we have put in place that we are taking seriously.
It's cost reduction, it's SG&A, and it also involves CapEx control. And this is what we are doing to make our balance sheet and our cost competitiveness improve continuously. And this is what our management team is placing great emphasis on. And on the next page, you can see that in the details, whether it's the general offer for Mitsubishi, even though it was unsuccessful, nonetheless, our collaboration continues on with Mitsubishi, whether it's through frozen shrimp, chilled salmon, pet food, and so on. Our teams continue to work together. Aside from that, I would like to share other updates with you. Our ratings are maintained at A+ , and this demonstrates that we have issued bonds, THB 1.7 billion. It was very successful. The interest rate that we have received is in a level that is quite low and is a satisfactory low level.
In addition to this, we have also received various awards, multiple awards, whether it's the Adam Smith Award for Asia, and most recently, we have to say thank you to the Analyst Association for voting for us. They're going to announce it tomorrow, but they said that we could share this in the meeting today. We're allowed to share it. We have more than last year. We have one more award than we got last year, which is outstanding. Aside from outstanding CEO and outstanding CFO, we also have the outstanding IR team. So we would like to thank the analysts once again for the confidence that you have in us, and CEO also received many awards as well. They received the Innovative Company Awards from SET, and they also received the Top Senior CEO from the EconMass event.
This is another award that, again, was voted on by financial institutions. And lastly, what I'd like to share with you from my part is about the Blue Finance. We mentioned that we launched this. And the details about the interest, you can see whether it's 1.7% for four years, 2.2% for seven years, and 2.46% for ten years. And this is something that we are very happy with. And our goal to have Blue Financing at more than 75% by the year 2025, we have achieved more than our target. It's more than 80%. And in the next two years, we expect to have a refinancing loan that will be Blue Finance. And so that is what I would like to share with all of you today. And in the details, Ludovic will be the one to provide more information for you. Thank you.
Thank you, Khun Thiraphong, and very happy to be with you this afternoon. As usual, we will start with the five-year picture. So here, a few things I think for you to keep in mind, and I think Khun Thiraphong mentioned this one. Very happy to see that we get back to organic growth this quarter. You know, in Q1 and Q2, our organic growth was declining a bit, but here we are back to growth. The GP margin also 19%, even if it is declining a bit compared to last year. I think it's moving in the right direction. Since the beginning of the year, the gross profit margin is always very close to 19%. Okay, and I think this is a very strong achievement, especially in this time where we have so much pressure coming from the USD, also coming from the U.S. tariff.
So overall, very happy with this picture. Just try to focus on the top line. So here we have in dark blue the organic growth and light blue the reported growth, the FX translation, sorry. So here overall, our top line looks decreasing by 1%. But if you remove the FX, again, this quarter, the FX impact is negative by 2.8%, then the organic growth is 1.8%. So it's not yet huge. Still, we are very happy, and I think it's a very positive development. One thing also I want to draw your attention to is on the volume. Okay, we have a 3% or 4% volume growth in Q3, mostly coming from the feed business. As Khun Thiraphong mentioned, our feed business is doing extremely well. As usual, you have TFM analyst meeting right after the one from TU. Please stay.
It's a very booming business for the time being. Just a quick overview by category. In terms of ambient, the reported sales declining by 3.8%, mostly coming from the FX. The volume are almost flat, but then we are facing also soft demand from the U.S. private label retailers. But in Europe, we have been increasing our volumes. One thing I want you to keep in mind is right now we have many customers in the U.S. They are still in the wait-and-see attitude. Okay, you know there is a decision from the Supreme Court to come soon. We don't have a lot of hope behind this one yet. Some people are waiting what is happening.
Also, I'm sure you heard at the beginning of last week that President Trump is negotiating some new trade agreement with Thailand, and there is some discussion potentially to remove tuna from the 19% tariff. It's not confirmed. At this stage, it's only an MoU. It will have to be confirmed. So we do remain very careful. But of course, our customers, they know that. Okay, so when they know that, there are so many uncertainties. Sometimes they just prefer to wait and see. Opposite situation for the frozen. The frozen sales here are growing by 5%. Khun Kwan, we elaborate, but I think overall we have many segments in the frozen business who are doing well. And especially the gross profit margin is very attractive for this quarter within the frozen. Pet care also is growing by 6% in Thai Baht.
If we were considering the USD sales, then the growth would be more 13% to 14%. So again, very happy with the pet care development over the quarters. This is really growing back to growth. And you know we want these BU to deliver much more in terms of growth compared to the others. So I think this is also a positive sign for you. In terms of raw material prices, we have been facing a bit of inflation. Okay, you can see the tuna prices went up to 1,500, 550, increasing by 10% compared to last year and increasing by 2.6% quarter on quarter. That was expected. We told you at the end of Q2 we're expecting a bit of inflation to come in Q3 and also in Q4. But overall, no surprise on this one, but still a bit of inflation compared to last year.
In terms of shrimps, also we are facing some inflation, THB 153 for one kg. So here again, a bit of pressure, but nothing exceptional on the shrimps. There is one anomaly here, which is the salmon price. The salmon price at NOK 69 is extremely low. Okay, and of course, this is positive for us. We have different businesses which are exposed to the salmon price. And here we are fully benefiting from this one, especially in the frozen business. So overall, no big warning on this one. On the FX, we are kind of the same situation since the beginning of the year. We have been facing some constant appreciation of the Thai Baht versus USD and all the other currencies. If you look year on year, the USD has been depreciating by 7.2% versus THB. So this is massive. The EUR by 1.3%.
So this is more reasonable. The GBP by 3.7% and then the Yen by 6%. Okay, so we have been facing all along the year some very significant changes coming from the FX. Of course, this is penalizing us for our top line and also for our bottom line. However, for you to keep in mind, we are using some very conservative hedging strategies. Okay, so the vast majority of transactions are being hedged. So we are not fully impacted by that. Our hedging is preventing us from losing too much on this part. Quick overview on the ratio. I think first of all, I will talk about the inventories and the net working capital. Here, I think the situation is improving. Overall, our inventory stands at THB 45 billion or 152 days. It's decreasing a bit compared to the previous quarters. It's moving in the right direction.
The net working capital also stands at 133 days. I think overall, we see some gradual improvement. The idea for us is to continue in that direction and to reduce further in the next quarters. In terms of net debt to EBITDA, you have seen some increase. We had 4.8. We told you because of the share buyback, also because in Q4 we did convert the Perp into traditional funding. We told you that we were expecting a growth to happen. Okay, and we told you also in H2, we see some kind of plateau. Okay, some plateau around this level of 4.7, 4.8.
We told you also that next year the priority would be to be put on deleveraging the company, no more share buyback, and really generating some cash flow and improving this net debt to EBITDA to get back to our target range, which is 3.5 to four as quickly as possible. In terms of net debt to equity, we are at 1.1 in the high range of our guidance. Again, mostly explained by the share buyback program. But overall, very strong balance sheet. I think there is no concern on that. Quick overview of our net debt. Our net debt has been increasing in Q3. So from THB 53 billion at the beginning of the year to THB 59 billion. The key drivers between the two, we are quite happy regarding our free cash flow generation. We have THB 4.1 billion of free cash flow over nine months.
The EBITDA is exceeding, slightly exceeding THB 9 billion . This is okay. The working capital, mostly because of the raw material increase, has been increasing by THB 2 billion . The CapEx are fully aligned with our guidance at 2.7. But overall, we told you we are not happy with our cash flow generation in Q1. Now, since Q2 and also in Q3, the situation has been really improving. Okay, and we do expect also to be in the same direction in Q4. Of course, we have been doing some investment and some financing activities. Over the nine months, we did pay for the dividend, and we had also the share buyback for THB 4.3 billion . So these are the key drivers. One thing also I want to highlight here is the cost of debt.
Okay, the cost of debt last year on average was around 3.65%, and now moving this year to 3.45%. So I think also it's moving in the right direction. Quick focus also on Khun Thiraphong mentioned this one. We have been doing a lot of refinancing. At the beginning of the year, we told you we have a very heavy agenda in terms of refinancing in 2025. We told you at the beginning of the year we did THB 5 billion with ADB. You know already this one. So here we show you what we did in Q3. We did a blue refinancing by THB 19 billion . And we did a combination this time of loans and bonds. Okay, so THB 10 billion for the loans and THB 9 billion for the bonds. Again, we are doing blue bonds. We are doing SLL.
We continue doing the same thing and scaling up compared to what we've been doing in the past. We were very positively surprised with, again, the success of these transactions. Now we have quite a good track record from all the banks and a lot of excitement. We can see here, we are exactly where they want to invest. Okay, so when we do launch this kind of project, we can deliver a lot of success. And finally, the amount we were able to refinance was higher compared to expectation. Okay, and the impact from this, we do expect there would be some positive impact, mostly next year in our finance cost. And we do expect our finance cost to be more in the range of 3% in the next years to come.
Okay, again, a lot of credit to our treasury team, Yongyut, who is here also, a lot of success on this one. He wants to continue in this direction. We do really have a lot of recognition from that, from all the bankers. There are some bankers here in the room today. Very strong recognition from that, and I think we want to continue in that direction. Another good news I wanted to share with you is regarding to the Pillar Two, the minimum tax. At the beginning of the year, if you remember, we told you a few things. We told you, first of all, the key challenge for us is Thailand. Okay, in Thailand, we are exporting 90% of our product. We are benefiting from a very positive and very favorable tax scheme.
Okay, you know the whole idea behind this Pillar Two is to get to a minimum tax rate of 15%. In Thailand, we are quite far away from this rate. So at the beginning of the year, we told you we're expecting the impact to be around THB 250 million THB 250 million for the whole year. Okay, we have been revising down in Q2 and again in Q3. Okay, in Q2, we told you between THB 100 million and THB 150 million. Now it would be very likely slightly below THB 100 million. Okay, the key explanation from that, there are multiple explanations. The first one is our profit is a bit lower compared to expectation, which is not a good reason, but we have to acknowledge that overall our performance is not in line with our guidance. That's point number one.
Point number two is to say also the tax expense is a bit higher compared to expectation. We had in some businesses in Thailand, some BOI coming to maturity, coming to expiration, and I think we did not really budget in the right way for that, and this is why our ETR, our effective tax rate, is a bit higher compared to expectation, so lower profit and ETR, which is a bit higher, and this is why we do believe now for the full year, the impact to be more in the range of THB 100 million. Okay, for your information, this is a very dynamic calculation. It's a very technical one. The first time we are doing this, so we miss a bit of background. Okay, so it's a very dynamic calculation.
We are also considering a few options for the end of the year where potentially we could reduce compared to the THB 100 million impact. This impact, but this is still a point we are discussing right now with our advisors and auditors. But the one thing for you to keep in mind is the impact will be lower compared to our initial expectation. I think this is very positive news. How sustainable will it be for 2026 and the years after? I would expect the impact for the next years to come to increase. Why? Because we do expect our profit in Thailand to increase, and we do expect that we'll benefit again from all the BOI incentive schemes. Okay, so don't take it for granted that forever it will be this amount of THB 100 million. But I think it's a very positive development.
Now we'll hand over to Khun Kwan for the view by BU.
Thank you, Khun Ludo. Hello, everyone. I would like to update you on our business category. You can see that in the nine months that have passed in this year, we have added it all together and it's over THB 90 billion in the sales contribution for the ambient to the value added. We have increased contribution from our value added and from the pet care. The nine months ambient has a gross margin at 20.3% gross profit margin, and our guidance was 20% to 22%. Frozen business is 12.7%, 12.7% gross profit margin. For pet care, it's at 25.3% for gross profit margin, and the range was at 23%-25%.
For the value added business for the nine months, it's at 26.6% gross profit margin, and we were targeting more than 25%. On the next page, you can see the third quarter for the ambient business for the canned goods. Our sales have gone down compared to the last quarter since we were in the year before. This is because of the FX translation, as Lulu explained earlier. If we take a look at the sales volume, you can see that the sales have gone down a little bit by 0.6% year on year. This decline, the main reason is because of the demand in the U.S. for OEM customers. And the second reason is for the high baseline in the Middle East region. In the third quarter for 2024, it was a high baseline for us. This also includes the third quarter and fourth.
September this year, we have a postponement in shipments from OEM customers in the Middle East. Nonetheless, if we take a look at the OEM in Europe, you can see that in Europe, the demand has increased, especially from Germany, and as for our branded business, our branded customers, the volume remains solid, and this reflects our marketing and promotion that we continue to implement, and we informed you of that earlier. The gross profit margin is at 19.4%, down 0.7%, and the main reason for this is the cost that we have absorbed in terms of the U.S. tariff, and the pricing, we aren't able to pass through 100% just yet, so that's why we have an impact in this quarter. On the next page, the nine months for the ambient business, we have a drop in the sales. You can see a 7.3% drop year on year.
This is because of the FX impact. We have a sales volume that has gone down by about 3%. The main reason is because of the OEM customers who are waiting to see due to the uncertainty of the U.S. tariffs in the past period. They were waiting to see what would happen. The sales volume in the U.S. has gone down. This is offsetting some of the offset by the demand increase in Europe. The gross profit margin is still in the range that we have set for the 20.3% for the past nine months. The presentation that we provided in the past, our marketing and promotion push. On the right-hand side, you can see the promotion that we have had, whether it's with Petit Navire in France or Mareblu in Italy and Chicken of the Sea in the U.S.
On the next page, our frozen business, it is a combination of many segments, and there are four of them. The first is the frozen shrimp, and the second is the chilled salmon. The third is the feed, and the last is others. And the sales in the third quarter were at THB 10.334 billion, increasing 5% year on year, mostly due to the sales volume. As our executives mentioned earlier, the sales revenue and the volume have increased, and this is due to the TFM feed. They have strong performance results, and they have recorded an all-time high in their sales volume and their sales value. And we are still seeing increasing demand for the frozen shrimp in the U.S. as well. If we take a look at the gross profit margin for us in this quarter, it is at 13.8%.
It has increased 1.8% year on year. This is mostly due to the feed business that we mentioned earlier. If we take a look at the chilled business, the chilled salmon, it also has strong performance. If we take a look at the performance that does not include the feed, you can see that the gross profit margin for the frozen business and the chilled segment is still favorable, very favorable. For the past nine months, for the frozen business, it has gone down by about 5% year on year. This is mostly due to the OEM customers in the U.S. because the price of shrimp in the past nine months has increased significantly by about 12.4% year on year. If we take a look at the branded products, we're seeing an increase in the sales volume.
The gross profit margin is at 12.7% for the first nine months of this year. This is an all-time high for the gross profit margin for the past nine months for the frozen business unit. This is mostly driven by the feed and the chilled business. Next, the pet care in the third quarter, pet care business in the third quarter has sales at THB 4.624 billion, increasing 6.2% year on year despite the impact from the foreign exchange. In terms of the sales volume, you can see that the pet care business has done very, very well at about 10% year on year. This increases due to the U.S. market and also the market in Europe as well.
In terms of the European market, if we track the past period, there has been a drop in pet care, but ITC has a strategy to expand its sales in Europe. And this quarter, they have been able to achieve the strategy that they put in place. Looking at the product mix, you can see that for the third quarter, the premium product mix has increased compared to the same period last year up to 55.1%. And this is another key driver for the pet care revenue increase. The gross product margin is at 25.8% for the third quarter. This is more than the target that was set at 23% to 25%. Despite the drop year on year by 4.8%, we'd like you to know that in the third quarter of last year, there was a benefit for the pet care business from the inventory reversal.
If we exclude this inventory reversal, then the gross profit margin declined by only 3.1%, and this is due to the pet care business unit having to provide support to their customers because of the tariff impact. As for the past nine months for the pet care business, we have seen an increase of 3.3% in the first nine months thanks to increasing the volume by 11% year on year, and this is driven by the increased demand in the U.S., while the gross profit margin is also very strong at 25.3%. If we take a look at the last business unit, which is our value added business, you can see that the sales is THB 2.296 billion, dropping 16% year on year. The main element for the value added business, there are four main elements. The first is the value added products, which are the ambient and frozen.
The second is packaging. The third is our ingredients. The fourth is byproducts. The last is others. In the last quarter, the sales that declined for the value added category are from the value added products in the U.S. for the most part. If we take a look at the European market, we can see an improvement in terms of the value added products. Nonetheless, if we take a look at packaging, the sales have gone down. This is in line with the ambient category. The sales volume for the value added products went down by 10%. This is mostly due to the byproducts and the packaging and value added product segments. Our gross profit margin has improved a bit compared to the same period in last year, up to 25.6%.
In the past nine months for the value added business, the sales have declined by about 10% year on year. At the same time, the volume has increased a bit by about 1%. The reason for the drop is every segment except for the ingredient business. The gross profit margin is still in a positive range at 26.6%. Next, I would like to pass things back to Mr. Thiraphong to provide the outlook for 2025. Thank you. For the year 2025 outlook, there isn't much change. The sales growth, we may have to adjust it downwards a little bit from before we gave guidance of -1% to -2%. But at this moment, we are looking at -5%. So we want to adjust it to -2% to -4%. We expect an improvement in the fourth quarter.
The gross profit margin remains the same at 18.5% to 19.5%. SG&A is also the same at 13.5% to 14.5%. We might see a bit increase in this, but it won't be that different. There isn't anything that's exceptional to worry about. CapEx is at THB 3.5 billion to THB 4 billion. The effective interest rate, there is no change. The dividend policy remains the same. We will continue to pay at least 50% twice a year. The presentation has come to an end. If you have any questions, we welcome them. I think what's important to remember is what the indicator is the gross profit margin. If this is improving, this is because it's the COGS reduction that we're working on. It's the SG&A. We'll see if the level decreased from 14 to 13.5 or not. We have to monitor this as well.
I believe that there are indicators that can provide clarity. In the past two to three years, if we had not taken this action, our margin would probably not have improved because of inflation, which has increased significantly. And in some places, the currency is at the core, like in Ghana. In Ghana, if we had a stable forex, but it's gone down by 10%, remember, but their forex has gone up and their money continues to appreciate by 40%. And this is something that exceeded all of our expectations. So there are so many other factors at play. But overall, you can see there has been a drop for us, a lowering for us. And the Ambient factories, there's a standardization. We have them all aligned under one line. Rather than everyone doing their own thing, we have a more standardized procedure.
If there are no other questions, then we would like to thank you all for your interest. And we hope that we will continue to receive your support, not just your votes for the awards, but provide us general support as well. Thank you so much.