Welcome everybody to our Q3 Conference Call. Thank you very much for your interest in joining today in this conference call. Today, we will comment on the first nine months of the business year and the Q3 isolated. And if I look back to the last weeks, we already had three MARs in recently. The first one was on 18 October , there we communicated that we assume Q3 to be significantly below our prior year's Q3. But Q3 to come out better than Q2, and this is something when we will look later on to the figures, we can confirm this assumption was right. And the figures that we will present today confirm this assumptions.
On the other hand, which was less pleasant and also surprising to us, we had two MARs on fifteenth of November. The first one, where we had to adopt the operational profit guidance for the full financial year. This was due to the significant and not expected price decrease on ethanol markets from EUR 900 to EUR 635, and that day we adjusted for the first time, the forecast. And very unpleasant, one month later, on fifteenth of December, we had to adopt the forecast for the financial year for a second time, because other to our expectations, the price drop continued to below 600, and that's why we had, at fifteenth of December, had to adopt the forecast for the full financial year for a second time.
And then if we could now go to the, to the agenda, that's why we have put, and this is, came unexpected to us. So we will also would like to use this conference call, if you have a look onto the agenda on page two of our presentations, have a particular view on the development of the ethanol prices. To explain or try to explain this, this development that we have not foreseen. And we will also touch, that's the second point, we will touch, as indicated, the financials from the first to third quarter, 2023, 2024. And we will also in the third section, we'll give you an update on our strategy, and there we will discuss our recent acquisition of EthaTec.
You have also seen the MRF of 19th of December, the delisting offer from Südzucker to all outstanding CropEnergies shares. Let's get started. That was page two. As I said, let's have a particular look into markets and ethanol price development. For today, we have not foreseen an update on politics, but there is no significant change. If you want to have a look on what is actual status on, or current status on politics, you can have a look into our Q2 presentation. This is unchanged. Focus for today is market development. You find that on page four. Before going into the details, as I said, the price development as of November, the downward trend came and not awaited to us.
You will see on this page, when we look into sales and demand figures, this is pretty stable. This is fully in line what we have foreseen and also what we have communicated in Q2. Our main messages at that time were that we foresee a stable consumption pattern, stable production patterns, and normal development of E10 market shares, and so on. This is fully in line. So you can see this assumption was completely backed by reality three months going onwards. But nevertheless, we had a significant price decrease. We will discuss that on the page five. Let's start on page four. We can have a look into the graph on the right-hand side, and there you will see what I just indicated.
When it comes to total ethanol consumption, this is up 4% to 11 billion cubic meters. And if you look at the graph, we can see clearly a stable and positive event development of volumes between 2021 and 2024 expected. So nothing exceptional on the market side, and there's still a positive CAGR when it comes to consumption. Also, production turned out normal. Production was up 8% to 8.2 million cubic meters. So on the sales and demand side, this was pretty, pretty stable. Let's have a look on the E10 market share. There you can also see that currently 17 member states plus Norway and the UK have rolled out E10. Nothing special here.
Also, what is positive, the E10's market share is also increasing. We now reached a market share of 25%. As I said, in previous years, quarters, this is still below our European neighbors and other member countries. But nevertheless, it's positive to see that this onward trend is continued. And also, if you have a look into the BAFA data, which are available as of end of September, they always have three months delay. And there you can see that ethanol consumption also in Germany is 2.7% up compared to prior years. So also here, stable environment. Also, the outlook for E10 is positive. We have the start of E10 sales in Ireland, Austria, and Norway. This should give an additional market potential from, let's say, roughly 200,000 cubic meters.
And then for Poland, it is, it is planned, but not yet finally confirmed, to roll out E10 also this year. So this could give another market potential of 200,000 cubic meters additionally. That's. On the market side, you see, nothing special and fully in line with our expectations. On page five, let's have a look into the prices, and this is what is not in line with our expectations. I would like to start with the graph on the red, right bottom side, let's look into the current financial year 2023 to 2024. That's the green line.
And you see, when we were lastly communicating with you, we have been in October, where with the ethanol price going towards EUR 900, and we said we assume this trend to continue, but the opposite happened. So we in beginning of November, we reached EUR 900 per cubic meter, and since then a significant drop in prices, which is really difficult to explain, towards EUR 600 and then even below EUR 600. The lowest was reached at EUR 550. Since then, we see a small stabilization of prices above EUR 600. When it comes to imports, the pricing difference between the U.S. market or Brazilian market and euros makes imports still attractive.
So we also foresee imports to come to the EU in the area of three million cubic meters, and given the high demand in Europe, we also need these imports to balance the market. But what we claim from a politics view, we claim this has to be a level playing field. So all in all, average ethanol prices in Q3 turned out at EUR 761 per cubic meter, compared to EUR 882 in prior year's period. And as I said, this price decreased since November, which we had not in our expectation. How to explain this drop in prices there? So we see two reasons for that, or possible explanations, but as I said, it's difficult to have really the full picture on that development.
One is that there is a pressure on the greenhouse gas savings tickets due to suspected fraudulent advanced biodiesel imports. That means there had been huge or massive imports of advanced biodiesel. They are suspected to be fraudulent from China, but they led to the fact that mineral oil companies, or that the GHG savings tickets price decreased. And as you know, the mineral oil companies they have different options to fulfill their greenhouse gas reduction targets. They can blend biofuels, but they also can buy tickets. And due to these suspected fraudulent advanced biodiesel imports, ticket prices decreased significantly. So other mineral oil companies could have been in the position to buy those cheap tickets to fulfill their blending obligations.
And the second point, which is maybe also more relevant, so that we see this downward trend not only in Europe, we see that also in all the other international markets. So also the U.S. markets, the Brazilian markets, the Asian markets dropped significantly in that period. For example, in the U.S., the prices dropped from the area of EUR 650 to EUR 430, in Brazil, from EUR 640 to EUR 450, and in Asia, from EUR 600 to EUR 530. So this is not only a European downward trend, it's also worldwide, the ethanol prices have significantly decreased. But as I said, this was not our expectations when we lastly communicated with you on our Q2 figures. Let's have a look on the next pages, pages six and seven, on the feedstock markets and energy markets. But I can be short.
If you look briefly into the charts, you can see this is fully in line with our expectations and what we discussed last time. So, as both the feedstock markets and energy markets, they come back to normal, so it's, it's quite flat. And also, when it comes to feedstock markets, we can continue to, to state that there's a good harvesting situation. So on, on the feedstock markets and energy markets, this is, pretty stable and fully in line with our expectations. So then let's continue with the financials. Let's have, firstly, a look into Q3, isolated. You will find that on page nine. And, positive things first. You, you can see that ethanol production, was up in Q3, isolated to roughly 260,000 cubic meters.
So the overall development of Crop Energies Group is in line with our expectations. We have said at the beginning of the year that we would have a difficult start in Q1, but our base case assumption is to have quarter by quarter increase in production sales. And so this is confirmed. Q3 was better than Q2, better than Q1 when it comes to production and sales figures. But on the other side, operating profit significantly dropped to roughly EUR 27 million from roughly EUR 56 million. And this decrease has two reasons. The significant reason is the most important reason is the decrease in the ethanol prices, as just discussed. On page 10, you'll find more details on the operating profit of the third quarter.
So we had significantly lower sales prices for ethanol, but higher production volumes. We see also lower prices for raw materials. That was positive, but they could not offset for the lower ethanol sales prices. Also in line with our expectations, Q3 operating profit with EUR 27 million was above previous year's second quarter. So the overall trend, that's the graph on the right-hand side, is positive. As we have foreseen that quarter by quarter, we should see increase of operating profits and also for production. That's the graph on the right side at the top. Here, you can also see that from Q1, Q2, Q3, we have an increase in production.
You might ask or see that when we look in more detail into further operating expenses and income, that there's a significant increase from Q3 prior year to this year. This effect is not an effect of the current financial year. It is linked to prior years Q3, and in this quarter, we had a EUR 10 million effect in delta for the derivatives out of positive effect for the derivatives out of hedge accounting. That means if we adjust for this EUR 10 million, we are also on the same level when it comes to further operating expenses income year by year or quarter by quarter. So from Q3 isolated, let's have a look on the first nine months in total.
Here you can see that, despite we could increase the sales and productions quarter by quarter, when it comes to the total of nine months, when it comes to production, we are still below prior years figures with 722,000 cubic meters compared to 811,000 cubic meters. Revenues show a significant drop by 20% to EUR 943 million, and, more significantly also on the operating profit side, which is our key KPI. The first nine months, we reached an operating profit of EUR 61 million. This is a reduction of EUR 175 million compared to prior year, but please keep in mind, prior year was exceptionally positive.
It was our fourth record year in a row, and this 175 million delta, compared to prior year, explains to a major part by the price effect and to also significant part to the volumes effect. But you know me, I always look also for the positive signs. Also, in those negative figures, we had a positive effect from the co-products. They have a good price development, but this effect was not for sure, not able to counterbalance the stronger effect on the reduction of ethanol prices and volumes. And the second positive point in the figures of Q3 is our net financial assets position, which is still strong, turned out at EUR 320 million.
This is pleasant, and this is still, for us, a good basis for our future projects and to execute on our strategy. And we will have, at the end of our presentation, also an update on our strategy. Let's move on to page 12. Here you find the net earnings situation. So below operating profit, we see a significant increase in the interest income due to rising interest rates. So financial results turned out positive at EUR 6 million and earnings per share at EUR 0.57. And this follows for sure the earnings development in prior years period, we stood at EUR 2.07. Last but not least, let's have a look on the cash flow.
The cash flow, we had a decrease in working capital, so cash flow turned out from EUR 87 million plus a reduction in working capital. So operating cash flow turned out at EUR 97 million, which is still a strong figure. We have an increase in investment in the plant PPE as property, plant, and equipment, and this is particularly for our ethyl acetate plant in Elsteraue. When you take all the other effects of expenses and cash in, at the end, we turned out at EUR 320 million net financial assets position. This is still very positive. Before coming to strategy section, let me please confirm our outlook in 2023 to 2024, as we have communicated of 15 December.
So we confirm this outlook as of today. We await revenues to be between EUR 1.23 billion to EUR 1.25 billion and operating profit to between EUR 50 million and EUR 60 million. This corresponds to an EBITDA of EUR 85 million to EUR 105 million. But for sure, if you look into Q3 or into this midpoint of EUR 50 million, at Q3, we stand at EUR 61 million operating profit positively. That means we cannot exclude a loss in Q4. This is particularly linked to the still low ethanol prices. As I said, they have stabilized over the last days, but spot prices still are in the field of, let's say, EUR 620. So with the which is still a low basis, and that's why we cannot exclude for Q4, the a loss situation.
This is possible, so we have a prudent approach, stating that for financial year, our operating profit is seen between EUR 40 million to EUR 60 million. But the final outcome will be dependent, as you know, on the volatility of the market, on the development of the ethanol price. Our general assumptions for this outlook is that we gradually see a decrease in volatility in the sales, raw material, and energy markets. We still believe that there is a stable supply and demand situation. That means the introduction of E10 in further European countries points out to a stable sales of fuel ethanol, and we will also have the assumption that this will be met by continued high import volumes. This having said, let's come to the strategy update, and you find on page 16 a snapshot on our strategy.
This is unchanged. We can start with the right-hand side, with the graph. So we are fully convinced that fighting climate change, we need all measures to help to that the fossil carbons remain in the ground. And from our position, the best thing to do is innovation from biomass and to focus on green carbons. So we still and will continue to fully see and to strengthen our biorefinery concept for the entire CropEnergies group. That means as raw materials, we have the intake of sugar syrups, of all kinds of feed grains, and increasingly also from waste and residues.
And this, it's a concept of circular economy, and by up working on the production of taking those raw materials and then producing ethanol and proteins and biogenic CO2 fertilizers, neutral alcohol, fuel ethanol, and green energy. This is a strong strategy going forward, and we are fully in line with our, our projects. There's one new that we want to put into focus today. This is on page 17. We have closed an asset deal on seventeenth of November, and we intend to acquire the assets of EthaTec GmbH. The site is in Weselberg, that is in Rhineland-Palatinate, Rheinland-Pfalz, close to Kaiserslautern. The closing is to be foreseen in the coming months. So my best guess is a closing first of, 1 March.
You will see that the key message here is: yes, it's a small business, but it's a very promising business. With that, we will strengthen our position in the 2G ethanol market, and we really like, and that's why that's the key motivation for this acquisition. We have a very highest team for the technology used by EthaTec. So the idea that, or what is EthaTec doing? They produce advanced ethanol, 2G ethanol, from food industry waste. And what they use can be all kinds of food waste. That means food waste that is production that is not compliant or out of date for consumption or whatever reason.
So it can be dough residues from bakeries or pizza factories, but they can also use all kinds. Let's say, when I was there last time, I've seen chocolate bars, so all kind of products which contain carbohydrates from the food industry. But it could also what is also possible, that we've seen also from pharma industry, when they have glucose that they can no longer use. So all kind of carbohydrates can be used in their technology and then produced into second generation ethanol. And also interesting in this concept is the parts of the raw materials that cannot be converted to ethanol.
They are fed into a combined biogas production, so that means those sites, they are fully energy autonomous, or can even produce a surplus, and then with additional biogas then fed into the grid. So this is very promising. Our intention is to increase here the production on site and to use this concept then step by step, also in our existing plants, to increase our production of 2G ethanol. Voilà! This having said, let's come to the delisting offer. You will have seen on nineteenth of December, Südzucker has today decided to submit a public delisting tender offer to all outstanding shareholders of CropEnergies. So the price offered is EUR 11.50 per share.
This is a significant premium, so it corresponds to a premium of roughly 37% of the volume-weighted average share price over the last six months, and a premium of roughly seventy percent compared to the latest share price of CropEnergies the day before the offer. So we have thoroughly analyzed this offer, and both CropEnergies board and CropEnergies supervisory board, they support this offer. So we have agreed on a delisting agreement, and the big advantage that we see is we like very much our being separately stock quoted. But we also see the complexity of this structure and also the administrative burden that goes with that.
We believe all in all, there are advantages also for CropEnergies. For example, we can focus much more in our daily work or strategy executions with the capacities freed up. All in all, we fully support this offer. You can find all relevant information on this delisting offer on powerofplants-offer.com. This is our presentation as of today. We would now like to go into the Q&A sections to your questions, and Heike Baumbach and myself, we are happy to take your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on the touch-tone telephone. To withdraw your question, you may press star followed by two. Your questions will be answered in the order they are received. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making a selection. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes from Pablo Cuadrado from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, Stephan. Good morning, Heike. Good morning, everyone. Just two quick questions on, on my side, if I may. The first one will be If you can help us to understand a little bit in the current market structure, where this decrease in ethanol prices and such low prices, whether you can keep, let's say, the production levels going for Q4. I was wondering whether you think that with these prices, you will need to readjust your operating capacity or even talking about peers, that would be helpful. And the second question is, a little bit more on the strategy side. Clearly, we saw the advanced ethanol investment, as I think you have explained it.
But, I was also wondering whether you can give us final hints on where you stand on the other, let's say, parts of the innovation for biomass strategy, particularly looking to the renewable ethylene or the solar PV investment and the renewable hydrogen. That would be also helpful to know where you stand, or if you are seeing basically at the moment better grounds to keep working on second gen ethanol, prioritizing versus the other investments that you commented in the past?
Thank you, Pablo, for your questions. When it comes to the ethanol price, yes, you're fully right. This level of ethanol prices is not satisfactory to us, and in this context, we check for all our sites if can keep on the same production level or whether to reduce. We already have decided to reduce the production where we can. We have some kind of flexibility, both on the sales side perspective, but also on the raw material side perspective, and there, where we could, we already decreased the production volumes.
When it comes to strategy, we fulfill all our projects, so they are ongoing, but as we cannot do everything with the same pace or the same capacity at the same time, we focus clearly on bio-based chemicals and second generation. So this is our focus on Aand within bio-based chemicals, there's a clear focus on ethyl acetate. So the first plant is up, is in production, so we are on track and on budget here. And the second one, which is also in our focus, is all activities linked to second generation. But we also, the others are also fulfilled, but priority at the current time is given to bio-based chemicals and 2G.
Thank you. That's clear. Thank you, Stephan.
The next question comes from Hartmut Moers. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Well, I would like to follow up a bit, a little bit on the first question. I mean, I guess you want to be you don't want to be a bit more specific on production, and I understand fully that this is also, you know, has a relevance with regard to competitors. But, let's say, starting from your 200, roughly 260,000 production in the third quarter, I would guess the indication that you're giving is that from this level, you will go down and not from, you know, a more ordinary level that you would have at, I would say, some 280,000. But, you're indicating that for the fourth quarter, we should calculate with less than EUR 260. Is that a right way of viewing it?
For me, it's too early to say. What we do right now with our plants, we check at all our plants, yeah, to see what are the customer contracts, what is the raw material flexibility, and but I would say. So, it is too early to say. But we check on it, so for sure, we also have an interest. We will fulfill our contracts, and we stick to a high capitalization wherever we make positive contribution margins. But we are right now in the process of checking everything. This is not only linked to one particular plant. This is we look into all plants.
Okay, thank you. The second point I have is with regard to material cost development in the third quarter. Based on the prices we saw with regard to wheat, I was a bit astonished that material costs were so high. And I would like to get a feel for where this is coming from. So probably I was completely wrong, but did you have a material impact from hedging, which could have, you know, increased the burden on the wheat side? Or should I more look into, let's say, other operating costs, which might have been at a more elevated level compared to previous levels?
The only significant one-off element is in other operating income that we don't have in Q3 isolated, the income from derivatives accounting out of hedge accounting. That also affect Q3 prior year. When it comes to more raw material expense, I mean, quarter by quarter, there can be shifts there. If I look into the nine-month figures, we can see clearly that we have a slight increase or slight decrease in grain prices. So it is 1% better than prior year's period, but for nine months. And the effect then, when it comes to the is from the much lower grain or feed grain in total that we use, because given the lower production, for sure, there's also volume-wise, lower raw material procured. But on a pricing level for full nine months, we see a slight decrease of roughly 1% in the prices. So it's a better role.
Okay. Okay, thank you. Last question, more something strategically going forward. I mean, you were saying that you're still pursuing all of the projects that you had indicated at the start of the previous year. So I would assume that also the methanol production still is on the agenda, though you were saying that this has probably been shifted a bit into the background. I mean, this is very capital intensive, and you were saying at the time that financing could be done via banks. But at a time where CropEnergies was, or is still listed, also the capital markets, so equity markets would have been an option of financing. Now, with the tender offer, you're foregoing that option. So are you saying that Südzucker and the banks is the right means of pursuing, in particular, this very capital-intensive project, though it may come at a later stage?
Yeah, I think fully right. So what methanol is is on our strategic agenda, but as you said, it's shifted time-wise in the background, because the political framework still is not yet there. But I believe that methanol will play an important role in the decade to come, because we need this technology of liquid fuels or liquid methanol, or it can also be green ammonia, to buffer down surpluses in green electricity, which will come when all the investments will be continued in solar and wind. And because then you need also this buffer technology, which can be methanol, to have a synthetic fuel, carbon-free, for liquid fuels. It can be applied in cars, it can be applied in ships. So methanol is still on our strategic agenda, but it's, as you said, it's not tomorrow.
When it comes to financing, I don't see an issue because at the moment, we have this net cash position of EUR 300 billion, so this is sufficient to fulfill the projects in the to come. And also, we will continue to have positive cash flow. And when it comes for the remainder, yeah, being delisted means that it is we cannot have direct access to the capital markets via equity, but fully confirmed also by Südzucker with our strategy, we are then integrated into Südzucker financing, and Südzucker Finance has all the debt instruments in place or can use all kind of debt instruments, and we have full support from Südzucker part to fulfill our bio-based chemical strategy. So it's a little bit even the other way around, given the fact, I mean, you are fully aware of our share price development.
We have been above 16, and even though we have communicated this, what I believe very stringent and forward-looking strategy, we did not get the positive feedback from the capital markets. And that's it. I would like to say, so although we have this very good strategy going forward, the share price of CropEnergies did not fully respect this potential in bio-based chemicals. And so it's a little bit the other way around, and then Südzucker says in this context, and then Südzucker is also fully standing behind this bio-based chemical strategy. It makes sense to have this delisting and then to make that internally and to finance it. We are then Südzucker indicates that CropEnergies cash flows or net cash position would go from EUR 300 million down to zero. But we have full commitment from Südzucker part for this bio-based chemical strategy.
Okay.
Also for finding, too.
Thank you very much, and I hope we see each other in person before you make the move to Südzucker.
As a reminder, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one at this time. Seems there are no further questions at this time, and I hand back to Stephan Meeder for closing comments.
Yeah. Thank you, and then let's please go to page 19. Yeah, so because we assume the delisting offer project is at the time being fully in on schedule and going to plan. And if everything continues like this, this would mean that the delisting would be effective before the end of the financial year. And this, under this assumption, this can be our last conference call, isolated for CropEnergies. And that means we would like to say farewell and thank you, but this is not an easy task because we at CropEnergies, we also, that is, it is also mixed feelings if we say goodbye to the stock markets, because we always have been very proud or are very proud of this being stock listed.
And we have put a lot of efforts and heartblood in our also shareholders communication, investors communications. And as I said, we also recognize that it's complex, that it's admin, and that we also see the advantages of being integrated into the Südzucker Group. But nevertheless, for us, it's very important to say thank you to you for all your support that you have given us since our IPO in 2006. And we will not be off viewer. That means that we will still be visible.
You will hear us, you will see us, not isolated with our isolated CropEnergies stock being quoted, but as part of Südzucker Group, and there we will be visible. We kindly ask you to give us the same interest and support and commitment that you have shown in the past via Südzucker. So thank you very much, and we highly appreciate working together with you, and we're to continue this in the future. Also, Heike wants to say some words.
Yes, okay. I'd like to thank you all for the very good collaboration in the last years. I, Investor Relations at CropEnergies, together with Joachim Lutz in 2011, and then together with Stephan Meeder since 2015. It was a great time. Challenging discussions, very interesting, particularly challenging discussions, and a special thanks to Hartmut Moers, who always kept on asking critical stuff and made me use my brain quite a lot. So it was very good. So I say goodbye. I hope to speak to all of you soon, and yeah, have a good time. It was a pleasure to work with you.
Thank you. Goodbye, all.