Good afternoon, dear listeners. Welcome to AUGA group Meeting with Investors. I'm Emilia from Nasdaq Vilnius, I'll be moderating today's event. We will start with a presentation from the management, which will be followed by the Q&A session. Please be informed that this webinar is being recorded and will be available for a rewatch. As always, I encourage everyone to share your questions in the Q&A section at the bottom of your screen, you can submit them either anonymously or with your name. With that said, I'm pleased to introduce today's presenter, Chief Financial Officer of the company, Mindaugas Ambrasas. Please, Mindaugas, the floor is yours, good luck.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining this webinar. Emilia, thank you for introduction. As it was already introduced, my name is Mindaugas Ambrasas. I am CFO of AUGA group, I will try to tell you a little bit more about AUGA group and how the group is doing in nine months of year 2022. This time, I would like to start the presentation slightly differently, because we know that every time when we have a similar webinar, we have at least one, two new investors joining in. We thought that maybe we just need to have the slide as a reminder, what is AUGA group for today. I hope that majority of you know that we are the largest organic food producer in Europe.
Though we have much more history, AUGA group, as it is today, was created in 2014. The company is, of course, listed in Nasdaq Vilnius. We have four business segments. We have 1,200 employees, and we cultivate almost 40,000 hectares of land. Generally, company is really export-orientated. We are selling our goods in 48 countries, generally all over the world. As today we have this webinar about our nine months results, maybe let's just jump to the results.
For the start, if I just to have to give a short evaluation of our results for nine months, I would say that despite different turbulences and even in some cases some difficulties, I would say that we have rebounded from very difficult year to 2021, and we had really very negative results. We are, I would say, back on track. And our operational results profitability had improved significantly comparing year-on-year, and we are generally on the same level in which we were in the year 2020. If you just as you can see from the table in the presentation, we're very similar revenues to last year, and I will get back to this a little bit later in the presentation.
Our gross profit increased from almost EUR 1.7 million - EUR 15 million. Though we have small net loss for nine months, we still earned almost EUR 70 million of EBITDA comparing to EUR 5.5 million year ago. What is also maybe important that in our activities, I would say that results of nine months, they really realistically show what we could expect from full financial year of the company. Still, as agricultural company, we big part of our activities is already finished in the third quarter. We already have results for very big and important part of our business.
As always, maybe let's move from segment to segment, and we'll try to provide more detailed information on every segment we do operate. As always, we will start from our largest segment for today, crop growing. Before moving to financial numbers, as I said in the very beginning, as three quarters is time when big part of our agriculture activities is, I think, closed for a year. Let's move to actual results from this year's harvest.
As it's also stated in the presentation, you see that maybe not 100% of our cultures are fully harvested and fully result of the harvest is fully calculated because some of them are really harvested not only in September, but October and in some cases in November. Still, majority of cultures are fully harvested and accounted in the three quarters results. In our presentation, we will give more attention to, I would say, two main cultures, wheats and legumes, which are really the most important ones for us, which accounts for almost 61% of all land we cultivate.
They really have the largest impact on our financial results for agriculture and for the group as well. As you can see from the table in the presentation. Yields for both cultures have improved. I think I also have to say that our expectations and our plans in the first half of the year, they were slightly higher, and the final results we are having, they are slightly below what we expected and planned to have. This was affected not, I would say, by lower yields overall, but it was mainly affected by very poor results for some specific cultures. To be really specific, so we had quite poor harvest for summer wheat and peas, and these two results really drove overall yields lower. If we look at specific cultures, for example, winter wheats, beans.
Generally, I would say that we were almost in line with our expectation and the harvest was in line what we historically, let's say, aim to have or what we historically have. Overall still, we had quite nice rebound, I would say, from very poor harvest, at least for legumes last year, and this was quite significant improvement, and it's also had a big effect on changes of our results. Secondly, I think for obvious reasons, we had quite substantial changes during the year, if we talk about cost level and the price level for the goods as well. We had to review our costs during the year, and for the three quarters, we can see that our costs, though they differentiate culture by culture.
Overall, we had an increase of costs by almost 18% comparing to the same period of last year. Generally, it's of course, quite substantial growth, but what is important for us that this growth of costs was, I would say, more than compensated by growing prices of our products. As you can see from the table that, for example, average price for wheat had increased from EUR 240 to more than EUR 400 per ton, so it's 68% increase year-on-year. This increase was not only because of price. Quality was also important driver, because contrary to what, you know, we could hear about conventional farming, quality of harvest for AUGA was quite good this year, and this was additional reason why the average selling price has increased.
Overall, for those two cultures, you can see that profitability per hectare, which is, I would say, the main ratio we are measuring our success of doing agricultural business really has changed. For legumes, for example, where we had very substantial negative result last year, we generally now have very similar positive result per hectare. As always, more information about the harvest and results for other smaller cultures, as always, we will disclose in the annual reports. As we already mentioned the prices, here we have a little bit more information about development of prices, and as always, we show the graph for wheat. With some differences, I think it also gives understanding and gives a view how the market is, what is happening in the market in general.
As you can see from the graph that yes, we had a slight decrease in prices lately, but still we have quite substantial growth of prices if we compare to the same period to last year. It's very difficult to forecast what would be the future developments, because first of all, I would say we believe that this decrease could be a seasonal effect also, because generally every year, just after the season, there is a slight decrease in prices because of just a big increase of the supply. For us, maybe it's more important that we already contracted quite big part of our harvest. Generally, as you can see, a few days ago, 90% of the harvest we have, it's already contracted.
Generally, we don't have this risk of future development of prices and how this could affect our results in the future, because generally, we already have contracts in place and contracts have prices fixed in them. Still, looking into the future, as I said, it's quite difficult to forecast, but we believe that the current price level is generally the level we believe the market will continue in at least nearest future, in three to six months. From organic, at least market, we still see that there is really high demand for feed crops. Due to not very good harvest last year, not very good harvest this year, this demand is still really high. Feed crops market also helps to support pricing level in food crops market.
A little getting back to our harvest, we wanted to provide a little bit more information how our results fluctuate and what is the effect of this gain or loss of biological assets at fair value every quarter. As you can see from this graph, last year we really had this negative result overall, and we had to do a lot of changes in our, let's say, forecasted results from crop growing activity in the third quarter and I would say to some certain extent in the fourth quarter as well. At the end of the year, we had this negative result from revaluation for the full financial year. We believe that situation this year is really different.
Yes, we had some negative developments in the third quarter, and I think that was also indicated in our previous presentation when we were talking about 6 months results. As you can see from the graph, we also had some negative results for the quarter in Q3. I believe we are in completely different situation comparing to last year. Generally, if we talk about our result for full financial year, I would expect this to be more similar to year 2020 because generally, if we talk about fourth quarter, the biggest effect in revaluation comes from forecasted yields or forecasted harvest for all of the next harvest for next season, and only major small and minor changes could come from the cultures which are not fully harvested yet.
If we look at our, let's say, situation with future harvest, sowing process went smoothly in the autumn. Generally situation with crops is okay as much as you can judge them in current weather conditions. Generally, as I said, we are quite positive that results we are having for nine months, you know, this will be the tendency if we talk about our 12 months results as well. Just to sum up our results in crop growing segment. As I said in the very beginning, crop growing segment is really the largest and has the largest impact on results of the Group.
As you can see, we had really, I would say, substantial change if we compare to our results last year. We have gross profit of almost EUR 10 million-12 million for nine months. I think it comes, I would say from two sources if we just compare our results year-to-year. Of course, this gain of revaluation of biological assets is by far the largest driver, but also our sales activities, we also had a positive change if we compare our results year-to-year. We have much less write-offs. Our results of sales is positive.
This, at the end of the day, decreased our losses from sales activities to less than EUR 1 million than we had almost EUR 4 million of losses in the nine months of 2021. That's instead two drivers which really helped to improve the result. In the very beginning, I mentioned there could be maybe questions about the recent level of our sales, because if just compare year-on-year growth, this can be explained by very simple thing. This year in the third quarter, we sold proportionally much less of our harvest than we did a year ago.
This is just how our harvest will be sold quarter-to-quarter, and we sold this financial year or the sales will move to the next financial year. This will not have an effect on the profit of the segment because generally it's already calculated in revaluation and it's shown there. But this I would say the development this year is that somehow even if we have contracts signed and contracts in place, all the buyers, they somehow try to postpone actual sale and delivery of goods till the very end of terms agreed in the contract. That's why we have this, I would say, maybe delay if we compare our sales year-to-year.
Overall, as I said, this is just, I would say more technical thing when the sales will happen, but it will not affect the results, quarter-to-quarter or financial year to financial year. If we move to dairy segment, I would say that we don't have so much changes from our previous presentation. Two main drivers for the segment is of course yields and prices. It was already mentioned during last presentation that we had this drop in the milk yields.
The reason for that was that after very poor harvest, last year, we just made a decision in the AUGA group that instead of buying some missing ingredients, we will just have poor quality of, or maybe poorer quality of feed, and which of course will result in lower milk yields. From financial point of view, it was just a decision, better decision to have. After this year's harvest, feed structure is, feed menu is back to the optimal one. It generally just takes time, one, two months, till the cows could get back to, let's say, optimal production level. You know, maybe, I would say, we are not that positive that, you know, it will happen very quickly.
We believe that, you know, it could take two, three months, but generally, we should start seeing improvement already because the harder the feed structure for the cows was already changed, and those missing ingredients are already included. I would say prices has much more bigger and positive effect on our segment's results. As you can see from the graph, so prices really increased quite substantially. Yes, for conventional milk, the growth was even higher. Here I would say we believe that organic market, it really reacts a little bit slower to the changes.
If we have lower growth, we will have the same if the market will change and if the prices will start to decrease a little bit slightly. Secondly, we also preferred not the spot market, but we also preferred to have, I would say, you can't call it long-term agreements, but agreements for just couple of months, so longer maturity of the agreements with our buyers. This also maybe because of that, the price doesn't fluctuate that rapidly, but this also gives us stability for at least foreseeing future. That's why our expectation for the last quarter, we still believe that the price level could be similar to what we have today, and the results for the segment also would be similar to what we are having today.
Just maybe to comment, yes, pricing is, I would say, is really the main, most important factor, which really helps us to increase result of the segment. As you can see, for inine months, from EUR 170,000, we reached almost EUR 1.7 million. I'm not sure, but I think it's a record gross profit for the segment. And we really, we will try to move forward from there, to the next quarters, as well. Mushroom growing segment, and I think this is mostly the most difficult segment to, to present and discuss because I think you already saw from our reports that segment was really struggling in the third quarter.
Then we had losses from the segment for the quarter and for the nine months as well. Before moving to financial figures, I just wanted maybe to discuss, I would say, key factors which results in positive or negative result for the segment. I think the most important for the third quarter was energy and transportation costs. You all know that energy prices. We had record energy prices in August. Generally, if we compare to the prices for electricity we had a year ago, it's almost 15 times more than what we were paying just a year ago.
As you can see from the graph, those two cost groups, energy and transportation, we really increased from generally for almost EUR 2 million if we compare the same period last year to nine months this year. Of course, this was factor which really led to negative results for the segment and the factor we couldn't compensate quickly and easy. What we did, and the second factor in the results is the price of the mushrooms we are selling. We already talked about our target and our goal and things what we are doing, how we want to increase the pricing for our consumers of the mushrooms.
You will see in our next slide that overall figure, if we just check average price for mushroom, just total sales divided by tons, there is almost stable price. This is because of different price, different product mix, different packaging, transportation, et cetera. If we take all those factors out and just check real price of mushrooms, we managed to increase the price by almost 8% if we compare the average price in the first quarter this year and the third quarter this year. This process It's long, it takes time. I don't believe that this is the final result what we can achieve.
Generally this will continue, and we already starting to have at least some positive impact from increasing prices for the product. The third also important factor to get back results of the segment to normal results is our production volumes. During our last presentation, we already said that, you know, we believe that all the problems we had in the production they are already solved, and we should get back to this normal level of 1,000 tons per month. Unfortunately, as you can see from the graph, yes, we have an improvement if we talk about production levels year-on-year, but still, we are slightly below where we want to be in the third quarter. It was caused by several reasons.
First of all, you know, when you have those huge energy prices, we also try to optimize our production. When you talk optimize, generally it means that it becomes lower. This was, I would say, one of the key drivers why we didn't produce in optimal capacities, because once again, when you have those huge energy prices, and in our processes, we really need a lot of cooling to keep temperature in mushroom growing places on this level. When you had very high temperature in some months, you spend quite a lot. This was the reason why we made a decision also to control a little bit production in order to save energy costs.
Those three factors combined, they really led to the result. We have cost loss of almost EUR 1.5 million for the segment for nine months. We already have some, let's say, positive development in terms of production in October. Still, you know, all those factors results in final results. We still have some things to do and some homework to do in order to get back the segment on track. Though, as I said, pricing is increasing stably on the lower level what we would like to have, but, you know, this process is stable. I would say we have better situation in terms of energy prices, just because, first of all, prices went down comparing to the third quarter.
We also have some state compensation mechanisms, how at least partially compensate for the companies which are really affected by this. This is additional positive things, but still, in the longer perspective, we see that we need to make, you know, investments into renewable energy. We need to use those biomethane projects we are currently finishing in order to help the segment to get back on track. After mushroom segment, it's really, I would say, nice to move to FMCG because I believe the situation in the segment is really different what we have in the mushroom segment and what even I was describing in our six months presentation.
Because if you remember when we had this presentation, I also said that, we see that all those challenges in the market, they also have an effect on our sales. Some of the sales we forecasted, we are not sure that, you know, they will materialize, and our expectation of, growth of sales, was somehow lower. I really, I would say I'm quite happy that, situation has changed in the third quarter. We had, I would say, quite good, third quarter in terms of sales. More importantly, that, we have, reasons to be quite optimistic about, fourth quarter as well because, U.S. is by far the largest market for us.
For example, last year, all our sales to U.S. market were done in the third quarter. This year, I would say almost half of the sales will be. Oh, it's already done in October, so generally this will be in the fourth quarter results only. Just to repeat myself, as I said, we are quite happy that this situation seems it's better than we expected three months ago. Higher sales also have an impact on our profitability because if we have high utilization of our production facilities, so of course our costs per product they go down, and profitability increases.
Secondly, we also were working on reviewing the pricing and changing pricing for our consumers. This is another reason why we also see quite substantial, I would say, improvement of profitability comparing to the situation we had for the six months. Of course, in terms of profitability, we're still lacking behind. If we look at the changes we did in the third quarter, this gives optimism for quite good results for the segment for the full year as well. Just to sum up, this is just main drivers for our EBITDA change if you compare EBITDA for three quarters last year and this year. I think there is no secret that by far the largest effect comes from agriculture. We also have positive development in dairy.
Of course, mushrooms is the sector which has substantial negative change year-on-year. Another important thing we were talking and discussing, I would say, for the last year, we always try to give you an update what is happening with our technological developments. We know that investors, I would say, are already waiting for some results from those activities and would like to get more specific information from us. You know, what is happening, what are our plans and what could be effect on the financial results of the group. It was decided that this presentation will focus more on our financial results.
In a short period of time, we will come out with separate announcements regarding our developments in biomethane infrastructure production and our M1 tractor production. Then we will provide more detailed information. You know, what we are doing, what could be impact of those investments and those results we are having on our future activities and results. You know, just to go through those three key projects we are doing for this year. biomethane infrastructure, we were planning to complete construction and start operation of three facilities by the end of the year. Due to just supply issues, logistical issues, it takes a little bit more time than it was expected.
Still, we are, at least for one facility, we are just finalizing all infrastructure and, you know, production of biomethane will start in the very beginning of 2023. As I said, before start of the activities, we will have separate announcements with much more details about the project and the impact. Just to give you at least something, we can say that theoretically, those three facilities could produce 63,000 MW of biomethane per full year. If we check, say, market price for gas currently, you know, that would be an impact on revenues or cost saving of our group. Of course, our profitability is different topic because there are some costs involved in that.
Still, this could be very substantial effect on activities, sales, and even profitability on group level as well, then those three facilities will start operating. If we talk about specialized feed technologies, maybe not so much news there because we are still working on some tests, and then this will continue next year as well. Regarding our tractor, yeah, we were planning to have this first batch completed by the end of the year. I would say this plan still stands. First batch production is on process. As you know, we have agreement with the third party who is providing us this assembly services. Generally, we are finalizing, I would say, assembling of the tractors.
You know, first batch of three tractors should be completed in this year. once again, we have more clear view on completion. There will be separate announcements with more detailed information about the tractors, technical parameters, you know, what we are doing with them, et cetera, et cetera. as always, stock market information, where you can find more information, numbers, presentations in our webpage. the Nasdaq page, legal disclaimers. that's all of my presentation. now I would be more than happy to answer your questions.
Thank you very much for the presentation. Indeed, now we will proceed with the Q&A session. We already have quite a few questions, but I would like to remind all attendees that you can send in your question in the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen, and I will read it out loud. Let's begin. The first question is, could you please explain the volatility and seasonality effect of FMCG?
Okay. Thank you for the question. Yes, maybe from like first view, it looks kind of strange because of course, if you sell in the local market, so there should be much lower seasonality in the FMCG activities. This seasonality comes that we export quite big part of FMCG products, and we export to far markets. As I said, U.S. is by far the largest market today. Japan is also a big market for FMCG products. What happened during the last couple of years already, first of all, due to increasing logistic costs, buyers started to buy in larger quantities. Instead of doing smaller orders through the year, they will try to buy everything in one order. This is one thing what increases seasonality.
Secondly, the largest product in terms of sales is our soups. Soups are still more, I would say, product for winter period or cold period. For example, for U.S. markets, generally the process works like this, that in summer we receive an order, which we deliver, like this year in September, October, and it is sold in supermarkets during cold season. Generally, all our sales are done in third or fourth quarter for U.S. market. These are like two biggest drivers for volatility and seasonality effect in FMCG business.
Thank you very much. The next question is, how high is the energy cost impact on mushroom segment this quarter and onwards? Thank you.
I will not be able to give a specific number right now, but you can see how the price has changed in the last three months, I would say. You know, and it decreased, if we take into account the compensation almost two times to from the maximum price we had in August. You know, though energy prices will still be comparably much higher what we had last year, but the effect should be much lower if we talk from energy costs only in the fourth quarter comparing to let's say, third quarter. There is also a difference because in during the summer when we need to do cooling, so we are using lots of electricity.
If we have very cold winter, we need to use gas for heating. Usually, you know, costs for cooling are higher comparing to costs for heating just because of much more energy is needed for cooling. As I said, I'm not able to give specific figures right now, but my guess, and the guess that effects from energy prices should be lower in the fourth quarter, comparing to really record the prices and record losses, we had in the third quarter. There are some, you know, positive developments, as I said, in prices. Generally, we have a small but stable pricing increase every quarter, so this will be another argument which should improve result of the mushroom segment in the fourth quarter as well.
Thank you very much for your answer. Before we proceed, I would like to remind all the listeners that you are welcome to send in your questions in the Q&A box of your screen. Please send them now as I see that we have only one more question remaining. The question would be: Could you give the outlook for the mushroom segment in Q4? Is positive gross profit possible or at least a reduction in the loss compared to Q3? Thank you.
It's a very difficult question to answer. First of all, you know, I would love for to say yes, but, you know, I'm sure that we will reduce the losses and the segments will be profitable in fourth quarter. We still have lots of factors which are not, let's say, fully controlled. As I said, during the presentation of the segment, from those three key drivers, if we talk about energy costs, we are in a better position than we were a quarter ago. If we talk from price level, we are also in a better situation than we were a quarter ago.
Production volumes is still, you know, factor, which is difficult to predict because, you know, we are doing lots of things, and how to, let's say, solve all those issues and really get back to production volumes we would like to have. This is really the situation for the last, I don't know, more than a year. You know, we always had the expectation that situation in production should be solved and improved. Some things happen. As I said, I think that we have realistic possibilities that, and not only possibilities, but I think I believe that the situation should really be better comparing to the third quarter.
What would be the final result, we really need just to work and see how it goes month by month.
Thank you very much. Could you please comment, on the company's liquidity situation given small cash amount?
It's very broad question, maybe it's very difficult to give a specific answer. I would say that, you know, that's always the same amount, quite low amount we are having, and that was always the case for the last, I don't know, two, three years. Because generally, agriculture is the business which requires quite a lot of working capital. Organic agriculture requires, I would say, even more, because we're also selling our products to the final consumers for another year. Of course, there's always situation when, you know, liquidity is as described here that, you know, we have quite low cash amount.
That's the case how generally the business, not our business, but I think all agricultural companies operate in the industry.
Thank you very much for your answer. As all the questions are answered, on behalf of AUGA group and Nasdaq Vilnius, thank you everyone for joining us today. Dear management, thank you very much for the presentation and Q&A session. Have a good day, everyone, and goodbye.
Thank you, everyone. Goodbye.