Dear participants, Welcome to APF Holdings' Investor Webinar. We will start the company's presentation and continue with a live Q&A session. Throughout the webinar, you are welcome to ask questions to the company. Please submit them in writing throughout the Q&A window below the presentation. For your convenience, we will be recording this session, and the replay will be available shortly after the call. Let me now introduce you to the management of APF Holdings: Jurijs Adamovičs, APF Group founder and Chairman of the Management Board, and Mihails Ķeziks, CFO and Member of the Management Board. Handing over to you.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, dear investors. Let's proceed to our Semi-Annual Webinar. We're going to cover quite an extensive agenda today, which is now available on your screens. We will cover all the important topics related to the operational and financial performance, the key developments in our business, and also key developments in the industry during last year. We will also share the outlook for 2025. I will cover the topics from number one to number five inclusive. We will also share our views on the strategic outlook. The rest of the topics will be covered by my colleague Mihails. Let's proceed to the performance highlights. The summary is now seen on the screen. If we speak of the operational performance, we have produced and sold 99 million eggs last year, which represents a 6% reduction to 2023. This is largely a result of egg-laying cyclogram.
We have deliberately decreased the production capacities in the summer of last year so that we can react accordingly to the very significant influx of third-country imports into Europe. This was a deliberate action on the management side. If we speak of EBITDA, it is EUR 2.6 million, which represents a 7% reduction compared to the year 2023. The annual revenue reached EUR 12.7 million, which is a 5% reduction compared to the year before. If we speak of gross profit, here we have good news. The gross profit reached EUR 3.7 million, which represents a 29% gross margin. This is historically the best-ever result APF has demonstrated. The management team is very happy to report this result to you.
Also, one of the key highlights of last year is that APF is the first and only player in the poultry industry, and perhaps not even in our industry, that has switched to 100% green electricity. Starting 1st of July last year, we only use energy that is powered by renewable sources, meaning hydro and also our own solar park, which we will touch upon later in the presentation. New product launches and partnerships in 2024. Last year was quite rich with developments on this front. We have continued development of our egg white smoothies, which has demonstrated a very solid growth in 2024. We have expanded partnerships and started to offer our products to new partners, new supermarket chains, Sky and Rimi. We have also started distribution with Virši. We have also added an additional flavor of our smoothies product, which was orange flavor.
All in all, if we look back at 2024, the sales reached almost 50,000 units, which represents a threefold increase compared to year 2023. The other important development, speaking of new products, is the introduction of liquid products. We have deepened our cooperation with HoReCa and started offering liquid egg mass that is used in confectionery and food service industries. Last but not least, we have launched two distinct egg packaging solutions tailored to very different segments: the Eggjoy, which is now one of the new trademarks which we have registered last year, which is now available in several pan-Baltic retailers. We have also launched a so-called big format or family format inside of Olas Lielā Paka , or in English, T he Big Pack, which is also a new trademark that we have registered.
It actually is, looking at the latest statistics, likely to become one of our top three best-selling packaging solutions. Another very important milestone is our e-commerce project entitled Fiteeg². Fiteeg² is also a new addition to the family of trademarks owned by the group. This is the project we have launched in very late 2024. In fact, the official launch was during Black Friday in the end of November last year. The product lineup includes three distinct products. First and foremost, the egg membrane collagen. We will have launched the egg white-based protein powder. We have also launched three flavors of egg white-based protein bars. These are all dry egg protein-based products with very high value added. This is a very important project for the group, which we will develop further during forthcoming years.
The investments into the launch of Fiteeg² have totaled roughly EUR 300,000. That includes product development, development of the e-commerce platform, and all related infrastructure. We are likely to have some further investments into this project during this year as we intend to go into the new markets. Just also a very short snapshot of why we have decided to expand into these projects and these products. Actually, this was a project in the making for quite a few years internally. We have built an in-house research and development team, which was working on this project during last years. Basically, the idea was to capitalize on the highly lucrative and high-margin sports and health nutrition market in the three categories that we have launched. The estimated market size is EUR 28 billion in 2023 and demonstrating double-digit year-on-year growth in the last five years.
We do believe that this is an industry to be in for a poultry player like ourselves, as we want to move on to production of a high-value product where our core business, producing table egg, can be used as a raw material for high-margin products. Sustainability initiatives. Sustainability remains at the core of our business. Year 2024 was quite eventful in this regard. In spring last year, we have launched our own solar park, which is now fully operational and is capable of producing enough electricity to fully supply Alūksne poultry farm with its electricity needs during summer months. During the year, the production output of our own solar park can meet up to 25% of annual consumption, which is quite sizable. We intend to extend solar energy capacities further as we increase production capacity of the factory in subsequent years.
Also, as I mentioned before, transition to 100% green energy is also a very important milestone and an important point to emphasize on our sustainability agenda. As I have mentioned before, starting July 1st of 2024, we have transitioned to using 100% renewable electricity, which, I guess, gives us the right to say that APF eggs are produced exclusively using green energy. Also, we have reaffirmed our commitment to top-in-class energy management standards by renewing our ISO energy management certification in February. This is a very important certification that we continue to maintain in the future as well. Also, as part of our commitment to food safety and quality assurance, the Alūksne facility has successfully passed an announced audit, which once again represents that the operations and quality assurance at Alūksne facility adhere to the world's best standard. We expect to maintain this commitment going forward as well.
Next, we proceed to the post-IPO investment program and its execution. As our investors remember, the key rationale for doing IPO was to implement the fourth development stage of the factory, which is now nearing its completion. To be more specific, if we speak of the warehousing facilities and the liquid egg product production facilities, these are fully completed, fully commissioned. This part of the investment project is 100% executed. The total CapEx reached EUR 3.6 million. The next and more substantial part of our investment project was construction of two additional barns, which, looking backwards, was 88% completed at the 31st of December last year. I am happy to share that the construction works are pretty much completed. The equipment assembly works are nearing completion as we speak.
These two new barns will be fully operational in May of this year. The construction budget for these two buildings is EUR 2.7 million. The cost of equipment is EUR 3.4 million. The total investment in launch of these two barns, including assembly of equipment and the investment that we need to populate these two new buildings with new flocks, is EUR 9.2 million. Another development project that we have is the development of our own poultry rearing facility in Preiļi. The reason we emphasize this particular part of the project is because of recent media coverage, which happened a couple of weeks ago with the Minister of Regional Development visiting the site, as there have been some bureaucratic delays in completing environmental impact assessment processes.
Now, I'm happy to share with you, dear investors, that when it comes to the preparatory work on our side and submission of all the respective paperwork to the state authorities, everything is duly completed on APF site. Yes, it is quite unfortunate that this process has taken more than three and a half years. That is the reality we're facing when it comes to respective processes when dealing with competent authorities. Nevertheless, the final submissions on our side are completed. We expect that the positive decision that will allow us to launch operations should be provided to us during the first half of this year. Just as a reminder to investors who are not familiar, Preiļi facility is located 150 km from our main site in Alūksne. The intention is that we're going to produce our own pullets for ourselves.
This part of the production process is now fully outsourced. As of today, we have been buying all of the flock from our partners in Poland. The intention is to swiftly progress to a full vertical integration. Once the equipment is installed in this facility, we should be in a position to meet our own pullet needs and will be growing our own birds. Egg industry landscape and the financial results for last year, these are the topics that my colleague Mihails will cover.
Thank you, Yuri. Thank you, dear shareholders, for watching. Let's now go to dive into market situation and financial data. We will start, as usual, with market segmentation in all Baltic states. What is of most interest here, of course, is the share of barn eggs in all three Baltic countries. Here, as you can see, at the end of 2024, still Estonia was having the smallest share of barn eggs. It was only 14%. That is explainable with the position strategy of Estonian big supermarkets that announced that they are planning to shift to the barn eggs at the year 2026-2027. Still, you can see that this market share is growing in Latvia. Very good result. The share almost doubled to the previous year.
It was, of course, due to the last year's share being rather small in Latvia as well. We are, of course, proud of this increase we had last year. We expect it to grow forward since the largest retail chains have announced this transition as well in Latvia. As you can see, it is 30% last year. The leader, again, among all three Baltic states, is Lithuania, where market chains are moving faster. They have already reached 37%, and we expect increase forward. Also, we are active in the Lithuanian market as well that you will see in the next slides. This slide here will provide the development of egg prices in all Baltic states and Poland, comparing them to the average egg prices of APF monthly. It is very important to look here and to see what was this year.
From this slide, you can definitely read that there was a noticeable decrease in egg prices in the first half year of 2024. That was driven, as Jurijs said, by the influx of substandard eggs from certain countries into Europe. Due to this, APF, to reduce the production capacity, to decrease the supply of eggs to address this market situation, as you can see, we have managed to stabilize the prices somewhere in May, June last year. After that, in first July, the import duty was imposed by the European Commission. This stabilized the prices overall in the European market as they started to recover. By the end of the year, on top of that, additional avian influenza outbreaks appeared in Europe and also in the United States that have even more increased the demand for eggs, also for barn eggs.
The price has reached a historical maximum. APF was able to trade the eggs over two months over the average prices of all three Baltic states. That allowed us to compensate the negative result we have in the first half year, to finish this year on a good profit level. Now, also, let's have a short look into our sales of eggs breakdowns. The first one will be breakdown by eggs sold to retail and eggs sold to industry, which means for processing, which is usually used when there is no sufficient demand from retail. As you can see, we have managed to significantly decrease by 30% the share of eggs sold to industry, which was driven by the higher demand for barn eggs in all Baltic states. Another breakdown is split between eggs sold at APF-owned labels or eggs sold under supermarket private labels.
As you can see, this year, this share of eggs sold to the supermarket private labels almost doubled. It unfortunately is an unavoidable market tendency that we have to follow. It is also explainable by our strategy in this year that we were entering new supermarkets, new big players in Lithuania, in Latvia, which is the most common way to start it with a wider range of private label eggs sold. This slide presents the breakdown of eggs sold by destination. Reducing the eggs sold to industry, as mentioned before, we also managed to sell more eggs into Baltic states. The share of eggs sold to all three Baltic states has grown from 76% the year before to 86% in 2024.
You may notice that the share of eggs sold to Lithuania almost tripled during last year, which is explainable, of course, by this leading position of Lithuania in transferring to the barn eggs in the egg market. Next, now, let's just view main financial results. Actually, as usual, we explain the factors that influenced the change in EBITDA, first of all, of 2023 to 2024. As you mentioned before, the net change in EBITDA during these two years was rather minor. It's only 7%. Again, factors inside the year were rather significant. The main decrease of sales we have, of course, in egg sales, as you've seen in the first slide, as Jurijs mentioned, we have decrease of 6% in eggs sold. There was some decrease in average price.
Due to the better product mix we received between barn, cage eggs, industrial retail eggs, total impact on turnover was smaller, was only 5%. In terms of money, it reached EUR 720,000 smaller sales. On top of that, it was improved by feed expenses reduction that we achieved. It was significant. It was more than EUR 1.2 million. Part of it is, of course, a decrease in consumption due to lower production capacity this year. A much bigger impact comes from the feed prices that have stabilized during last year. After that, there was some increase in administrative and production expenses that were associated with packaging, which is linked to better mix, but also increase in payroll expenses that are associated in both increase in average headcount, but also in increase in salaries. Below EBITDA, changes in net result are even more obvious.
Of course, EUR 200,000 reduction due to decrease in EBITDA of 7%, as mentioned previously. Another EUR 200,000 increase in interest expenses. That is explainable of attraction of more expensive financing this year. After that, part of it, all other positions mainly have improved and brought our net result positive. As mentioned also previously, due to ongoing investment phase four, we are restructuring our production plans. We built new production facilities, and we were forced to write off or dispose of part of our fixed asset that brought us EUR 285,000 losses. That does not allow us to finish this year with a profit. Nevertheless, our net loss in this year is very small, only EUR 5,000. Finally, let's have a general look at all main financial indicators.
What you may obviously see here from this set of numbers is that during the last three years of 2022, 2023, and 2024, when the company is running on its full current capacity of three barns, we were able to provide a stable and sustainable level of turnover. In terms of gross profit and EBITDA, it was rather stable or even growing. That in total proves that the strategy that APF have chosen is stable and sustainable. Due to the investment phase, we are now ongoing. Of course, the net result is volatile. This year, slightly minor negative. All indicators associated with this are negative, which is understandable by this investment phase when the loan service is high, but profit is still to come in this year, 2025. Here, we also wanted to add one more indicator.
As all know, as I mentioned, we have attracted significant loan facilities, but the result is still to come next year. Nevertheless, our net debt EBITDA indicator is on a comfortable and sustainable level. By the year 2024, it is just slightly above two. I would finish here and pass to Jurijs for the next information.
Thank you, Mihails. Let's proceed to the strategic outlook for 2025. I'll cover here both operational targets and also financial. Let's start with operational milestones for this year. Today, obviously, the first and foremost perspective is to complete the launch of the fourth fixed barn and populate with a new flock of 250,000 hens. This is something we are aiming to complete in May this year. This would imply that in July this year, the factory will operate at full capacity. This is very important for us. If all is well, which it should be, we are targeting a 60% increase in egg production output on a year-on-year basis.
Also, given that last year, we have installed and launched the liquid egg production line, we have set an ambitious target for the team to reach a 20% market share in Latvia and reach 10% market share across the Baltic, which is ambitious but doable. Also, speaking of operational priorities, we also intend to enhance the vertical integration and launch a pullet rearing facility in Preiļi. That is also a strategically quite important milestone for us. That is also important from the perspective of biosecurity. Also, the growth of e-commerce platform. As mentioned, this is a strategically new pathway for the group. We intend to expand our presence in the Baltics. We are working actually right now to launch at least two new products in the second half of this year.
Once we have reached the internal estate KPIs for the Baltic markets, we intend to do rollouts in other European countries as well to make sure the Fiteeg² business reaches necessary scale. Year 2025 will be very important in preparation of our next investment phase. Once the barn four and barn five are fully commissioned and operational, the development team, our in-house development team, will proceed with engineering design for three new barns, 125,000 birds each. We intend all the engineering and design work to be completed this year to enable us to start construction in 2026. Three new barns is an investment ambition for 2026, but that requires some preparatory work, homework to be done this year.
Now, speaking of financial outlook for this year, as mentioned before, we expect to reach a 60% increase in the production output, which should translate into a fairly substantial increase in the revenue. We expect to reach EUR 21 million of revenue in year 2025, which represents a 60% growth compared to year 2024. We also expect a very substantial boost in our EBITDA. The target is to reach EUR 5.98 million, which represents a very ambitious 131% growth versus current year. The key growth drivers will be expanded production capacity, which is going live in a couple of months. We also expect to penetrate the liquid egg market. We intend to boost the growth of a Fiteeg² e-commerce platform. We expect to reach some efficiency gains from internal pullet rearing.
We also expect that a very substantial contribution to our margins will be from the fundamental change that is happening in the industry. That is that the supermarkets are gradually going into the sale of cage-free eggs only. We expect that this category to substantially dominate the supermarket shelves in the year to come. That means that a high-margin product mix will dominate in the product catalog that we are offering to our clients. Thank you very much for listening to our update and the presentation. I think we are ready to proceed to questions.
Thank you for the presentation. Now, just a reminder to all attendees that you can ask questions in the Q&A window. Let's start with the first question we have received. It goes, do you plan to create shareholder bonus offers for your Fiteeg² products, similar like Virši, Madara, and others?
That is something that is on the table. No decisions were made so far, but we see that there is such a request from our investors, from our shareholders. We will give it due attention, and we will come up with something that is attractive to our shareholders, yet is economically beneficial for the company as well. Thank you. Next question.
Could you please comment on the prospects of further liberalization of the European agricultural market for Ukrainian producers? What impact do you anticipate this may have on APF's operations going forward?
This is a very important question. Liberalization of further liberalization of the European market for Ukrainian producers is a matter that is quite critical not only for the egg industry, but also for the agriculture sector at large. We are taking a very active position here using NGOs that represent our industry both in Latvia and also in Brussels. We are, of course, quite mindful that any continuation of the current regime will be harmful for both Latvian producers and also European producers. No secret that this issue is quite painful for the industry. It was quite helpful, and we believe it was very fair that starting 1 July last year, import tariffs were introduced for Ukrainian poultry products in the magnitude of EUR 0.15 for every 10 eggs. That has helped a bit to stabilize the market and to stabilize the prices.
Yet we believe that this is not fully sufficient. We remain of the EU, and this is also what we convey through our industry association, the NGO that represents local producers, that the issue of competition, which is one of the key pillars establishing the European Union, needs to be very carefully followed to. We will be advocating hard for a fair competition and that substandard products are not allowed on the market. The same standards are applied to all market participants because fair competition is important, and we believe it should remain at the core of the European market. Thank you. The next question.
What are your expectations regarding operational margins for the main business lines? Do you anticipate maintaining the same levels of gross margins in 2025 as achieved in 2024?
Yes. The short answer is yes. We expect the gross margins to be on the same level, mostly due to the fact that the product mix, as I said, is changing. With introducing two additional cage-free barns in the coming months, we will be further decreasing the share of enriched cage eggs in our product mix, which means that if assuming that the overall market sentiment remains as it is, as a minimum, we should be reaching the same gross margins levels as we have reached in 2024. If markets are favorable, we should outperform 2024.
Thank you. The last question we have currently received. Could you provide your perspective on the current situation with U.S. poultry egg prices? What are the implications for the European market, and how might this affect APF's business model and strategic positioning?
We monitor very closely developments of the egg market in the U.S. No secret that in the U.S., retail, the egg prices are being sold at the historically maximum prices globally. This is largely due to the fact of the outbreak of unprecedented scale of avian influenza. Our opinion is that this is likely to have a short-term effect, and the main U.S. producers are likely to renew their bird flock in the next six months or so. The situation that is happening in North America now represents a short-term spot opportunity for European players able and willing to export to the U.S. We have taken a strategic decision that a Baltic client, Baltic clients that are at the core of our client base right now, and also the European clientele that we are servicing today remain the key priority for us.
Given the limitations of production capacity that we see, we have decided not to pursue opportunities in the U.S. market at this stage.
Thank you. We have received another question. Just a reminder to all attendees that you still have a chance to ask questions in the Q&A window. Are there any updates on the biogas project?
The biogas project is currently on hold, if I may say so. This is largely due to the fact that last year we have made a few site visits to leading European biogas producers. We have also held a series of meetings with specialized funds, investment vehicles, investing in the biogas sphere. We have taken a strategic decision that for the implementation of the biogas project, the land plot that we have currently secured is not optimal because the best practice today shows that investment viability and potential sale of that project in the future improves if you have direct access to the gas pipeline, gas grid on the same land plot. In our situation, the nearest connection to the gas grid is 14 km from our site. At this stage, we are pursuing potential land plot acquisitions where we would have direct access to the gas grid.
This is the number one priority for the biogas project development team for the next few months to come. Once this is completed, we'll then resume the project, biogas project development.
Thank you. Now all questions are answered. Thank you for being with us today.
Thank you very much, dear investors. See you next time. Thank you.