Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ag Growth International 2021 fourth quarter results conference call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Wednesday, March 9, 2022. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tim Close. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I will start this call by joining the world in expressing our support for the people of Ukraine and strongly denouncing Russia and the actions we are all witnessing. Our team in the region is safe and we're looking for ways to contribute to the world's effort to support Ukraine. Now, I thank you for joining Jim Rudyk and I to discuss our fourth quarter results and our outlook for 2022. As usual, I will make a few remarks on the quarter, hand the call over to Jim for a more detailed recap, and then open the call to questions. We had a record fourth quarter with sales and adjusted EBITDA up 44% and 61%, supported by strong results across our farm, commercial, food, and digital segments. Our fourth quarter concluded an outstanding year for AGI, setting records for both sales and adjusted EBITDA.
Solid organic growth, market share gains, and resilient margin performance contributed to our results. For the full year, sales and adjusted EBITDA grew 20% and 18% respectively. A healthy combination of strong activity in our legacy businesses, including our portable farm segment, was augmented by robust growth from areas we have invested in recently, including Brazil, AGI Food, EMEA, U.S. Farm, and AGI Digital. Our global platform is now nicely diversified by geography, segment, and customer group. This diversification has increased both our growth potential and the resiliency of AGI. There was a time not long ago when a severe drought in Western Canada or conflict in Ukraine would have had a material impact on AGI. At that time, close to half our farm business was in Western Canada, and nearly 100% of our international business was in Ukraine and the Black Sea region.
Our efforts to diversify enabled AGI to post record results in 2021 despite a severe drought in Western Canada. Today, Ukraine and Russia represent approximately 3% of our total business. Over the past 5 years, we've invested with a sense of urgency, building a strong foundation for AGI that also provides robust opportunities for continued growth. This is very much the case coming into 2022, with backlogs continuing to build despite very strong year-over-year comparables. Sales intake and quoting remain very active with notable strength in Brazil, US Farm, North American Commercial, EMEA, and India. The combination of strong backlogs and sales pipelines provide solid visibility for 2022 and inform our expectation for double-digit growth in sales and adjusted EBITDA in 2022. In fact, our current expectation is that 2022 adjusted EBITDA will exceed CAD 200 million for the first time.
Our success in 2021 and our continued growth plan in 2022 is due in large part to an outstanding team that is aligned on shared goals, thrives on collaboration, and is excited about creating a truly unique business focused on delighting our customers. Now let's turn to a more detailed review of our fourth quarter in 2021 results. AGI's business in Brazil continues to hit its stride and it was a significant source of growth throughout 2021 and in the fourth quarter. Sales grew 131% for the full year and 271% for the quarter. Sales in the fourth quarter alone were greater than all of 2020 combined. AGI Brazil now accounts for approximately 10% consolidated sales.
As of the fourth quarter, our margins in Brazil have caught up to overall AGI margins, and we are focused on continued improvement. In terms of materiality to AGI results, sales growth and margin profile, 2021 was a breakout year for AGI Brazil. With now a well-established brand, market-leading solutions, increased market share, and strong fundamental demand for our products and systems, our Brazil operation is well positioned for continued momentum and success in 2022. Our farm segment posted another strong result in the fourth quarter with sales up 28%, supported by significant strength in the U.S. and abroad. Solid market dynamics underpinned our growth in the farm segment as a good-sized crop in the U.S. drove continued demand in addition to a push across our dealer network to replenish generally low local inventories.
Sales were augmented by a strategic focus on growing our farm systems dealership network. While we have an extensive dealership network for our portable equipment, we currently have a very small farm system dealer channel as this is still a relatively new business for AGI in the U.S. We see a significant opportunity for AGI in this channel as we offer farm system dealers a market-leading package comprised of the broadest and best product catalog, significant production capacity, best-in-class lead times, extensive dealer services, leading financial support, extensive marketing resources, and cutting-edge technology products. That further differentiates our offering and positions our dealers to win more business. We made solid progress in farm system dealer onboarding in 2021 and expect to accelerate our efforts in 2022. In our international farm segment, we grew 174% in the quarter, with meaningful contributions from Australia and Brazil.
Heading into 2022, the farm segment backlog was up 48% year-over-year, underpinning our expectations for a strong start to 2022. Momentum and growth in our commercial platform continued, with sales up 70% in the quarter. Strong demand for commercial handling and storage, with many large projects coming to market around the globe, helped drive very strong results in the U.S., EMEA, and South America. Within EMEA, we were active in the Black Sea region, including Russia and Ukraine, primarily supporting the ongoing commercial infrastructure build-out in that region. While these markets are important to AGI and the opportunity to help develop critical grain infrastructure is significant, the region is not material to AGI's overall consolidated sales. Annual sales to Russia and Ukraine are now generally around 3% of AGI's total sales. Our current backlog in the region is similar to these levels.
At this time, all project activities and customer contracts in the region are suspended while we are reviewing internally, along with the support of specialized external counsel. We do not operate production facilities in either country. As I mentioned, the region was central to AGI's international growth ambitions 5-6 years ago. This area is now complemented by our growth in Brazil, India, and the wider EMEA region, including quickly growing sales in Africa and the Middle East. We will continue to monitor the situation, but any significant or lengthy disruption in the region should not be considered material to AGI. Regional disruption aside, we expect continued growth in our commercial business as supported by our backlog, which is up 23% along with an active quoting pipeline.
This activity includes the Canadian commercial platform, which after a difficult 2021, is showing strong signs rebounding, with backlogs up 154% year-over-year, now sitting at their highest levels since H1 of 2020. Our food platform continued to ramp up, growing 13% in the fourth quarter and 31% in 2021 overall. We are seeing broad-based demand across all regions for food. Our capacities in terms of people and production space became an issue towards the end of 2021. Given the strong demand, vast addressable market and capacity constraints, we acquired Eastern Fabricators early in 2022 to further bolster our capabilities and capacity. Eastern has several key assets to enable accelerated growth.
With three production facilities, in-house engineering capabilities and installation teams, Eastern helps reinforce and expand capacity along all three aspects of our design, supply, and project management offering in AGI Food. Eastern's specialization in high-quality stainless steel products will increase AGI's share of wallet on food processing projects. Eastern also brings strong relationships with several multinational food processors. The revenue synergies will be very meaningful, and we have already validated in the two months since the acquisition as the combined AGI Food and Eastern teams have collaborated on proposals and successfully secured multimillion-dollar projects. We expect significant growth in 2022 for AGI Food and our backlog levels up 212% year-over-year support the strong forecast for the year ahead. As we move into Q1 2022, we plan to break up the food platform into a standalone segment in our quarterly financial reporting.
This will provide increased and appropriate visibility to this exciting part of AGI. Turning to our AGI Digital segment. To begin with, I want to highlight that we have now formally brought our various technology business together under the AGI Digital name. This is in line with our broader efforts to integrate our technologies and facilitate more rapid development of the overall platform. From a disclosure standpoint, our prior technology segment will now be referenced as AGI Digital. The digital segment posted 27% and 43% sales growth in the fourth quarter and 2021 respectively. This growth was despite ongoing chip availability issues, which restricted our ability to produce some pieces of IoT hardware, as well as widespread disruption to trade show activities, which limited our ability to utilize one of our most effective sales channels.
Despite these obstacles, we made critical progress on several fronts in the digital segment throughout 2021. Critical manufacturing initiatives to reduce production costs were completed. We also built up the team to accelerate growth and product development initiatives in 2022. With enhanced production capabilities and an expanded team, the focus heading into 2022 will be on sales growth, customer adoption, and channel development. As supply chain issues and other disruptions ease, the digital segment is set for rapid scaling. A quick update on steel and supply chain. Following extreme conditions in 2021, the environment for steel has stabilized. Supply chain for some components and materials continue to be more challenging than in the past, but we have been successful in sourcing what is needed for production. The impact is generally limited to some delays in shipping, which may affect timing of revenue recognition.
Moving on to a quick update on our accruals for the remediation work and related issues. The accrual for the bin incident was revised in the quarter with an increase of CAD 8.6 million. We have now completed the remediation at one of the two impacted sites, and we are very pleased to see that site commissioned and fully operational. Our team worked productively and professionally with that customer and their design and construction partner to rebuild the site in record time despite supply chain and COVID challenges. We now have certainty on the cost of re-remediation. Our accrual provides very thorough coverage of our obligations, and we do not foresee any additional increases. In addition, we have increased the accrual for the previously disclosed equipment rework by CAD 10 million.
As a reminder, this is not connected to the bin incident, but has been a major warranty obligation relating to towers and structures supplied. The relevant site is currently operational and will continue to operate as this final phase of remediation work is completed over the coming three months. Throughout this extensive process, our estimates of scope have been based on facts as known at the time. In a very dynamic environment, we have modified our projections as new facts came to light. However, we now have certainty on the full scope of rework and view this as our final adjustment to put this issue behind us as well. Following extensive analysis, we are confident today that these are final adjustments which address all equipment remediation and account for the legal claims.
We are now very pleased to be on a path to putting these matters behind us, but it's important to highlight that we have accelerated the transformation of AGI through addressing these unfortunate issues. Our recently announced office in Chicago will be the home of our new application engineering, customer success, global product management, and sales execution teams. We have been heavily recruiting top talent into these groups and have transformed our capabilities in the process. All of these teams are currently coming together in a temporary space in Chicago as we build out a dynamic and extensive space for this center of excellence. I am very excited about our expanded team and capabilities. We are already seeing a positive impact as our North American commercial backlogs and sales pipelines grow as we build new and expanded relationships with commercial and farm customers.
While I'm very pleased with our fourth quarter and record 2021 results and the incredible efforts from our team to manage unprecedented conditions, we have our eyes set on an even bigger year in 2022. Across the board, we've seen strong demand. As of late February, our backlog continued to grow and sits at an all-time high, providing solid visibility into 2022. I'll now hand the call over to Jim for further comments on our results.
Thanks, Tim, and hello, everyone. For today's earnings call, I would like to cover four topics. First, I will provide a brief overview of our financial results. Second, I will discuss our balance sheet. Third, I will touch on our accruals for remediation work. Finally, I will provide an update on our outlook for 2022. Our strong fourth quarter results capped a record 2021 overall for AGI. For the quarter, consolidated sales of CAD 327 million were up 44% from CAD 227 million year- over- year. This result was supported partially by higher prices to mitigate steel costs, but more prominently through strong fundamental sales growth across all segments, particularly the Commercial platform, specifically EMEA, Brazil, and the U.S., as well as the Farm segment, specifically the U.S., Brazil, and Australia.
Consolidated fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA of CAD 44.6 million was up 61% from CAD 27.8 million year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA margins of 13.7% were up 150 basis points from 12.2% year-over-year. Farm segment sales and adjusted EBITDA grew 28% and 78%, respectively, in the quarter. Segment adjusted EBITDA margins increased from 18%-26% as product mix, strong sales volume, and pricing increases all combined to drive the solid results for the quarter. Commercial segment sales and adjusted EBITDA grew 60% and 64%, respectively, in the quarter. Segment adjusted EBITDA margins held steady at 13% as the impact of higher input costs were offset by SG&A scaling and operational efficiency. The digital segment posted sales growth of 27% in the quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA of CAD -4.5 million includes a CAD -1.9 million impact from the Farmobile transaction. Tim mentioned in his prepared remarks, several factors, including supply chain and trade show disruption, constrained sales throughout 2021, including the fourth quarter. In addition, we continue to build up the team to enable accelerated sales growth and advance our product development priorities. As conditions stabilize, the digital segment is well positioned for growth in 2022. Our annual results are worth highlighting as well, given we were able to achieve record results amid highly challenging conditions. Sales of CAD 1.2 billion were up 20% from CAD 1 billion in 2020. Adjusted EBITDA of CAD 176 million was up 18% from CAD 149 million in 2020.
Adjusted EBITDA margins of 14.7% were generally in line with 14.9% from 2020 and along with the growth of the overall business is a clear indication of the resilience embedded in AGI's business model and global team. Moving on to our balance sheet. We continue to closely manage our senior debt to EBITDA ratio, which sits at 2.5 x exiting the quarter. On a year-over-year basis, this is in line with Q4 2020, but sequentially, the ratio has improved from 2.9 x exiting the third quarter. We have sufficient room against our covenant of 3.25 x, and we do not have any bank covenant concerns.
That said, we remain vigilant in closely monitoring our senior credit facility usage and overall cash flow management while also balancing credit facility usage to help enable growth, particularly in our international regions. While we are comfortable with our senior debt ratio, throughout 2022, we will continue to focus on free cash flow conversion and managing the overall balance sheet with a clear objective to continue deleveraging. On an all-in net debt to adjusted EBITDA basis, we expect the ratio to trend towards the 4x level from its current level of approximately 5x by the end of 2022. As previously stated, this will be achieved through a combination of disciplined capital management and the benefits of strong results and growing EBITDA.
Excluding our CAD 150 million accordion, we have approximately CAD 169 million in available undrawn credit facilities and CAD 61 million of cash on hand. We closely monitor our liquidity position, ensuring we are flexible to react quickly to new opportunities. From a working capital perspective, we continue to make great progress in optimizing our position. While non-cash net working capital investment increased from CAD 123 million to CAD 147 million year-over-year, we note that as a percentage of sales, our working capital intensity fell from 14% to 11% on an annualized basis, an impressive result when the strong sales growth from the quarter is considered. Further, on a sequential basis, our working capital investment fell from CAD 175 million to CAD 147 million on a similar level of sales.
While working capital requirements will vary quarter to quarter, we are encouraged to see that our initiatives promote greater working capital efficiency in our results. Continued success with managing non-cash working capital will help us not only grow, but also provide us options on deleveraging our balance sheet. Turning to our remediation work. As Tim mentioned in his prepared remarks, we have increased our accruals for both the bin incident and equipment rework. The incremental CAD 10 million for the equipment rework is expected to be released over the next three months. The remaining accrual related to the bin incident, including the incremental amount announced with the quarter, isn't as straightforward to predict timing, given this customer's decision to remediate with other suppliers and the related legal claims. However, we remind listeners that this accrual will be partially offset by insurance proceeds.
Finally, turning to our outlook for the upcoming year. Supported by a strong backlog of 47% year-over-year and the high level of sustained customer demand across all segments, we anticipate full year adjusted EBITDA to be at least CAD 200 million in 2022. Thank you all very much for your time. With that, we will turn it back to the operator to take questions.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now conduct the question and answer session. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Michael Doumet with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, Tim and Jim.
Morning.
Nice quarter and obviously nice outlook. First question I had was, on the CAD 11.4 million one-time sales concession, that was in your adjusted EBITDA, again, related to a previous contract. I'm just wondering, how that came about and what the amount relates to.
Yeah. We have a few customers, primarily in North America, that have fairly complex sales arrangements, pricing arrangements with us. As we work through to clear those up, we were able to come to a reconciliation on the amounts that will be funded from a cash flow perspective over the next couple of years.
Got it. Okay. I guess, is there any WIP related to work expected for delivery in Russia or the Ukraine? Just trying to think in terms of inventory risk as it relates to the conflict there.
Yeah. A couple of comments there. From a raw material perspective, fortunately, our steel buying approach allows us to easily divert any steel that would have been earmarked for any projects to other customers. We don't have any risk from a raw material perspective. There's no WIP in process. Any finished goods that we would have, a very small amount, are easy to divert to other customers. From an exposure perspective, from an inventory perspective, nothing.
Perfect. Okay.
Yeah.
At this point, I'm wondering, you know, have you recovered the margin spread as it relates to steel costs? Or should we think that there could be more price increases through the beginning of the year? I'm just wondering, you know, maybe on your commercial and farm backlog, in your backlog, yeah, have you locked in steel prices? I'm just trying to think about the margin implications through 2022, and I guess the dynamic of steel prices going forward.
Yeah. Good morning, Michael. Yeah. Good question. No, we have locked in our supply, and we're sort of dollar good on that backlog in those components. So any further changes or disruptions in supply chain, you know, we would expect to be less than in 2021, for instance. We would or we'll look back and address pricing again as we see both the changes in pricing and the outlook for those prices.
Thanks very much, guys. I'll pass it on.
Thank you. Your next question comes from David Newman with Desjardins. Please go ahead.
Just to clarify, guys, just on the steel prices, you're not hedging, you're not instituting hedging. You didn't hedge in Q3. I assume you're not hedging here. Really it's just about the dynamic pricing that you're seeing in commercial and through the farm catalogs. Is that how you're approaching it still?
David, I mean, we approach hedging more around locking in certainty of margin. When we have, we're securing the supply for the backlog, and in doing that, we've got the firm pricing on those components that then locks in our margin for that backlog. Then we just continue to do that roll forward and look at the outlook for pricing across steel principally but then all components and materials.
Got it. Then on the commercial side, with sort of the volatility that we're seeing in commodity prices, rising interest rates and war in Ukraine and et cetera, and maybe as the dynamic pricing, are you seeing at all, at the margin, any deferrals on the commercial side at all in terms of just customers thinking, "Well, we'll wait this out and see how this plays out"?
Look, the projects in Ukraine and Russia are obviously impacted, so
Outside of Ukraine and Russia.
No. Outside of that, in fact, you know what, you'll see the world needs to make up for what will almost certainly be a lower supply out of Ukraine and then that region. We don't see any delays in other projects. I'd say just the opposite.
Interesting. Okay. Then just on the Russian-Ukraine conflict, obviously, you're taking out a major player here in terms of a wheat exporter. I have to think that some of your other regions will have some big knock-on benefits in terms of grain-growing regions. India is obviously a big wheat producer, et cetera. What's the benefit for some of these areas? I would think Brazil and India, in particular, could benefit from Ukraine being taken out as basically a supplier.
Yeah. No, that's right.
I mean, obviously it's a supplier, right?
Yeah. This will be the fourth year with substantial disruption in grain production and trade flows. If you remember back to 2019, we had the trade wars where China essentially withdrew from buying beans in the U.S. Of course, they had swine flu and had to cull their herd, and that reduced demand of that region. In 2020, we had substantial disruption in 2020 as well. In 2021, of course, COVID, and then into now this disruption. All that does is highlight the need for redundancy in infrastructure and pushing to more sophisticated, a more efficient, more productive infrastructure, food infrastructure in the rest of the world so that there is. The world is able to shift supply patterns, the trade patterns, you know, and more nimble in shifting those and then have more redundancy, essentially food on hand to account for these types of major disruptions.
Last one for me, just on the commodity price rally that we're seeing, particularly wheat obviously is exploding, I would think that your customers at these sort of commodity prices are salivating and, you know, obviously what their cash receipts could be on the back of that will more than offset any sort of inflation that they might have in equipment prices. Am I reading that wrong?
No, you got it right.
Excellent. Great results in Brazil, by the way. Awesome. Thank you.
Thanks, Dave.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Jacob Bout with CIBC. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Maybe I'll just start with Brazil and you know clearly a very amazing story or journey there. It appears it was more profitable in fourth quarter than in Canada. Can you talk about the sustainability of this growth and do you need to? You know, what is the plant capacity currently right there right now, and do you need to invest more?
Yeah, a good question, Jacob, and good morning. It's very, very sustainable. You know, our market share fundamentally is growing in a robust market, in an overall growing market. We expect to see continued growth in market share in that environment, in that growing market environment, with the overall market growing for our products, growing faster than most parts of the world, maybe the fastest in the world. You've got this multiplication effect of our share growing and the market growing. Those two things bode well for sustainability, in fact, sustainable growth. You know, we're coming from the startup phase, so that growth through 2022 or 2021 was huge. We expect to see that growth rate moderate somewhat, but you know, those two factors leading to very sustainable growth going forward.
How much of the demand within Brazil is actually provided from the production in Brazil? Are you still actually importing product in?
You're planning capacity. We're building everything for Brazil, and in fact, for other parts of South America from Brazil. South America is still augmented by supply from the U.S. and Canada to some degree, which gives us some options around flexibility around capacity. Brazil, you'll remember, is a very efficient automated plant. We continue to have good capacity to keep our lead times low. This type of growth obviously is gonna put pressure on capacity. We'll be looking at some ways to debottleneck, continuing ways to debottleneck, some of which were included in our original plan.
We're recently adding additional laser capacity, for instance, which had been, we'd left room for that addition in the early days in setup and structure of that plant. Those things, we'll continue debottlenecking and cleaning up the current facilities to get expanded capacity, bringing on additional shifts, expansion of our team, is all occurring right now and planning for increased capacity going forward. At these types of growth rates, we will be looking at investment to provide the capacity in future years. I mean, at that point, you know, those are good problems to have in that robust market.
With the ex-outstanding legal issues, you know, where are you at with the claim with Farmers Edge? When do you expect a resolution there? Same with AGT, and then, you know, what has the dialogue been with the insurance company or when do you expect a ruling or settlement there?
Yep. Farmers Edge, it's all in public record, but we're due to go to trial on that. We're the plaintiffs in that case around a patent infringement. That's due to happen around mid-year. That continues on track. I mean, we're very interested in pursuing, looking at commercial means to settle all of these accounts, by the way. When we switch over to the other clients, including the AGT claim that you mentioned, I mean, it's fully provided for. We're very comfortable in our provisions we've now taken. We do, as I said in my remarks, we view these as final amendments that more than account for our obligations. You know, we will pursue, and we're very optimistic.
I'm personally optimistic around finding very reasonable commercial means to put these behind us and settle out sooner rather than later. You know, with the claim, the accruals we've taken into account for either scenario. In fact, I think if it goes longer, we'd expect to be well within what we provided for.
On the insurance?
Insurance, you know, as Jim mentioned, we do expect to see an offset here. Very clear that that expectation continues. There's multiple parties, multiple policies involved, so it'll continue to take some time. Another spot where we would look to having a discussion with the various policyholders and try to come to a good, reasonable resolution and solution as quickly as possible. You know, if we can do that inside 2022, that would be wonderful.
Looking there. Thank you very much, Close.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Andrew Wong with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Can we just talk about longer-term EBITDA margin expectation? There's obviously been a lot of impacts over the last few years from steel, from investing in new businesses like Brazil, digital, and some product mix shift that we've seen. You know, with the current mix shift, with the current kind of business conditions that you're looking at, could we see EBITDA margins kinda get lifted into, like, maybe into the high teens at some point?
Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, we've seen very resilient margins as we've come through a pretty heavy investment phase, including a lot of startup businesses and launches. You know, that just gives a lot of confidence around that resilience and then the ability to expand. Mix is a big part of it, you're right. Also, there's positive contributions to mixes. We look at India, for instance, expansion in that market as we look at food, as we look at digital in the, you know, midterm, all expected to be positive contributions. The delta and the catch-up through the launch phase in Brazil will have a big impact on that as well.
Some of the investments we've made in selling tools will start to taper, and we'll see a combination of all those things, including stabilization in supply chain and pricing environment. We'll continue to expect to see EBITDA margins start to tick up by about two points over the coming years.
Okay. And then just like on farmers with grain prices where they are, they're obviously looks like their farm profitability looks pretty good. You know, nobody likes to pay more for equipment that they paid a lower price previously. In the farm segment, are there any cost pressures that, you know, as you're passing this through the farmers, has there been any pushback?
No, I think the environment is well understood by everybody. You know, they're getting much more on marketing their grain, and so it's in that context. If those things were reversed, maybe there'd be a little bit more pressure if price was down and commodity price was down and equipment price was way up. You know, you generally don't see that because they're margins locked up. You know, you're right. Of course, nobody likes to pay more. You know, we're seeing the general inflationary environment across everything. So it's not, you know, our equipment or our segment is not different than what people are generally seeing. Backlogs are way up.
Our sales are way up in the farm segment across the board in really all geographies. I think that bodes well. We may see pricing come down, but for the time being, the environment has more or less stabilized.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Steve Hansen with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, guys. Just a couple from me. First, just on the food segment, Tim, you described that you're setting up again for a significant growth this year, which is encouraging. You also described previous capacity constraints prior to acquiring Eastern. I'm just trying to get a sense for how your capacity sits today to handle the growth that you're expecting. Are you good for the next year or two? Or just give us some context around how well positioned you are to handle the growth.
Yeah, great question, and good morning. The, you know, businesses are growing very strongly. Again, like Brazil, growth at these kind of rates will need we need to address or continue to address capacity. Eastern gives us a big leg up in that right away, both in people and in production. We do have other facilities where we can that we can leverage to produce some of the equipment, so including our businesses in EMEA, in India, in the U.S. and Canada. We have flexibility around some of these production, this production space. We're very positive about capacities now and into the rest of this year.
You know, growth at this kind of rates, we will augment that, look to augment it as we, you know, look over the next couple of years. There's a lot that can be done with debottlenecking and flex production.
Okay, that's helpful. Just on the dealer build-out that you described, you've already got good portable distribution capabilities. Can you just maybe give us a bit more context in terms of how much broader you want the dealer network to look on the broader package side, on the farm side, sorry? Are you know, is there context around the quantity of dealers, I guess, that you're looking at? I'm trying to understand how that's going to increase your penetration rates into the U.S. and into what magnitude.
Yeah. Well, we're looking to bring on really robust, expansive partnerships with our dealer network in the farm permanent space. That's coming from a fairly low base. Then we're looking to expand our full-line AGI dealers, and we only have a handful of those today. To give some perspective to it, we sell through about 150 dealers on the farm, in the farm permanent space, close to 2000 or 1500, I guess. Close to 1500 portables would give you an idea. Now, it's very much the 80/20 rule.
In the farm permanent space, you know, there's a lot of smaller dealers, and we're looking to really expand our partnerships with solid dealers that are full-line AGI dealers. That just in building those partnerships out, there's enormous growth potential in U.S. farm.
you described a number of attributes in your prepared remarks around why you've got a comprehensive package to offer now. What is the real hook? Because you do have bigger competitors in the U.S. Like, what is it in particular you're finding that's allowing you to really grab the additional dealer mindshare?
Well, I look at it as just a comprehensive package as any partner would. We need to have the best product, the best breadth of product, service, support, financial support, configuration tools. You know, these are engineered to order environments. And then, you know, solid delivery and lead times. You know, I look at it as a package of everything, and then that's augmented by our technology capabilities. You know, we look to be number one in every one of those categories. I think we are, and we will continue to demonstrate that and prove that. As we do, just naturally, if you're one, number one in those categories, you're gonna see an expansion in your distribution channels. It's really that basic. We'll just continue to position ourselves to be number one across every important category to our channel partner.
Okay. Very good. Appreciate the time.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Tim Monachello with ATB Capital. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone. First question here, just on the digital segment. We saw revenue tick down slightly quarter-over-quarter, and you mentioned chip shortages and you know, the limitations on trade shows as some of the factors there. Was there anything one-time in the quarter and can you provide, I guess, an outlook on how you see chip shortages you know, developing through 2022 and what you're seeing on the trade show front so far in the year?
Yep. There's also a seasonal impact there, Tim. Q4 and digital, I mean, once you get the grain in the bin, it's you know, you're gonna see a natural pause in some of the sales activity in those pipelines. Remember, a lot of what we're doing is monitoring bins, getting sensors in bins, the protection of that crop, and automated conditioning. Once you get the grain in the bin, that's gonna naturally have a slowdown impact. You know, factor in the seasonal there and that can account for the or fills out the picture as you laid that out. Trade shows, yes, continue to have a big impact.
We would have expected more growth in 2021 if we'd been able to interact and get in front of customers. Our win rates when we're in front of a customer are very high. They will come down as the further we get away from that customer. No surprise. We're very excited to get back in person across the board in 2022, and that will augment our growth rates in that segment going forward. There was a third part of that question. What did I miss?
Just the chip shortages. Are you seeing that starting to clear or do you have some suppliers that you've got agreements with or anything?
Yeah. The short answer is that environment continues to be very difficult. What we've done is redesign our products to be able to use products or supply components that are available. We've been heavily pursuing that to give us more flexibility currently. Then as we look forward, we avoid sort of single source or single component situations. I think the world in general will be heading in that direction after this supply chain shock.
Okay. Next question sort of related on supply chains. Can you talk a little bit about the lead times in your Farm and Commercial segment, how those have progressed since Q3? You know, where you're seeing the biggest pinch points in supply chain? Sounds like steel is less of an issue than it was previously.
It's really stabilized, you know. Everything's relative to past quarters or months in 2021, of course. We are well positioned for our backlog, for our pipelines, our expectations for the year. Steel, you're right, has generally eased up in terms of both availability and pricing environment. Components across the board, there's some components that continue to be a challenge that might account for some delays, you know, from month to month or quarter to quarter. Largely speaking, we're comfortable with supply chain environment as we sit here today. We've got further disruption in the world. We can't predict what might happen, but you know, we're comfortable where we sit today.
Okay. You don't anticipate any major capacity concerns based on supply chain in the context of, I guess, growing farm demand given where commodity prices are going in 2022?
No, Tim, not at this stage. I mean, you know, our situation is obviously different depending on where in the world. We do stay on top of this very closely, weekly reviews, worldwide reviews in terms of supply chain challenges and how to resolve them. I mean, we've come through the last couple of years of some very, as you know, very challenging supply chain environments. We put in place the right governance and process to make sure we can react and accommodate. That's actually been one of the, I think, key reasons why we've been able to do well through these turbulent times, is our ability to react and adjust for the challenging supply chain issues.
Yeah. Then last one for me. You know, obviously, Russia is a big supplier of potash, and there's some supply chain issues even in the Canadian potash segment. If there's a fertilizer constraint in the North American market that develops in 2022, how could that impact, I guess your Farm segment?
Yeah. Well, right now we expect. I think general expectation is that farmers will be able to get the nutrients and fertilizer and seed all the things they need to get to planting indications and expectations. You know, there obviously will be some changes in the flow of those goods around the world. We do expect that we'll see that it will not interrupt or reduce planting expectations. Fundamentally, it's that volume, that planted acreage and yields and volume of crop coming off the field. We don't see an impact as we sit here today.
Okay. Thanks, gentleman. I appreciate the details.
Thank you. We have a following question from Michael Doumet. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks for taking the follow-ups. Just wanted a couple clarification. On the bin incident, these final amendments, does that exclude any potential settlement on the legal issue if that's what you'd like to pursue? I'm assuming that also excludes any potential offsets from insurance.
It excludes any offset from insurance for sure. I mean, that's that process you know needs to get into full swing, and it usually happens towards the end of these types of events usually takes a lot longer, not to mention the number of parties involved, and insurance companies generally wanna take their time to review all the facts, come up with all the details of the insurance recovery. That recovery will come. Then in terms of what our accrual covers, yes, it does cover our. You know from an accrual perspective how we do this is we look at various scenarios, including settlement costs, actual costs, legal costs, et cetera, and incorporate all of those to come up with the rest of our accrual.
The answer is yes.
Okay, very clear and good to know. I wanted to comment first on the solid job on the working capital. You know, Jim, I think you talked about reaching net debt to EBITDA four turns at the end of the year. Just trying to think how you get there. Obviously, you've got to pay the provisions, the CAD 65 million. You've closed Eastern. There's the dividend. I'm just trying to think, you know, is the fair characterization that, you know, we effectively de-levered to that four turn ratio through EBITDA growth? I guess just a follow-up question to that, you know, how much CapEx should we be expecting in 2022?
Maybe just directionally, where working capital could get to you and if there are further improvements that you're working on.
Okay. A lot of points there. A couple things to note. You know, we generate a lot of free cash flow. But yeah, as you pointed out, there are some uses for it, the Eastern acquisition. And your question on CapEx. You know, based on our forecast for this year, we expect CapEx levels to be similar to the last couple of years. They'll be slightly higher, but nothing too dramatic. That allows us to generate quite a bit of free cash flow that we can use to apply to various business needs. Working capital management, as I noted in my comments, has been very good this year, despite the strong growth.
You know, we have had a need to increase working capital but at a much lower percentage than we have in the past. We do expect strong growth to continue this year, so there likely will be some working capital needs. Again, our focus on accounts receivable management, inventory management and AP management will continue. We have not let up on that. We expect to be able to hit our low fours total leverage ratio by two factors. One, applying some of that excess free cash flow to our debt levels, but also as importantly, the growth in our EBITDA, which will have a significant impact to us.
Thanks for the clarification, guys.
Thank you. We have the following question from Steve Hansen. Please go ahead.
Yeah, guys. Thanks. Just a quick one. I just wanted to follow up. Tim, I think you said the quoting activity in Canada on the commercial side had really picked up of late. I just wanted to get a sense for whether you guys are involved or seeing any benefits from this renewable diesel push that continues to be capturing headlines it feels like every other day. Just trying to get a sense for whether that's driving part of it or if it's just a broader sector activity that you're seeing. Thanks.
No, no, that's definitely a factor, and we're involved in quoting on all of those. We expect to be involved in some of them for sure. Broadly, you know, you look around the world. I think you'll see similar opportunities, expansion into those sectors. It continues to be part, you know, an active part of our quoting and our focus around the world.
Okay. Appreciate that. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Michael Robertson with National Bank. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, gents. Congrats on the solid quarter there. You guys touched on the majority of these questions already. I just had a follow-up on the backlog. Going off memory, I seem to remember exiting Q3, the increase in the backlog was sort of like an even split between pricing increases and volume increases. Just wondering if there was any sort of change there quarter-over-quarter or if it's still sort of a 50/50 drive there.
Yeah, no. Pricing certainly has had a part of the impact for sure. We are seeing strong volume benefit, particularly in the commercial international segments, even North America for the higher in the commercial segments. There is a mix. It hasn't changed too dramatically from Q3 in terms of the split between pricing and growth, though.
Got it. That's great color. Appreciate it, and turn it back.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Close, you may proceed.
Great. Thank you very much for the time this morning. We'll close this call there. Take care.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a great day.