Hello and good afternoon, everyone. My name is Muhammad Faisal Potrik, and on behalf of Riyad Capital, it's my pleasure to welcome you all to Almarai's first quarter 2024 earnings call. At this point, I would like to hand over the call to Mr. Mohammad Al-Khalidi, Almarai's Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mohammad.
Thank you, Muhammad, and welcome everyone to Almarai Q1 earnings call. My name is Mohammad Al-Khalidi, and I am here today with Almarai CFO Danko Maras and Ikram Haque, the Head of Finance. First, I would like to thank Muhammad and Riyad Capital for hosting and organizing our call today. As usual, I assume all of you have downloaded the earnings presentation. For those who haven't, please go to Almarai website Investors page Earnings Presentations, and you will find the document. Before we start our presentation today, please pay attention to the disclaimer on page 2. Now I will leave you with Danko to take us through the presentation. Danko?
Thank you very much, Mohammad, and good morning, good afternoon, both ladies and gentlemen. We're happy to be with you again in our first earnings conference in 2024 covering our Q1 results. I hope everyone is doing great. I see that we're increasing the number of participants as we go along, but let me just start, and maybe I'll go straight into page 6 if we can and look a little bit on our innovations. Except for our great extensions that we do in dairy and juice that you see on the bottom left side and also on our dairy food products, we're also very happy and delighted to announce the launching of our ice cream segment in the first quarter of 2024.
You can see that we have about 14 different variants and flavors of ice cream, and I have to say that we are delighted to see the consumer reactions on the launch that we've done. It's everything from cones to tubs to sandwiches to sticks to my favorite there on the right side, the Mini Bites. I don't know if you had an opportunity to taste it yet, but hopefully for those of you who are in the region, have an opportunity and buy our ice cream. It's an overwhelming consumer reaction, so we're very happy to see that. All big things have a small beginning, so of course we are just very happy to see the launch of this, and we are now building plans to ensure that we can accommodate the great demands that we've seen on the ice cream segment.
So with that, maybe we should just move then to our total Almarai first quarter highlights, and I'll spend some time on each and every one of them. To start with, our revenue growth for the quarter was 8%, to SAR 392 million, reaching SAR 5.459 billion in the quarter. This is a strong performance across the board. I'll eliminate that a little bit more for you on categories, channels, and countries. It's led by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Kuwait. Growth was the highest for our dairy category, followed by food and poultry. And I know I'm going to get some questions about the shift of days that you have on Ramadan and the impact of that between Q1 and Q2.
So let me just highlight already now to you that our growth that we are seeing in the quarter is approximately around 1%-1.5% benefiting from that we have more days of Ramadan in the first quarter versus the second. So of course we will have the reversal effect in Q2. But nevertheless, if we look at the growth component of our first quarter, we are very pleased to see that we are growing significantly in volume across the board. There's very little price in this quarter. We predominantly have volume and mix. That is a good health of our business across all our categories. Our operating profit grew also 8%. Many different factors around that, but operational efficiency and investment in consumer communication does its part.
But we also start to see a continuous stable commodity situation, despite some negative impact due to the interruption in maritime freight transport that you might have heard of. It's manageable for us. We are dealing with it, and hopefully it will not get worse as the year goes along. And then if we look at net income, despite higher funding costs and lower quantum of debt, but higher funding costs, our net profit for the quarter increased by 9% to SAR 692 million, mainly due to the top-line growth and the operational efficiency that we have, assisted by also a bit of a deferred tax item in Argentina that elevated the net income versus the operating profit. If we look at the balance sheet, we see an increase of working capital versus last year's ending position in Q1.
But if we look at it versus the ending position in December for a fourth quarter, we are basically flattish. We are not moving the working capital. If we look at CapEx, you see an increase of SAR 268 million. And that again comes back to the reflection of our increased expansion of investments that we're doing, in particular in the poultry segment. So the SAR 790 million that you're seeing there is according to plan, and there will be more to come throughout the year, of course. Despite all this, mainly because of the operating business that we have, you see a very positive free cash flow of SAR 500 million coming through. It's an increase versus last year's flow of about SAR 232 million. So we are delivering a good cash flow delivery also in the quarter.
I'll come back to that a little bit more in the later section, or Ikram will do that for you. Now, if we dissect the revenue component a little bit more, I think the next three charts are very positive in the sense of seeing where is this growth coming from. You can see across the board that we are having growth in all countries, and a very significant component of that sticks out. I guess you all see Egypt of SAR 122 million. That growth is in Riyal, and I'm sure I will get questions on that as well. The devaluation that happened in mid-March in Egypt was anticipated, and we did not know if it would happen in January, February, March, and nobody knew really. In anticipation of that devaluation, a lot of price increases were done without significantly impacting the volume.
So what you're seeing there is a precautionary approach towards devaluation that actually paid out well in the quarter, and very significant growth is coming in Riyal of 39%. The local currency growth was 55%. So the team in Egypt are working hard in making sure that they do the best in very dire circumstances. Excuse me. But then in absolute, of course, KSA is the highest in SAR 158 million with 5%. But you can also see across the board that we are growing in every country. We're also growing in Qatar. I think the 0% is just a reference that we didn't have any sales last year, and we're actually growing in the first quarter with SAR 14 million. And we are expanding also with our juice category, and we are gradually coming into Qatar, which is a very positive thing for us.
And if we then look maybe at the categories, you also see very strong growth coming from all our categories, and in particular then in fresh dairy. If we talk about Ramadan, that's where you see the biggest impact, where you have seasonal consumption patterns that are affected by the Ramadan and the buy-in, etc. So very strong growth in fresh dairy. Food's also growing very well with 9%. Poultry, 9% as well. Long-life dairy growing with 6%, fruit juice 6%, and bakery slightly growing with 2%. We are seeing a good pickup also from Q1 going on the bakery segment. So all categories growing. The other sales is the overseas farming of alfalfa that I keep talking about, but it doesn't really impact us on profitability. Another positive for us is also when we look at channels.
And our stronghold in traditional trade that we continue to have with 56% out of our total portfolio grew 9%, and in absolute that yields a lot, SAR 250 million. But we've also grown good in modern trade. So total retail have grown really well in the quarter with 10% in modern trade. But also the other channel grew, both on food service and export. So a positive mark, I would say, in all countries, categories, and channels. And that bites well for the continuation of 2024, whereby we built a plan on executing growth in volume, not so much in price, holding the price where we are, but growing the volume. And we are seeing that coming through, and for that, we feel very good. If we talk about the net income, let me just do a bridge for you on page 13.
Last year's results, you saw a delivery on net income at SAR 635 million. The increase of SAR 57 million or 9% that you see here in the first quarter of SAR 692 million comes predominantly from volume mix and others. That's approximately SAR 100 million coming from our growth in our volume. We do have some pro-rata benefits from net pricing, but for those of you who have followed us closely, you know that that was significant pricing activities every quarter. This is not the case what you will see for the rest of the year or in this quarter either. Something very positive for us is also the cost of goods that we look at. Although it's very small in absolute terms, it's still a shift of trend whereby we've had continuous increases. I think this is the first time in a few years that we ever see it coming down.
This reflects the stabilization of commodity cost. Also, if you recall, the inventory churn that we are having in Almarai being such a large company, it comes gradually, but it comes surely that we are buying in at lower prices and we are dispatching at a little bit higher prices. The average price is coming down on our inventory, and we are starting to see the benefits of that in our cost of goods sold. To that, I want to go straight into the SAR 77 million, the one-off item that you see there. Last year, we benefited quite substantially from food security support that we received. In total, it was more than SAR 77 million, but we phased it out by quarter. The SAR 77 million was inflating the underlying results last year.
That component, of course, also had another benefit of the one-off impact of Ramadan, but it was less than the SAR 77 million. So if I look at the gross profit, and if questions would come, you see a slight erosion of gross margin, albeit higher than ending last year and ending 2022. We are moving along and improving our gross margin. There is a dilutive effect that this one-off item in the gross margin that impact us. The operational cost that you see there, SAR 24 million, it's essentially diesel. And the impact of diesel, we've announced this full year around SAR 100 million-SAR 150 million. And you just have that impact as we see it in accumulation for Q1. It's about SAR 24 million in that item.
It's manageable, but it's, of course, if it continues to go up, it will be a little bit source of a worry for us in terms of our cost structure. We have to drive efficiency to mitigate that impact if it continues over the years. The funding cost of SAR 9 million is entirely related to an increase. It's about 70 basis points more than last year. We are still below 6% on effective interest. We also are flattish compared to last year if I look at the net debt level that we are in now. A lot of our portfolio of borrowing is fixed, as you know. So we continue to have good control of, let's say, the interest costs. Like everybody else, we are hoping for an interest reduction, and when it comes, we will benefit from that gradually.
But at this point in time, we still see borrowing rates close to 6% or more if we want to borrow. So that's the net income bridge. Good to see the growth of 9% on the bottom line. And we continue to drive our volume growth, and a lot of that improvement should come down to and trickle down to our bottom line. But for that, I let Ikram speak a little bit more in detail on the financial performance and the segments.
Thank you very much, Danko. I'll go through the next few slides on the financial performance. If you focus on this slide, we're looking at revenue, operating profit, and net income. I think we've discussed revenue growth in detail, and Danko talked about how the growth is very broad-based across all channels, countries, and products, where Almarai has recorded very decent growth. I'll focus more on operating profit. Our revenue grew up by 8%. Our operating profit also grew up by 8%. But please remember that this includes the one-off support that we received last year of SAR 77 million that Danko talked about. This highlights that the underlying operating profit is growing even stronger than what you see on the screen here. The rationale for this strong performance on operating profit level is twofold.
The number one is the strong control of Almarai management on overhead and cost. We've continued to manage cost as best as possible, and as a result, we are able to generate more operating profit. The second factor helping us grow operating profit aligned with revenue growth, regardless of the one-offs, is driven by stable commodity costs. We see signs of this across the board, be it corn, alfalfa, soybean. That's the reason the operating profit is also going aligned with the revenue growth, which is 8%. The net income is growing a bit faster. It's growing at 9%. As Danko mentioned, the interest cost is going up mainly because as we are rolling up our debt portfolio, currently nearly 54% of our portfolio is on fixed basis.
As we roll over the debt, depending on when the maturity comes through, it's resulting in slightly higher interest rates. Today, we are paying just below 6%, but that's the reason why interest rates are slightly higher than last year. That's, in summary, the P&L for the full year. Let me discuss in detail by each segment on slide 15, which you can see on the screen right now. I will focus on three segments, and I will discuss the revenue growth as well as the net income growth. If we look at the first segment, dairy and juice, mashallah, we see double-digit growth on dairy and juice, 10% year-over-year, driven by Ramadan, driven by very good performance by the business, regardless of seasonality, and very good performance in Egypt as well.
As a result of this, the top line was very, very decent, 10% growth. Bottom line was even better at 16%. This is, again, driven by our economies of scale and the stable commodity cost and the cost control within the segment as well. Let me now address the bakery. Bakery was slightly positive compared to last year. As you can well imagine, during Ramadan, the propensity of consumers to start having single-serve or, let's say, a puff or a croissant on the go becomes very limited. So regardless of the seasonal consumption patterns, bakery results were still strong and positive on the top line. The bottom line was slightly higher than the revenue growth, mainly driven by economies of scale. Let me now talk about poultry. Poultry growth is 9% for the quarter. The volume growth was 6%.
The balance of the growth is coming by better channel mix, coming by selling more of these products in retail. So we're getting better and better at optimization of our portfolio as we go through this cycle. We have another decent sale this quarter. We sold nearly 53 million birds in the quarter. Based on this volume-led growth, the numbers were very decent, but the operating profit growth you see is slightly lower than revenue growth. Again, this is because of the one-off subsidy that we received last year. Otherwise, the underlying numbers and the underlying profit growth remains very strong in the poultry segment as well. Let me now move through some of the other information, mainly on our balance sheet and cash flows. So if I go to slide number 17, you will look at our CapEx spend.
Today, our CapEx spend is around 14% of our revenue at nearly SAR 2.8 billion. As Danko talked earlier, this is in line with our planned investment. The majority of it is coming from poultry investment, and this number is likely to be elevated for the next one or two years, which we have already announced to the market as well. If I move to slide number 18, you look at the working capital at SAR 4.2 billion. And we talked about it in the last quarter as well. We saw one-off purchases at the end of the quarter, but as we said, we will come back to our normal operating range. And I'm very pleased to report that our working capital, as a percentage of revenue, is back towards the 20%-22% range, as you can see on the screen above.
We expect that trend to continue, and we would like to improve it, but that trend remains solid as we speak. The next one is operating cash flows. Again, you can see for the last three years, the upswing, which is happening from 20% to 23% to 25%. So it shows that how we are now crossing more than SAR 5 billion on a trailing 12-month basis in operating cash flows. It now represents 25% of our revenue, and we hope the trend will continue as we continue to make positive sales for the next upcoming quarters. With that said, I would like to request Danko to take us to the end of the presentation. Over to you, Danko.
Thank you very much, Ikram. So this is a 12-month rolling chart that talks about the cash flow. And of course, we're pleased to see the operating cash flow before working capital movements in the last 12 months is up to now SAR 5.4 billion. And then if we take that time period, you have a SAR 400 million impact on the working capital. It's negative for us, and we continue to have the ambition to reduce that so that we actually can show a positive delivery from the current assets into our cash flow delivery. But it's a strong testament to the cash flow generation capability that we have in our business. It continues to be high, and it's reaching even higher levels with this quarter added in the last 12 months. But we're also investing a lot.
So the SAR 3.6 billion that you see there, SAR 2.8 billion is planned property and equipment, but also biological assets of about SAR 800 million. So we are consuming a lot in our CapEx as planned. And then essentially, you have the funding cost of SAR 600 million that we are spending and paying to our bondholders and lenders, and then another SAR 1 billion of dividend that goes to our shareholders, essentially leaving us with the same debt level at this period versus last year, but with a higher EBITDA. So I will come into that on the next chart if we look at that. You have a summary, I think, on the net debt trend. Now, this is comparing the year-end of SAR 9.4 billion of net debt to SAR 9.1 billion. And I was referring to last year's first quarter so that the debt remains the same.
But in reality, we are keeping approximately the same net debt level as last year, but we are improving our EBITDA, and that continues to improve our ratio of net debt to EBITDA to being very close to 2 times. And we've said that we should be somewhere around 2.5 as a guiding principle. So the ability to generate the cash, hold our debt level down, and improving our operating performance is a good testament in this metric that we're looking at. And you can also see that the debt ratio to the equity is also coming down below 50% now with approximately SAR 18 billion of equity in our balance sheet. So a healthy sign on the left side. On the right side, you see the trend of the development of EBITDA and EBIT.
And although you probably have seen that in the quarter, we had an EBITDA of 23%, and our EBIT margin is 16% in the quarter, it's also rolling 12 months here as we're using, and we are holding the 14% EBIT margin and very close to holding the position also on EBITDA. So turning the tide a little bit from where we came from in the past, moving back up again into levels that we feel that Almarai should be in in order to sustain its position in the marketplace and being able to invest in the business, it's something that we feel proud of in Almarai. So with that, I think, yeah, on the maturity profile, as you can see, we redeemed our Sukuk in the first quarter.
We had $500 million sukuk that we redeemed with an issue that we did already in July last year because we felt the timing for issuing the sukuk was the best in doing so, and it's proven to be very good. And this quarter, we are actually paying back an existing sukuk and redeemed it, and we are now replacing that with the sukuk that we issued in July last year. What it does, it has a different maturity profile. So you saw a very high column on up to one year in the previous presentation, but now we have an evenly distributed debt maturity profile. And because the duration of the new debt that was issued is beyond five years, we are now reaching a very healthy level of 5.7 years of a debt maturity profile.
If something were to happen in the world, we are also able to generate our own cash and repay anything that might happen in the next four years or five years. The column on the right side that looks like a big refinancing need is not five years. It's beyond five years. So please don't see it as we have debt being refinanced in five years or 4.5. It goes beyond the five years, and maybe we should make that a little bit more clear for you if you have that interest so that we don't scare anyone away from Almarai here. Very healthy debt maturity profile. The dividend that we have paid just a few days ago, everything went well. As you, I'm sure you know from the AGM and the decision made by the shareholders, $1 billion dividend was paid out to the shareholders.
That this year, excuse me, related to 2023, is 49% of our net income in those levels where we've guided that the payout ratio should be. So with that done and that behind us, we are now ready for any questions and answers that you might have. Please feel free to the moderator, Muhammad, to go ahead and steer this. Thank you.
Thank you for the presentation, gentlemen. We now move on to the Q&A session. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please use the raise hand button on your screen. Our first question comes from Mohammad Al-Rashid. Mohammad, please go ahead.
The first question. Assalamu alaikum. Am I audible?
I can hear you. Please go ahead.
Yeah. So I have three questions from my side. The first question is regarding the depreciation and amortization expense in your dairy segments. It has dropped by around SAR 74 million on a year-over-year basis. So was that mainly driven by depreciation of biological assets? And if that's the case, what was the reason? Is it basically lower commodity costs? And how should we expect that in the coming quarters? My second question, if it is possible to provide the breakdown of the SAR 77 million subsidy received last year between poultry and dairy. And my final question is regarding the expected capacity of your poultry by the end of this year and next year. Thank you.
Well, thank you, Mohammad. I think on the depreciation, I only have the high-level view of we depreciate about SAR 1.6 billion a year, and we are investing more now because we are expanding in our total business for the poultry segment in particular. But normally, we have a ratio of investing approximately what we are depreciating. And then maybe, Ikram, can you say if you want to specify? I'm not sure we are disclosing how we are doing it by category, but if we are normally disclosing, feel free to answer number two and three as well.
Sure, [Nahis]. On the dairy and juice segment, one of the reasons is mainly because of accelerated depreciation for some of our assets that we were doing a regular review. And there were some biological assets as well that happened mainly in Q1 last year. So EBIT looked very good for the segment, but exactly as Danko said, the overall depreciation remains between SAR 1.6 billion-SAR 1.8 billion, and that remains 7%. In terms of your question number three, it was about poultry capacity. So today, our capacity is between 260 million-270 million birds. We are trying to bring in more capacity online as quickly as we can. We are hopeful that the next phase, which could be between 70 million-100 million birds, can come online by the end of 2025, but that remains tentative.
So if I'm in your shoes, I will still presume that the current capacity will continue for the best part of 2024 and the best part of 2025 for the poultry plant. Your question number two was about subsidies, if I remember.
Yes.
Yes, the breakdown between the segments.
Oh, so nearly half of. So what happened? The subsidy related to corn and soya. The government gave subsidy on corn, soya, and barley, mainly for the Ukraine war that the company supported them. We got the subsidy for corn and soya, and corn and soya are common products between poultry and dairy. So of the 77, virtually, it was equal half of between dairy and poultry. If I remember, I think 51% or 52% was dairy, and 48% of that subsidy was poultry. I can't remember the exact number, but it was virtually within that time frame, within that spectrum.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Fahad Al-Ghamdi. Fahad, please go ahead.
Questions. Yeah, I have two questions. We noticed that you did not provide us with your market share this quarter. So can you please update us on your market share in each segment, especially in UHT? My second question is in regard to ice cream. What percentage of market share are you targeting? And from what I noticed, ice cream production is being outsourced. Are you planning to keep it this way or produce it in-house at a later stage? Thank you.
Well, Fahad, on the first question about market share, we continue to have number one position in dairy in total. We had a little glitch, I think, on one of the segments, and hopefully, we can be able to produce and show market share at the later stage. But overall, we are continuing to have our number one market share positions. The UHT component that you are seeing and the question that you are having, we have a very precise long-term strategy of becoming the leader in that segment. We believe that both fresh dairy, without cannibalizing, benefits from a total category growth within the dairy segments, both for fresh and for long life. We are investing heavily both in innovation and marketing and route to market in order to gain market share positions in long-life dairy.
We had glitches last year when we had a production issue in Q3, if you remember. Today, we have full capacity to go on our long-life dairy, and we are confident about our ability to do so over the long term. Having the number one position in the categories that we operate in the GCC markets is our number one priority. Longer term, there is no change to that ambition. If I look at the market share positions that we are having today, we are overall in the categories number one, with the exception of long-life dairy. There, we want to be instead of number two, we want to be number one. On ice cream, you're absolutely right. We are outsourcing it to start with. We have what we call a little bit of a sequencing in capital investments.
As you know, if you look at the number two strategic pillar of growing in adjacent categories, many of you have said, "Why haven't you been in ice cream before?" But the reality is that we were not. And in order to be a fully-fledged competitor in the ice cream market, you need to be vertically integrated. But that is also very capital-intensive. The same goes for seafood. The same goes for red meat that we are gradually investing. And depending on the investments we are doing and the success we are seeing in ice cream, we will gradually increase the vertical integration. We have, as you know, the core raw materials to produce ice cream. So we are very confident about our ability to develop processing facilities for ice cream when we come to that stage.
At this point in time, it's about building brands, building the right innovation, making sure that we are establishing market share. Longer term, our ambition is to be the leader in ice cream in the GCC region. There's no hesitation on our strategic intent on ice cream either. Does that answer the question?
No, thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Taher Safieddine . Taher, please go ahead.
This is Taher from JP Morgan. Two questions, if I may. I mean, the first question is really on looking at this set of numbers on a like-for-like. I don't know. Maybe I'm missing something because if I take out the SAR 77 million subsidy, the numbers look quite strong, right? I'm calculating 90 basis points gross margin improvement, 150 basis points EBIT margin improvement. If I adjust it on the net profit, as Ikram was saying, in terms I mean, I'm looking at very solid profitability growth in the dairy and juice and also in the poultry. So help me understand, isn't this the right way to look at it, to take out the one-off subsidy? And then, I mean, how should we read these numbers, Danko? I mean, the margins are finally turning around, and with that, we've seen a decent revenue growth.
I mean, just maybe your thoughts here and how should we look at the margin profile moving forward because there seems to be some significant improvement, specifically dairy and juice and poultry, on a net level.
Yeah, thank you, Fahad. I think I'm a little bit more muted than you because the reality is that, yes, we had a comparatory issue on the food security support that we received last year. But you also have to remember that we had a benefit of 12 more days of Ramadan in the first quarter in a fairly good segment that we have high profitability in. So the SAR 77 million that we are referring to also had an offsetting benefit this quarter with the Ramadan phasing that you will see in Q2. But with that said, I'm still confident what I believe fast-moving consumer goods companies should do, and Almarai is no exception, is to grow volume and grow volume profitably. Pricing is something you have to do every now and then because of raw material that comes into play, and you want to pass that on to consumers.
You can do strategic pricing. You can have assortments with price piano that goes for addressing premium pricing on specific products, mass market, or value. And we do all of that. So the reality is that if you don't grow volume at the end of the day, you will have an issue. And the 8% or the 6.5%, if we take out the Ramadan impact, is still very solid for a business like ourselves. So that gives me confidence that we have built the plan this year on growing our volume. And that's a very good sign. And we continue to be very ambitious in growing the volume in all categories. And it remains to be seen. But I think we have the conditions now to set up for a good year in growing volume.
You will have a little bit of a negative impact, I think, for Ramadan in Q2. But as we go along this year, we are seeing some very healthy signs. And it starts with branding, the brand equity, the capabilities, making sure that we actually do have the capabilities of producing so that we don't have any constraints. And today, we operate only in one area where we have constraints, and that's in poultry. Believe me, we are selling everything we can produce. And we are elated to see the demand for our Alyoum brand. People feel that that is a product they prefer. And they prefer it because of the investments we've done in quality. It's all natural. There are no additives. The Alyoum brand represents quality that you can trust. But unfortunately, it takes a little while for us to produce at high quality.
Ikram was saying that maybe full output in the end of 2025. I think it's better to wait because when you are in a vertically integrated supply chain like we are in dairy and in poultry, there are always bottlenecks from mills to hatcheries to broiler houses to processing units, etc. So we want to be a bit cautious on that. But we are selling everything we can produce. And we are grateful to see the demand among consumers, which is a testament on investing in the brands, investing in the quality that you can trust. So yes, I'm upbeat, but not as positive as you are. I'm always a little bit more cautious because it's maybe the role I play.
Okay, understood. So clearly, the way to look at it, the like-for-like revenue growth, just adjusting for Ramadan and all of this noise, is 6.5% in Q1, right? That's the correct way to look at it.
Yeah, we don't have exact science. It's always difficult because you have mixed issues, of course. We know the best comes from dairy. But we said between 1% and 1.5% boosts top-line revenue in a good category because of the shift of the days in Ramadan.
Okay. Just maybe the second question and the final question from my side is you've announced a new investment plan for the next five years, right? I mean, there was an announcement on Tadawul, if I'm not mistaken, around SAR 18 billion of investments. Can you just maybe elaborate more on that in terms of what kind of revenue targets potentially we're looking at? And in addition to poultry, which I think is very well known by the market today, how are you thinking about these investments and which categories, which segments? I mean, maybe more details would be helpful for us to better understand those.
Yeah, I understand that you're asking for the details. And if we would have disclosed them, you wouldn't have asked me, of course. But it is about giving a testament about Almarai's ability and also commitment to grow, not necessarily only in the next quarter, but to reassure yourself and investors and many stakeholders around the kingdom that Almarai is a relevant player in the food segment, food and beverage segment. And we are committed to grow significantly in the next coming five years. And we are prepared to invest SAR 18 billion in growing. And part of that has to do with expansions that we're doing, as you rightly pointed out on poultry.
But we're also investing heavily in dairy and bakery and our existing categories to capture more growth in areas surrounding those categories, if it's UHT or if it is Artisan Bakery, where we think there is a very interesting expansion area for high-quality bakery products. And we will invest in those segments to make sure that we are the relevant player in the kingdom. But then we're also investing in the adjacent categories, as you could see. For us, we do that sequentially. So we don't spend billions, but we do spend a lot on these adjacent categories and make sure that we're investing in the right way. That will be a supplement to our current portfolio if you think about it in the next five years. If we do well on one or two of them, that you will see a significant impact on our top line.
And then, obviously, we also have to have the infrastructure to support it. We work today with AS/400, but technology is moving rapidly. AI is moving rapidly. And although we don't want to be leaders in that field, we don't want to be followers either. We want to make sure that we are having state-of-the-art technical facilities in place to drive it. And as you see volume growth expanding, we also have to ensure that we have the infrastructure in our supply chain to support it. So I'm afraid that's all I'm going to give you for now. And perhaps a little bit later in the future, we will be able to give you more data about it.
But clearly, this is a testament to our commitment to be a number one player, not only necessarily in the region, but also, if you look at it from size, also worldwide, that we are committed to growing in Almarai.
Okay, thank you. Very clear. Thanks.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please use the raise hand button on your screen. Our next question is from Mohammad Saad. Please go ahead.
Questions. My first question is with regards to selling and distribution expenses. If we look at the number, not only in absolute terms but also as a percentage of the revenue, it has declined despite the increase in diesel costs and the associated increase in transportation. If you can provide some clarity what is happening there. My second question is actually a follow-up question of a colleague who asked who was a participant here who asked about the depreciation cost. Any guidance you can provide with regards to depreciation going forward because this quarter, we saw a very huge decline in depreciation. And can we expect this to be a recurring phenomenon? And lastly, I wanted to ask if the management provide any guidelines with regards to top-line growth or EBITDA margins in the next few years.
Well, on number three, we are not providing that at this point. So what we are giving you is indications as we do every quarter. But perhaps at a later stage, we might do it. But I will come back to you on this. Maybe on one and two, can you take those, Ikram?
Sure, Danko. So Saad, number one, when you talk about selling and distribution, look, you will see this more and more coming through in Almarai. And that's mainly because of efficiency and economies of scale. And when you're looking at our vans, you will see dual-temperature vans getting in place. You will see more reefers coming in place, which we are able to deliver more volume using one vehicle across the board. And with scale and with more than 4,500 vans, what we're seeing in selling and distribution, even in Egypt and mainly in GCC as well, we're having huge efficiency opportunity. And every project that we're working on, mainly through the CapEx as well, is helping us deliver and achieve that. And that's the main rationale. We're achieving 8% top-line growth.
We're achieving more than 6%-5% volume growth with, I would say, probably only 1%-2% of growth in our trucks and reefers. That's the underlying benefit of why the cost control is so strong in Almarai. It's simple as that. We are using the same trucks to drive more volume. Having the same volume to drive more revenue. That's what's causing us efficiency across the whole P&L structure. That's on the S&D part in terms of the depreciation. When you look at the useful life of our assets, as long as the current investment structure and current PPE is in place, SAR 1.6 billion-SAR 1.8 billion depreciation on a full-year basis is more or less what you will expect to see for the next two or three years.
The current CapEx plants, which you're looking at for poultry mainly, are not going to come into play till about next one or probably next, I'll say, two years minimum. So on the underlying structure, I'll say, for a guidance perspective, SAR 1.6 billion-SAR 1.8 billion in depreciation on an annual basis, that's a reasonable target to take. Once we start to have more assets in play, which will be, I'll say, in 2026, then I would expect that depreciation to be at a higher level. But inshallah, at that time, we'll have a higher revenue base as well. But that's the guidance on depreciation. You will see quarterly changes that happen. But on a long-term basis, based on the useful life of our assets, 1.6 to 1.8 sounds about right.
Yeah, and maybe I can just emphasize I was trying to make that point before as well that you have a ratio of 1 to 1 between investments and depreciation over the long term. And please don't look at an individual quarter. But obviously, if we start investing more, you will also see a higher depreciation eventually. So if you are working on more of a longer-term model, the reflection will be following that sooner or later. But it takes time to capitalize and start depreciating when you're doing heavy investments, just like any other construction company. So at this point, you have a little bit of a lag. But over time, you should be somewhere in the ratio of 1 to 1 between the depreciation and the capital investment we do because that more or less reflects the replenishment of investments that we need to have in place.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Reem Al-Barri. Reem, please go ahead.
Thank you. Congratulations on a good set of results.
Thank you.
I just had a quick question regarding the significant growth that's been witnessed in Egypt. Is that primarily due to precautionary measures taken into account for the devaluation that you mentioned earlier? Or have you been seeing any positive pickup, possibly food aid that goes via Egypt? Has there been any change in the channels there?
Well, I would be hopeful and wish for consecutive growth in Egypt at the same level. But in reality, I think that's not sustainable. So the growth that you saw in Egypt was in anticipation of a devaluation that would come. The challenge you have is their inflation and the reality that you cannot price yourself out of this economic situation without structural reforms, etc., that impacts the Egyptian economy. So I don't think it is meaningful to extrapolate the first quarter if that is what we were hoping for. But the reality is more that what we are seeing underlying in the performance of the Egyptian management team is excellent performance in driving volume growth and pricing in tandem. And you need to do that. The more pricing you do, the more impact you have on volume, and the less impact the results will be.
It is a balance that needs to be done. I'm sure you've heard about pressures also about not actually doing price increases but decreases in the industry in Egypt. All of that needs to be managed, monitored. It's a different kind of business model that needs to be having a very close eye to everything from innovation and what the consumer wants. It's more value than premium, if you see what I mean. There are many mouths to feed. That's one of our strategic reasons to be in Egypt. We are there for the long run to make sure that it's successful. I'm very positively surprised about their ability to manage this in the quarter. We are in there for the long run. Maybe you'll see a more benign growth but still growth coming from Egypt going forward.
We also have to see, even though you saw some strengthening of the currency, very residual strengthening since the devaluation because it was sort of a quasi-devaluation that they did, my expectations now, when I'm looking at it, it's not certain. I mean, it's still moving in a negative way. So all of that comes into play. And we will just have to rely on our excellent team in Egypt to continue to do a good job and take market share and be number one in the categories that we operate in.
Thank you.
Maybe one point that we do look at, it's addressing your question, that we do have export also from Egypt. It's still, in relative terms to Almarai, it's small. But there are benefits also with a high inflationary environment when it comes to cost. And here's where we are seeing cost efficiency benefits also in the fact that we now own 100% of our business in both Egypt and Jordan. We start sourcing from each other. We start utilizing our trucks and deliveries in a much more efficient way today where we don't have long haul with empty reefers. But we are filling them up. And we are ensuring that they are using our equipment in the best possible way. So the scale benefits that Ikram was alluding to, we now can use 100% of that benefit because we are now the full owner of this business.
It wasn't against it before when we had a joint venture. But it was more difficult to do. Now we can actually optimize supply chain procurement and also sell products from Egypt to North Africa and that region in a way that we haven't done before. So that has good strategic relevance for the future that we also feel very good about.
Thank you. Our next question is from Neetika. Please go ahead, Neetika .
Hi, questions. This is Neetika Gupta from U Capital. So first of all, congratulations for the great set of results. I wanted to understand a bit more about this SAR 18 billion CapEx plan. So could you just help us understand the phasing of it? And also, I wanted to understand, is it entirely going to be invested in the existing product lines? Or we could expect some other product lines being added, some related business lines being added to the portfolio?
Yeah. So the SAR 18 billion is an aggregation of the next five years that you'll see. And a large lion's share of the spend you'll see in the next two years, 2-3 years. But also this year, our spend will be significant because of the poultry expansion. And you have it not evenly distributed. But you have, let's say, a lion's share of that in the next 2-3 years that will come. That will yield benefits to us in both top-line growth and profitability. And the expansions that we were talking about in the adjacent categories are also part of that. So you'll see that a lion's share of the spend that we do are in existing categories. But we are also spending approximately SAR 1 billion on new food segments. And they are all entirely new for us.
So that when we move into the red meat segments, we are building a processing unit to ensure that we can do successful production, packaging, and delivery. And the same goes with seafood, ice cream, etc. So it is a mixture of what we're having on our existing categories in bakery, in dairy, in poultry predominantly, which requires a lot of investment to expand in volume. But then also the adjacent categories that we mentioned before will also be completely new for us. But the lion's share, again, in the next two to three years, when I say SAR 18 billion, two to three years, I mean disproportionate amount of that will come in the next two, three years. And then it will fade off. All of it is organic. There's no acquisitions involved in this.
It's all building on existing capacity that we have or adjacent categories that we are now entering into.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you have a question, please use the raise hand button on your screen. We don't have any more questions now. We just got a question from Taher again.
Okay.
Taher, please go ahead.
Maybe that will be the last question then. Or we are happy to answer any.
Yes.
It's Taher. Just maybe a follow-up. I mean, we're seeing that the space in general is getting more active in a sense that other public listed companies have also announced some ambitious revenue targets, including some of your peers. I know that there's an investment plan that was just announced. But on the M&A front, is management also looking at this as another lever of growth, given that now there's an investment plan that has been approved by the board of director? And clearly, the direction is for you to grow existing categories, adjacent categories. Does this open room for M&A? And again, I mean, are there any targets or categories that you want to be in? Or you think the process is still going to be organic? You scale up gradually. And then if it works, then you can actually start vertically integrated.
So maybe your thoughts on M&A in general, if there's anything worth mentioning?
Well, first of all, I think we have a very growth-oriented board of directors and also management. We want to grow our business. We want to significantly grow our business. I think it is dangerous to release commitments to M&As as part of your growth. In doing so, you try to reach threshold levels that don't necessarily fill the profitability or the yields that you are expecting because of pressure around that. We feel comfortable about announcing the growth that we do now organically. Please don't, for a second, believe that we don't look at M&As. We continuously have a pipeline of M&As around us. Many of them are what we call bolt-on acquisitions or tactical acquisitions that, in the grand context of Almarai, doesn't impact our borrowing significantly. We finance it with our internally generated cash flows.
It's an assessment that you need to do all the time. Do you build high-quality facilities where you can rely on our history of knowing how to produce high-quality products? Or do you acquire companies, get an immediate market share position, but you pay multiples that might be a bit too expensive? All of that is being assessed ongoing. We have a very active M&A department that looks at all of this. But I think it's dangerous to commit to growth that is dependent on M&As. These things are a variety of factors. You have to be successful when you do them. So if we talk about more strategic acquisition, large-scale ones, we're also looking at that ongoing on what could be interesting for us. But we are making sure that the numbers are really right for us. We are not opportunistic in that respect.
I think we are very diligent in making sure that acquiring something has strategic value but also reduces risk over time and actually not necessarily over the short term but on the long term that we're in there for in perpetuity, basically. Looking at these things is an ongoing process, as you know. We don't announce it. When the day comes and we have something that we believe is strategically relevant, we will not hesitate. For us, we are willing to look at it. We have the firepower to do that. You've seen our leverage ratios relatively low. We have a current credit facility for over SAR 5 billion. We could do something if we needed to. But it has to be the right investments for us strategically. You'll see and hear more tactical acquisitions coming.
That, to me, is something that is part of a company of our size that's not really moving the needle when you think about it strategically. But all of it is very relevant for us. And we do look at it. But we don't commit to anything outside until we know for sure that it's a good investment to do.
Okay. But is there any category you want to be in as a company your size and the way you're expanding your portfolio in terms of the, is there a category you think that you want to be in? I don't know, maybe confectionery, biscuits. I mean, is there anything that you feel, given a company your size, needs to be in the Saudi market?
Now you're fishing for too many answers from me. But in the end, we want to diversify our portfolio. We are a food and beverage company. And we stem out of dairy. And portfolio diversification is also a little bit of risk management in making sure that we have strong categories. If you think about it, today, we are number one in poultry, number one in bakery. When we started, we were number one in dairy only. And now we want to move into more categories. And those that we have announced requires us to be focused, making sure that we do our best to make them a success. But we continuously look at adjacent categories around our segment. And it could very well be that we move into something if it is in snacks or anything else.
But I prefer not to disclose what we are particularly interested in at the moment.
All right. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, everyone. We've now reached the end of our call. I'd like to hand over the call to Mohammad Al-Khalidi again for any closing remarks.
Thank you, Muhammad. Thank you all for your attending and participating in our call today. Please, if you have more questions, please contact the IR team. We will be more than happy to answer your question. I don't know, Danko, if you want to close the call.
Yeah. So thank you very much for listening in. I saw it was quite a large number of participants. Hopefully, we answered your questions. And as Mohammad said, please feel free to reach out to Investor Relations if you have more. We are off to a good start in 2024. We are positive about the volume growth. And we will want to continue to see this coming through. So hopefully, you'll get another positive release from us in Q2 and onward. So thank you very much for listening into this call. And talk to you soon. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. We'll now close the call. I hope everyone has a good day.
Bye-bye.
Bye. Thank you.