Astarta Agro-Industrial Holding, the country’s largest sugar producer, increased its revenue from sugar sales by 32% year-on-year to EUR142 million in 9M2023, according to the company’s report on the Warsaw Stock Exchange on Thursday.
According to the report, Astarta’s sugar sales amounted to 203 thousand tons. At the same time, its selling price increased by 8% year-on-year to EUR684 per ton, which allowed the gross profit of the sugar business of the agricultural holding to increase by 36% year-on-year to EUR41 against a slight increase in margin to 29%.
EBITDA of Astarta’s sugar business increased by 35% year-on-year to EUR35 million, while its margin remained stable at 24%.
The agricultural holding noted that in 9 months of 2023, exports of sugar and sugar-containing products accounted for 17% of Astarta’s total revenue, while a year earlier it accounted for only 7% of revenue.
According to the report, the sugar refining season in the 2023/24 marketing year (MY) at Astarta started on September 12. It involves five sugar factories of the agricultural holding.
As of November 8, Astarta’s sugar factories processed 1.1 million tons of sugar beet and produced 171 thousand tons of sugar, compared to 146 thousand tons on the same date in 2022.
“Astarta reported that Ukraine has already harvested 10 million tons of sugar beet with an average yield of 48 tons per hectare. Sugar production in 2023-2024 MY started at 30 factories. As of November 8, the country produced a total of 0.8 million tons of sugar.
Ukraine resumed sugar exports on September 15, and there are currently no export restrictions. For 9 months of 2023, Ukrainian sugar exports amounted to 295 thousand tons, which is 7 times more than a year earlier. The main buyer of Ukrainian sugar was the European Union, while Romania became the main importer, accounting for 31% of the total volume.
Astarta estimates that its share in the country’s exports was 11%. Its key European customers were in Romania, Spain and Hungary. 99% of the sugar exported was transported by land, and 85% of it was by road.
“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 220,000 hectares and dairy farms with 22,000 cattle, an oil extraction plant in Globyno (Poltava region), seven elevators and a biogas complex.
In the third quarter of 2023, the agricultural holding earned EUR1.24 million in net profit, down 27.7 times compared to the same period in 2022. Astarta’s revenue decreased by 14.4% to EUR104.75 million, gross profit by 2.7 times to EUR26.96 million, operating profit by 7.6 times to EUR6.79 million, and EBITDA by 42.7% to EUR97.25 million.
Due to significantly better performance in the first half of this year compared to the first half of last year, in the first 9 months of 2023, net profit decreased by 9.8% to EUR 55.97 million, while revenue increased by 14.8% to EUR 392.00 million. The company’s gross profit increased by 3.0% to EUR 151.91 million, while operating profit decreased by 15.9% to EUR 79.91 million and EBITDA by 10.8% to EUR 116.63 million.
