Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining this presentation, where we will discuss the first half results for Golden Agri first half 2025. We look here at the executive summary, and we are very pleased with the excellent first half results, with especially stronger contribution from the upstream business. Revenue increased by 20% to $6.15 billion, and that was primarily driven by stronger CPO prices, which more than offset the slightly lower sales volume. The EBITDA increased by 14% to $566 million, and that was because of stronger upstream margins and a continued healthy downstream margin as well. The underlying profit increased by 23% to $232 million, and that was further supported by the lower interest expenses that we enjoyed.
If you look at the graph on the right-hand side, the segmental EBITDA, you can see the largest contribution coming from the upstream, the red part of the bar. If you compare it to first half 2024, you can see that it was actually the downstream providing the largest contribution to our EBITDA. So we believe this is evidence of the resilience of our vertically integrated business model, where both the upstream and downstream are significant contributors to our earnings. We have here the financial highlights. As I already mentioned, if you look at the first half this year compared to the first half last year, strong increases top line and bottom line. The net profit is here given as well, which increased by as much as 56%, further supported by a lower foreign exchange loss and reached $160 million for the first half.
Quarter on quarter, we also saw positive growth, in terms of revenue, reaching $3.1 billion and a strong increase in EBITDA to $307 million and underlying profits, to $144 million. Net profits for the second quarter increased by 93% compared to the previous quarter to $106 million. We come to our balance sheet, which remains strong, with a healthy cash position as you can see, and a reduction in our debt. Net debt reduced by 54% to $258 million, while the interest bearing debt decreased by 9% to $3.37 billion. The strong earnings combined with the deleveraging gives us strong financial ratios. Current ratio remains strong at 1.4x , and we saw improvement in the debt to total equity, 2.61x . Net debt over EBITDA, 2.22x , and EBITDA over interest increased to 5.11x .
We come to the segmental performance, starting with the upstream, the plantations and palm oil mills. As I already mentioned, this was the largest contributor to our earnings for the first half. This was driven by more favorable weather conditions, which gave us more production, more than compensating for the replanting process that we're going through, where we are preparing old estates for replanting. We can see here revenue increasing by 30% to $1.2 billion and EBITDA by 51% to $320 million, with a EBITDA margin increase to 27.1%. Of course, the financials were helped by the higher CPO prices, as I mentioned. We see here the 90% increase compared to first half last year to $ 1,090 per ton.
But we do pay a higher levy to support the biodiesel program, and therefore the increase in the first half was 13% compared to last year. Net of these taxes and levy to $900 per ton. Fruit production, as mentioned, because of the better weather, we saw a 10% increase, and fruit yield increased by 9%. The total palm products output increased by 9% to 1.3 million tons. We saw increases improvements in both the oil extraction rate and kernel extraction rate as well, to 20.7% and 5.5% respectively, resulting in a palm product yield of 2.3 tons per hectare for the first half, a 10% increase over last year. There are some details about our oil palm plantations, and we continue to focus on securing the future growth through our replanting program as well as the innovation in the fields.
If you look at the mature area, we saw a slight increase, while planted area saw a slight decrease. This is because of the replanting activities. We replanted 6,000 hectares in the first half of this year with a target of 20,000 hectares for the full year. The average age of our nucleus plantations was sustained at 15 years old, and you can see the age profile on the right-hand side. 7% of our trees are immature and 11% are young. That is where the production growth will come from in the coming years as these trees mature. The prime trees, 45% and 19%, they are at their peak production. We have 18% of all trees over 25 years old that we are replanting.
We are replanting with higher yielding seeds, which will give us higher production per hectare in the future years. Then we come to the downstream, and here we experienced a more competitive market environment. Nevertheless, we were able to maintain a healthy EBITDA margin of 4%. Revenue increased by 20% to over $6 billion. That was primarily because of the higher CPO price. Sales volume, as I mentioned, decreased slightly by 2%. We did see some recovery in the market environment in the second quarter, so we hope to see good results for the full year. Then we come to our business strategy and outlook. Golden Agri-Resources focuses on fortifying its position as an innovative and leading integrated agribusiness and food player with a superior at scale upstream and resilient value adding downstream business.
In the upstream business, the plantations, the focus is on operational excellence. The key drivers there are maximizing yield potential, consistent high quality replanting, optimizing manpower productivity, that is also through the mechanization and automation, upscaling precision agriculture platform, and advancing research for superior planting materials. In the downstream, the focus is on value add enhancements, selling the higher value added defined products with a focus on a large product portfolio that differentiates on quality, healthier alternatives, and sustainably produced products, advanced R&D on oils and fats, full service global logistics and distribution network, and strong relationships with our destination customers. Underpinning these are the leveraging cutting-edge technology and agroscience innovation, ESG commitment for responsible production, maximizing asset utilization through new product initiatives, and effective and efficient management with streamlined business processes and talent development. Now we have the business outlook and the industry fundamentals remain robust.
We see a modest recovery in palm oil plantation outputs, especially in Indonesia this year, but we believe that this supply growth will be easily absorbed by the continued growing demand, including from the Indonesian B40 biodiesel program. The capital expenditure budget for this year is $ 350 million. In the upstream, this is mainly for the replanting and in the downstream for expansion of the processing plants, the enhancement of other downstream facilities, including for traceable products and carbon emission reduction initiatives. This slide about our ongoing sustainability initiatives will be presented by Anita.
Thank you, Richard, and good morning, everybody. We have had a busy quarter in relation to ongoing sustainability initiatives, starting, of course, with our commitment to responsible supply chains. This quarter, we published our Responsible Agri-Commodity Sourcing Policy, which extends responsible sourcing to non-palm products that we trade. In addition, we have continued our work on EUDR readiness, piloting our SmartTrace system with key EU-based customers to enhance supply chain transparency and support supply chain compliance. We have maintained active dialogue as well with regulators in Indonesia and the EU, as well as stakeholders and customers to follow EUDR developments.
In terms of our ambitions looking forward for sustainability, we launched our new sustainability framework, Collective for Impact, in May, focusing on three pillars: sourcing responsibly, caring for our planet, which includes our net zero by 2050 commitment, and empowering people where we are strengthening our commitments and in human rights due diligence. We have set clear time-bound targets to drive long-term impact for the environment, our people, and the communities where we operate. We can do more if we do it together with others, and that is why we are focused on driving impact through partnerships. Together with ADM, a key customer in Tzu Chi, Indonesia, we have launched a program to improve food security and prevent stunting, two key issues in Indonesia, and enhance early childhood education in Lubuk Gaung, Indonesia.
This expands on an earlier partnership that has trained over 600 caregivers and upgraded education facilities in more than 350 early childcare centers, reaching over 8,000 children. That is all from me. Thank you.