Adecoagro S.A. (NYSE:AGRO) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call November 10, 2022 8:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Mariano Bosch – Chief Executive Officer

Charlie Boero Hughes – Chief Financial Officer

Renato Junqueira-Santos Pereira – Director of Sugar & Ethanol Operations

Victoria Cabello – Investor Relations Manager

Conference Call Participants

Henrique Brustolin – BTG Pactual

Christian Audi – Santander

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for waiting. At this time, we would like to welcome everyone to Adecoagro’s Third Quarter 2022 Results Conference Call. Today with us we have Mr. Mariano Bosch, CEO, and Mr. Charlie Boero Hughes, CFO. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded and all participants will be in a listen-only mode during the company’s presentation. After the company’s remarks are completed, there will be a question-and-answer session. At this time, further instructions will be given. [Operator Instructions]

Before proceeding, let me mention that forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of Adecoagro’s management and all the information currently available to the company. They involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions because they relate to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors could also affect the future results of Adecoagro, and could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements.

Now, I will turn the call over to Mr. Mariano Bosch, CEO. Mr. Bosch, you may begin your conference.

Mariano Bosch

Good morning and thank you for joining Adecoagro’s 2022 third quarter results conference. First, I would like to give you a brief update on our distribution policy. Next week on November 17th, we will be paying the second installment of our cash dividend in the amount of $17.5 million. The total cash dividend of $35 million distributed during 2022 is approx $0.32 per share. In addition to this, we continue buying shares under our buyback program. During the first 10 months of the year, we repurchased 3.6 million shares totaling $29 million.

Now going into the highlight of our operations, I will start with sugar, ethanol and energy business. We entered this quarter with good sugar cane availability, agricultural productivity indicators recovering from 2021’s frost event, enough storage capacity to carry over our production until year end if needed. We started the quarter crushing at full speed and later during August and September we received very good range, improving yield expectations, but slowing down our crushing pace and reducing our volume in 10% year-over-year. It was because of this lower volume and higher costs that adjusted EBITDA during the quarter went down by 20% year-over-year.