Good morning, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to our first quarter earnings call, 2024. Speaking to you is Misael Álvarez, Director of Strategy, Portfolio, and Investor Relations. As presenters today, we will have Mr. Álvaro Correa, who took office as new Chief Executive Officer as of March of this year. Mr. Manuel Romero, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Álvaro Rojas, Vice President of Marketing Consumer Goods Peru, and CEO of Marketing Consumer Goods Peru, and other members of the senior management team who will join us during the Q&A section. Today, we will be discussing the first quarter 2024 results after the financial results and earnings report were issued on Monday. If you have not received a copy of the earnings report, please visit us at www.alicorp.com.pe, where you will also find a webcast presentation to accompany our discussion during this call.
Please be advised that today's call is for investors and analysts only. Therefore, questions from the media will not be taken. If you're a member of the media and wish to direct any questions to the company, please contact our team directly after the call. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that forward-looking statements may be made during this conference call. These forward-looking statements are based on several assumptions and factors that could change, causing actual reports to materially differ from current expectations. We ask that you refer to the disclaimer located in the earnings release prior to make any investment decision. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Álvaro Correa, Chief Executive Officer of Alicorp. Alvaro, please go ahead.
Thank you, Misael. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today. First, we will discuss our consolidated and business units' financial results, and then we will go through our leverage indicators. At the end, before the Q&A section, I will take the floor again for an update on our guidance for 2024 and some closing remarks. Let's review our consolidated adjusted gross profit on slide number five, please. Before going through our financial results, we would like to advise that the following figures are being presented on a pro forma basis. These adjusted figures exclude non-recurring impacts incurred during their respective period, and as mentioned in our last call, given that foreign exchange arbitrage opportunities in Bolivia are becoming recurrent and relevant, we are presenting crushing foreign exchange effects as part of the crushing margin.
Our consolidated adjusted gross profit has amounted to PEN 634 million, increasing 22% year-over-year. This was mainly explained by the performance of our Consumer Goods Peru unit, which increased PEN 97 million in the first quarter of this year. Consumer Goods International, B2B, and Crushing also exhibited positive results during the quarter. This was partially offset by Aqua Feed. Excluding the crushing business, adjusted gross profit amounted to PEN 593 million, and gross profit per metric ton reached PEN 1,311, increasing 21% and 33% year-over-year, respectively, marking a third consecutive quarter with very positive growth rates. Let us now review our EBITDA on slide number six.
Consolidated adjusted EBITDA reached PEN 340 million, a 43% year-over-year increase, explained by the performance of both Peru and International Consumer Goods, as well as B2B and Crushing. This was partially offset by a PEN 49 million decrease in our Aqua Feed business, which is still facing challenges, particularly on our shrimp business, due to negative market conditions. We expect these conditions to start improving in the following quarters. We will look into this later on this, in this presentation. Excluding the Crushing business, adjusted EBITDA amounted to PEN 313 million, and adjusted EBITDA per metric ton reached PEN 692, increasing 38% and 53% year-over-year, respectively.
With these results, we are delivering a third consecutive quarter with very positive growth rates in terms of adjusted EBITDA and adjusted gross profit, excluding crushing, which make us believe that strategic changes implemented last and this year place us on the right track. Now, let me pass the floor over to Alvaro Rojas, who will discuss in greater detail the operating results for our Consumer Goods Peru business.
Thank you, Álvaro. Let's move on to slide eight to discuss the performance of our Consumer Goods Peru unit. Regarding our business strategy, and as covered in previous calls, we are now prioritizing growth driven by our six emblematic brands and ensuring volume that adds increased value to our company. As evidence of the success of our new strategy, in the first two months of 2024, compared to the same period in 2023, we have gained market share in four key brands: 1.2 percentage points for Primor in edible oils, 1.4 for Casino in cookies and crackers, 0.2 for Alacena in culinary sauces, and 0.8 for Bolívar in laundry soap. Moreover, the portion of volume mix of our core segment has increased from 70.8% in Q1 2023, to 74.5% in Q1 2024.
As a result, EBITDA in the first quarter of 2024 registered another remarkable performance, increasing 78% year-over-year. This result is mainly explained by the increase of 39% in gross profit, as we continue to focus on profitable volume, especially in our emblematic brands, and the decrease in the price of raw materials, leading to the optimization of our pricing strategy. It is important to mention that despite 9% decrease in volume sold in Q1 2024, our strategy continues to consolidate, capturing higher volume with special focus in the traditional channel, and strengthening marketing efforts and investments for our core portfolio in order to generate tiering up. We are confident that we will continue on this path, leveraging the power of our brands and our competitive advantages to generate greater value for our company.
Now, I'll pass the floor over to Manuel, who will cover the B2B, Consumer Goods International, Aqua Feed, and Crushing units, as well as our liquidity and debt metrics.
Thanks, Álvaro. Moving on to B2B, even though we continue with market contractions in most of our core categories, our view for 2024, for 2024 is positive, as inflation levels in Peru are stabilizing, and impacts related to El Niño did not take place in the magnitude initially estimated. In this context, we managed to deliver, for the third consecutive quarter, a 5% increase in our volume sold when compared to 2023. This was mainly driven by a recovery in market share in core categories such as flour, shortenings, and edible oils. We remain focused on sustaining healthy profitability levels, increasing our gross margin 6.5 percentage points in the first quarter, mainly explained by lower cost pressures due to lower commodity prices.
As a result, gross profit per metric ton reached PEN 801, which represents a strong year-over-year increase of 19%, despite lower revenue and a more challenging competitive environment. EBITDA in the first quarter amounted to PEN 67 million, a year-over-year increase of 28% when compared to last year. Regarding the performance of Consumer Goods International, EBITDA registered another positive performance in the first quarter, reaching PEN 18 million, a year-over-year increase of 34 million soles. This result is mainly explained by Bolivia, which registered a PEN 28 million increase due to the performance of detergents and edible oils as a result of lower cost pressure and the focus on higher value volume.
In Ecuador, despite lower volume and flat EBITDA, we achieved a slight 1.9% increase in gross profit per metric ton, as we continue executing efforts to develop our presence in that country. Other geographies also exhibited an important PEN 6 million recovery in EBITDA in the first quarter, as we continue focusing on profitable categories and markets. It is worth mentioning that this increase in EBITDA is despite relevant investments in the American market, in the sauces category, under the brand Tari. We are now codified in approximately 500 points of sale. We are still in the early stages, and we expect losses related to this launch to continue over the following years, putting pressure on other geographies results. This is a very important project for our company, and we will continue providing updates as the project evolves.
Let's move on to the performance of Aqua Feed and Crushing on slide nine. The global shrimp industry continues to be challenged with low prices throughout the first quarter. Farmers are still struggling to reach break even. The impact of the global crisis is reflected in the negative trend of volumes of Ecuadorian shrimp exports, which decreased 8% year-over-year as of March 2024. This is the first quarter that Ecuadorian exports exhibit a decrease in volume since 2020. In this context, farmers keep shifting to lower tier feed, aiming at greater discounts and lenient commercial terms. In terms of business performance, gross profit in the first quarter decreased 40% year-over-year, explained by a reduction in volume sold in both of our feed business units, the tiering down of our portfolio, and price reductions due to the aggressive competitive dynamics.
Adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter decreased 67% year-over-year, due to lower gross profit and higher SG&A expenses, due to bad debt provisions, which increased $3.8 million, mainly explained by clients in Central America and Peru. That being said, we are starting to see some very early signs of recovery in the market and a reduction in raw material prices, which should allow us to improve our expected results from the second quarter onwards. We will provide more color in the coming quarters as the situation continues to develop. Moving on to Crushing. Despite lower soybean crush volume, we managed to deliver an increase of 45% in our gross profit, mainly explained by higher volume sold to third parties, and an increase of soybean crush margin.
As mentioned earlier, we are including exchange rate arbitrages in our adjusted figures as part of our crush margins. During the first quarter, we registered $3.9 million due to these arbitrage opportunities, positively impacting our results and cash flow generation. We believe these exchange rate arbitrages will continue and are constantly being included as part of the crush margin in all negotiations with our agricultural partners in Bolivia. Moving on to slide 11 to comment on our leverage, debt, and liquidity metrics. Regarding our debt metrics, as our strategy to focus on core brands and the traditional channel led us to improve our operating results, we generated positive free cash flow that allowed us to post a significant delivery.
Thus, our net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio decreased from 2.7x in December 2023 to 2.3x as of March 2024. Over the next two quarters, we expect a slight increase in leverage as the funds required to purchase soybean in our crushing business should increase our debt levels. By year-end, we expect to resume the deleveraging trend we are seeing today. Regarding our liquidity, as of March 2024, our available cash position amounted to PEN 1.518 billion, PEN 121 million more than as of December 2023. Mainly explained by our working capital initiatives and the postponement of the purchase of soybeans for our crushing business, as we previously commented.
This cash position represents an ample buffer, as it covers 2.23x our debt maturities over the next 12 months, and if we consider our $129 million committed facilities, such ratio would be 2.94 x. Now, let me pass the floor over to Álvaro to wrap up today's presentation with a glimpse of what we expect for our full year 2024 results on slide 13.
Thanks, Manuel. As mentioned during this call, first quarter results continue to show a positive trend as a result of changes implemented to our strategy last year. We expect this positive trend to continue during 2024 as we consolidate our strategy and face lower cost pressure from raw materials, mainly in our consumer businesses. Nevertheless, we still see headwinds regarding our aqua feed unit due to international shrimp crisis discussed earlier. In this context, we are partially updating our guidance in 2024. We expect our revenue to reach a low single-digit decrease in 2024 as raw materials prices continue rapidly decreasing.
This has been reducing pressure not only in our cost structure, but to the market overall, leading to opportunities for our company to cautiously pass through those lower costs to price reductions across key categories on both our Consumer Goods Peru and B2B businesses. In this context... Oh, and although we are adjusting our revenue growth expectations, we remain confident that we will achieve an important recovery in our adjusted EBITDA on the back of the consolidation of our strategy and improvements in gross margins due to lower international prices of commodities. Thus, we still expect to reach a 13%-18% increase in EBITDA, excluding the crushing business, and a 17%-22% increase on a consolidated basis.
As for our investments for 2024, CapEx is estimated in approximately $76 million and $62 million, excluding our expansion project in Aqua Feed. For leverage, we expect a net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio between 1.9x and 2.4x. It is worth mentioning that the low end of this range does not consider the potential acquisition I will mention in a moment or distribution to our shareholders, while the high end of the range includes both events. Let's move on to, let's move on to slide 14. As you know, on April seventeenth, our board of directors approved a call to a general shareholders meeting to discuss the approval of a share buyback program and present the main terms and progress of the potential acquisition of Refinería del Espino.
We are confident that through both proposals, we will continue generating value for all our shareholders, as we did in 2022, by successfully executing the first buyback program. A potential acquisition of Refinería del Espino should strengthen our presence in key categories, especially in the eastern region of Peru. The general shareholders meeting will take place on May sixteenth, and both points will be reviewed in greater detail during the session. As final remarks, and with a longer-term perspective, we believe that the main elements of the strategy will guarantee growth and profitability. In Consumer Goods Peru and international, and in B2B, the focus on core brands, the tactical nature of value brands to protect categories and secure volume....
Smarter pricing, distinctive go-to-market capabilities, focus on sustainability in supply chain efficiency, continuous innovation, and smart use of technology will make us bigger and better. As for Aqua Feed, markets will eventually come back, and Vitapro, with state-of-the-art manufacturing and feed technology and its commercial strength, is very well positioned to deliver sustainable, healthy results. This concludes our presentation, and we welcome any questions you may have.
Thank you very much for the presentation. We'll now be moving to the Q&A part of the call. If you have any questions, please press star two on your keypad. That's star two on your keypad for any questions. You may also ask a voice or a text question if you are dialed in via the web. Thank you. Our first question comes from Alonso Aramburu from BTG Pactual. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, hi, good morning, and thank you for the call. Two questions on my end. First, I was wondering if you can give us an update on just consumption dynamics in Peru, whether you've seen some improvement in the first quarter or maybe the beginning of the second quarter. Second, regarding your strategy in Peru as well, maybe can you comment on how far along you are in this refocusing strategy on the price optimization? Have you really completed most of that, or do you still have some efforts to do on that? Thank you.
Okay, hi, Alonso, how are you? I will let Alvaro Rojas to answer these two questions. Please, Alvaro.
Sure. Thanks a lot for the question. Regarding consumption, we're seeing a slight growth in consumption in the first quarter. We're very cautiously optimistic that things could start moving upwards, but still too early to tell. Regarding our strategy, I would say that we're around 70% of where we want to be. Many of the things that we have to do take time. You know, there's a lot of focus on consumer understanding and turning that understanding into value propositions that impact our consumers' lives in a way that will generate brand loyalty. So that takes a little bit of time, but we are very encouraged in the results that we are seeing as of today.
Great, thank you.
Okay, thank you very much. Our next question comes from Mr. Felipe Ucrós from Scotiabank. Please go ahead, sir.
Thanks, operator. Good morning, gents. Maybe a question on Aqua Feed first. Wanted to ask you when you think the bottom for the market might be coming. It seemed in the call like you're expecting prices to improve pretty soon, and therefore sort of calling the bottom in this first quarter. Just wanted to confirm that that's how you feel about it. Then also wanted to ask you about clients. Obviously, you've had to provision for some non-payment working capital. So just wondering how the environment in Aqua Feed is changing on the ground. I imagine some clients are potentially not going to be around in the future. Are you seeing some consolidation around clients? And how's the market changing around that?
And then the last question also on Aqua Feed is on CapEx. Is there, are there any chances or any considerations of delaying the projects a little more, given that the market is kind of in a downturn?
I will let Manuel to answer Aqua Feed question, Felipe. Thank you.
Thanks.
Yeah, thanks, Felipe, for your question. As we mentioned in the call, the first quarter, our results were impacted by the lower prices in shrimp. But we have already started seeing positive trends in March and in April, with increases in volume and as commodity prices continue declining, we should be able to see better margins in the second quarter, and hopefully those improvements continue to the third and fourth quarter. Obviously, there is uncertainty regarding this recovery, but we are confident that eventually we will return to profitability levels that we have seen in the past for Vitapro. Ecuador has very strong competitive advantages, so if we look at the health of our clients, the Ecuadorian clients are performing better than our clients in Peru and Central America.
So most of our provisions are from Central America and Peru, which obviously have much lower volumes than in Ecuador. Obviously, in the next months, we will be focused on trying to recover some of those bad debt provisions, but we're taking a conservative approach, and we have already provisioned some of those accounts receivable in the first quarter. Regarding consolidation in the market, we have seen some consolidation in Ecuador mostly. In Central America and Peru, we haven't seen any consolidation, so I mean, we're fairly optimistic about the next quarters. But as I mentioned, there is uncertainty and factors that don't necessarily depend on us related to this recovery.
Okay, understood, Manuel. And any changes on the speed at which you are expanding and directing your CapEx towards the division?
... Yes. I mean, regarding our expansion project, that production line is already coming online in May. So I mean, there is no chance to delay that project. And we believe that that project is a key lever to recover our profitability level because it's the first extrusion line for Vitapro. And we believe that that line will allow our clients to achieve better productivity results, and allow us to gain market share and recover our profitability levels. So we're confident that that investment we made to expand our capacity in Ecuador will pay off in the following years.
Great, very clear. And then I'll do a last one on crushing. You guys talked about the arbitrage in FX, and forgive my ignorance here, but I was wondering if you could sort of delve a little deeper explaining what that arbitrage is?
Sure. I'll take the question.
Go ahead.
Okay. Yeah, thanks, Álvaro. Yeah, so regarding our crushing business, today, the official FX rate in Bolivia is 6.96. But it's possible right now to sell dollars in Bolivia at a higher rate. So when we negotiate with our agricultural clients, that margin in the FX is being considered as part of our crushing margin. So right now, if you look at the operating results that are above the EBITDA, that number has declined significantly because part of that margin is being captured below EBITDA as part of FX gains. For that reason, we are adjusting our EBITDA to include these FX gains, as they're a key part of every single negotiation that we have with our agricultural partners in Bolivia.
Because everyone is aware that this margin exists, and for that reason, our competitors are also considering it as part of our crushing margin.
Very clear. Thanks for the explanation.
Thanks.
Okay, thank you very much. If there are any additional questions, please press star two. Any additional questions, star two on your keypad. You may also ask a voice or a text question using the web. Okay, it looks like we have no further questions at this point. I'll pass the line back to the Alicorp team for the concluding remarks.
Well, thank you, and thank you, everyone. I want to thank everyone once again for participating in this call, the first quarter of 2024. In case you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. And have a great day. Thank you.
Thank you very much. This concludes today's conference call. We'll now be closing all the lines. Thank you and goodbye.