On July 25-26, Viktor Ivanchyk, CEO of Astarta Agro Holding, bought about 0.069% of the holding’s shares on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) for a total of PLN516.56 thousand (about $131.5 thousand at the current exchange rate), bringing his stake to 40.757% of the issued shares.
According to information on the WSE website, Albacon Ventures Ltd. owned by Ivanczyk, acquired 17.65 thousand shares in about 200 transactions these days at prices ranging from PLN27.85 to PLN30.6 per share, with an average price of PLN29.77.
On Friday, Astarta’s share price fell more than the market – by 4.95% to PLN28.80 ($7.33 at the current exchange rate).
As reported, in December 2023, Ivanchik resumed buying shares on the stock exchange after a break that lasted since June. According to the annual report, over the past year, Ivanchyk acquired 0.26%, or 64.90 thousand shares, increasing his stake to 40.26%, or 10 million 64.90 thousand shares. By now, he has reached 10 million 189.25 thousand shares, in particular due to receiving 0.5%, or 124.755 thousand shares as remuneration this year.
The annual report noted that, in addition to Ivanchyk’s family, Fairfax Financial Holdings is also a major shareholder with 29.91%, and about 2% of the shares belong to the company itself and were previously bought back as part of a buyback.
“Astarta is a vertically integrated agro-industrial holding company operating in eight regions of Ukraine. It comprises six sugar factories, agricultural enterprises with a land bank of 220 thousand hectares and dairy farms with 22 thousand cattle, an oil extraction plant in Globyno (Poltava region), seven elevators and a biogas complex.
In 2023, the agricultural holding reduced its net profit by 5.0% to EUR 61.9 million, and its EBITDA decreased by 6.1% to EUR 145.77 million, while revenue increased by 21.3% to EUR 618.93 million.
In the first quarter of 2024, Astarta reduced its net profit by 44.1% year-on-year to EUR9.02 million, while its consolidated revenue increased by 1.4% to EUR165.78 million.
