Good afternoon. Thank you very much for joining the call, everyone. We can see a lot of people still connecting. We would like to ask everyone to be on mute while we do the main part of the presentation, and then we will ask to send us questions through the Q&A box so that we can handle it more efficiently. We are comparing our results for the first quarter this year to the previous period. We see the nice growth in agricultural revenues on back of higher volumes of crop sales. Sugar production is down due to the pricing environment despite the higher volumes. Soybean processing is flat, and cattle farming saw revenue decline also on lower prices. That caused margin compression at the growth level from 27% to 14%.
We also have deterioration in the EBITDA for our key segments. First of all, this is sugar production at minus EUR half a million, and also cattle farming at minus EUR 2 million. Also, we show our results without the impact of the IFRS biological assets treatment in our accounts, and the margin compression is also evident here, but not as steep. If we are turning to our cash flows, given the deteriorating environment in the markets for our core products, our focus was on increasing operating cash flows. We did some destocking in the first quarter this year, and that allowed us to increase our operating cash flows by 42%. We also reduced our CapEx, discretionary CapEx, apart from continuing the investment in our main project, the SPC plant, which we plan to launch this year.
Lower profitability and EBITDA resulted in our leverage ratios increasing to 2.6 by first quarter 2026. As we move to our segmental results and look closer at agriculture, we can see higher volume sales, especially for corn, for wheat, and sunflower seeds. The prices are lower than last year, and that also led to reduced profitability overall for this segment. CapEx is reduced to the maintenance level of EUR 1 million. Looking ahead for this season, we have relatively stable crop mix, but there is a room to rebalance towards corn. We increase acreage of corn at expense of lower acreage of wheat. There is some reduction, although not very significant, for sugar beets. We keep the acreage under soybeans stable as this is our key crop for the processing segment.
Currently, we are finishing planting. We only have soybeans in the spring planting field works underway, and we, of course, prepare for the winter crop harvesting starting quite soon. Looking at the global market sentiment, the prices are down both at the domestic and the global level for the core grains from Ukraine, such as corn and wheat. Our core destinations for exports is Middle East and North Africa, but we do also retain our sizable presence in the EU markets where the quotas permit us to. Sugar globally and domestically is going through the adjustment period, which we haven't seen since 2018. We have low global prices also because domestic production is higher than local consumption, and we faced reduction in the EU trading quotas last year.
We have suppressed margins at gross margin level, and we became EBITDA negative in the first quarter of this year. The selling pressure is quite significant, with average selling prices down by one-third compared to the previous year. Exports continue. Our main export destination is Middle East and North Africa in the absence of higher quotas in the EU. If we are looking for this year ahead, we have several public sources for the acreage. There is an optimistic number coming from the Ministry of Economy. We do dispute it a lot. There is an industry association, Ukrsugar, which forecasts much lower acreage. Recently, USDA put the number somewhere in between.
As explained, we do continue to export, and our peer sugar producers also try to relieve pressure on the domestic market by being active in the global market, especially in the MENA region. Soybean processing also came under some pressure as prices for meal remain quite low. Soybean oil is almost flat. Despite good volumes that we process, we have compressive margin as energy and raw material costs are higher this year. The CapEx is also limited only to our project on SPC. There is an export duty which came only recently, 10% on exporting soybeans out of Ukraine. That resulted in a minor decrease of acreage of soybeans in Ukraine. As a significant grower of soybeans for in-house crushing, we still feel that we have abundant availability of raw materials, although at a higher cost.
Cattle farming is also performing worse in the first quarter this year. There was a cliff edge price drop at the end of the year in the last quarter. The trend is slowing down. The market is slowly rebalancing. We hear from official statistics that the milk reduction and the cow head reduction in Ukraine is quite significant, -20%. The balancing of the market will take some time because also, unfortunately, there is a global supply of dairy products in the international markets. That weighs down on our performance in Ukraine. This is very quickly regarding our results for the first quarter. We would like to switch to the Q&A. One second. I'm just checking the box with the questions. The first question coming from Martin.
Why there was no resolution regarding dividend or even profit allocation in the AGMs agenda ? That's an easy question. We said during our annual call, we will review the situation regarding the dividend payout after we see our first quarter results. There will be no dividend distribution. We are going to put a current report out this evening stating the same. Why there is such high difference between the Ministry of Economy and Ukrsugar beet area estimates? I would like to pass this question to our commercial director, Viacheslav.
Thank you very much, Julia. I would like to mention that the methodology which were used by the Ministry is somehow different at Ukrsugar. The Ministry was making the polling of regional administrations, their agrarian departments, which was basically made on the phone calls. The Ukrsugar was making the polling via sugar factories and interviewing all the sugar beet growers around these factories. In our understanding, we are targeting Ukrsugar numbers as more precise, and they are reflecting the situation on the fields. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question from Thomas. Our cash increased significantly to EUR 81 million. What are our priorities for capital allocation? For this question, I would like to pass the floor to Liliia Lymanska, the CFO.
Thank you, Julia. The temporary increase was driven by our loan drawdowns just in the end of the first quarter. All cash will be allocated for our future operational and capital expenses.
Thank you. I don't see any more questions in the chat box. Just wait for another couple seconds. There is one. I see no increase on realized average prices of soybean oil in 1st quarter. Has it changed for 2nd quarter? The prices on futures are up by a lot compared to the start of 2026. This question is for our commercial director.
Thank you, Julia. We see that the oil segment itself is the situation which is basically on the Middle East. We see that the prices are very fluctuating and periodically or in between of different periods, it could be higher or lower, but on average, the increase is not so huge. We have some increase, but very small. Thank you.
Yes. The second question is also for you, Viacheslav. If there are any signals of improving sugar margins. Are realized sugar prices, costs, and sales mix improving compared to the first quarter?
We see that current sugar prices are better than it was in the first quarter of this year. The export market is very dependent on the stock exchange from the London No. 5 and Sugar No. 11 contract. It's also very fluctuated and again floating from period to period first quarter.
Viacheslav?
Julia?
Okay. I probably lost signal for a while, but I just wanted to add for the broader picture for investors which are not familiar with the sugar cycle prices. Look back to 2018, 2019, and 2020 to see that the process unfortunately takes a couple years. This is a very cyclical industry, and we are in year two of this process. The next question is on SPC. Will it be commissioned in quarter three, quarter four due to low soybean crushing margins? How should we think about SPC EBITDA after ramp-up? I'll start answering this question and see if my colleagues can add anything, but we addressed this recently during our annual report meeting. The SPC will be commissioned in the second half of this year.
We will not be providing a precise date given the situation in Ukraine. People should bear in mind that we operate in the war-affected environment. It will also take us some time to ramp up production. In terms of sizeable EBITDA contribution we will see it much better in the 1st quarters of next year. The crushing margin for soybean meal will be replaced with the margin that we earn on SPC. Please give us some time to launch the facility and to see the volumes which will translate into the margin. Number four, covenants. Is the risk lower due to the increased cash position after 1st quarter? The question is to our CFO, Liliia, please.
Thank you, Julia. We estimate our liquidity risk as rather low. Of course, every factor, first of all, prices influence on our covenants, we review our forecast as soon as we know or get new information.
Okay. Thank you. The next question was from Natalia in Ukrainian. I'm just going to translate it for everyone. What we are expecting in terms of our cost evolution per hectare in 2026, take into account price jump for fuel and fertilizers. We purchase our inputs, given our size, much in advance, more than six months in advance. This recent price hike will have a limited impact, although there will be some impact, which we estimate between 5% and 10% of COGS. I don't see any more questions. Just wait for a couple seconds. Well, thank you very much. We hope we addressed most questions, and we would be happy to further discuss anything of interest. Just send us an email or we will arrange for one-on-one calls.
Thank you very much, and have a good weekend, everyone. Bye-bye.