ADAMA Ltd. (SHE:000553)
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6.50
+0.08 (1.25%)
May 22, 2026, 3:05 PM CST
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Earnings Call: Q1 2026

May 6, 2026

Guo Zhi
Board Secretary, ADAMA

Investors, good afternoon. I am Guo Zhi, corporate secretary of ADAMA Ltd. Welcome to our Q1 roadshow for this Q1 of 2026. Today, we are still providing you simultaneous interpretation for English and Chinese. You can see the clip button on the right bottom of your screen. You can choose the channel which matches your need. Today, we have also invited our President and CEO, Mr. Gaël Hili, and Madam CFO, Efrat Nagar, and our Global Investor Relations and Financial Corporate Manager, Madam Rivka Neufeld, to present to you our Q1 results. We have also the question and answer session. You can click the button and input your question. We are looking forward to your questions.

As a routine, we will present you the Q1 business performance slides, and you are kindly reminded to read through this legal disclaimer before we start. Now we will welcome Mr. Gaël Hili to present to you how we have performed in this first three months. Please, Gaël.

Gaël Hili
President and CEO, ADAMA

Good afternoon, everyone. Very happy to be here to share where ADAMA is going, its Q1 and where we are with the state of the business. A lot of strength, a lot of good news in our Q1, which is a continuation of what we've seen in the performance of the company for the last two years. In Q1 2026, we saw in a market that continues to be very competitive, very challenging, the profitability of the growers continues to be challenged. There is a lot of uncertainties for growers today, so their willingness to invest continues to be challenged.

Despite those conditions, we posted a quarter in Q1 as ADAMA with sales growth of 3.7%. Higher sales was one of our key objectives for this start of 2026, and we delivered on that. It's a combination of higher volume and lower prices. Prices continue to go down in our markets. Not only ADAMA, the whole industry is still facing price downturn. We have overcapacity that continues to affect the markets and a lot of competition, very tough competition, especially in markets like South America, Brazil, Argentina, but also in some Asian markets. Despite that, higher sales in Q1.

Higher gross profit also 5% growth in on the growth profit side with a gross profit percent, which is slightly higher than Q1 2025. Which means that we are able, in the current market condition, to protect the profitability of the company, which we improved over the last two years. Our objective is to grow the sales while protecting the profitability moving forward, and we succeeded to do that in Q1. The EBITDA is lower than Q1 2025 also because of the market conditions. We had expectations in term of mix, which did not turn into reality, unfortunately. Our strategy of growing the sales of the higher margin product is working well in some geographies.

It's still challenging because of the market condition in other geographies, so we're working on that. There is progress, but we need to continue to work on it. We have lower financial expenses. This is another good news for Q1 2026, due to favorable CPI and an improved debt profile. All these put together make us report a higher net income, a significantly higher net income. Efrat Nagar will talk about the actual number in a moment. Whether it's reported or adjusted, the net income is higher than Q1 2026. This evolution of the net income of ADAMA is also, I see, that a continuation of what we've been working on the last two years. Okay?

Getting out of very important losses into first smaller losses and now and now profit. This is one area of focus for us. I see this as a natural continuation of the work we've been doing the last two years. Next slide.

Efrat Nagar
EVP and CFO, ADAMA

In terms of how it looks, P&L for Q1 2026. We can see here that our strategy of a profitable volume growth is reflected with 3.7% higher sales, while we see 3% higher in volume. However, due to the market conditions as mentioned by Gaël, the 4% lower prices somehow, offsetting the benefit from the volume. In addition, the company took a decision to edit and reduce the manufacturing itself of the basic and low margin basic chemical product, which is also impacting the sales in 2026.

Looking on the gross profit, although also in this quarter, we can see that our profit increased by 5%, with a margin of 30.6%. This is due to the favorable exchange rate that impacts us positively on the gross margin. Of course, the higher volume and we succeeded, not as expected, but we succeeded also to improve our quality of business, selling more profitable products which supported also the level of the profitability. With higher OpEx, which in OpEx, we see negative impact of that FX rate, together with increase of the employee compensation and increasing in expenses to support this profitable sales growth.

We are basically reaching to EBITDA of $150 million, 6% lower than last year. If you are looking on the adjusted profits, we support it by, as mentioned by Gaël, better financial expenses, also due to our cash management in 2025, better debt structure and the CPI, lower CPI on our bonds in Israel, we can see that our net profit in 2026, the adjusted increasing by 35%, reaching to $59 million, and the reported reaching to $82 million while we reduce significantly our restructuring costs. Also, we sold a logistics center in Israel. We generated a profit of $37 million. Next slide.

Gaël Hili
President and CEO, ADAMA

On the sales front, as I was saying before, we saw an increase of the sales overall. If we look at it by region by region, there are some differences. Some of them are market related, some of them are actually related to decisions that we made as a company. Let me start with the top two, which are Europe, Africa, Middle East and North America. Here you see we posted some very strong sales growth. Despite the price trend is also negative in those markets. We posted these very strong volume increases, thanks to our growth strategy. This is very promising in places where also we're seeing some positive impact of the mix.

I'll go to Asia Pacific, then I'll talk about Latin America, which is the most challenging market today. Asia Pacific, you see a downside there, lower sales. This is driven by a decision of ADAMA to exit the sale and the production and sales of some basic chemicals. Actually, not in agriculture. We were selling some basic chemicals in China at a very low margin, a business that was not accredited to the overall profitability of the company. We decided to exit this business back in Q3 2025. When you compare the two quarters, Q1 2025 to Q1 2026, these sales are not there anymore. That's not something that we see as a bad news. It's actually our decision, and I believe it's a good decision.

Latin America, this is where the market is really challenging. This drop of 2% that you see in dollar is a combination of actually higher volumes but significantly lower prices, more significant than what we expected. The market continues to be very challenging in Brazil. There is a lot of product in the market. All players in the industry are trying to win in Brazil, and they're ready to make price concessions that are sometimes very, very challenging for us, and for all the players in the industry and driving prices down. That explains the trend in Latin America. Latin America, Q1 is not high season. It's actually low season. The real business in Latin America happens in Q3 and Q4.

I really hope that by then we'll see some inversion of the price trend also led by or influenced by what we're seeing on the cost side of our industry, related to the increase of oil prices and raw materials in China. Next slide.

Efrat Nagar
EVP and CFO, ADAMA

Okay. Thank you, Gaël. Yeah. This slide basically represents the sales bridge. I already mentioned our volume growth of 3%. This is a combination from one hand, loss of sale of some low margin chemical products, but from the other hand, is supported by new product introduction, which also supported our margin due to the higher, relatively higher, gross margin profitability of those products. With the still challenging market conditions, our prices are down by 4%. The weak dollar, because we are a dollar-denominated company, we are also enjoying it from the dollar by $45 million, and this is bringing us to $1,037 million sales. If we will go to the next slide, and looking on it now.

Looking on the EBITDA bridge, we can see the impact of the volume, $24 million contribution to our profit, again due to slightly higher quality of our business. Cost are moderate, more or less the same as last year. The increase in OpEx, which as I mentioned, are to support these sales. The increase in sales require more operating expenses. FX eventually supported ADAMA by $25 million, which allow us to reach to $150 million EBITDA, 14.5% EBITDA to sales margin. In the cash flow, in the next slide.

I think it's very important to mention that because of the seasonality of ADAMA business, Q1, the Q1 of each and every year, is usually negative. We can see here that the operating cash flow in Q1 2026 is $141 million. This is mainly due to phasing of sales and collection. Last year, Q4 2025, we sold lower sales. If you remember versus last year because the collection in this quarter is lower. Also we perform executed sales at the end of this quarter, which the collection will be in the next quarter. Bottom line is only phasing, and of course, we don't have any issue around collection.

Looking at the free cash flow, we can see that our best investment discipline, including the proceeds from the sales of the logistics center in Israel, somehow partially offset the negative operating cash flow and our outflow for free cash flow in Q1 is $139 million. Gaël?

Gaël Hili
President and CEO, ADAMA

ESG reporting, this is something we're very proud of. We've been releasing our 2025 ESG reports with a lot of very positive news on the front of on that front. I won't go through all the thing on the slide, but just highlight some of them. We saw a reduction, a significant reduction of our hazardous waste in 2025 versus versus 2024, 75%. We have zero significant injuries or fatalities during 2025, which is another very important achievement for us. Our scope 1 and 2 emissions were down 21% in in 2025, we are on track to deliver our 2030 objectives. This is an area where ADAMA is really progressing as per our plans, sometimes even better.

This is recognized by outside stakeholders. That's the next slide. You will see that our ratings, our ESG scores, if you look at and we look at different outside parties who are rating this type of performance, you see that all of them are increasing our rating as a company following the release of that report. I'm very happy, I'm very proud of our performance in that area, and we will continue, obviously, to drive this agenda in the quarters and the years to come. This is very important to us. We believe it's very important to our stakeholders, shareholders.

We know that these type of ratings are taken into consideration by our shareholders to evaluate the value of the company. We are very focused on that area. I think that's it for the presentation. We'll go to Q&A, correct?

Rivka Neufeld
Global Investor Relations and Financial Corporate Manager, ADAMA

Thank you for your introduction. Next, we will enter Q&A session. The first question is, has there been a specific assessment of the damage to the warehouse at the company's Israeli factory at the end of March 2026? What impact has it had on business performance in Q1, 2026, and the risk have on the whole year of 2026?

Gaël Hili
President and CEO, ADAMA

Yeah, thank you for the question. First, of course, this was very sad event for us, which we're still recovering from at the plant level. Most of the plant, I have to say by now, 90% of the units of the plant have been returned to operation within 2 weeks-3 weeks of that event. There's been a lot of repair and rebuild happening very fast after this event. I want also to stress the fact that nobody was injured during this event, which is a tribute also of how our people on the plant are following the safety procedure in case of events like this one.

Now, in terms of business continuity, I have to say that whether it's Q1 or the full year, we don't see any material impact on the, on the business continuity. Our ability to sell, to provide our customer, we have alternative options, or we had during the few weeks where we had some operational, let's say, slowdown in the plant. We have alternative. We continue to serve our customers globally without issue, and we don't see any material impact for Q1 none, zero. And for the full year, if any, it will be very, very minimal, not material at the scale of ADAMA.

Efrat Nagar
EVP and CFO, ADAMA

Yeah. Just to add there to this, that in Q1, important to mention that we recorded provision for some damage of our product, which is $5.7 million. We are expecting to get this money, the compensation from the compensation fund in Israel, and also we have an insurance on a loss of profit. Continue, like, beyond the fact that we are not seeing any material damage to our business continuity, we also going to get the money from the government and from the insurance in order to cover our expenses due to this.

Rivka Neufeld
Global Investor Relations and Financial Corporate Manager, ADAMA

The second question is that due to geopolitical events, the prices of various chemical products worldwide have seen a significant increase since March 2026. Considering ADAMA's sales performance in April and expectation for May, what changes have occurred in the selling prices of ADAMA? Have the corresponding costs increases been successfully passed on through product price increases?

Gaël Hili
President and CEO, ADAMA

Clearly, first, you saw that in Q1, our costs were broadly flat. Actually, they were flat. You saw a negative impact of $9 million on the bridge that Efrat presented earlier. Most of that $9 million is a one-off impact in Brazil. If we wanna compare apples with apples, our costs were flat in Q1, which is logical because in Q1, what we sold in Q1 was mostly either produced or purchased in Q3 and Q4 last year, where the cost increase that we see today in the market were not active yet.

True, the costs are increasing now, and the big question mark is, how much of these cost increases will the industry be able to pass to the end customer, down to the grower, knowing that the financials of the grower are also challenged in this very moment. Okay? Clearly, we are increasing prices. Most of our price increases are, depending on countries, they're active April 1st, or they were active April 1st or May 1st, a few days ago. We are doing our utmost to capture the, or to compensate the cost increase that we see, coming into prices in the market. Our ability to do that will depend on two things.

First, will depend on ourselves and our ability to also leverage our portfolio. I would say in that case, very importantly, will depend on the market. We saw the market behaving sometimes in an illogical way in the past years, destroying value because of competitiveness. Is that gonna continue or are we going to see a global trend from the whole industry to capture the, or to compensate the cost increases? This is too early to say. We will know this probably in Q3 and Q4, when the actual cost increases will hit the P&Ls of most of the companies in the industry. It's gonna happen between the H2 of Q2 and the beginning of Q3, depending on the supply chain of different companies.

Our intention in ADAMA is definitely to, at least compensate those pricing, those cost, increases with price increases. Our ability will also depend on what the market is doing, on that one. So far, as you saw in Q1, we have protected our margins.

Rivka Neufeld
Global Investor Relations and Financial Corporate Manager, ADAMA

The second question is that the gross margin of ADAMA in Q1 was by 0.3 percentage points to 30.6%, which is lower compared to the gross margin for the whole year of 2025. What is the company's gross margin percent for the whole year of 2026, and what are the means of to further improve the gross margin?

Efrat Nagar
EVP and CFO, ADAMA

You know that we Basically, we started our journey in a very low baseline of profitability of gross margin. We launched our Fight Forward plan in order to improve our gross margin, and we see it significantly in 2025. However, it's easier to jump versus the low baseline versus the continued significant gross margin improvement. We are in the trend of improving our quality of business during the 2026 onwards. However, we do believe that we will not, according to the also market condition, we will see improvement, but not at the level of the junk having in 2025.

Gaël Hili
President and CEO, ADAMA

If I may add, Efrat Nagar, we are changing, we are moving from a phase of restructuring and for two years cutting costs, setting up the company for in a healthy financial place, which we did for two years. Now we're getting into a phase which started in Q1, where we need to grow the top line again, which we did, okay? In Q1, as you saw, the sales grew. In order to do that, we cannot do that and at the same time increase the gross profit from the magnitude of we, that we did in 2024, the 4 points, okay?

We want to continue to grow at our gross profit, our profitability, but probably at a slower pace than what we did before, because we want at the same time to also increase the top line of the company. Okay. We're managing that balance. I think again, Q1 showed that we can manage that balance and we will continue to do so. We are still after improved profitability. We're keeping actually the discipline with cost management, with return on investments that we built over the last two years, that took us where we were in, if you see our financials for the full year 2025.

Now next is to grow the sales while also growing the profitability, but we cannot do it at the same pace as we did in the last, in the last two years. In the last two years, the company shrunk in terms of size, okay. We took some hard decisions to walk away from some products to improve the profitability. Now, with the portfolio that is left with us, we wanna grow this portfolio in sales. This portfolio has a starting profitability, which is healthy. We can increase it and we will increase it, but not at the same pace as before. We cannot expect that.

Rivka Neufeld
Global Investor Relations and Financial Corporate Manager, ADAMA

The first question is that ADAMA's net profit for Q1 has seen a significant year-on-year increase, yet both EBITDA and cash flow have declined compared to the same period last year. How do you interpret the contradictory trends in these financial figures?

Efrat Nagar
EVP and CFO, ADAMA

You know that, from the EBITDA, to the net profits, we have other factors that impact us. Okay? We discussed the lower financial expenses. This is one, because of our better cash performance in 2025, positive cash performance in 2025. We also restructure our debt to have a lower cost debt. And also, the CPI on our bonds in Israel, which was lower in 2026 versus 2025. This is benefit to our net profit. Another line or expenses that impacted our net profit and more than offset the lower EBITDA is our tax expenses.

While we keep focusing on our company structure, in order to improve our taxes, we already shared with you our own project of merger, the Israeli company, all in order to see or to unlock tax benefit in Israel. We are also benefiting in this quarter from accounting that for accounting guidelines around the level of the BRL, the Brazilian currency, and also the level of the intergroup inventories that's held by our subsidiaries. Of course, in addition, the sales of our logistics center in Hadera, in Israel, as we mentioned, $37 million, all those more than compensate the lower EBITDA, and we are performing significantly better net profit adjusted and of course, reported.

Rivka Neufeld
Global Investor Relations and Financial Corporate Manager, ADAMA

Next question is that recently National Climate Center stated that it is expected to enter the El Niño state in May 2026, and a moderate or stronger El Niño event will occur in autumn, possibly lasting until the end of the year. How does ADAMA view the impact of this climate event on the demand for crop protection products in various regions around the world?

Gaël Hili
President and CEO, ADAMA

Yeah, thank you. This is, We are looking into this, obviously. We know that this type of forecast provision exists. Usually historically, El Niño can have, depending on crops and geographies, Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, wheat versus soybean versus corn, can have actually negative or positive impact on the market. Okay. I think it's too early to say what will be the impact, if any. We're monitoring it through risk and opportunities. If it has an impact, obviously, it will be the whole market. It won't be only ADAMA. I believe at this stage, we cannot do much more than, you know, treat it as a potential risk in some geographies and a potential opportunity in others. That's the way we're treating it.

Rivka Neufeld
Global Investor Relations and Financial Corporate Manager, ADAMA

Second question is, that, if you want the company's administrative expenses to decrease by 20% year-on-year, the previous company's administrative expenses were mainly affected by expenses related to the Fight Forward plan. Will the full year decline rate of the company's administrative expense be close to the Q1 decline rate or will it drop by a larger margin?

Efrat Nagar
EVP and CFO, ADAMA

We share with you that, in the last two years, 2024, 2025, we had the Fight Forward plan, which, I think, took us to a change in the mindset of ADAMA towards OpEx discipline. Okay? The good news that this OpEx discipline is a part of our now culture, okay, our ongoing business, and we will continue manage it through 2026. Another good news that, as we share with you, this Fight Forward plan resulted by also higher restructuring expenses, the payment for McKinsey. It is something that we are not going to see in 2026. This is also going to support, of course, our operating expenses.

Last but not least, the FX impact, because we are a dollar nominated company, we are going to see some negative impact on our on the, on the dollar, on translating the local currency into dollar on the OpEx. Overall, I can share with you that we are putting a lot of effort on our OpEx management to make sure that OpEx is allocated to the region, to the business that are performing, to support their profitable sales growth.

Rivka Neufeld
Global Investor Relations and Financial Corporate Manager, ADAMA

Question number 8. Does ADAMA resume your sales in Turkey?

Gaël Hili
President and CEO, ADAMA

Not yet. The answer is not yet. We're still not selling in Turkey following the embargo that was announced by the Turkish government back in 2024. We have plans to come back probably toward the H2 of this year. We're treating it at this stage as an upside. It's not part of our official plan. We have good chances, solid chances to come back toward the end of 2026, with even higher expectation for 2027. We will have found compliance and way through submission of new regulatory documents to the Turkish authority to sell again in Turkey. And we will do so, as I said, probably toward the H2 of this year. Growing again, in 2027. That's our intention.

Guo Zhi
Board Secretary, ADAMA

Let's do the next question. The question number 10. You can check out, it is a question about tariff and what is the approximate value of goods exported to U.S. in 2025 and 2026 that are subject to IEEPA tariff. What is the corresponding tariff amount? What proportion of this is eligible for refunds? Previously, who is bearing the cost for exporting goods to U.S.? How much is the cost? Who is the ultimate beneficiary of this refund? Will it be returned to your company? Do you have any similar expectation for refunds? What impact will this have on your future growth margin?

Gaël Hili
President and CEO, ADAMA

Look, we are well aware of the refund mechanism that has been released by the government, the authorities in the U.S. At this stage, it's difficult and we're not in a position to comment on our eligibility as a company for potential refund or a potential benefit of that process. We don't wanna speculate at this stage. It's simply too early. I wanna also stress out that the exposure of ADAMA to the U.S. market is exists. Okay, we have a presence in the U.S., but our agriculture sales in the U.S. are relatively small, okay? If you put it in the context of the overall ADAMA. Even if it has an impact, at one point in time, it will not be a very material impact at the scale of ADAMA.

Guo Zhi
Board Secretary, ADAMA

Okay, let's see the last question. How do you view the global resistance problem of glyphosate?

Gaël Hili
President and CEO, ADAMA

Well, I view it, a company like ADAMA, which is an off-patent chemical company, has access to all available off-patent molecule in the globally. We can choose our tools, we're doing it very actively, which means that we are able to provide solutions to growers that actually are alternatives to glyphosate. We're doing it already in our herbicide portfolio. We're not selling glyphosate at ADAMA, or very little. We decided to exit the glyphosate business because it was not profitable enough. For us, the resistance to glyphosate, while it's an issue for growers, recognize that, is an opportunity. It's actually an opportunity, through bringing valuable solution to growers that allow them to find alternative to glyphosate to manage their weeds.

Guo Zhi
Board Secretary, ADAMA

That concludes Q&A. I will give the floor back to Gaël to give us a closing remark. Thanks.

Gaël Hili
President and CEO, ADAMA

Yes, thank you. First, thanks to all of you for your questions. I really appreciate the engagement here. As I said in my introduction, Q1 for us is entering into a new phase, a phase of growth. We've seen our sales and gross profit and net profit increasing quarter-over-quarter. I see it as also part of that is a result, a continuation of all the efforts we did the last two years to bring the company in a financial, in a good, solid financial place. We continue that journey while growing our business. There is a lot of positive in what we shared today for Q1. There is also a lot of challenges in the market and a lot of uncertainty.

This is something that is obvious to everyone. I think we have a team, we have a company that is able to manage much better that uncertainty than if we look at the company, where the company was two years ago. I have also a lot of confidence in the future. Thank you very much.

Guo Zhi
Board Secretary, ADAMA

That's the end of Q1 2026 session. We appreciate your support. Thank you.

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