Throughout the webinar, you're welcome to ask questions to the company. Please submit them in writing through the Q&A window below the presentation. For your convenience, we will be recording this session, and replay will be available shortly after the call. Let me now introduce you to the management of APF Holdings: Jurijs Adamovičs, APF Holdings Founder and Chairman of the Management Board, and Mihails Keziks, CFO and Member of the Management Board . Handing over to you.
Good afternoon, dear shareholders, dear investors. Welcome to our semi-annual webinar. Today, we're going to cover the following agenda. We're going to walk you through key indicators of our operational financial performance. We're going to share key highlights of the business, followed by an industry overview, sales performance, key financial indicators, and we'll finish with targets for the second half of this year. Key indicators. This six months of this year have been historically the best ever period for the group. Operationally, we have sold 59 million eggs, which represents 23% YoY growth. We have surpassed the EUR 10 million revenue threshold, which is 70% YoY growth. Gross profit, we have reached EUR 4.3 million, which is 183% growth. Our EBITDA for the six months of this year is EUR 3.5 million, which is 250% growth.
As you can see, the results are the proof of our investments, of the viability, as our investments are now translating into very viable results, higher scale, stronger profitability, and discipline on leverage. Moving on to the highlights, I'll only touch upon the key ones. February 2025, we have reassured our commitment to energy efficiency and sustainability by renewing our ISO certification. We have also been quite active on the product innovation and marketing. In June this year, we have launched a new packaging, which actually we now see is very likely to become our top five bestsellers amongst all SKUs that APF Holdings is offering. Earlier this year, we have also entered into the market making agreement with Signal Bank. This is to support share liquidity and improve trading dynamics.
This was done for the benefit of our investors, and it's, in a way, our small contribution to the capital markets development of our country. Hopefully, this is going to be helpful for our retail investors. In March 2025, we have completed a Series B placement of bonds. We have placed EUR 5 million private bond issue with our partner CVI. The funding was used for the completion of our latest investment phase and also to give us some flexibility, and also in order to decrease reliance on shareholder company loans. June 2025 was the month of some changes in corporate governance. We have reelected the Supervisory Board and have a very valuable addition, Ruta Amtmani, who joined the board as a new member and also as a Vice Chairperson of the Supervisory Board.
Ruta is a well-respected professional in the corporate governance and corporate law fields and has very substantial experience in banking and finance. Since very recently, he's also on the Supervisory Board of air Baltic. This makes our Supervisory Board complete in line with the articles of agreement. The investment program that we have communicated about in our previous webinars has been fully completed during the first half of this year. On May 8, we actually had an official inauguration of all three new buildings. These include two state-of-the-art laying houses with Big Dutchman state-of-the-art equipment and also a new liquid egg processing and central warehousing complex. All three are completed and delivered within the budget. That basically puts to a close or to a final completion our current investment phase, which in total amounted to EUR 13 million, of which EUR 2.9 million was EU co-funding.
As reported before, this would allow us to boost our production capacity by 60%, allowing APF to produce up to, apologies, 180 million eggs per round. This expansion is actually very critical. It's an initiative which would allow us to strengthen our position as a market leader in cage-free production and would certainly be going to improve our competitiveness in the cage-free egg and egg product line. As reported before, last year, we have launched a new business line under the trademark FeedTech Squared. First six months of this year, we have continued to actively work on this business. Just to remind our investors, the product lineup includes premium egg white protein powders, egg membrane collagen, and egg white protein bars with different flavors. We have a separate dedicated team that works on this project.
Since launch, the product is primarily Baltic region focused, but the vast majority of sales, roughly 94% in the first six months, come from Latvia alone, with the remainder coming from Estonia, Lithuania, and just slightly more than 1% from other EU countries. This is now no coincidence, and this is related to the fact that before starting a more aggressive rollout, we wanted to prove the business model and the concept, which is now largely being done. The FeedTech Squared team has achieved a repeated purchase rate of almost 32%, which according to any e-commerce benchmarks is a relatively high rate. Now we're quite comfortable to be more aggressive in launching in Lithuania and Estonia with recruitment activities currently in process. Most likely later in 2026, there will be additional rollouts in selected European markets as well. Egg industry overview is the next section we are going to cover, and I hand over to my colleague Mihails.
Thank you, Jurijs. Thank you, dear investors. Let's now walk through the financial part of the presentation. We will structure it in a similar way as usually. We will start with a big picture of the industry and then dig deeper down all the way forward to our numbers. First of all, let's see what's happening on the market. As usually, we are presenting this information, which is based on Nielsen IQ data for all three Baltic countries and describing the changes in the markets that happened during the first half year of 2025. Let's now take a look at this nice picture that we see.
All three Baltic states recorded the growth in the total egg market, and it was driven mainly by the barn egg segment where APF Holdings is developing, and the growth number reached a three-digit number, which is absolutely perfect. The leader amongst strict countries, as usually, is Lithuania, which in the first half reached the barn egg segment reached more than 60% share of the total market, which is very close to what APF Holdings was forecasting before IPO. In Latvia, less, but still more than 50%, and 23% in Estonia, which is still below our forecast, but it is explainable due to the fact that some supermarket chains are postponing shift to cage-free eggs to the next periods. Next slide, as usually, it's a price development during the reporting period. What we can see from this slide, information is provided by the European Commission.
Definitely during the first quarter of this year, prices were continuing to grow until the Easter period. There is a number of reasons to this. Of course, it was influenced by previous year developments. Namely, as we described previously, there was a smaller production of European egg producers due to large import previous from Ukraine. Also, some AI outbreaks that happened in the end of the previous year and some in the beginning of this. And also an important factor in this period was the shift to the cage-free eggs that drove a higher demand for them. Prices continued to grow, as I said, until April of this year, and then the market has stabilized, which also was in line with the regular annual seasonality of the prices when the summer months are the lowest one.
On the background of this, as you can see, APF prices were in line with the highest price in the market. It was bullish producer prices. Now, let's take a look at our sales breakdowns and performance, and let's start with one basic segmentation. It's the difference between eggs sold to supermarket to retail and eggs sold for processing or industrial eggs. As you can see, a very good result for APF. We have managed to reduce the share of industrial egg sales to 11%, which we can say is very close to the natural split of the eggs produced. Small eggs and large eggs, which are not suitable for retail sales, amount around 10% of egg production. We were very tight in this parameter and got a very good result selling a lot of our eggs directly to retail, not to processing.
Next slide is for the breakdown of eggs sold under APF own brands and eggs sold under other private labels. Here again, you can see that almost no change to the previous period, and the market level is approximately 50 to 50. APF was very effective in this line, and we maintained two-thirds of our sales being sold under our brands, which gave more sustainability to our sales. Of course, we would like to thank all our customers that choose our brands versus some other labels. Last slide about sales, but not least, very important. Let's take a look at how our export and our final destination geography of our clients looks like. Here you can see that we have continued to grow comparing to the results reported for the previous financial year.
We have significantly increased the number of eggs sold to Lithuania, and here you can see Lithuania and Latvia sales are almost equal, which is explainable, of course, by the situation on the market previously described, that Lithuania is a leader among Baltic countries for cage-free eggs sales. We have increased our share in Estonia, and it's going to continue in the next period, we believe. What is more important here to say, as Lithuania and Baltic share increase in our exports, also our final client profile has changed, and we have sold more eggs to supermarkets, not for processing as previously. This has driven the income from exports to rise almost three times compared to the previous period, which is also a very good result for APF Holdings for this period I'm happy to present here.
After that, let's finally take a look at our financial data, and as usual, at the beginning, we will review the factors that influence the change in our adjusted EBITDA parameter. As mentioned, and as you can see, a fantastic result. We have more than tripled our EBITDA for this period, and the main reason came from higher egg sales received in this period. Under that was a number of reasons. Of course, we produced more of our own eggs in this period due to the finalization of our investment phase previously announced. There were higher prices in the market compared to the previous period, and also we have more than doubled third-party egg sales compared to the previous year period.
On the cost side, feed costs increased, but only due to larger consumption of the feed due to new laying hens barns opened this year, but the feed price was even lower than in the first half of 2024. Another production cost increase was faced again due to the acquisition of these third-party eggs compared to the previous period, but also increase in packaging and operational personnel salaries. Also, to mention administrative expenses, the increase was due to higher research and development costs. All in all, we finished this period with a brilliant EUR 3.4 million EBITDA, which is EUR 2.4 million higher than any previous period. Again, let's take a look at what happened, what drove the change in our net profit.
The previous half a year, we finished with some losses, but this year we are glad to announce that we are closing with a record-breaking net profit of EUR 1.7 million, which was again mainly driven by the increase in EBITDA expressed and described in the previous slide. There were higher interest expenses due to more expensive financing we have attracted for this investment phase compared to the previous period. On the other hand, in this half a year, we didn't have any expenses related to the disposal of fixed assets as we were forced to have in the previous period. This was positive, and again, happy to announce our net profit of a record EUR 1.7 million. Finally, let's take a look at our financial indicators at one slide.
At a glance, as you may understand, our significant profit result of this year has boosted all of the profit indicators, and we have reached brilliant margins in EBITDA and return on equity of 34%. Our price earning indicator has decreased to 8x earnings received on an annual basis. Earnings per share is in a historically highest level, EUR 0.60 per share, which provides for 12% per annum income versus IPO price. Very important also to mention, nevertheless, we have encountered a higher debt to realize our investment phase. Our indefinite net level on net debt/EBITDA remained at a very comfortable level of 1.6, which also improves our financial stability. I will stop here and probably pass to Jurijs for the next slides.
Thank you, Mihails. The financial outlook is what we have on the screen now. We currently operate under the assumption that the revenue target or the turnover for 2025 should be close to EUR 22.6 million, which is a 7% upward adjustment towards last guidance, which was at the level of EUR 21.1 million. Also, for EBITDA, our previous guidance was almost EUR 6 million. Now, we operate under the assumption that APF should be in a position to close this financial year with EBITDA of EUR 7.1 million, which is an 18% increase versus last guidance. Growth drivers for the second half of this year. First and foremost, this is expanded production capacity. As mentioned before, the investment phase is completed, fully operational. Now, we have four out of the five barns full. Once we complete flock replacement in one of the five barns, which is currently underway and is expected to be completed in September, starting September, APF facilities in Aulksne will operate at full capacity.
That should support a strong revenue growth in the second half of the year and enable us to meet rising demands for products across all of our clients. Shift towards cage-free production is another growth driver, which Mihails covered, that we see even in the Baltic markets and retailers across markets and countries perform differently. We see that Lithuania is leading when it comes to cage-free transition. Latvia is ranking second among the Baltics and Estonia lagging behind. We do believe that all major international retailers will not walk away from their public commitments for transitioning towards better animal welfare products. We do expect to increase a further accelerated demand for a higher welfare production. We expect to see some growth in the liquid egg segment. There is also some correlation to the increased capacity of the APF facility.
Obviously, once we have a significantly higher number of eggs that we produce, there is also a larger quantum of so-called B-grade or secondary quality eggs, which are used for processing into liquid products. We also see a higher demand for liquid products produced specifically from cage-free products among large corporate accounts such as food processors, confectioneries, and bakeries. This segment we also see is becoming more high animal welfare standards focused, which also works for our benefit. Next growth driver is growth in FeedTech Squared. We are growing the team, as I already said. We are recruiting people in other markets as well. We are actually, as we speak, increasing our presence in retail, fitness, and other lifestyle channels.
We actually have already started first shipments in July to a majority of larger retailers in the Baltics, where the FeedTech Squared product range is already available, which we expect should be a significant boost in brand awareness and should help to facilitate growth in revenue across both the online and offline sales and channels. Overall, we also do believe that a more premium product mix should also contribute to growing revenue and higher margins. As we reported before, now APF is becoming, actually we have already de facto become, the largest industrial scale cage-free egg producer.
If we look at our capacity in relative terms as to what is the % of cage versus cage-free eggs we produce, only one of our five barns is cage or enriched cage or so-called colony, and the remaining four are cage-free, which puts APF on the path most likely to become the first totally cage-free egg producer once the cage production is gradually phased out. This ends our presentation. Thank you very much for your attention, and we are open to take up any questions from our shareholders and investors.
Thank you for the presentation. We will start with the questions and answers session. Just a reminder to attendees that you can submit your questions in the Q&A box below the screen. Since we have received a lot of questions already prior to the call, we will address similar questions as one. Let's start with the first one. Will shareholders' loyalty program include any benefits for the FeedTech Squared production?
The short answer is yes. A more expanded answer, I need to say that actually the timing of this question is very good. We had our regular Supervisory Board meeting last week, and the shareholder loyalty program was approved at last. It does contain, of course, very, we hope, attractive components for our loyal customers and for FeedTech Squared product connoisseurs. We do expect to officially launch this, I would say, within 6-8 weeks, and hopefully we'll make some positive surprises for our clients. It's no secret the key day for us for the egg industry is International Egg Day or World Egg Day, which is early October. Around that time, we expect to publicly announce all the details of the shareholder loyalty program.
Thank you. What drove the 17% growth of the revenue in the first half of 2025?
Yes, as we mentioned during the presentation, there was a number of reasons. Of course, it was an increase in the number of eggs sold and the more eggs produced thanks to the next investment phase we finished in the first half of the year. Also, we sold more third-party eggs, as mentioned, another factor was an increase in price of eggs due to the market situation and due to a higher demand for barn eggs this year. Also, thanks to the change in our product mix, as mentioned, we sold as less as possible eggs to industry, but the majority was sold to retail clients.
Is the gross profit margin improvement sustainable?
Yes, of course. Our gross margin was driven by this significant change and transfer in the market, which is a shift from cage eggs to cage-free eggs production. Our increased capacity will lead us to a better economy of scale, which will support our gross margin henceforward.
How do you manage rising feed or energy costs?
Feed and energy costs, both prices are fixed for the maximum period possible ahead, which is the best market practice and available solutions. In terms of energy, we can add more that we also have built our own solar park, which partly compensates our energy consumption.
How much debt do you carry after the bond issuance?
This year, yes, we have received another EUR 5 million debt from CVI, and in total, you will see from financial statements, our debt from CVI reached EUR 12.6 million, which was in line with our previous expectation. As we mentioned, all in all, at the end of the first half of the year 2025, our indebtedness indicator is very comfortable for EUR 1.6.
Do you expect to raise any additional capital in 2025?
I'll take this one. As we reported, our current capacity expansion is fully funded. If we will pursue additional development projects or acquisitions, we will, of course, evaluate financing options very carefully, always balancing growth with leverage. Our investors and shareholders might have noticed that some decisions on raising new equity were also taken at the latest shareholder meeting in June. If those acquisition and development opportunities will materialize, then yes, indeed, there will be additional capital raised.
The IPO projections were higher, so why was there adjustment?
The adjustment reflects predominantly timing. As Mihails Keziks covered in his macro overview, we have seen some delays in retailers accepting or introducing the transition to cage-free. That also makes the transition more gradual and not at the pace we have originally anticipated. That does not change our strategic direction, which remains the same. As you have seen from our operational and financial results, APF is delivering strong growth, which is well above our previous guidance.
How do you see the cage-free transition affecting APF?
I think it's fair to say it's a tailwind, and we are pretty much in the hands of our end clients, consumers, also retailers and food processors, who are, of course, in many ways accelerating this shift, if you like. I think also with our investments, which have been already concluded this year, APF is very well positioned to capture a significant market share and premium pricing as cage-free we see over the years will become an industry standard.
What is your expert strategy?
It's pretty much based on diversification. As we have reported to our shareholders and investors before, for us, the whole market is Baltics. But statistically speaking, if we look at everything that we sell beyond Latvia, exports are already above 50% of sales, with very significant growth in Lithuania and Estonia, which are logical markets because these are the markets for our key corporate accounts, for the key international retailers with whom we cooperate. Over the course of the first six months of this year, we have seen more shipments than usually to Western and Central European clients. This reduces reliance on any single market and builds some resilience. Of course, going forward, our strategy will be to increase exports as a percentage of overall sales of the company.
How material is FeedTech Squared today, and what is the outlook?
Today, it's not material. It's a relatively small share of our revenue, but it is a strategically very important business line. As we have mentioned earlier, we are scaling distribution. We are going into offline retail, we are going into fitness channels as well, and we have a very strong pipeline to grow those distribution channels. The FeedTech Squared business as such is diversifying our revenue into functional nutrition, which is internationally known to be a high growth and high margin category in which APF wants to be significantly present.
Will you internationalize FeedTech Squared?
Yes, absolutely. Our ambition is to scale FeedTech Squared far beyond Latvia, first in the Baltics. Once we see that we can deliver good results here, we intend to roll out into selected European markets. feedtechsquared.com was actually built to be an internationally scalable platform, and that's our intention.
Is the information available on the average number of eggs produced per hen annually? How many of those eggs go to production of egg mass, and how much to other products?
Yes, a very, very detailed question, let's say. As you may find, an average hen is producing something around 300 eggs per annum. In our case, what we are planning for now, approximately 6% of eggs produced will probably be used for liquid egg products.
Is there already available information on total egg production for the first half of the year?
Yes, of course. Of course, it's approximately 57 million eggs, and the difference between sales is also these eggs sold from third parties.
Could you provide guidance on the expected CapEx for the construction of three new barns, each housing 125,000 hens? Additionally, when is the completion of these barns planned, and in which farm of 2036 is commissioning expected?
Very, very detailed question. As I recall, we haven't yet disclosed our next investment phase. Of course, as the current phase is finished, we are now working on the next investment phase, and expected CapEx will be around EUR 22 million, and the completion is expected in the year 2027.
Have barns four and five reached full operational capacity?
Yes, of course, they have now reached this maximum capacity, but not in the first half of 2025, as new barns were populated in May and June 2025.
Could you please provide details on the repayment schedules for the company's borrowings?
Yes, both bonds tranches we have received from CVI were in total for a term of five years, and all repayment is postponed until the end of the financing period. Also, we are in a position to refinance these borrowings starting from the second quarter of 2026.
Thank you. Baltic Level has launched investments into 12 new cage-free barns able to produce roughly 500 million eggs annually. How will this reshape the Baltic markets, and what will be the key for APF to stay competitive?
I think it's fair to say first that even before this announcement was made by Balticova, and even before APF Holdings has completed its current investment phase, Latvia was already the number one ranked country in the European Union by the number of hens per capita. This means that already two, even three years ago, Latvia was producing significantly more than we consume. I would even say that Balticova and APF combined actually produce more than we require for the domestic consumption by far. It's also known, it's public knowledge, that Balticova's business model is based on exports, so they export the vast majority of their production. What you have also seen from our numbers already, roughly 50% plus of what we produce is being sold internationally. That basically highlights what the strategy is for both Balticova and APF . We are building an export-focused business.
It's also a statistical fact that the European Union as a market is producing less eggs than we produce. In Latvia, actually, the poultry industry is the only agricultural industry which is export-focused and which is consistently delivering good financial results. I think it's good news for the country, for the economy, that two of the largest producers, who also happen to be top three producers in the Baltics, are increasing capacity, and they're going to export more and more goods to international markets. When it comes to what will be the competitive edge, our competitive edge will be the same, to provide the best possible quality product and the best possible service to our clients, and we will continue to do so. That, as before, should be sufficient to deliver good results for our shareholders.
Are there any plans to distribute dividends in the future?
Nothing has changed. At the time of IPO, pre-IPO, we have announced what our dividend policy is, and it remains intact. Up to 50% of the profits are expected to be distributed as dividends. We have also clearly communicated that this will only happen based on the financial results of year 2025. We see the results of six months, which are encouraging. Assuming we will deliver on the baseline scenario, assuming our creditors will grant consent for the payment of the dividends, we actually do expect the payout next year.
Thank you. The next question, what the potential M&A deal does not cover, and could you please give some clarity on the planned deal?
At this moment in time, we're not in a position to give any details in public. We will do so in due course when the respective transaction is finalized and the respective legal contracts are executed. Announcements, public announcements, will be made fully in line with NASDAQ requirements.
Are there any plans to sell in regular retail stores the liquid egg whites?
Not at the moment, unfortunately, due to some policy changes within, I would say, some or a couple of the largest industry retailers, which are narrowing the number of SKUs. It seems very likely that one of the products we were particularly proud of, the protein smoothie, is going to be phased out. The product itself was a very good product in terms of the quality and also in terms of the gross margins. Since some of the large retailers want to replace it with alternative products for their own internal reasons, most likely the distribution of this product in the Baltics is going to be discontinued.
All questions are now answered. Thank you for joining us today, and if you have any questions that have not been answered, you are welcome to approach the company individually.
Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much.