I'm Moritz, your current call operator. Welcome. Thank you for joining the AGRANA results for the Q1 2023, 2024 conference call. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touch-tone telephone. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Hannes Haider, responsible for Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to AGRANA's conference call, presenting our results for the first quarter, 2023, 2024 financial year. With us today are three other four members of our management board. Markus Mühleisen as the CEO of the group, will start the presentation with an overview on the highlights of Q1, and will comment briefly on the market environment. Our CTO, Mr. Norbert Harringer, will afterwards, briefly cover the topics, raw materials and production, as well as ESG and investments. Finally, our CFO, Mr. Stephan Büttner, will report on the Q1 financials in detail, and he will conclude, with an outlook for the remaining financial year. As announced in our invitation, a presentation is available in reference to our call. You can find this presentation in the IR section of our website.
The presentation will take about 25-30 minutes. After the presentation, the lines will be opened, and we will answer your questions. Now I may pass over to our CEO, Markus, who will start with the presentation.
Thank you, Hannes, good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q1 conference call. If you turn to slide 2, just give you a quick overview. We have started the year well. Our revenues are up 9%, our EBIT is up 23%. We are able, therefore, to deliver on our Q1 guidance. We're pleased that we are able to continue and deliver on our guidance for our performance. We look ahead to reaffirming our outlook for the whole fiscal year. Clearly, it will be another interesting year, full of challenges and very much continued volatility.
As we have proven, in the last two years, we are set up to navigate these volatilities well. Therefore, we are reaffirming our outlook for the year. We're not only navigating the challenges in the current business, but we're also looking ahead and we've made good progress on our strategic agenda. I will lay out together with the team tomorrow, the key points on that agenda, on the strategic agenda in our annual meeting. Therefore, I won't speak about it today. I do wanna highlight one particular point, which is on our sustainability strategy, where we submitted our SBTi targets last year.
The validation actually started now, in May. We're making good front on that part. If we now turn to slide number 3, just a few key numbers. As always, Stephan will go into a lot more detail. As I mentioned, revenues in the first quarter were up 9%. Our EBITDA is up 26%. That also means that our EBITDA margin actually has improved by about 130 basis points over the last year. Operating profit is up 45%, and EBIT is up 23%, and our EBIT margin, in totality, also up 150 basis points over the same quarter last year.
In terms of earnings per share, they're up EUR 0.03, and Stephan will then go through the numbers in a bit more detail later. On slide 4, a couple of points about our annual meeting tomorrow. Clearly, we'll present the financial results for the past fiscal year, but as I mentioned, we'll also lay out the elements of our new strategy going forward. We also have a couple of other important items on the agenda. Number 1, the distribution of the dividend. The dividend recommendation is EUR 0.90 per share.
Secondly, we are putting forward a resolution on amending the remuneration policy, something that we have talked about in the past year, that we are working on that, to include financial indicators in our remuneration policy, as well as changing the variable portion into a short and long-term component, plus making a few other amendments. Also we have some elections, or actually one election to the supervisory board, triggered by the resignation of Veronika Haslinger. We look forward to you possibly joining us tomorrow, either in person or via our link, which is sort of at the bottom of slide 4.
Going forward to the market environment, as Hannes mentioned, I'll say a few words on slide 6 now. Here, first talking about sort of the fruit segment, that their environment, which obviously continues to be challenging. We are actually seeing signs of recovery, in particular in the important fruit yogurt segment. We're seeing signs that it's stabilizing in a number of our global regions. It's actually quite nicely in growth again. That is supporting the good development in particular in the fruit preparations business. Also in other parts of the fruit segment, we're seeing some good market trends.
I think again here, what plays very much in our favor is our global diversification. We have an excellent footprint. Just as a reminder, we are the world market leader in fruit preparations, and we're also one of the top three players in juice concentrates. We also have a nicely growing added value business, and we have a terrific access to a broad and diversified portfolio of customers at the global level. We have an excellent footprint here with global, regional, and smaller customers. So we're looking forward here to further improvements for the fruit segment, based upon a good market environment. Starch is facing a little bit of a tougher market environment. We expected that.
We knew going into the year, that especially in comparison to last year, we were not gonna have the benefit of high energy prices, also driving ethanol prices high. If you remember last year at this time of the year, we saw ethanol prices above EUR 1,100 per a cubic meter. This year, they're about EUR 300 lower. We're not having that tailwind. We had that tailwind through most of the first quarter, the first half of last year. When you do that year-to-year comparison, you gotta take that into account. At the same time, our core storage starch business is performing well in some more challenging market conditions.
We do see a number of our customers struggling with demand. I mean, we all have heard about challenges in the building sector. We also know that paper and pulp have some challenges. There's also some sectors which are hit by slowing consumer demand due to high inflation. At the same time, when you think about this year, keep in mind that after several years of crises and challenges, in particular on the supply chain side, many customers are now looking to significantly reduce their stock holdings. Of course, further pushed now by rising interest rates, everybody's working on their working capital, and we know from many of our customers that that's a big, big focus for them to lower the inventory levels.
What we're seeing is both a slowdown of fundamental consumer demand in some areas, but also, if you will, this corrective action of reducing inventories and what we expect to see that throughout the year. We expect that and factor that into our outlook. On the paper side, we continue to see a stable market. We see world production and consumption, as well as production and consumption in Europe, being quite stable, and as a result, also prices being quite stable. We see that continuing.
At the same time, you know, we all have to keep reminding ourselves it's still a lot of volatility out there, a lot of risk. War in Ukraine can be a major factor, all the geopolitical risks. So we do also expect that volatility to continue throughout the year, but we're taking all the right measures to make sure we can navigate these volatile times well, and we've demonstrated that over the past 2 years. Then if you wanna have a quick look at slide 7, that just is a reminder on the ethanol prices. So we are, if you do the year-over-year comparison, we're comparing ourselves to extremely high prices last year.
When you think about the storage segment, you know, you have to think about it in that context. Slide 8 is just what I said about sugar prices. They are at a good level now after a number of years of being quite depressed. It's taken a while for everybody to respond to the liberalization of the markets in Europe. We do see a stable environment, and we see that continuing for some time. Okay, that's for me, that's it for me, overview, and I'll turn it over to Norbert now.
Thank you, Markus. Ladies and gentlemen, in the next minutes, I would like to briefly touch on some highlights on the commodity and the production side that seems to me worth mentioning for the first quarter. In the fruit segment, the berry juice processing season in the fruit juice concentrates business unit has just started. An average raw material availability is assumed for the 2023 berry campaign, and also from the production side, everything is working well. Coming to starch, you know that raw material costs are a decisive factor, especially for this segment. Raw materials prices in the first quarter of the current business year were still significantly higher than a year earlier, due to the after effects of the massive increase in international market prices. On the stock markets, we see a decreasing trend for several months now.
You can see this also on slide number 11. This development will have then an impact, of course, for the new harvest. Markus already mentioned signs of a demand slowdown before. I can confirm this, especially for the stock segment, as many customers are facing weaker consumption and are increasingly running down their inventories. This means for AGRANA, our production has to be very flexible. It was also commented on the ethanol performance, I just wanted to add here that the introduction of E10 fuel blending in Austria will have not only a midterm positive impetus for demand, but also a protracted national debate has ended well, as the use of more domestic ethanol in Austria will improve the country's greenhouse gas balance. I will now conclude with the highlights in the sugar segment.
As you know, the new sugar campaign will start in autumn, and we are still confident that the campaign 2023 will be a better one than the one in 2022. The main reason for this is that AGRANA Group's beet cultivation area in the current sugar market year will be around 86,000 hectares, compared to around 72,000 hectares in 2022. This means, of course, a good basic outlook in terms of fixed cost regression. It can be assumed that the favorable weather conditions give reason to hope for a high-yield beet harvest. However, at the same time, the ban on neonics in Austria remains a steady course for concern, as there is an increased risk of lower yields per hectare and production volumes for the two Austrian locations.
Some facts about our focus on ESG. In November 2022, AGRANA submitted its science-based climate targets to the SBTi. The validation by the Science Based Targets initiative began at the end of May of this year. By 2030-2031, under the targets submitted, AGRANA will cut emissions from its own production operations by 50%, and reduce those in its upstream and downstream value chain by about 34%. From the analysis of our corporate carbon footprint, we know that most of the emissions arise from the growing of the agricultural raw materials processed. To date, the emission factors used for these crops had to be taken from international databases or the literature.
To gain a more accurate understanding of the highest and lowest emission agricultural practices and other drivers affecting agricultural emissions, a project was launched in the last business year to collect primary data, as suppliers of the key raw materials calculate AGRANA's specific emission factors, and thus, more effectively identify leverage points and potentials for emission reduction. Regulatory developments and inquiries by customers confirm the importance of primary data in agriculture, and hence, validate the path we have taken. Ladies and gentlemen, last but not least, some facts about our investment activities. In the first quarter of the current business year, AGRANA invested at about EUR 15.5 million, or EUR 4.2 million more than in the Q1 entire year.
In addition to the regular projects for product quality and energy efficiency improvement and for asset replacement and maintenance across all production sites, the following individual investments are worthy of note. In the fruit segment, the replacement of the central cooling system in Centerville, Tennessee, U.S., the acquisition of new stainless steel containers in France, and the expansion of our raw material storage in Jacona, in Mexico. For the starch segment, we invested in specific measures to increase the specialty corn processing. In Aschach, we drove forward the expansion of the company wastewater treatment plants in Aschach and in Gmünd, in Austria, and we undertook an upgrade of our cooling performance in Pischelsdorf. Finally, in the sugar segment, we engaged in the modernization of the control systems in Leopoldsdorf, in Austria.
We optimized the production process by replacing the filter presses in Sereď, in Slovakia, and we optimized the evaporator station in Kaposvár, in Hungary. Let me conclude with the CapEx outlook for the full year, 2023, 2024. The total investment across the three business segments in the current financial year, at approximately EUR 150 million, is to significantly exceed both the 2022, 2023 value and this year's budgeted depreciation of about EUR 120 million. Around 16% of this capital expenditure will be from emission reduction measures in the group's own production operations as part of the AGRANA Climate Strategy. Let me now hand over to Stephan Büttner and the financials.
Thank you, Norbert. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm happy to give you a little bit more detailed outlook on the financials. We start with the revenue by segment. As already mentioned, we had an increase in total revenue of 9%. When we look at the fruit segment, we have an increase of 11.2%. This was mainly driven by price increases. In the fruit preparations business, we had a slight decrease in sales volume, whereas in the, let's say, volume drivers, in the fructose concentrate, we had a decrease of sales volumes of around 10%. In total, as already mentioned, the increase on revenue of 11%. In starch, a decrease of 0.6%, so stable revenue.
Significantly lower sales volumes against prior year, first quarter, with higher selling prices, compensating for the lower volumes. In sugar, as also already mentioned, we had really significantly increases in the sales prices. Therefore, there we had an increase in revenue of around 20% in the first quarter. EBIT by segment, as we can see, we have overall an increase of 23.1%, up to EUR 63.5 million. Main driver here against prior years, of course, the sugar business, with an EBIT of EUR 17 million. Here, also mainly driven by the price increases. In starch, reduction in the EBIT, this was mainly driven by a much lower, let's say, negative contribution on EBIT level from the ethanol business.
Here we lost EUR 28 million on EBIT level versus prior year. We could not fully compensate this in the starch business, but overall, let's say we have a decrease of 24.6% on the EBIT level. In the fruit segment, you can see an increase or improvement on EBIT level of 22.6%. This is coming from both divisions, let's say, from the fruit preparations business as well as from the fructose concentrate business. In both sections, we have higher margins. Let me come to the consolidated income statement. EBITDA, EUR 90.6 million, up 25.7% versus Q1 prior year.
When we look at the share of results of at equity-accounted joint ventures or consolidated joint ventures, minus EUR 1.8 million. This is a significant decrease versus prior year, mainly driven by the low performance in Hungrana, but also in the, in the sugar joint venture, STUDEN. In Hungrana, due to lower sales volumes and also very high raw material costs and energy costs. EBIT, EUR 63.5 million. EBIT margin, 6.6%, also up versus prior year. The net financial items increased significantly up to EUR 13.3 million. This is due, of course, both up to two effects.
One effect is the higher gross financial debt, and on the other hand, we have a high interest rate, and this leads to a profit for the period after tax of EUR 38 million and earnings per share of EUR 0.58. Energy costs in Q1, a further increase. We think that we now reached really the peak. We had a total cost, energy cost of EUR 52.8 million. In starch, the most consuming division with EUR 32 million stable. An increase in sugar of around EUR 4.6 million, and also up EUR 2 million in the fruit segment. On the right-hand side, you can see the energy mix. There is no huge change. We move on to the net financial items here already mentioned, on one hand, we have a significant increase in the interest expense.
Yeah, of course, significantly higher interest rate during Q1, already up to 3% in average. The currency translation differences, weakening of some currencies where we have financing in EUR or USD. This ended up in net financial items of minus EUR 13.3 million. This is 129.3% higher than previous year, Q1. The tax rate, 24.3%, this is in the normal range. When we look at the cash flow statement, the operating cash flow before changes in working capital show there a significant improvement of 43%. Of course, which is hurting us a little bit, is our changes in working capital, EUR 182.6 million minus here.
From a cash flow perspective, this is mainly driven by accounts receivable, with EUR 79 million, and accounts payable with EUR 120 million. The accounts payable mainly are driven by payments to the beet farmers of more than EUR 70 million in Q1. Ending up with a net cash from operating activities of -EUR 91.1 million and a negative free cash flow in Q1 with -EUR 106.3 million. Finally, the consolidated balance sheet, there is no significant change here. You can see non-current assets are very stable, and also the current assets show only a slight increase of 2%. Equity with EUR 1,286.7 million.
There is an increase of EUR 30 million, 2.4% up, due to the positive profit after tax. The equity ratio with 42.3% still in a good range, especially when we take the high inventories and let's say, working capital into consideration, net debt up to EUR 800 million, and therefore the gearing is 62.1%. Let me come to the outlook for 2023, 2024. As we already mentioned, we are confirming our overall guidance for EBIT, which should go up very significantly versus 2022, 2023, and the revenue should increase significantly versus 2022, 2023. Of course, as you can always see, we have sources of uncertainty, Ukrainian war, volatility in raw material prices, energy prices, and so on.
Of course, also, these projections are always based on the assumption that the physical supplies of energy and raw materials remain assured, and that purchasing price increases, especially for raw materials and energy, can be more or less be passed on to our customers. The outlook for the segments: fruit, we expect a slight increase in revenue and a very significant increase on EBIT level. Starch, a moderate increase in revenue and a significant decrease in EBIT. In sugar, a significant increase both in revenue and in EBIT. Outlook for the second quarter, 2023, 2024. Here we compare to the adjusted EBIT, which means before exceptional items in Q2 2022, 2023. There we had an adjusted EBIT of EUR 48.4 million.
Our expectation versus that in Q2, 2023, 2024, is, say, a moderate to significant decrease, in EBIT. Now let me hand over to Hannes Haider for the financial report.
Thanks. Before we go on with the Q&A session, just for your information, tomorrow's Annual General Meeting will be an event in presence only. The weblink posted on slide 4 will bring you to our AGM website, including all relevant supporting documents for our AGM. Tomorrow at 11:00 A.M., you can find here also a PDF link to tomorrow's CEO and CFO presentation on the financial statements and the strategic agenda. We will now go on with the Q&A session.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by 1 at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes from Vladimíra Urbánková from Erste Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello, good morning. I would have one question related to the outlook for the second quarter. What are the major reasons for the anticipated moderate to significant drop in EBIT? Next question would be to the performance of Hungrana. You mentioned that you did not manage to pass on to customers the price adjustment. How the situation looks like now, and is there an improvement on horizon? Last but not least, the energy prices. You said that you managed to be past the peak. What about the personal cost? Because I do not see your detailed PNL, and I'm just wondering what kind of increases we should anticipate in this year.
This would be it for now. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Mrs. Urbankova. Let me answer or try to answer your questions. A significant drop in EBIT. I mean, yeah, this is currently our expectation. You know, as we already mentioned, in several areas, we see, let's say, a significant drop in sales volumes, especially in the starch segment. Also we expect, let's say, in some areas, lower sales prices. There is some kind of price pressures, of course, in the market also, triggered by lower raw material prices and lower energy costs. Of course, due to risk limitation, we also, of course, also hedge some raw material prices and energy costs, and therefore, this will a little bit squeeze our margins. This is our expectation, especially in the starch business.
Sugar, also, we have to keep an eye on the sales volume. Yeah. Overall, this is our expectations, you know, so mainly driven by lower sales volumes. Hungrana, yeah, so the whole, let's say, calendar year for Hungrana will be quite difficult. I mean, last year we faced enormous raw material costs due to the poor harvest in Hungary, in corn, and also very high energy costs. Of course, these costs also were, let's say, fixed. Then we saw a significant slowdown also on the sales side. Therefore, our coverage on the raw material side and on the energy side is much lower than we expected.
Also prices are a little bit under pressure, therefore, we do not expect a significant improvement of the situation in the calendar year for Hungrana, and next year, this should go up again when the lower raw material prices and the lower energy prices will kick in. Personal costs, sorry for that. There we have an increase in the first quarter versus the first quarter prior year of 13%, and the total personal cost amounted to EUR 97.9 million. Energy prices, sorry, this was also a question. What was the question again?
No, no. It was like the missing information on personal cost. You said that how much was it up year-on-year, or how do you expect for the full year, the increase in personal cost? It's better.
We expect that this will be more or less stable, let's say, in the deviation versus in the Q1. Yeah. We have around 13%. This is our average expectation.
Thirteen.
For the full year. Yeah. Yes.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one at this time. There are currently no more questions, so I hand back to Hannes Haider for closing comments.
Thanks. As there are no further questions, thank you for your interest in our call, and we wish you a nice remaining day. Bye.