AGT Food and Ingredients Inc. (AGTF) Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the AGT Food and Ingredients Inc. Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Harley Ulmer, Global Corporate Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Danielle. Good morning, and thank you, everyone, for joining the call. My name is Harley Ulmer, Global Corporate Treasurer of AGT Food and Ingredients, Inc. With me on the call today are Murad Al-Katib, our President and CEO; and our Board Chair, Bill McFarland. After a brief presentation, we will take questions with the call ending by 9:15 Eastern Time. We will be commenting on our Q2 2026 results and outlook with the assumption that you have read the Q2 earnings press release, MD&A and financial statements. A slide presentation, which supports today's comments is posted on our website, and we encourage participants to access the slides and follow along with our presentation. Before we begin, I would like to make some comments about forward-looking information. In yesterday's news release and on Slide 2 of the presentation that we have posted to our website, you will find cautionary notes in that regard. We do claim the protection for any forward-looking information that we might disclose on this conference call today. I will now turn the call over to Bill McFarland for his introductory comments.

Good morning, and welcome. Management and the Board are pleased to report AGT had a good second quarter with the key metrics consistent with or improved over the comparable 2025 period. This was despite shipping delays due to the war in Iran and a slower rebound in our South African operations. We are seeing encouraging results from the strategic investments made over the last several years within our Packaged Food and Ingredients segment, which became for the first time, AGT's largest contributor to adjusted EBITDA during the first 6 months of 2026. Our strategic plan is on track and being executed with focus and passion by the management team, and the Board is excited about the future, including the progress being made on our growth initiatives in India and Minot. We also believe that over time, our shareholders will be rewarded as the market appreciates our disciplined approach to capital allocation, resiliency and performance and the future prospects of the business. With that, I'll turn it over to Murad to discuss the quarter in more detail.

Thank you, Bill. Appreciate it. Welcome, everybody. Glad to be back on our quarter 2 conference call. I wanted to start by just providing a bit of a market update on crop conditions. We're at a period where we start to look at the North American harvest, and just wanted to report that favorable crop conditions across North America and Australia, combined with generally average Black Sea prospects, uncertainty in Indian production, even with all of those factors, we're expected to maintain ample supply availability to execute our plan. Together with a positive demand trajectory in global pulse and food markets, these conditions are expected to support attractive sales opportunities through the balance of the year, particularly within our value-added processing and distribution segments. We are expecting with continued tensions in Russia and Ukraine and Sea of Azov of problems, we do expect the Black Sea region to contribute to a little bit of price -- upwards pressure that may ultimately just lead to kind of the stability in the current commodity price regime. So again, good crops, no major volatility in the commodity markets are expected. This will be good for us in terms of how we execute our plan. Conflict in the Middle East initially resulted in higher freight and other costs, along with some shipment delays in Q1 and Q2. AGT has now begun to incorporate these costs into new contracts, alternative routes of transport are being utilized. This will allow us to ship and reduce our inventories through contractual commitments by customers, including food security programs currently being shipped. AGT is expecting this catch-up and new growth will positively impact our results over the next 6 months, which historically, the second half of the year does produce our strongest results each year. Packaged Foods and Ingredients continued its strong momentum, as Bill noted, becoming the largest contributor to adjusted EBITDA on a year-to-year basis. We're truly seeing the benefit of these capital investments in recent years through growth in the segment. Adjusted EBITDA compared to the prior year of 42% in the quarter and an increase in revenue of 18%. When we have room for more growth -- while we have room for more growth, we continue to grow our customer order book. We expect unutilized capacity to decrease in the back half of the year. On a consolidated basis, AGT delivered a strong operating quarter, rebounding from Q1 with adjusted EBITDA of $39 million and was consistent with the same quarter of the previous year. So ultimately, the Q2 EBITDA increase, even with the slowing in shipping in South Africa and the weather challenges, Q2 is traditionally a slower quarter. So the adjusted EBITDA when considering the impact of the shipping delay and the war and the decreased South Africa results, adjusted EBITDA still increased by 14% when compared to the second quarter of 2025. Consolidated shipment volumes increased 7% during the quarter, led by growth in Packaged Foods and Ingredients, even considering those impacts of shipping delays. Adjusted free cash flow increased 39% year-over-year, demonstrating the strength of the business model and 52% of adjusted EBITDA was converted to adjusted free cash flow during the quarter, making our trajectory target of increasing free cash flow showing strong results and strong trajectory. Customer demand is strong across key markets, supported by significant confirmed order book, which includes the delayed sales impacted by the war planned to ship in the second half of the year and a growing book of customers to fill the Mersin, Turkey and Minot, North Dakota plant expansions in the short-term. Strategic growth and capacity investments in India and Minot continue to progress on schedule, and the competitive and consumer landscapes continue to show these were the right investments to build long-term shareholder value. During the quarter, we saw adjusted net earnings growth of 9%. As noted, our Packaged Foods and Ingredients delivered another strong quarter. On Slide 5 in our deck, you can see adjusted EBITDA increasing 42% and adjusted EBITDA margin increasing to 13% in the segment, realizing returns from our capital investments in new capacity. And many of you will recall our goal of a trajectory towards 14% to 14.5%. This 13% result is a good trajectory upwards. The Turkish pasta plant and Packaged Foods continue to drive strong volume growth and profitability with a diverse set of customers around the world, Japan, other markets in Asia, Canada. Demand for AGT's Better for You extrusion platform is also growing, supported by a pipeline of both new and existing customers in the Better for You Pasta, and we've seen growth and opportunity and diversification in various extrusion snacks, which has a key advantage of diversifying this business unit. These new products are on retail shelves in the U.S., and we're seeing strong initial sales and interest and our taste and products meet the consumer demand for healthier foods with more protein and more dietary fiber. The diversification of the product base beyond pasta, more into snacks and breakfast derisks our modular CapEx expansion strategy in Minot. We saw a recovery of the South African results in the month of June at the end of quarter 2. This had a nominal impact on the quarter, but we are expecting an increased contribution through the balance of the year, consistent with our 2025 results. So the South Africa platform should contribute to some recovery. Slide 6 on value-added processing. On a year-to-date adjusted EBITDA margin basis, we've increased from 5.7% in 2025 to 7.1% in 2026. The main drivers to the increase are diversification of the product mix, operating efficiency, and we believe the margins will continue to increase over the medium term. Food security programs had lower revenue due to lower commodity prices with year-to-date volumes and adjusted EBITDA contribution generally consistent with the prior year. So we had a catch-up and we have strong order book from food security agencies. Our conversations suggest that the war in the Middle East has caused governments to review their food security reserves, which should create a positive demand trend over the next 18 to 24 months. Our inventory at quarter end is up $100 million over the prior year as we built inventory with confirmed orders and are now scheduled to ship those in the second half of 2026. We expect inventory levels to normalize by the end of the year. Shipping delays in the Middle East are estimated to have reduced revenue and adjusted EBITDA in the quarter by $57 million and $3.4 million, respectively. This has not lost revenue, but only a shift in timing and the war and inflationary pressures in Turkey have resulted in some short-term margin compression impacting our results. Overall, though, value-added processing was a mixed bag given the war, but the long-term strategy fundamentals are in place, and we are confident in our ability to continue to show positive results in this segment. On Slide 7, the strong financial position, I'm going to let Harley take over.

Thank you, Murad. AGT's balance sheet is substantially stronger following the IPO and the Fairfax Private Placement, and this will allow us to fund growth investments and execute our strategy going forward. As noted in our materials, we had an adjusted net-debt-to-adjusted-EBITDA ratio at 0.49x, which is in line with our expectations. Lower leverage than in pre-IPO period has reduced financing costs and enhanced our free cash flow generation. Our adjusted free cash flow and adjusted free cash flow conversion rate of 52% positions us to fund capital projects and support future dividend payments. We are on target to exceed $100 million of adjusted free cash flow in 2026. Of specific note this quarter, we did call out that there was a change in the Turkish tax rates that are specific to Turkey, where we're seeing the programs were set up to give a beneficial tax rate on manufacturing process of about -- a tax rate of about 17.5%. This should give us a blended rate overall for AGT of about 20%. What that should allow for is a stronger competitive position going forward, where we should see less cash taxes in our business as we continue to execute our plan. I'll now pass it along to Murad to take you through Slide 8 and the rest of the deck.

In summary, the execution of our strategy is working. We have color-coded this slide to highlight the areas where we made good progress in Q2 in green and where there's more work in progress in orange. First, AGT is expanding sales with new and existing customers in all of our business segments and is seeing value-driven from recent growth investments. We're seeing growth in our Packaged Foods and Ingredients margins as the contributions from Pasta and Better for You, which have higher margins grow. Demand trends across protein and dietary fiber are strong and affordability of our Packaged Foods platform is driving the interest and growth. So just to digest that, meat protein alternatives are expensive compared to many of the Better for You alternatives that are being developed and put on the store shelves by the major CPG companies of the world. By the end of 2026, the new Turkish short-cut pasta capacity is expected to be over 75% utilized while the long-cut commercial capacity reached production in early Q3. So that long-cut line that we put in is now producing, and the new Minot line is expected to be over 75% utilized by the end of 2026. So strong uptake on the commercial modular CapEx that we've undertaken. We expect commercial production and sales to start from the India facility by mid-2027, with test production at year-end and commissioning beginning early in the new year. I want to reiterate that, that project is on time, on budget and will be bolstered by pasta customer pipelines, including tax-free and duty-free access in Europe given the Free Trade Agreement with India. Low operating costs of the project in India will help to provide a competitive advantage and will add about 78,000 metric tons of capacity to our footprint. We'll finance this facility and hedge the investments with a loan in rupees, and the project will drive strong adjusted EBITDA growth in excess of 10% per year in the Packaged Foods and Ingredients segment. Our inflation is actually -- as another point, inflation is also a concern for many businesses. The good news for AGT is that our people costs are less than $200 million annually on a consolidated basis, which partially insulates AGT from inflationary pressures. We were $186 million of people costs in 2025, excluding our share-based comp. But although we see some margin compression in Turkey, given the interplay between the lira and inflation with the lira not devaluing at the pace of inflation, the inflationary pressures and margin compression are present in our business but are manageable, and we expect them to continue to trend towards our pricing power as we continue to move forward on sales. Finally, currently, we're trading at about 6x adjusted EBITDA, while our peers are trading around 9x. So yes, we believe we are undervalued and AGT represents a compelling investment opportunity given our strong balance sheet, growing free cash flow and an expanding portfolio of higher-margin products and future prospects. AGT is focused on executing its growth strategy as outlined with double-digit adjusted EBITDA growth in Packaged Foods and Ingredients and strong single-digit growth in value-added processing, leading to consolidated adjusted EBITDA and adjusted free cash flow exceeding 2025 levels of $190 million and $73.7 million, respectively. We believe that our targets are achievable regardless of whether or not there is peace for the Iranian war. Packaged Foods and Ingredients will continue to be the company's primary growth driver and profitability platform with both pasta and extruded products, diversifying our product mix and continuing the growth trajectory. And during the second half of the year, we're going to capitalize on strong customer demand in food security, reduce our inventories, ship the delayed product in the first half of the year and continue to leverage our asset-light strategy in our distribution segment with matched opportunistic sales achievable through strong crop conditions in the world. We're going to finish India and Minot on time, on budget and move into the commercialization phase in 2027. And we plan to do all of the above while continuing to build the capability of our management team and the confidence of our investor community by delivering on our focused plan. Now, let's get to questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Luke Hannan from Canaccord Genuity.

Murad, I wanted to, if we can, if we could unpack the performance within the Packaged Foods and Ingredients segment because it was very robust growth during the quarter. I know some of that was the timing of Ramadan. But can we also -- can you just dig into what exactly drove the growth there? Because it is, I think, a little bit above what you expected over the long-term. I think I heard you say about 10% annual EBITDA growth over the long-term. So just curious to know what is in there that you expect to be, I guess, ratable going forward? And potentially, could we see above algorithm growth over the course of the balance of the year there?

Well, look, first of all, just to clarify, the Ramadan demand won't be a big driver in the Packaged Foods business in our side just because, again, the Better for You and the pasta side, being much more focused on, let's say, Japan, Canada, Malaysia and then places like that. We're not seeing a big Ramadan uptick on that side. That's much more in the value add. But what -- let's just unpack this here. I mean, again, incremental CapEx, we gave some indication that short-cut capacity in Turkey is going to be running at high 70s utilization by year-end. The long-cut pasta line is now commissioned and running. That didn't contribute in Q2. So that's going to again give us more upside growth as we continue to move forward. And frankly, the guidance on Minot utilization over 75% by year-end gives you the signal that the demand trajectory in our Extruded Products segment is strong. So again, we want to prove-out that sales pipeline. We've got orders shipping, being accepted and repeat orders and larger repeat orders being placed by a number of major retailers and CPGs. That trajectory is going to continue. So again, our comfort in giving you that, look, we're going to exceed 10% growth in that segment. We feel the confidence level interval on that continues to rise. This is, again, fundamental staple food demand. It's not affected by the war. And if you look at quarter 2 of 2026 versus quarter 2 of 2025, it's almost a complete inverse, right? Packaged Foods is bigger than the value-added processing for the first time in our history. That's where we've deployed the capital. That's where we're executing, and that's where we're taking this company. So Pasta growth, Better for You growth, again, offset a bit, Luke, by South Africa. Just to put the worries on South Africa to bed, I mean, seasonally, they're always quite light in the first half and much heavier in the second half due to the timing of their harvest. We're expecting South Africa to be able to be a positive contributor in the second half.

That's helpful. And then for my follow-up, and then I'll pass the line here. You had touched on the expectation, Murad, that there should be better volumes in the second half of the year in value-added processing, one, because your order books are healthy, but also higher sales to food security customers. And then on top of that, you gave a bit of an update when it came to the crop outlook as well. I'm just curious to know what impact, if any, do you expect there to be from El Nino when it comes to, I don't know, whether the bins are full to end the harvest season or not?

It's interesting. I mean, again, what we're talking about is North American harvest is going to be robust. Black Sea, we think will be average -- Turkey's average. But the El Nino effect is likely continuation of short monsoon rain in India, which we think, Luke is going to be a positive demand trajectory. I mean in the El Nino effect, Northern Hemispheres likely benefit, Southern Hemispheres likely suffer. So as a result of that, again, robust demand in Indian subcontinent will be a market driver. And then continued instability in the Black Sea region also is not bad for our value-added processing business. I mean we source there for Turkey, but the Canadian platform can be a lot more robust when Black Sea has political uncertainty. So all of those factors are giving me some strong confidence that normal seasonal demand will be there. We're going to get those inventories that were built up. Just to be very clear, we didn't build inventories for the sake of building inventories. We build inventories because there's sales that are being executed in Q3. So this has happened to be the snapshot that inventories were built and snapshotted and they're shipped in the third quarter. So we're seeing good strong order books. On the food security side, there's no mystery. Contracts have been awarded. We're going to execute now, and we're seeing demand from governments in that region that we think are going to be sustained over the next 18 to 24 months.

I'd just add as well, Murad, when we talk about El Nino that the geographic diversity of our sourcing that you highlighted is really a strength for AGT. We're not dependent on any one region. And we know that there will be pluses and minuses when there's these massive weather events, and we can still find our product and meet our sales demand based on our ability to source from the various geographies in the world.

The next question comes from Zachary Evershed from National Bank Capital Markets.

So the Packaged Foods and Ingredients margins were quite strong this quarter. Can you comment on how sustainable you believe that level is? And how much incremental EBITDA is still going to come from Turkey, U.S. and Indian capacity expansions?

I mean, Zach, we said very clearly in our IPO messaging and even in our first quarter that we had a very strong move towards a trajectory of 14% in that segment. And I think what this quarter is showing is that the Better for You margins that we talked about being much better than just the overall PFI margins -- it's starting to show as volumes grow on that extrusion business, the incremental dollar sales are smaller than the pasta, but the margins are bigger. So it does have a margin impact quite quickly. So we expect that to continue as we continue to add lines in '27 and '28. Our signal that 75% utilization by year-end on that does give you a strong signal that the trajectory is as we expected. So we'll get those orders in the book and then look at incremental capacity in the future. On the pasta side, we said the long-cut line is just commissioned and it's producing commercially in quarter 3. So there's still some upside to be seen in that. And then India will come online for commercial production mid-2027. So you're going to see some strong sustained growth in this, both from a volume perspective and a margin perspective. And again, we started off this process when we did our IPO at margins around 11.5% to 11.6%, 11.7%. We're up at 13%. We're going to play in that range of 12% to 13%. And then our goal will be as continued Better for You goes, we'll go to that 13% to 14% and just continue to incrementally drive sustained margins. The volatility in margin in the Packaged Foods, remember, commodities are a very small part of this, and we hedge the commodity. So this is all about finding better sales, better opportunities and even higher margins as we continue to drive into more diversified segments. One key thing, Zach, as we said, diversification. We talked a lot about gluten-free pasta. We're now saying, look, our snacks and our breakfast category on extrusion is becoming more robust and the diversification is going to benefit that trajectory going forward.

That's helpful. And then for the follow-up on building up that capacity, it looks like CapEx year-to-date is already above that $50 million number. Is it going to slow sharply in the back half of the year or are you going materially higher this year?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, listen, one thing that we'll do in the future is we'll look at ensuring that our commissioning costs are appropriate or reflected in our capital budgeting guidance. Just to be very clear, those commissioning costs are not large when it comes to the magnitude of the CapEx budget. It's months of commissioning, not years of commissioning. So we want to appropriately capture those. But look, our guidance was $100 million over the 2-year period. What we're going to see is we're going to see a heavier 2026 because of the India project is sensible. And then we'll see a slowing at the back half of the year, you'll see quite a material slowing. And then you will see us target to be close to our budget for 2027. So call it, maybe 65, 35, somewhere in that range, maybe a bit more if the trend continues to accelerate in the Packaged Foods side of the Better for You, but we'll give that guidance as we go forward. So no big surprises on CapEx. Don't expect that because we spent $50 million in the first 6 months that we're going to spend $50 million in the second 6 months, and we're going to spend another $50 million, 6 months after that. This is a disciplined modular CapEx strategy, full stop. So we will maybe have a bit of variance depending on how the trajectory goes, and that's sensible because we're using free cash flow to fund these budgets. Let's be very clear. We're not using leverage. We're using free cash flow.

The next question comes from Steve Hansen from Raymond James.

Murad, can you just describe maybe perhaps how much of the India book is sold at this point for the facility? You seem to suggest that the European customers will be at the core of the book given the tax favorable treatment there. But if I recall back to some of the earlier discussions that North America was also in focus. So just where do we stand on booking that capacity as we get closer to production?

Steve, I would say that we have strong visibility on the retailers that are going to be customers. The process would work that you have to build your facility, they have to audit the facility and then you place your orders. But we're on track with the retailer discussions. We're expecting to have visits in fourth quarter and quarter 1 on audits and procedures to meet our commissioning by mid-2020 -- sorry, call it, second quarter of 2027. We have a strong confidence that the tax advantage into Europe is going to be an advantage. And we have a strong view that North American, meaning Canada and the U.S. Duty certainty are going to be quite important as we go forward. So India is on track, Steve.

Okay. I appreciate that. And just as a quick follow-up, I just wanted to delve into the logistical cost just briefly, recognizing there's an insane amount of volatility out there. But are the customers starting to act more normally as yet, just given all the volatility we're seeing, just recognizing that food is still a stable demand side or are they sort of waiting and gauging some of the volatility to make those orders and place those orders to move volumes? I'm just trying to get a sense how smooth the rhythm is out there right now from the customer side to move volumes into that region. And then I guess just secondarily is how those costs are fading or fluctuating, sorry, through the third quarter thus far.

Yes. I mean, listen, this is not an AGT-specific question, what you're asking. I mean demand fluidity in the time of war and on again, off again war, are we attacking? Are we settling peace? These are all uncertainties. So the demand side of the value-added outside of the food security [ piece ]. So in the food security, we know our contracts were shipping. And ultimately, we're expecting good strong shipments in the second half. Demand fluidity on the other side is still a bit hand to mouth. We are expecting that to resolve because stocks are dwindling in the region. So this is no longer a -- do I want to import? I need to import. The question is how much. So we're expecting the back half to be reflecting that. On the cost side, new contracts are being costed at the new freight. And that's the reality. These are staple foods. They're not discretionary and the supply chain costs have to be borne by the customer. And that's ultimately what we're starting to see.

The next question comes from Kyle McPhee from ATB Cormark.