According to the results of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025, IMC (Industrial Milk Company) is in good financial condition, intends to reduce its debt below $20 million by the end of the year and will return to paying dividends, IMC CEO Alexander Verzhikhovsky said in an interview with the Polish edition of parkiet.com.
He noted that as of the end of March 2025, IMC had $44.7 million in cash and cash equivalents, which is 73% more than a year earlier. This allows the agricultural holding to reduce its financial debt as planned.
According to the CEO of the agricultural holding, IMC’s debt as of the end of 2024 amounted to more than $23 million, compared to $46 million at the end of 2023.
“This year, we are striving to further reduce our debt and plan to bring it down to below $20 million. At the same time, we have returned to paying dividends and are working to share our profits with shareholders in the form of significant dividends next year,” the IMC CEO emphasized.
In addition, he said that in March 2025, IMC completed investments in its own rolling stock. In total, since 2024, the company has invested about $22 million in the purchase of a fleet of 300 grain carriers.
Verzhykhovsky explained that owning grain cars allows the agricultural holding to largely abandon the use of leased cars for grain transportation to ports. “Currently, IMC can transport up to 80% of our annual grain production with its own railcars.
In addition, in 2024, the agricultural holding invested heavily in the renewal and modernization of its fleet, which directly affects the production processes related to soil preparation, sowing campaign, their efficiency and optimization of operations.
“IMC intends to maintain annual investments in equipment, technology and infrastructure modernization at the level of $10-12 million. The company does not plan to issue shares or increase debt. Investments will be made at the expense of own funds,” summarized IMC CEO.
IMC Agroholding is an integrated group of companies operating in Sumy, Poltava and Chernihiv regions (north and center of Ukraine) in the crop production, elevators and warehouses segments. The land bank is 116 thousand hectares, storage capacity is 554 thousand tons, with a harvest of 864 thousand tons in 2024.
IMC ended 2024 with a net profit of $54.54 million compared to a net loss of $21.03 million in 2023. Revenue increased by 52% to $211.29 million, gross profit quadrupled to $109.10 million, and normalized EBITDA increased 25 times to $86.11 million.
Kusto Logistics, part of Kusto Agro PTE. Ltd. (Singapore) has acquired 25 grain hoppers and plans to expand its fleet to 70 hoppers by the end of this year.
“Now the total fleet of the company’s wagons is 45 units. It is planned to purchase another 25 grain hoppers [by the end of 2019],” the company told Interfax-Ukraine.
As reported, Kusto Agro acquired Lischynske LLC and Tereschenko Agrarian Fund LLC in Zhytomyr region from France’s AgroGeneration with assets in Ukraine.
Kusto Agro is part of the international holding Kusto Group (Singapore), which develops business in oil, energy, agricultural, construction and other industries. Kusto Group implements projects in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Turkey, Vietnam, and China.
In Ukraine, the company’s land bank is 12,000 hectares in the Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, and Khmelnytsky regions. In addition, Kusto Agro owns three silos with a total storage capacity of 90,000 tonnes. The group also has about 600 heads of dairy herd.
According to the information on the group’s website, Kusto Agro plans to create a land bank for crop production of at least 100,000 hectares over the next five years.
