Want to join a minute to get in? Okay, looks like most of us are here. We're gonna go ahead and get started. Hello everyone. Thank you for joining Organto Foods' Fiscal 2025 Review and Business Update Webinar. My name is Lauren Bech- Hansen, and I will be monitoring today's session. We'll begin with a brief presentation from Steve Bromley, CEO and Co-Chair of Organto Foods, who will walk through the company's fiscal 2025 operational highlights, financial results, and outlook for 2026. Following the presentation, we'll move into a live Q&A session.
For those of us joining on Zoom, you can submit questions at any time using the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. We'll aim to address as many questions as possible, including questions that were submitted in advance of today's session.
Before we begin, I'll note that today's discussion may include forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities law. These statements may relate to Organto's expectations, plans, objectives, strategies, financial outlook, anticipated growth, operating performance, market opportunities, expansion plans, and other future developments.
Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations, assumptions, estimates, and beliefs and are subject to risks, uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. For a discussion of these risks, assumptions, and uncertainties, please refer to Organto's public disclosure documents, including its MD&A, available under the company's profile on SEDAR+.
Today's discussion may also reference certain non-IFRS financial measures, including EBITDA or Adjusted EBITDA. These measures do not have standardized meanings under IFRS and may not be comparable to similar measures used by other companies.
Please refer to Organto's public disclosure documents for additional information, including reconciliations where applicable. Nothing discussed in today's session should be considered investment, financial, legal, or tax advice. Organto undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable law. With that, thank you everyone for joining us today. I'm pleased to turn the call over to Steve, CEO and Co-Chair of Organto Foods. Steve, over to you.
Great. Thanks, Lauren. Thanks everyone for joining today. Appreciate you taking the time. Today I want to jump into an overview of 2025, the highlights, what happened during the year. It was an extremely busy year for the company, and we're really proud of our progress. We'll then dive into our fiscal 2025 financial results, take a look at what's ahead in 2026, and then turn it over to Q&A. I'll try and keep my comments to 15 minutes or so.
When we look back at 2025, it was an incredible year for the organization. We had record growth in our operations. We had sales of CAD 60.8 million, up 194% versus 2024, and the largest year in our company's history.
Gross profit followed with CAD 5.2 million, up 197% versus the prior year. Also, the largest in our history. While the top line and gross margins were improving, our operating costs were being leveraged, so they came down from 15% of sales to 7.7% of sales. We're seeing that leverage that we expect in the business.
We had our first positive EBITDA quarter in history, EBITDA continued to trend in a positive direction at -1.9% of sales in 2025 versus -6.5% in the prior year. Certainly, trending in the direction that we, you know, we're working on and expecting. We'll dive into those numbers in a bit more detail here in a minute.
At the same time as our operations were making excellent progress, we were busy restructuring our balance sheet. We eliminated CAD 16.2 million of liabilities. At the same time, we entered into an operating line with Rabobank, one of the largest ag lenders in the world, to provide us with an operating line to continue to finance our operational growth. A really good job on that side. As well, we completed three financings during the year for proceeds of around CAD 14 million, in order to position the company for continued growth.
With the operations performing and the balance sheet in line, we've turned our attention to strategic expansion opportunities. We've developed a nice pipeline of potential opportunities that we see going forward. You know, we'll talk about that in a minute.
While that wasn't enough, we completed a corporate rebranding of the company. Our logo, our positioning, our website, all of our presentations have been revamped. We've reestablished our presence on social media, which is so important in today's age. All in all, a busy year with a lot of progress. I just want to talk about the rebrand a little bit and those three leaves that you see. Those leaves really are link ourselves to our guiding principles, right? We're in healthy food products. That's a key guiding principle for us and where we want to remain.
We're looking to drive value across our ecosystem, and that includes strengthening outcomes for growers, suppliers, shareholders, and our team. We're about sustainability. We're about responsible, transparent business practices. Those are the guiding principles that guide us every day.
When you see the leaves and the new logo, you know, I remind everyone that that really does mean something to us and is part of, you know, our DNA. When we look back at fiscal 2025 and just do a deep dive on Q4, we ended up with revenues or sales of CAD 14.9 million in Q4 versus CAD 6.5 million in the prior year, up 132%. Our gross margins were CAD 1.6 million versus CAD 0.6 million in the prior year, up 167%.
Our cash overheads declined from 18.7% to 8.6%, so we're seeing the leverage that, you know, we're looking for in the business. Our EBITDA in the fourth quarter was -CAD 270,000, so very, very close to breakeven, which is where we expected to be, 1.9% of sales negative versus 7.9% in the prior year. We continue to see that financial evolution and continued momentum that we were expecting.
When we take a look at the year, our sales were CAD 60.8 million up from CAD 20.7 million in 2024 and CAD 14 million in 2023. 194% growth with our margins increasing 197% to CAD 5.2 million. Our cash overhead's similar to the quarter, down from 15% to 7.7%. Our EBITDA for the year was -CAD 1.15 million or 1.9% of sales.
We're seeing that trending and leverage that we expect across the organization, which sets us up to be very excited about what 2006 has to bring. At the same time, our balance sheet underwent a significant transformation. We ended the year with working capital of CAD 7.6 million versus -CAD 14.6 million in the prior year, so that's an improvement of CAD 23 million. We have no debt on the balance sheet, and we have positive equity of CAD 8.8 million.
While the financial aspects and the operating aspects of the building the business were improving, the balance sheet underwent a dramatic improvement. We have a strong cash position, and we're well-positioned as we move forward. Our market cap also, you know, moved along. Our share price is up about 1000% since we re-listed in March of 2025.
Our market cap is in the range of CAD 145 million. We have 190 million shares outstanding. You know, the stock is trading in the CAD 0.76, CAD 0.77 range. It traded as high as CAD 1.15 or so during the year, so off a little bit from the highs, but that's the opportunity that lies ahead. 20% of the company is owned at the board and management level, 50% is free float, and 33% of the shares outstanding are restricted.
Diving into the business a little bit, our core products. Recall that we rationalized our product line-up in 2023 and 2024, so our core products now are our organic and fair trade bananas, ginger, mangoes, blueberries, and other seasonal products if we have the opportunity. We deal with about 20 major retail accounts across Europe, and these are significant players.
We're dealing with the number one and two largest grocers in France, Germany, and Austria, and the number one and three largest grocers in Denmark. We're dealing with the big players in the European market, which is very encouraging, and you have to earn your stripes in order to deal with those retailers. We're in 16 countries across Europe today. France, Germany, Denmark, and Austria are some of the largest countries that we're serving, but we do serve across 16. We source products from 20 origination ports into six destination ports in Europe.
We have six sea carriers, there isn't a day goes by where there aren't boats on the water transiting with the core products that we're bringing to market, and we have an extensive line-up of service providers and growing partners as well.
Last year we served about 60 customers. You know, we've announced this year that we added eight new customers. We added, you know, new sea carriers. With the expansion of our business comes the expansion of the platform, and we're excited by what's happening. When we think about where we're moving going forward, our business today is anchored in fresh, high-volume, lower margin products. Think about bananas and mango.
We're looking to move into the higher margin product mix, so think ginger and blueberries and there's more that we would like to add. We'd like to expand the fresh platform into North America, and then from there also expand into non-fresh, so just a different product grouping. Think seeds, nuts, oils, those sort of things.
We like to continue to move into value-added products, converting some of those raw materials into value-added ingredients, and then also into consumer packaged products. We have an active pipeline that we're working on, and we're very excited about hopefully being able to add some further expertise and capabilities to our product mix and to our portfolio as we go forward. As we look to 2026, our theme is our future is bright and our time is now. We're in fast-growing healthy foods markets, healthy living markets, so the opportunity is there.
Consumers are looking for healthier, sustainable products. We think we're in the right place at the right time and really want to continue to build. As we look to 2026, we're looking to continually grow the European fresh platform that we have today.
We recently announced that our sales have increased to about CAD 2 million a week, that puts us on CAD 100 million run rate early in the year here, hopefully that will continue to play out for us over time. We're focused on, you know, gross margin improvement, that's supply chain leverage as we get larger, shifting the product mix to higher margin products. Of course, risk management is really, really essential, especially in the geopolitical world that we're living in today.
We want to continue to leverage our cash operating costs to get those down below 5% over time, we're making progress on all those fronts as you've seen. We also want to continue to scale the platform, adding new product categories where margins are better, also using technologies to drive efficiencies, improve transparency, and reduce waste.
We're active on all of those areas and see them as very, very important for 2026. We want to continue to build organization depth. It's all about the team, right? If we don't have the right people in the right chairs, you know, we won't be able to continue to grow as we have been.
You know, we did do a reorganization in March of this year, which we announced, really dedicating resources to business growth and strategic expansion while refocusing the operating team, and we'll continue to look to add to that team. We really want to leverage those resources that are focused on other growth opportunities to execute on our strategic growth and pipeline that we have in place.
A lot of effort is going into that, and hopefully we'll see some of the benefits as the year goes on. Then lastly, really, we want to drive better market awareness and visibility. We really believe we're uniquely positioned, and our growth profile is quite interesting at the moment. We've got to get our story out there, to a lot more people, other than folks like yourself who are on the phone. That will be a key initiative as we go forward through 2026 as well.
To wrap up, our future is bright. Our time is now. The heavy lifting of the last couple of years is paying its benefits, and we're quite excited about the future. With that, I'll take a pause and turn it back to Lauren, let people load up the chat room, and happy to take some questions.
Thanks, Steve. Just as a reminder to everybody for those joining on Zoom, as we move into the Q&A portion, you can submit questions via the bottom of your screen through the Q&A function. If you don't see it there, you may have an opportunity to click More, and you can see it there as well. We do have a couple questions to start off, Steve, I will read these out to you now.
Yep. Thanks.
Our first question, with regards to the growth in sales, how much came from new customers secured, and how much came from existing? How do you see this moving forward?
Yeah. Okay. Lauren, I am assuming that that is in 2025. In 2025, our growth from CAD 21 million to CAD 61 million came about 35% from existing customers and then 65% from new customers that we brought to the platform. As we look going forward, if you think about the fact that, you know, we have announced that we are currently running at about CAD 2 million a week, so CAD 100 million+, the growth is pretty similar in 2026. You know, we did announce that we brought on eight new customers.
A couple of them are pretty significant. Again, this year in that 35%, maybe 40% internal and about 60% via new customers on the platform. As we look forward, you know, it is very, very important to us that we maintain solid internal growth.
The true statement on how we're doing is when we can grow our business with our existing customers, which we've been able to do, you know, in that 35% range year-over-year, and then we're adding new customers on. You know, that's a sort of a profile that we'd like to maintain going forward before we do any sort of strategic work. You know, we've been very blessed in that, you know, the longer you're dealing with a larger retailer, the more confidence they have in your capabilities and the bigger the opportunity for you to grow.
Okay, great. Thanks, Steve. Our next question, you've previously alluded to a significant sales growth run rate for 2026. What level of visibility do you have today on 2026 revenues, and what needs to go right operationally to achieve or exceed that level?
Okay. First off, if you take a look at the products that we have, bananas are an annual contracting proposition. Ginger is more quarterly. Mango is more quarterly. Blueberries, as an example, we're almost week by week. You know, bananas are a large part of our portfolio, and in the case of bananas, we enter into annual commitments with our customers and also with our growers, right? We back those back-to-back .
We have pretty much annual visibility into bananas, and on mango and ginger, for example, that's visibility that we're provided every quarter. I think it's fair to say that 80%-85% of our sales, we have good visibility through the course of the year.
You know, we're really comfortable that so long as we can execute and supply is available, in other words, there's not a huge weather issue or something else crazy that comes along, you know, we have good visibility and, you know, are comfortable that the CAD 100 million run rate is certainly achievable, and hopefully beyond that.
That just comes from the way we contract, both with our growers, and then with our customers as well. Solid visibility versus, you know, being on the spot market and hoping you can sell week over week. We, we have commitments that we have to deliver on, which also gives us some visibility into our sales.
Okay, our next question. Can you provide some color on how operations have trended so far this year, particularly around volumes, customer onboarding, and supply chain performance?
There's a lot to unravel in that question. First off, how have things gone so far? A lot of the new contracts started in February. We've seen the uptick, you know, commencing in February as we bring on the new customers. We bring on most new business between week four and week nine, so it ramps up throughout the first quarter. I think we'll see solid results in the first quarter, you know, and as we get further into the year, we'll see some very good growth. That has gone well.
From an operational perspective, things have gone fairly well. It's been a big undertaking to bring all this new business on, and it hasn't been perfect. You know, we're serving all the customers that we made commitments to.
Well, as we entered the back half of the first quarter, we ended up seeing some of the impacts of the craziness that's going on in the Middle East, which has caused, you know, for some significant increases in the costs of freight and logistics, and we've seen some container dislocation and that often product that is shipped from Latin America goes to Europe and then those ships proceed through the Middle East, with loads of dropping off, and then they end up back in Latin America. They obviously haven't been able to make that transit. It's forced some shipping lanes to change around.
We've managed quite well, and we're in the process of, you know, passing the logistics increases along, but it's never a dull moment in this world anymore, Lauren. The team has had to been very adaptable and very flexible in order to, you know, keep things going. All in all, it's, you know, I think we'll see a very solid first quarter.
Great. Thank you. Our next question comes from Nicolas Cortellucci.
Mm-hmm.
Is the solution to profitability doing more volume of bananas or branching into new products or both?
Yeah, Nick, it's really both. You know, when we repositioned the business, we really took the platform down from over 20 products to the four or five core products that we had. Our position was some of the core products are lower margin, but a higher volume and more predictability. Our goal was to go and pay the bills and have a platform that is standing on its own, operating on its own, and then from there, look to add more products.
You know, with the benefit of hindsight looking back, pre-restructuring, you know, we tried to do a number of things, some of them cost you money, you know, we weren't really ready for that. We certainly want to move up the value chain.
We want to add more products, but we want to be very disciplined about it. Add products where we deserve to win, i.e., we do something that others can't do as well as we do, and I think all the products that we're handling now, that's the case. Then from there, you know, we'll continue to add. We'd like to add more fresh products to the portfolio. We'd like to add non-fresh to the portfolio. We want a value add on that portfolio, but we want to do it very, in a very disciplined and methodical approach to getting it done. It's both.
We'll just move into another question that was submitted by Nicholas. I think some of it was addressed in your previous answer, but what are the plans for M&A in 2026, specific geographies or products you would acquire to enter?
Yeah, I'm just going to go back to this slide. You know, as I indicated, you know, we're intently focused now on looking for growth opportunities beyond the existing platform that we have. We like the fresh category. We would like to be in North America, if at all possible. We think we would be probably one of the only publicly traded companies with operations on both sides of the ocean. We, we would like to move to North America.
We are assessing a number of different opportunities to potentially move into the North American market, leveraging the platform and the portfolio that we already have in place. We'd also like to expand further in Europe, and expansion in Europe, you know, could be new geographies, new products, and new customers.
You know, we're very focused on that. We also have a number of opportunities to move into non-fresh and add value to the products that we have in place. We're really focused on all of those. We've got a nice pipeline of potential opportunities and folks that we're having discussions with. It's super critical though, that anything that we add to our platform is the proper fit.
We're a small team. We don't have a great big team to go in and run people's businesses. We need solid operators, looking for partnership opportunities that would like to join the portfolio, join our platform, leverage what we have and be part of a fast-growing public entity. Lots of work there.
on, frankly, we have discussions going on all of these, on all of these various platforms. We're being very careful, we're being very diligent, and we're not. You know, like, we have to be realistic with ourselves. There's only so much we can do. I think as we showed last year, we may have a small team, but we can get a lot done. That's what we're focused on doing.
Great. Thank you, Steve. Our next question. When I reviewed your audit financial statements that are posted on your website, I noticed that you had a large loss on settlement of debt that appeared to have an offsetting positive impact on equity. Could you please provide some further insight into this?
Yes, I can. Interesting question. We eliminated CAD 16 million in debts last year via a number of debt settlement arrangements in order to do that and also through just paying down some debt. When we did each of the arrangements, in other words, shares for debt settlements, we agreed on a price per share. I can tell you that every one of those deals was concluded at a premium to what the trading price was the day that we concluded those deals.
The way the process works is once you have an agreement, you have to announce that agreement publicly, and then you wait for the regulators two, four, six, eight weeks to approve that transaction. During that period of time, once those transactions have been announced, the stock price goes up.
What we ended up with was non-cash losses. We had CAD 12.9 million of non-cash losses on settlement of debt, of which CAD 13 million was non-cash. T he offset to the loss that we're booking is increased capital. There's no change to the equity in the company. You know, as a financial guy myself, it I don't know how to describe it other than that you follow the accounting rules and that's what comes out. The bottom line is all of the debt restructuring was done at a premium to the market price at the time. I'd do it again 100x over. You just end up with this loss.
At the same time as you book a loss, you book more capital being raised into the company, so it's got zero effect on retained earnings. You know, we kind of look at it and say, "Well, you know, that's the way the accounting rules treat it." The bottom line is that we dramatically improved the balance sheet, and that loss did not have an impact on retained earnings because we added more share capital. I'd love it not to be there, as I told somebody, Bromley's accounting principles don't fly. We have to follow IFRS, so. Yeah, we're very happy with the debt restructuring. It was a major win for our company.
Great. Thanks, Steve. Our next question: After two years of very strong growth, what gives you confidence that this pace is sustainable?
Look, you know what? We've been winning. We have a supportive grower base. We have a supportive customer base. We're, you know, earning our stripes with our customers. At the same time, healthy eating and healthy living is not going away, consumers are looking for healthier foods options, and we're playing in that space. You know, are we gonna grow 200% every year? No, we're not, because our base is growing.
You know, we've already indicated that, you know, we were at CAD 60.8 million this year. You know, we're gonna be CAD 100 million, hopefully CAD 100 million plus next year. You can do the math. That's a lot of growth. Of course, you know, we'll look for some strategic opportunities on top of that.
We're really comfortable that we can continue to grow here for the foreseeable future, and that's a combination of the markets are growing, our growers want to grow, and our customers, you know, have given us the privilege of growing with them. That leaves us pretty confident.
Thanks, Steve. Next question: Does your business have an opportunity to leverage artificial intelligence?
Yes, it does have the opportunity to leverage artificial intelligence. We're starting to use artificial intelligence right now with a focus on improving our internal processes and our efficiencies, 'cause we think that's the shortest-term opportunity. Longer term though, we think AI can provide huge insight into our supply chains, into waste reduction, and in providing transparency. You know, depending on whose numbers you want to believe, anywhere from 40 to 60% of fresh foods that are grown never get consumed, and it's through waste, et cetera.
We're firm believers that technology can help us understand a lot better the root causes of waste and how to avoid waste, and in doing that, improve margins for our growers, improve margins for ourselves, and more importantly, make more food available, make more good food available, you know, around the globe. We do see AI and various technical applications really being important, and it's a key focus for us now as we move forward.
You know, one of the things that we're doing is, you know, you can see where our cash operating costs, you know, declined to 7.77% from 15%. The way to continue to drive that is to, you know, apply technology where it can really help. We're really intently focused on doing that this year.
Great. Thank you, Steve. Well, no further questions. That brings us to the end of today's webinar. On behalf of Organto Foods, thank you everyone who joined us for the fiscal 2025 results review and business update. A replay of today's webinar will be made available and shared with attendees following the call. For anyone who has additional questions or would like to learn more, we encourage you to visit Organto's website at organtofoods.com.
You are also welcome to reach out to the Organto team directly through the contact information available on the website, or feel free to reach out to Steve directly with any follow-up questions. Thank you all for joining. We appreciate your time and interest in Organto Foods, we look forward to keeping you updated as the company continues to execute on its growth strategy. Thank you again.
Thanks very much.