I hope everyone can hear me. I think that's a yes. Yeah. Good. Great. There are many slides and quite a bit of interesting information. I'll try to go quickly through the presentation and at the end, as always, we'll be happy to open for questions and to have an open discussion with you at the end. These are the, you know, the people that are today presenting from Purcari Wineries. I'll be the main presenter, but everyone is here in the call, perhaps some of them may come into discussion later at the Q&A stage. This is the agenda. We'll give brief information about the Purcari Wineries.
Through this, I'll go very quickly because you know, we've used these slides quite a bit, so I'll try to be quick on time. Then we'll show the results for the nine months of this year. We'll give you a bit of an M&A update. There are a few subjects there. You know, Angel's Estate, EcoSmart and the rest of the strategy. We'll look at the guidance that we gave at the beginning of the year and how we're doing against this guidance. A quick look at the Purcari wine store. By the way, before maybe I jump in, I'd like to actually mention that right now I'm in Bulgaria. I'm at the premises of Angel's Estate, and right next to me, Eugeniu Baltag is also here.
We're already, of course, we've dug into the operations of Angel's Estate and doing what we need to do to get this company running. We'll get into this later. Very quickly, the overview. You know, we still see ourselves as the leading large winery in Central and Eastern Europe. Until now, we were present in two markets with our operations in the Republic of Moldova and Romania. As of tenth of October of this year, we can also say that our footprint is now in three geographies, in three countries with the acquisition of Angel's Estate.
You can see that, before this acquisition, we were in this, let's say, cluster of, let's say, a large area of vineyards. The first one in the Central Eastern Europe with 338. That's the combination of Moldova, Romania, the area of vineyards of these two countries. Now, with Bulgaria, all these countries are connected with their borders. We are in the area which is crossing to 400,000 hectares of vineyards in this area. We always say that if we wanted to start and to follow our vision of becoming the champion in the Central Eastern Europe, we are in the right regions to do so.
I always find it good to stop at this slide for a bit. Just very quickly, you know, of course, it's unfortunate what is happening in Ukraine. The war is still going on. Just a quick look at the correlation between or the relationship between the stock price and our revenue. You know, we've pretty much managed to double the company since the company IPO'd in February 2018. Despite that, of course, we understand there's a certain risk component in the setting up of the price of our stock. Today the share price is lower than at the time when we IPO'd. I'll skip these slides.
Of course, you know our quality is very high. You know that we are the most awarded winery in the world in 2021, and we still keep on receiving many awards. In fact, there's a slide later in the presentation. Let me jump into the financial results for nine months. This is a high-level visual representation. Here we're showing the results for the group overall. In revenue, the revenue increased from RON 166 million to RON 199 million for nine months. So it's a 20% increase year-over-year over the same period of nine months last year. Overall great result.
You will see that it's a combination between what we call the core business. Basically, it's our wine business and the château and the combination with the EcoSmart business, which also contributes to this revenue growth. On the EBITDA side, we increased our EBITDA year-over-year to RON 60.7 million. Now it's a +4% increase. Again, there's an impact of EcoSmart, relatively small, though. It's a relatively small negative impact from EcoSmart on the EBITDA side. The normalized net income has increased by 1% to RON 35.4 million. Why we call it normalized?
Because last year, in the nine-month period, we've incurred a benefit or we've had proceeds from the sales of the GCC stake, and we received around another EUR 1 million in that period. In order to see apples to apples, we've normalized it. The nine months of 2021 was 34.9 without that contribution, and now we are at 35.4. Just to note that in the presentations that we've issued and published, we'll issue an errata. We'll adjust the graph, the graphics and the numbers with the normalized EBITDA because it was a last-minute decision to introduce this normalization versus the GCC contribution of last year.
That normalization has squeezed or has somehow managed to get it itself to the EBITDA, but we know that that's not how it's supposed to be. We'll do an errata. We'll issue a new document over this. When we speak about the wine segment, because again, we're trying to do as much as possible apples to apples, and we've always mentioned that we have a commitment towards our investors to delimit and to give as much visibility as possible into the wine business and into the EcoSmart because these are in a way separate businesses and, you know, in many of the analysts' models, you know, maybe those figures can ruin a bit the model.
We've taken this commitment to give you as much visibility into the wine business and to the EcoSmart business separately, so you can do your figures and calculations. Now if we were to go again to apples to apples, we're comparing our wine business from nine months of last year versus nine months of this year. Revenue has grown 13% to RON 186.6 million. The contribution of EcoSmart was RON 13 million. The EBITDA is up 6% now to RON 67.3 million from RON 57.3 million. This normalized net income is up 7%. I'll cover this very fairly quickly because we have many slides that kind of overlap with the information.
Overall, you see that through organic growth, we're showing strong organic growth, in fact, within the guidance, and we are managing to have strong margins. Overall, you know, we are in this period of inflation and, you know, we can call it also maybe an energy crisis situation. We are prioritizing margins over volumes. That has, you know, shown in the numbers for various countries where overall we are growing. If we were to speak just about the third quarter, +27% increase. We had a strong quarter. All the markets relatively are doing well.
There's maybe the central Europe, Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Baltics, and of course, Ukraine, if we look at the nine months, has had an impact. Even though in fact Ukraine, if you take just the three months, has shown a growth versus last year. That's encouraging. Of course, we are fully aware of the situation that's happening there. Overall, when we look at the margins, we see that we've managed to cope well. M&A, you all know we've acquired the 76% stake in Angel's Estate. It's a beautiful winery in the center of Bulgaria, with a strong market share, strong sales, good positioning. It's just that there's some work there to be done to turn it around.
I'll speak about this for a bit. This year, you know, we've continued to award dividends. 0.51 RON per share was awarded. It was paid on the eighth of September. This was a 5.51% yield on that date. You know, in the pre-registration, we received quite a few questions about what our policy, dividend policy will be going forward. I'll repeat it. Our policies will always remain to pay up to 50% of the net profits generated by the company in the previous year. This is something that we want to do because we mentioned the word discipline.
We need to make sure that we create the cash flow and the profits to reward our investors. You know, in the same way that we have a positioning to our customers, you know, that affordable luxury, it's also that we have a positioning towards our investors. Towards our investors, we want to be seen both as a growth company that generates growth, you know, has a large CAGR growth, which we have, and will generate yield through the growth of the price of the shares, but also a value company which is has strong margins and generates profits to reward dividends from its operations. Also on the investor side, we've maintained a high liquidity.
We are the second most liquid share, liquid stock on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. With that, we've maintained our position and our presence in the FTSE Global Micro-Cap Index. We've held an investor day at the Château. It was great to see many of you there. I hope this was a beautiful experience, for you, for everyone that was present there. It seemed. We hope to see many more in the future because we plan to repeat this event going forward. Going a bit more in depth here. Here we show both the nine months and the third quarter alone.
Again, top line, revenue, RON 199.8 million for the nine months, RON 75.9 million for the third quarter. Over nine months, it's a growth of 20%. Over the third quarter, 27% growth. The gross profit, it's a gross profit margin of 45% for the nine months, 42% for the third quarter. This, of course, also includes the business of EcoSmart, which a bit pulls the gross profit margins down. If we did here a quick calculation. Just for the wine, for the third quarter, for example, just for the wine, we are at a gross profit margin of 47%.
We'll see the nine months in the next slide where we split the core business and the EcoSmart business. Overall, we're moving down. We have an EBITDA of RON 60.7. That's 30% EBITDA, despite again the negative contribution of EcoSmart, which is fairly strong. For the wine business 60.9, which was a gross profit margin was hitting a bit. Quarter nine, so pretty much the same, EBITDA margin for the third quarter. Overall, EBITDA margin is relatively stable, which is a good sign. We are showing also very, we believe that in these conditions that around us are very strong net profit margin for the nine months of 18%.
When we do apples to apples, of course, we remove that contribution from GCC sale of last year. So 18% of nine months, 19% at the third quarter. Overall it's a strong business performance. Now splitting a bit the wine business and the EcoSmart, we show here just the nine months. So you see here that the contribution of EcoSmart to the revenue was RON 13.1 million. Gross profit margin of 25%, obviously pulling down a bit the gross profit margin for the overall group results. Wine business at 47% gross margin. It's very solid. Moving down, we look at net profits.
EcoSmart is pulling down a bit at the -0.9 million RON, but that's this negative 0.9 million RON. In fact, we've included in the first half. If you remember that we mentioned that the, let's say, the negative impact or that this cleanup that we spoke about of EcoSmart has already been done. Pretty much a line has been drawn. Sure, there may be some, a bit more cost incurred with some lawyers because of the open cases that we have there, as part of the cleanup. But overall, operationally it's strong and you'll see that we have a plan for this.
In fact, the company looking back at the track record has a good track record with very large top line revenue and with strong net profits generations. You know, we're looking to bring that business back to what it can do. Just for the wine business, again, 19% net profit margin. This is a very, you know, a strong number. Despite the situation in the world and in the region, we believe that this is a great success for the nine months of our. A quick look on the balance sheet. Balance sheet looks very healthy.
For us this is an important aspect. We've received quite a few questions regarding well, they were kind of relating to the buyback, and maybe we can go into this in the Q&A. Around the capital allocation, what is the plan, you know, what would be the reason that we would not proceed with the buyback? By the way, regarding the buyback, I think it's worth to mention that, when the buyback was approved at the AGM, it was not necessarily the buyback itself, it was the option of buyback.
Just to be clear, because I have the impression that many investors have, you know, have had the impression that the company has or the AGM has approved a buyback and the company has asked for the approval of an actual buyback process. No, the approach was more we've pre-approved the option of doing a buyback should we be in the position and believe that this is the best course of action to go forward. Looking at the situation, we understand, and I'm sure that you also understand that having a strong balance sheet in this period can be a good thing for the resilience of the company, first of all.
Secondly is also to take opportunities or to make use of certain opportunities that arise in the market, perhaps also on the M&A side. That's why we believe that, you know, having that ability to finance transaction and M&A transaction is important in the period to come. Looking now at the numbers, when it comes to the growth of revenue per each country. Romania +11%. Romania overall doing very well. All the brands are doing very well. Ceptura also contributed now with double-digit growth. Purcari with a single-digit, but continuing its growth in Romania.
Bardar almost doubling over 9 months in Romania, which is encouraging because now Bardar in Romania is actually becoming quite a strong revenue and profit generator. Moldova now at 29% growth. Here all the brands are performing very well. We you know we've reported I think the first quarter +40%, plus forty something percent. I don't remember exactly the number. In the third quarter there was still growth. Okay, maybe not as strong as in the first or the second quarter. Overall you know very very solid growth with +29% across all brands. Purcari, Bostavan, Bardar, they're all showing strong performance in Moldova. Poland +11%.
We see very strong performance for both Bostavan and Purcari. Of course, Bostavan is the large revenue generator. Bostavan grew at around 7% for the nine months. A good portion of this growth was in fact a price increase and a bit of a sales mix. It just reiterates that approach that we prioritize margins over volume. Volume was pretty much flat on Bostavan in volume. Purcari grew by almost 50% in volume.
This is encouraging because Poland is a large market, and for us to create a new pillar of growth in Poland, and especially a pillar of growth which is Purcari, which also is a good margin generator, is important and is encouraging to see that. Overall, Poland with the +11%. In China or Asia overall, +56%. Here again, all brands across the board are showing strong performance. Purcari nearly doubled versus last year. Bostavan + around 30%. Bardar also nearly doubled versus last year. China, I'm always mentioning this, that China is a continuous work.
It's not the type of market as if there are other markets where we have, you know, a few, stable, very stable, relationships with importers and distributors. It's more of a market where we work with multiple distributors, and it's a continuous work from the sales team to generate sales over there. China perhaps has also taken a bit of a different approach in managing COVID. They had this. They have. I'm not sure they still have it, but they have this, you know, zero COVID approach, which still meant quite a few restrictions. We're yet to see how China will open up and how this will help or not our sales.
Well, let's go to Czech and Slovakia. -10% here. The positive news is that Purcari sales nearly doubled, of course, from a much lower base. The Bostavan sales lowered. That again it just shows that in this time of a crisis or of perhaps even a lowering purchasing power of the consumers. In fact, the price sensitivity of demand, it's more in the lower segments. You know, we are more in the mass market in Czech Republic with Bostavan than in the upper segments. You know, Purcari is pretty much growing across the board. Here we notice that we have a slowdown.
Further maybe a drill down here is that we combine Czech Republic and Slovakia. In fact, Czech Republic has declined a bit more. That's still the Tesco. We still get impacted by Tesco. Slovakia in fact has shown positive growth. It's a mixed bag for performance here. Now Ukraine, it's -50% on nine months level. The positive news is that the third quarter we've registered a +4% increase. That's great to see. Of course, we're not kidding ourselves. We know that it's gonna be maybe some delayed orders. There's still a war in the countries. We are still active in supporting the Ukrainian people through the creation of Purcari Foundation.
We have some projects there. We have donations from our partners. You know, despite just doing business, we also feel that we have, you know, we can also contribute positively to the people of Ukraine and the rest of the world, +7%. Now looking at Purcari, Bostavan, Crama Ceptura and Bardar, just these brands on a brand level. Purcari +16%, Bostavan +8%, Crama Ceptura +3%, and Bardar +17%. Again, it's a mixed bag of performance. I've pretty much covered this in previous slide. Good. Now, also part of the operational update. You know, for us it's important to, on one hand, protect our assets.
One of our main assets are our vineyards. As we see that, you know, more and more, there's maybe this climate change and the warming of the climate, it's even more now important to install irrigation systems at our vineyards. We've done that at Purcari. As of July, all the Purcari vineyards have been irrigated. That has actually helped already with the generation of the yield and also the quality of the grapes. Just for everyone to understand, it's not only quality, but actually quantity because you are able to give the plant just the right amount of humidity that it requires to be optimal in its quality as well.
We've installed the two large storage pools among the vineyards. 11,000 cubic meters and 24,000 cubic meters. This in fact allows us to irrigate another 200 hectares of vineyards as we plan to further increase our vineyards at Purcari. Due to the fact that you know the breakeven period from this project is very low, 2-3 years, we're planning to do this at the Bostavan vineyards around 600-650 hectares of vineyards there as well. We plan in 2023 to launch the irrigation project at that winery in those vineyards as well.
This will give us protection, this will give us strong yield, and even sort of a negotiation power in the market when we're acquiring third-party grapes. Speaking about the yield, 2022 was a fantastic year when it comes to our harvest. Let's say, during the Investor Day and the six months reporting, this was a question. Overall, we were seeing already during the year that the yield will be good. Here you see that we've managed to collect 12.3 million kilos of grapes from our vineyards. We also had a positive, or let's say, favorable pricing for third-party grapes.
We've bought 21.8 million kilos of grapes this year. This was to supply our needs for production and sales at the winery, but also to create a stock for distillation at Bardar. Overall, the harvest was strong. With the irrigation of Bostavan vineyards next year, we should be able to almost have a reliable figure around this figure year-over-year when it comes to the yield, and perhaps even larger in the future. We keep on investing in the different areas. You know, now energy, this energy crisis is a topic. Our investment in the solar panels becomes even more timely.
It's an annual production of 240,000 kWh. It's around 50% of the needs, electricity needs at Purcari Wineries. We want to keep on doing this because again, you look at the ROIs and the break-even points of these kind of investment projects. They're not necessarily towards our product, but they have this financial component or this financial return component. You know, given again the good ROI and the break-even points of this solar panel investment, we want to keep on investing and keep on installing this kind of solar panels at Purcari, but also at Bostavan. At Bostavan, in fact, the roofs now are you know, almost optimal for installing solar panels.
We want to keep on doing that. At Bostavan, we have this internal target that somewhere around maybe 5 years we want to reach to be able to supply 80% of the electricity needs just from solar alone. We've mentioned this a few times, but since we speak about growth and sustainability, you know, part of the growth is to have a warehouse that can allow the logistics of you know large sales in Romania, but also in Europe. We've built this at Iași. It can store around 1 million bottles. This will allow us to streamline and to be more efficient and more cost-efficient when it comes to our logistics towards Europe.
We don't stop when it comes to products. We actively invest in products. We look into new categories and I think we're doing very good at that. From the left side when we started, Purcari Nocturne, it's an amazing success on the Romanian market. Now it's also on the Moldova market. The wines are incredibly. They're really incredible. Yes, they're a bit more costly, but they also sell a bit higher. They're more costly because the collection of the grapes is happening very early in the morning, while it's still dark. Thus comes the wording and the name Nocturne. Nocturne also connects to the fact that it's a HORECA, so it's more an evening consumption occasion.
It's a beautiful name, but also a very successful product with a very fantastic wine inside those bottles. Academia Purcari, it's a newly launched project. These are wines that are vinified in amphoras. A fantastic success. It's a very limited edition wines, around 20,000 bottles. But top of the range, relatively highly priced. Then we have Native and Prociano. Native is a new, I cannot call it yet biological, but it's a vineyards that are in the process of receiving the biological certification. Next year we're looking to have these wines already called biological.
Basically it's our new line of going into this organic product, which is something that's growing around the world, and we're sure that this will have success as well. Prociano also in that health more healthy spectrum. Prociano, in fact, is a zero alcohol wine. It's very high in these flavonoids procyanidins, which helps the cardiovascular system of the body. It's a zero alcohol, it's high in these flavonoids, and it's also low calorie. You know, the team also worked on to making sure that it's low calorie so that we cover all the basics of you know calling it a healthier product. We're about to launch this product.
I think the first batch has been bottled. We are targeting, of course, Western Europe and Northern Europe, which, where this kind of the demand for these kind of products is growing fastest. We are entering also, you know, different segments when it comes to lifestyle and the profile of the customer. This new product, wine frame, you know about it, but now we also launched a Moscato, and we're about to launch a sparkling series as well from this brand. Last but not least, the 25-year Bardar, great success and an amazing brandy. It has won the number one spot in the world in the brandy competition.
It has been awarded the Taste Master of the World. This is a fantastic achievement. You see, all of our products are becoming number one in the world. Purcari has become the most awarded winery in the world in 2021, and our Bardar brandy has become the number one in the world in this brandy category. We were just covering this, how fantastic we're doing at international competitions. Here you see that, you know, we keep on winning grand gold with rosé. We were awarded the Wine of the Week by Jancis Robinson in the UK. She's the most known wine critic from the UK.
To be awarded the Wine of the Week, this is a fantastic achievement. Number 1 in the world with Bardar. Best producer from Moldova at Mundus Vini. Fantastic result to be mentioned with Negru de Purcari and to be awarded by Decanter Negru de Purcari being in the top 50 classic wines of 2021. Fantastic achievement. We continue to be top 10 best sparkling wines in the world. Of course, this is important to have this recognition. We are, you know, slowly but steadily, we're building our awareness and perception, not only in the regions where we're strong, we are now penetrating the world, Europe and the rest of the world.
Getting this kind of recognitions is important because this is how, you know, we are getting to the, not only to the consumers, we're getting to the world consumer, but also to the world buyer and distributor. We're doing that with, let's say, calculated costs. We're not, you know. You can imagine that, to try to build brand awareness through just throwing money at it's quite expensive adventure. This is the better way of doing it, just having good quality. We're staying relevant through different events that we're supporting and that we're doing. You know, we've been a sponsor at the Chisinau Big Hearts Marathon. We're doing this famous winemakers competition in Moldova.
Our brand, DOR, did this flash mob at Independence Day of Republic of Moldova. We were happy to see you at Investor Day earlier this year. We are supporters and, you know, we have this philanthropy through the now Purcari Foundation at Hospice Angelus, but also at other charities such as Copil, Comunitate, Familie. It's Child Community Family, which is part of the Hope and Homes for Children from the UK. Many of you maybe know it. It's HHC, so it's a known organization around the world. Congratulations to the team at Purcari. Purcari became the Winery of the Year at the National Wine Day of Moldova this year. Now moving into the M&A update.
As always promised, we want to give you as much visibility into the situation with EcoSmart. Just starting from the back, you can see the historical financials of EcoSmart. You see the revenues have reached RON 85.8 million in 2020. With that growth, though, in that year, the net profit has decreased. Those were the first signs that something is not going well at EcoSmart when it comes to how it's being managed. At that time, Crama Ceptura had a 27% stake in EcoSmart. The first, let's say, the initiation of cleanup and this investigative audit was started. Then some civil and criminal cases were opened at that time against the administrator.
With that situation, we decided that in order for us to be able to better protect our investment and to actually contribute to some kind of a turnaround of this company, we saw the opportunity to increase our stake in the company to 65.75%. Worth to mention that this investment overall in 65.75% of EcoSmart cost us RON 450,000. This is quite a small amount, I would say, for the potential of the company. Overall, we would see this as a great deal. The final cleanup was done, you know, in the first half. We saw the final cleanup being done.
Back then, we reported that RON 8.9 million of revenue and the net loss of RON 1 million. You can see that the RON 0.9 million net loss is maintained for nine months. Basically, the third quarter was pretty much flat. This already is, let's say, an inflection point. We know the operations are cleaned up. The plan is now to run this company as a proper revenue and contribution generator. The plan is, first of all, to recover the misappropriated funds. There are ongoing court cases for that. That's why we still have some kind of, we're incurring some costs with lawyers. We need to regain the larger customers.
We need to get that revenue to the level where it was. Maybe we'll reach, you know, first we'll reach RON 20 million, maybe then per year, yeah. Then we'll reach 50, then maybe we'll reach back that 85.8. There's a team that is working on this. We also need to set up an independent management team, which we're in the process of doing it, pretty much, the process is pretty much done there. What are the options for EcoSmart in the future? Well, we have three options what to do with EcoSmart. Number one is we would reduce the participation of Purcari into the Purcari Group or into the EcoSmart to below 50%.
Below 50% stake with the independent management would mean that we would not consolidate the results of EcoSmart into our consolidated group results. This again would bring back the visibility and, let's say, the figures will be focused on our wine business, because this would also mean that we can maintain our message to investors and perhaps also what investors would be looking for and when it comes to exposure to the wine business. Until now, our message was that we are a fast-growing company. We have, we're highly ambitious, and we have the vision of becoming a champion in the Central and Eastern Europe while being also very a business with very high margins, you know, 33% EBITDA and around 20% net profit margin.
Reducing this contribution to under 50% would get us into that, maintaining that message. Number two or B in this is presented here of the options would be to divest the business. We can then use these proceeds to of course, we need to void first, clean up, making it an attractive business, divest it, and then use the proceeds to either invest in growth or to award an extraordinary dividends to our shareholders. The third one would be to maybe perhaps maintain the stake, because maybe the business is very good, it has a good contribution, which we believe that it will do.
In the meantime, to ensure that we allow full visibility into the business so that investors have a full understanding of the company and are able to segregate between the wine business and this waste recycling business. Moving on to Angel's Estate. Again, I'm speaking today from the area, from Angel's Estate. It's a beautiful winery. It's a full cycle winery, which means that it produces its own grapes. It processes the grapes, it does its own vinification, it does its own bottling, and it has its relationship with the sales channels in Bulgaria. It's a positive, good structure where the company has direct contracts with the key accounts. Kaufland, Metro, Billa, Fantastico, and so on.
These are the big key accounts here in Bulgaria, but also works with the distributors for supplying to HORECA and fragmented trade in Bulgaria. Overall, the situation is, let's say on the top line, and the fundamentals of the business, the situation is good. At the moment, the business is producing. Historically, the business has been producing negative margins. Just to give you an idea, because it was also one of the questions. The 2021 revenue for Angel's Estate in RON was RON 13.5 million. For the nine months, the Angel's Estate is now producing RON 11.5 million, and that's a 38%.
Nine months, the revenue grew 38% versus the same period of last year. We are estimating that the company will finish the year with around RON 15 million in revenue. Now, when it comes to net profit, in 2021, the company generated a minus or a loss of RON 1.7 million. This was a minus 12.5% net profit margin. We are still forecasting a negative margin this year. A loss, the company will still make a loss this year.
The consolidation of the results of Angel's Estate will be only for the fourth quarter results, and you will see it in the unaudited financial results when we do it in the around end of February next year when we report for the unaudited results of the group. That's when the fourth quarter will be consolidated into the group results. Overall, we do have a plan here. You know, even in this slide, we're mentioning that, you know, there's some quick wins that we've identified even in the process of the due diligence and the negotiations with the sellers. And some of them are. I can actually mention because they're some of them are, how can I say?
They're very clear, and it's very we can focus on them quite quickly. The first inefficiency was in the agriculture area, where the company was producing a yield of around 2.73 tons per hectare. You can see that in the previous slides, we showed that we as a group, we produced 12.8 million kilos. That's just under 10 tons per hectare. The inefficiency when it comes to this is relatively high. The Angel's Estate is producing 3, we need to bring it to 10 tons per hectare. The cost of the operations in the vineyards are almost double of Purcari Group.
Okay, we took Romania, which is perhaps maybe a bit higher than Moldova when it comes to cost in the vineyard. Nonetheless, is still almost double than that. So there's a lot of efficiencies there. Now, this is the, let's say, the first project that we'll be working on. This will take maybe two years to fully clean up the agriculture area because the work in the vineyards need to be done correctly. Anyway, just I will not get into all this, but the positive news is the following, that if today the company would not have this inefficiency in agriculture, today the company would be profitable. You know, given the fact that we are will implement this, but there are also other things that we can improve with the company.
For example, it's commercial agreements with the key accounts that you know, there's a lot of work to be done there. Also, you know, working on the product mix on our brands, generating faster growth, plugging Angel's Estate into the Purcari Group, routes to market. Bringing Purcari into Bulgaria, through Angel's Estate under the same model that we have with Crama Ceptura in Romania. All of these added up, we are looking to relatively quickly turn this company around, turn profit and have a new pillar for growth in the separate regions. It's great for our salespeople when they go internationally. They have another region that they can bring them in the portfolio.
We are very confident that we can turn Angel's Estate into a national champion here in Bulgaria. Besides fantastic wine that it does, and the good thing is that the quality is very high. The pricing is correct. In RON terms, the average prices will be between 25 and 30, or maybe between 25 and 35 RON on the shelf. That's a good, decent price on the shelf. Besides all these fundamentals being in place, the company also has a very high potential to become a point of interest. It's very beautiful here where I am.
It's situated in the center of Bulgaria, and the building allows for, you know, it depends how crazy we want to go, but for sure, some HORECA component with it, at least a restaurant, but even potentially with a hotel similar to Château Purcari. Of course, we are in early days. It's just over a month since we've taken over the company. We've already have a strategy in place. You know, obviously there's more work to be done and planning of what needs to be done in the future for this company. Overall, we are very happy with the acquisition that we've done and to create this new pillar of growth in Bulgaria.
Now that we speak about M&A, of course, M&A is an important component of us becoming a wine champion in Central and Eastern Europe. What is the formula? How we're going to do it? Of course, number one is we need to make sure that we're growing both through organic and through M&A. We will always focus on the fundamentals. You know that. You know, the yield even to you as an investor must primarily come through the fact that we are generating top-line growth and bottom-line growth while delivering what we call the affordable luxury. We're staying true to our approach and to our strategy. An approach is to create in every country where we acquire a player to create a local champion. We have the formula for this.
We have the team for this. We have the know-how for this. We can bring this know-how to a newly acquired company. This is part of that route to becoming a champion in the CEE. Of course, we need to aggressively expand in other markets through exports. Even though we do have operations in the market, we can still attack it aggressively through the sales teams and, you know, even building local sales teams. We are very innovative in our product portfolio, and we will keep on doing that. Focus will always be on premiumization. You know, now that we are expanding our region, but this is all relatively. For example, from here to Bucharest is a four-hour drive.
Now we can, you know, overall as a group, we can create synergies and efficiencies when it comes to, let's say, procurement. We are, for example, negotiating cost prices for glasses, for example, or for labels. You know, we obviously have an advantage when we are large, but also at commercial management and production. This is an interesting one. We see that, you know, we mentioned this a few times. There was the Old World with France, Italy, Spain and Germany. Then there was the New World with Chile, South Africa, Australia, California and so on. There was a wave of adoption which among consumers around the world.
Now we see this as, and we'll call it the New Frontier world of wine, which is Moldova, which is Georgia, which is Bulgaria, Romania. We want, as a group, to become the leader in that, in that category of this New Frontier world. When this gets adopted and the way it is going, you know, it's in our favor, we want to benefit from that growth. Of course, we ultimately want to achieve, through some kind of metrics, that status of champion, undisputable, wine champion in the Central and Eastern Europe. Good. Going a bit to the guidance. We gave the following guidance at the beginning of the year, for 2022. Revenue growth between 15% and 20%.
Revenue growth just for the wine business between 10%-15%. EBITDA margin between 20%-25%, and net income margin between 10%-15%. You see that we are on the top of this spectrum with 20% growth for the top line. The contribution of EcoSmart is there. We are in the middle of our guidance for revenue growth of just wine, so +13%. EBITDA, very solid EBITDA margin of 30%, so above the guidance. Solid net income margin of 18% above guidance. We're going to maintain this guidance for the rest of the year. Again, we understand the complexities of the situation.
There is a potential energy crisis, and I'm sure you have questions about that. You know, there's this war in Ukraine. Overall, you know, perhaps a recession coming our way. The personal power of our consumers may further go down. We still believe in that lipstick effect that we keep referring to, where in terms of prices, the consumer may perhaps forego some more expensive luxuries like buying a new car, going on an expensive holiday, but they will compensate that lack of those expensive luxuries with more affordable luxury. That's exactly what we call our positioning on and our business model, affordable luxury. Somewhere, perhaps a crisis may actually help us, but we're yet to see that.
We remain prudent, and we will maintain this guidance for the rest of the year. Quickly on the Purcari Wineries' stock. You see here what I mentioned. We started with the index of 100 from our IPO. We are now below, so we are 93 out of a 100. Despite the fact that, as you can see, we've maintained our margins while growing the business, pretty much doubled the business, but we understand that there's somewhere, you know, a risk component into this pricing. We've always, you know, we've increased our the share of retail investors. I think we're around 15%. It was around 3% in 2018 or maybe the beginning of 2019.
We believe that this was important. You know, it makes as a company better communicating with investors, but also, in fact, it's the investors that are creating the transactions, the bulk of transactions, and are setting up the price. At that time, this was a good strategy because the company was going up. Of course, now with the situation in Ukraine, it perhaps worked a bit against us when the retail investor is a bit more risk-averse and now the price is where it is. Overall, look, we keep on doing our business. We keep on growing the business.
We know that eventually the share price will have to adjust to the business performance. When it comes to liquidity, we're still in the FTSE Russell All Cap and the Micro Cap. In terms of relative terms, we are the second most liquid company on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Certainly when it comes to peers, we are one of the cheaper ones. Peers, I mean other wine companies or wine groups that are listed on the stock exchanges. When it comes to other companies at the Bucharest Stock Exchange, in fact, we see that, you know, I think it's probably a good time to invest on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. The multiples are fairly low.
We're also on the low side when it comes to the multiples, to the P/E multiple, on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. This scatter chart, well, it's a combination of price to earnings multiple versus the CAGR. You can see that we are showing very strong CAGR, just under 20%, over the last five years or so, while we're actually low-priced. We are 7-something P/E multiple. Good. This was the presentation so far. I'm opening the floor to questions, please.
Hello. Thank you very much for your presentation, and congrats for the results. I was wondering, as I wrote on the chat, what do you think about the margin evolution going forward? Because we saw a little bit of a, well, a little problem there. How do you look at next year?
It's also in the guidance that we are giving, so we do see that we may have some certain impact on the EBITDA level. Overall, I think we are quite strong when it comes to maintaining this margin. It also comes from the fact that even when we are impacted, it's the lower priced product segments that are being impacted. That's where the price sensitivity, there's more elasticity in the demand when it comes to price. We understand that we're still impacted from the higher cost of energy. I can even give you.
The net impact, the delta of energy cost for this year, it's looking to be at around 1% of revenue. That's the impact of the increase in energy prices this year. That's one percent or one percentage point. We're still carrying maybe some more expensive inventories from the years when we had the drought in 2020, we had the higher cost of third-party grapes in 2021. The positive side is that this year, as you saw, we had a very good yield, and we had, you know, 2019 price levels of third-party grapes, which means that already as of second half of 2023, we'll see the benefits of this improvement in the COGS.
We'll continue in 2024 with the reds. As we invest in irrigation, we will have that this more controlled and foreseeable cost level when it comes to third-party grapes. Overall, look, in the long run, we're still looking to be at around 30% EBITDA margin and 20% net profit margin, we're speaking about the wine business.
Thank you so much. This is a little bit more conceptual market and is actually targeted specifically to you, Eugen. How do we feel about saturating the market versus oversaturating the market? Because wherever you look on the shelf, there is a Purcari product. This is good, but when do you see some cannibalization between the premium product and the, let's say, middle price product or the lower price product? Because they are more or less exactly the same brand. I understand Ceptura is different. I don't know how you position this Angel's, but from a marketing perspective, what do you think?
Well, look, here you're speaking about Romania. In fact, think about it this way, the Purcari Group has just around 10% market share in Romania. This is relatively small. When it comes to the opportunity to generate further growth, the opportunity is still there. Purcari by itself still has ample room for growth, we believe. Remember that our growth comes from both the ability to increase the price and to generate volumes, but Purcari on its own. But Crama Ceptura has space for growth because Well, Ceptura is also the brand is quite an extended brand.
We have wines that start around maybe 15, 16 RON and that extend to even up to 70 RON with all the name of the Crama Ceptura. Even with the Crama Ceptura further moving into the higher pricing with the Cervus, that alone can generate growth on the revenue side. In addition, we are launching new pillars for growth, such as Domeniile Cuza. Domeniile Cuza is a. The purpose of Domeniile Cuza is to cover the certain price segment that perhaps Purcari is leaving behind. There will not be a cannibalization because the price segments will still be different. Still Purcari is Purcari. But in the wine segment, we still see that there's ample room for growth in Romania.
Just staying on Romania, we're now creating strong growth in Bostavan. Bostavan has all this ability to grow ahead of it, for the years to come. Overall, in Romania, if we speak about growth, we still have many streams where we can generate this growth. In other markets, we have. I mean, we barely penetrated Poland, we barely penetrated Czech Republic and Slovakia. We barely penetrated the Netherlands, U.S., Canada, the Nordics. The nice thing about the Purcari business, and in fact, I'm also sometimes comparing because I'm also you know looking at the. I'm also an investor, I can say that. I'm also an investor on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.
You know, one thing about Purcari is that it's an export business. Sure, we make local champions in the markets where we have operations, and we are good at that, and we keep on doing. We have Bulgaria next, and maybe there's some other countries coming next. We are also an export business. In terms of growth, it's unlimited. The growth comes down to the fact of how good we are at making fantastic wines, making them in a cost-efficient way, market them well and sell them well. There's no limit for growth because we are an export business.
If I may add to this, Eugen, with your permission. We're still number four player in Romania. Still number four. There's three larger players ahead of us. As Eugen said, just around 10, 11% market share. If you look at our peers in other markets, say Concha y Toro in Chile has over 20% global market share. E. & J. Gallo in U.S. has over 20% market share. Clearly, our intention is to become number one market share company in Romania, and the target market share is around 20%+. That's our target, which means there's still ample room for growth in Romania. In some segments, for example, HORECA, we've just started really with October. In traditional trade, we're still relatively weak.
You know, yes, we are strong with key accounts, but we still have lots of room to grow in other segments.
Well, thank you so much. Actually, you should know with Black Friday, actually, I stocked up on presents for Christmas. What about Angel's? Where are you going to position that?
Well, the great thing about Angel's Estate that, you know, we say whether by design, or whether by circumstances, it has positioned itself, relatively high, what we see as the correct, pricing, in the market. If it's by design, then great, because indeed-
In the market you mean Bulgaria or,
We're speaking of Bulgaria. Now we're speaking about Bulgaria, because the previous owners, which are now the minority, 24%, their intention was to create a premium brand in Bulgaria, which was good. They've done all the correct investment. You know, all the correct investment when it comes to the winery, when it comes to the vineyards. The terroir is just you know, we had our Italian agricultural consultants come here at Angel's Estate, and I'll quote one of them said, "Even Italy doesn't have this." And indeed, the terroir is amazing. They've done all the correct investments. They've positioned the company correctly as a premium player.
They've been struggling with managing the business because the owners, in fact, they have many other large businesses. This was sort of a side business, and this is what usually happens with, you know, wineries are usually being created more as something for the heart, you know, and for the soul. When you do that, of course, there's room for mismanagement and probably somewhere, you know, this happened here. This was, of course, you know, a good opportunity for us to be in a good negotiation situation with the sellers. We have a, you know. On the market, the positioning is already great. We just need to sort out the internal things at Angel's Estate. That's number one.
The positioning is good as a premium player. For the international markets, it'll be again as a premium wine. But in our portfolio, it will be like we are the Purcari Group, so the salespeople, when they go and they do their pitch to buyers around the world, we are a large group, we are solid, we can create the best wine in the world because we have the most award-winning wine in the world. We have wines from Moldova, we have wines from Romania, we have wines from Bulgaria. This is. In fact, there's been.
If you think this way, there's no cannibalization between brands in our portfolio because this is another, you know, the Bulgarian wine, you can call it a different segment. For example, even in Poland, Bulgarian wine is considered as a different segment. There's a Bulgarian wine segment, there's a Moldova wine segment, there's a Georgian wine segment. Overall, the positioning will be still as a premium winery.
Great. Thank you so much for that.
If I may, I have a couple of questions also in on Angel's Estate. First, you're saying that they have a bottling capacity of 1 million, but how much are they selling now? Just for us to have something to look at, what do you think you'd be able to sell in a couple of years, let's say, and how much Purcari bottles did you sell last year? Just so we know exactly where to position it.
Sorry, I missed the beginning of the question. Are you questioning about?
Angel's Estate.
Angel's Estate.
Everything is. Yes.
Purcari sales in Bulgaria. First of all.
No, no. Purcari sales overall in bottles because we don't know exactly how many bottles you are selling. We see sales. But I'm not really sure about bottles.
Well, Juliana, look, we are trying, in fact, to not mention the volumes when it comes to our results because in our there are a few audiences for our reports. Of course, there's the investors, which we always trying to give as much information as possible, but there's also our competition and our distributors and our partners. Now, we need to be careful in showing volumes because once we show volumes then it's easy to calculate the average price per bottle, per liter, which we may be in a disadvantage when it comes to negotiating your position with.
Apologies for this, but we're happy to disclose the breakdown of revenues per market and per brand, but we cannot go into the volumes because this will show information that we would not want to show to the markets. That's when it comes to Purcari and, you know, to Angel's. Again, the Angel's revenue in 2021 was RON 13.5 million. At nine months, 2022, the revenue of Angel's was RON 11.5 million, and that's a 38% increase versus nine months last year.
What's the capacity? I mean, what capacity are they selling at right now?
Right now they're selling at, in liters, at around 800,000 liters. There you go. I've done the thing that I'm not supposed to do, which is to mention liters. Okay, we are just starting with this, so it's fine. That's around the level that it has sold. Matter of fact, let me actually, why don't I be a bit more specific maybe with that. Because I can actually tell you. More specific, because if I'm not specific, I may lead you in the wrong direction. Sorry, in terms of. Sorry, that was the units, that was quantity. In terms of liters, in 2021, half a million liters, so 500,000 liters.
In 2022, around 620,000 liters at 9 months, 2022. You will see that revenue is quite high. If you were to revenue per liter, RON 11.5, 0. point-
That's the capacity of total capacity for the vineyard. I mean
No.
You are looking to quadruple the capacity basically from the vineyard.
Yes. We're looking to quadruple the capacity from the vineyard. What will happen is the following when it comes to the efficiencies in the agriculture. Right now, the company is producing 2.7. Its yield is 2.7 per hectare when it should be 10. Obviously, the other necessities is buying, adding grapes or in third-party wine. Number one. First increment of the cost, which is not supposed to happen. Number two, it has a double cost in the vineyard than what it's supposed to. That, again, they're spending more. They were spending more in the vineyards and collecting 4 times less yield. Double the spend, 4 times less the yield, 8 times inefficiency. We will solve. We have the plan for this. This is something that we.
It's very controllable because it's internal. The other thing that we need to fix is the conditions with the key accounts. Because overall, you know, the key accounts are generating negative contributions to the business. That's. There's plenty of improvement there. Of course, we know that negotiating with key accounts is not an easy thing. We have our ways. We have, you know, we will come with a plan which is good for the winery and for the key accounts, which we've done it in the past and, you know, if we come with a plan, then we should be able to have improvements there as well.
Overall, the investment in the Angel's Estate, where now its production capacity is around 1 million bottles, we are looking to increase it to around 3.5 million bottles. We're looking to sell by in 5 years, by 2027. Okay. Our first, you know, initial models, we're looking to sell around 3 million liters in 5 years. We need to grow to 3 million liters.
We are reading a lot on Moldova and the energy crisis there.
Yeah.
In case of an energy shortage, what would be the impact for the wineries?
Well, the energy shortage can be on two sides. One is the gas and the other one is electricity. Let's take the electricity first. With electricity, shortage can mean that during the certain time there's no electricity. What we've done to counter that, we have generators that can, you know, for days, they can, or even weeks, they can, generate electricity. Like they can do it indefinitely if we have the diesel. We've loaded with. We have-- we've loaded on the, on the diesel, stock, I should say, to allow for, you know, to have undisrupted electricity at the wineries. That's number one. That's from the electricity perspective. From the gas perspective, in fact, only Bardar is a gas-intensive production platform because it uses heat for distillation.
The good news is that should there be, let's say, a breakout of gas, the distillation can always be delayed. We can do the distillation in December, we can do the distillation in January, February, March. Whenever there is gas supply, we perform the distillation. Just from breakouts of, well, let's say from loss of access to electricity and gas, we are protected. When it comes to cost, I've mentioned that we are foreseeing that in 2022, the impact of the increase in energy prices will have around 1%, will be 1% of the total revenue. Looking at where the prices are stabilizing, we see that the prices have stabilized.
In fact, the National Bank of Moldova, you know, there's a forecast that the inflation has reached a peak and overall the inflation will be moving down going forward. We've seen this also from European countries. These are the two aspects. One is the access to energy and the other one is the inflation of energy cost price.
Thank you so much.
Sorry, I cannot hear you, Dana.
I know. I was going to ask one more, but that's fine. Thank you so much.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Dana.
We have an additional question in the chat.
Sure. Which is? Which was the question?
From Pavel Filatov
Thank you, Pavel, for the question. Is there any marketing sales force engaged to have wines sold in Hungary, Baltic States that is geographically specialist in Europe? The answer is yes for Baltic States. We have a local sales manager. It's someone that's very experienced in the market, is an ex-buyer of you know, some of those chains, so very knowledgeable of the market. This is a longer process to create the right commercial strategy for Baltic States. The answer is yes, we have someone there. For Hungary, in fact, Hungary is not necessarily a market for our wines for now.
Perhaps we should look at it, but Hungary could be a target for an M&A, given the fact that, you know, many of the, I would say, probably many of the wineries will have a bit of shakeups during this period. That's why it's good to be sitting on a strong balance sheet and to see whether there are certain M&A opportunities. The one thing with the Hungarian wine that, you know, when you look at overall price per liter, it's actually one of the lowest in Europe. So, you know, even Bulgaria is higher priced. It has a different perception as a country, wine producer. Hungary, there are regions that are very famous for wine making in Hungary as well.
It's a mix there. Hungary could be a target or a destination for M&A transaction. Good. Well, look, if there are no other questions, I appreciate your time. Thank you for being here.
There is a question on the chat.
Sure. One more question. Okay. On Angel's, what timeline do you envision to reaching the efficiency improvement targets? 2 years. 50% of this will be done already next year. The other one. We see that by 2024, the yield of 2024 should be in line with the group figures. In fact, during the works, we are planning even to bring workers from Moldova for multiple reasons. One is to do the work properly, but also we plan to have some active instructions for the workers here in Bulgaria on how to work the vineyards. Overall, it's 2024 harvest should be in line with our group figures.
In our models, of course, we've been, you know, like we have internal models that are, you know, looking at, where the company will look in the future. We've been far more modest. At least I try to be more modest. With all the modesties, the company is turning profit the latest in 2025. The latest. You know, with assurance from, Victor Bostan and, Nicolae Chiosa, the Chief Production Officer and the other team, is that, by 2024, we are, the harvest is where it's supposed to be and the costs are where it's supposed to be in the agriculture. Which means that in 2024, we are, I don't like to say guaranteed, but that's where we are, we are turning the company, profitable.
We'll try to do that even in 2023, but again, we are realistic.
Hi. Congratulations on good result. I would like to ask just a quick question regarding Angel's Estate. So about gross margin. With what gross margin will this business be consolidated in the next quarter? And what gross margin should we expect from this business in the long term? Will it be similar to Purcari's gross margin or lower, higher?
Estimates that gross margin consolidation of only the fourth quarter in 2022. Fourth quarter of 2022 of Angel's Estate will have a gross margin of around 21%. This is early estimates. In the long run, we're looking to bring the gross margin to where Purcari is at around 46, 45 between 45% and 50% gross margin.
Okay. A quick question. Considering that we are at half of fourth quarter, and you probably have some visibility right now, could you please give us an overview of sales growth by country, if it is possible? If you performed any price increases during the recent months?
There is still room for price increases, because we see that the competitors are moving their prices up. In certain markets, certain segments, we see that there's a gap and we don't want to give that gap away. Because if we don't fill it up, we either give it to the key account or to the customer, and we want to take that gap to us. We'll continue to push for price increases. That's almost guaranteed. I can tell you that for the 10 months for the wine business, we have solid double-digit growth.
Okay. Thank you.
Are you going to source grapes or wine, the primary wines at Angel's for other-
Brands.
Well, you mean for other brands within Angel's or for other brands within the group?
Within the group.
No. In fact, the production will stay separate. There'll be a production for Bulgaria, production for Romania, production for Moldova, and there will not be any, let's say, carrying of grapes for sure, because that's almost impossible to do over border. It is too far. And most probably no wines as well. We'll look to fulfill our demand needs here in Bulgaria.
Thank you.
Thank you. Okay. Well, look, again, thank you.
Thank you very much for your presentation. It was really great as always. Thank you, Eugeniu. Thank you, Vasile. Thank you, Eugen and everybody. It was really nice and, it's, as always one of the highlights of the reporting.
We appreciate. Look, we always want to be as informative as possible. We want to bring value through these presentations and also through other events where we see each other. We want to maintain our 10 out of 10 Vector score. Is the voting ready for the best IR company? I'm not sure if the voting is-
It's too early.
We want to bring value to our investors, not only through the good business that we're doing, but also through other investor related or investor-directed activities, which is, you know, these reports also are part of. Thank you again. Thank you for your trust in us and look forward to either see you or hear you soon.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.
Thanks. Bye-bye.
Thank you.