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Operator
Welcome all to the Bioceres Crop Solutions fiscal fourth-quarter and full year 2025 financial results. My name is Drew, and I'll be the operator on the call today. (Operator Instructions)
With that, it's now my pleasure to hand over to Paula Savanti from Investor Relations to begin. Please go ahead when you're ready.
Paula Savanti - Head, Investor Relations
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Bioceres Crop Solutions fiscal fourth-quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. Our prepared remarks today will be led by our Chief Executive Officer, Federico Trucco; and myself as Head of Investor Relations. Both of us will be available for the Q&A session following the presentation.
During this call, we will make forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. I refer you to the forward-looking statements section of the earnings release and presentation as well as the recent filings with the SEC. We assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect no or changed circumstances.
Please note in today's presentation, we'll be making references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures can be found in our earnings press release. The conference call is being webcast, and the webcast link is available at our Investor Relations website.
It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Federico.
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Good morning, and thanks, everyone, for participating in today's call. Please turn to Slide number 3.
I wanted to start today's call by looking at this year's performance considering the trajectory of our company since 2019. 2019 is the year we launched Bioceres Crop Solutions to the public equity markets. As you can see, this is the first down year in the series and one that comes with important lessons in terms of risk management and financial prudence, which I'll address towards the end of the presentation today.
We are reporting a very disappointing final quarter to an extremely challenging fiscal year. Challenges in fiscal '25 cannot be attributed to a single factor, but we understand rather stem from a combination of circumstances, including most significantly the macro shift in Argentina, our main market.
In fiscal '24, clients anticipated a significant devaluation of the Argentine peso and as a result, hedged against this event by prepurchasing some of the input required -- inputs required for the following year. In contrast, with no expectation of currency devaluation for fiscal '25, clients in Argentina had no incentive to maintain high inventory levels.
Adverse on-farm economics also led to reduced spending on ag inputs, further exacerbating the company's exposure to the shifting cycle. These circumstances coupled with deteriorating financial conditions for the sector in general and our own shift in strategy around the HB4 seed business, landed us in the position we are reporting today.
I will now ask Paula to go over the specifics of the quarter and the year before we discuss lessons learned and next steps. Paula?
Paula Savanti - Head, Investor Relations
Thank you, Federico. Let me take you now through our financial results for the quarter and for the fiscal year '25. Let's turn to Slide 4 to begin, please. In the fourth quarter, we reported revenues of $74.7 million, a 40% decline compared to the same period last year. This decline is explained primarily by two factors. One is a winding down of our seed business. As you can see in the composition by segment of our quarterly revenues.
Sales in the seed segment were $25 million lower than last year, accounting for about 50% of the quarterly year-over-year decline. The other 50% of the decline is roughly equally split between crop nutrition and crop protection, with both segments affected by the weaker demand for crop inputs in Argentina given the dynamics that Federico has just explained.
In Crop Protection, we didn't see in Q4 the typical pattern of preseason sales ahead of the spring planting season as producers continue to operate this year and/or more just-in-time purchasing modality. In this sense, we expect activity to pick up as planting season begins this spring. The decline in sales in Argentina eclipsed the fact that international sales of some of our core technologies grew strongly in the quarter with, for example, adjuvant sales in Brazil, almost doubling and bio-protection products in the US growing almost 40%.
In Crop Nutrition, sales declined by 34% for the quarter, driven by lower micro beta fertilizer sales in Argentina as well as lower inoculant revenues in other markets due to the calendar-based timing of the Syngenta agreement which costs some misalignment with our reporting quarters.
For the full fiscal year, revenues came in at $335.3 million, down 28% year-over-year, with declines in all 4 of our reporting -- all three of our reporting segments. In Crop Protection revenues, were $181.9 million, down 20% from the prior year, with full year dynamics very similar to those seen in the quarter, a strong decline in Argentina, offsetting growth in bio-protection in the US and adjuvants in Brazil.
In Crop Nutrition, revenues for the full year were $89.5 million, down 37% year-over-year. Again, as in the quarter, the main driver of the decline were micro-beaded fertilizers in Argentina. Sales of this product were negatively affected by a lower corn acreage this year. As farmers feared a repeat of the corn stunt disease, corn acreage fell by about 20% compared to the year before.
Additionally, weak on farm economics and elevated channel inventories generated price pressure, which compressed margins. In this segment, the expected reduction of $15.7 million related to the Syngenta down payment further weighed on comparisons.
Lastly, revenues in the Seed & Integrated Products segment were $63.9 million for the year, representing a reduction of 34%. As explained before, this reduction reflects the scaling back of the HB4 program as we transition the seeds business into a royalty-based model. It's important to highlight that while the new strategy reduces upfront revenue recognition, it sets the stage for a more capital efficient and scalable business, which we expect will drive growth and improve profitability going forward.
Now let's please turn to Slide 5 to look at the quarterly gross profit by business segment. In the fourth quarter, gross profit was $25.4 million, a 47% reduction compared to the same quarter last year. Most of the decline is accounted for by the Crop Nutrition and Seeds segments as can be seen in the bar chart on Page 5 of the presentation.
The $10.6 million decline in Crop Nutrition for the quarter is driven by lower gross profit for micro-beaded fertilizer sales -- for micro-beaded fertilizers, where, as mentioned, lower sales in terms of volume were coupled with margin compression on account of pricing pressures in the market. By softer margins in biostimulants as the business expanded into markets with different pricing structures, but with meaningful growth potential and by lower gross profit from inoculants on account of the lower revenues in the quarter, as mentioned above.
In Seed & Integrated Products, the $9.3 million decline in gross profit reflects as mentioned, the planned wind-down of the Seed business. With no upstream seed sales to report, revenues in this segment were mostly grain inventory being sold off at a lower margin compared to last year's HB4 related sales, which drove a contraction in the segment's gross margin.
Finally, in Crop Protection, gross profit decreased $2.2 million from last year, a lower decline than that seen in revenues as the products that were mostly negatively affected were low-margin noncore products. A more favorable mix with higher contributions from bio-protection products as well as stronger margins in adjuvants resulted in a higher gross margin for the segment in the fourth quarter.
Overall, gross margin for the quarter contracted from 38% in 4Q '24 to 34% this quarter on account of the margin compression in Seeds and Crop Nutrition. Now let's please turn to Slide 6 to look at the gross profit and margin dynamics for the full year. For the year, gross profit was $131.7 million, a 29% decline with respect to fiscal 2024. The decline reflects the lower sales seen across all segments.
The largest decline came from Crop Nutrition, which saw a $31.9 million reduction in gross profit year-over-year, impacted not only by the weaker demand for our micro-beaded fertilizers, but also weighed by a $15.7 million year-over-year reduction from the Syngenta down payment, which carried 100% gross margin in FY24. The remainder of the decline was split evenly between the other 2 segments.
In Crop Protection, the decline in gross profit came from lower margin noncore products, resulting in a higher segment gross margin as product mix improved in favor of higher-margin adjuvants and bio-protection products. In Seed & Integrated Products, the gross profit decline follows top line performance. Overall, for the year, gross margin was maintained at 39% despite the challenging context and the absence of the Syngenta contribution.
Now let's move to Slide 7 to look at adjusted EBITDA for the quarter. The adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was negative $4.5 million, down from $19.9 million the year before. This sharp decline is almost entirely explained by the $22.7 million gross profit reduction discussed before.
While there were $5.7 million in savings in operating expenses achieved as a result of deliberate cost control measures, these were offset by $5 million in nonrecurring impairments for the quarter. This number is 6 times to 7 times greater than our normal impairment run rate and is linked to two specific events, bad debts in Bolivia and the HB4 rollback. Finally, positive contributions from JVs were offset by other expenses during the quarter.
Let's turn to Slide 8 to review EBITDA performance for the full year. For the full fiscal year, EBITDA was $28.3 million, down from $81.4 million in FY24. As with the quarter, the decline in EBITDA results mainly from a $54.6 million decline in gross profit, part of which can be attributed to the lack of the Syngenta payment this year as a larger portion of which is due to the performance of the business discussed above.
Again, nonrecurring expenses due to impairments outweighed OpEx efficiencies achieved through cost control initiatives. Joint venture results also weighed on performance with Synertech, the JV exclusively dedicated to manufacturing micro-beaded fertilizers impacted by weaker product demand in recent quarters. The JV results were offset by higher other income which reflected the beneficial exchange of noncore soybean trades and intellectually property assets that was disclosed in 3Q '25.
Now let's move to Slide 9 to look at cash flow. Thanks to the concrete actions we've taken to improve working capital management, which we discussed in our previous calls and continued to focus throughout the year, we delivered a solid operating cash flow despite the pressure on profitability.
Operating cash flow reached $29.9 million in the fourth quarter, up 28% year-over-year. For the full fiscal year, we generated $53 million, a 27% increase versus last year. This underscores our ability to prioritize cash generation even in a challenging environment. Net cash consumption for both the quarter and the full year came mainly from financing activities, primarily due to debt repayments.
With that, let's move to the next slide and take a closer look at our balance sheet and cash position. As of fiscal year-end, total financial debt stood at $255.5 million, slightly lower than the $259.7 million in 4Q '24. As previously reported, the company entered into amendments to its note purchase agreements and outstanding notes during the fourth quarter, extending the convertible note maturities under new terms that resulted in an increase in the principal base.
While the aggregate principal amount of the outstanding notes increased, total debt declined year-over-year and was slightly lower compared to 3Q '25, reflecting the repayment of unsecured public bonds and working capital loans in Argentina.
Cash, cash equivalents and other short-term investments totaled $34.6 million, resulting in a net financial debt of $220.8 million as of June 30, 2025, compared to $217.4 million in the immediately preceding quarter. Given a stable net debt, but the substantially lower adjusted EBITDA, this resulted in a net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio of 7.8x.
And with that, I will turn the call back to Federico.
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Thanks, Paula, and please turn to Slide number 11 for an overview of our current financial strategy. As we discussed in our last earnings call and revisited a few slides prior, we continue to focus on cash generation and improving our working capital profile where we are targeting a running rate of between five to six months of sales, which will better reflect our current business model and product mix priorities.
Also, we have accelerated adjustments to our cost structure, targeting operating expense savings of around 10% to 12%. These savings will average about $3 million to $3.5 million per quarter, as we started to see in the last quarter of fiscal '25. And we have reduced our rate of incremental CapEx and R&D investments by 50%, lowering it from nearly 6% of sales to between 2.5% and 3% for fiscal year '26 and '27.
Importantly, we do not expect this slower pace of investment to affect near-term growth as we already have the key registrations and manufacturing capacity in place to deliver on our three year-plus business plan. Finally, and without undermining the current financial challenges, we'll continue to work closely with our creditors to comply with our existing financial obligations and roll over part of our upcoming debt maturities as we have done in the past.
Where do we want to land? Please turn to the next slide. With these actions, a more normalized ag input market in Argentina and continued positive momentum in the US and Brazil to agricultural geographies, which are key, where last year, we grew 17% and 29%, respectively. We expect to improve our EBITDA margin levels and steadily progress towards a more robust balance sheet, preparing us for the next phase of growth.
Our main focus will be on scaling up our biological initiatives, including using our key actives such as RinoTec and UBP to functionalize and further differentiate important revenue generators for us, such as adjuvants and micro-beaded fertilizers.
On the seed front, we'll continue to support our key partners in Latin America, Florimond Desprez in wheat and GDM in soy, while we onboard new partnerships in other geographies, mainly the US and Australia.
I will pause now and open up the floor for Q&A. Operator?
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Kristen Owen, Oppenheimer.
Kristen Owen - Analyst
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking the question. I want to pause here on the slide that you left us on here Slide 12 with the looking ahead. And understanding that the 40% gross margin, 22% EBITDA margin, this is sort of where we are targeting over time. But as we think about the transition of the business, what are the metrics that we should be focused on, say, the next six to nine months initially, it was this top line growth and EBITDA dollars, cash generation? Just want to know what we should be focused on, on this interim term at this stage of the corporate evolution.
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Hi Kristen, thanks for joining the call today, and thank you for your question. I think, obviously, cash generation will continue to be a focus, a strong focus for us as we try to get leverage ratios back to more normal levels. I believe that top line growth is less of a priority under the current circumstances and that expansion of our profitability will be basically dependent on our ability to scale up the most profitable products in our portfolio.
Remember, we've recently achieved registration of RinoTec in the US and Brazil, and we're starting to generate revenues from that new family of insecticides and nematicides. Also, most of the pain from the shifting of the Seed business away from the identity preserve scheme that we had has already occurred.
So I think that will be an important contributor to going back to sort of the plus 40% overall gross margin profile. And with the cost reductions that are sort of meant to rightsize the organization for the current business opportunity, I think that we will get to these kind of metrics sooner rather than later.
But I would say working capital, making sure we're below five months of sales, moderate top line growth but expanding profitability at the EBITDA level and gross margin level are key indicators as we track progress towards sort of a more stabilized situation.
Kristen Owen - Analyst
Okay, thank you Federico, and if I could just add as a quick follow-up there. It sounds like these targets are not reliant on sort of any real growth beyond market growth in the portfolio. It's just growing those products, which are new and differentiated, not necessarily a robust return of the end market?
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Absolutely -- so what I would say is that part of what we need is the rebound to some extent of the ag input market in Argentina, which is not something that is affecting us specifically. In fact, we have not lost market share in any of our key products. So if we see that tracking positively, I think that will do a lot in terms of us achieving these metrics than the type of growth that we need in the other geographies as the portfolio scales up, the new product opportunities scale up is not different from the one we saw last year. So that is, I think, what is required for us to get to this more stabilized, more profitable numbers.
Kristen Owen - Analyst
Okay. One final question for me. If you could just say more about the cost savings initiatives. I think you said the cadence beginning in fiscal fourth quarter here was about $3 million to $3.5 million a quarter, and that's going to be pro rata across 2026. Just help us with a little bit of how you're thinking about those cost savings initiatives. Thank you.
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Look, I have my sort of own sort of back-of-the-envelope numbers. I think if we were between $28 million and $30 million a quarter in terms of overall OpEx to get too closer to $25 million. It's where we think we are with the things we have already done. So what I'm talking about are the results that we will obtain from streamlining workforce and rightsizing sudden capacities that has already occurred.
A contributor to that is obviously the shift in the Seed business strategy, but we have also done changes on other aspects of the organization to give us those levels of savings on a per quarter basis. So we should see that reported every quarter on a forward-going basis because we have already seen some of that in the final quarter of the fiscal year we just reported.
Kristen Owen - Analyst
Thank you. I'll take the rest offline.
Operator
Bentley Klieve, Lake Street Capital Markets.
Ben Klieve - Analyst
Alright, thanks for taking my questions. First on the Syngenta agreement. I understand that last year, $16 million was the recognition of that upfront payment. What was the gross profit within fiscal '25 from that agreement?
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Ben, thanks for joining us today. Paula, do we have a specific number there?
Paula Savanti - Head, Investor Relations
So we don't have -- so those $16 million were from the upfront payment, which this year is zero, right, because that's already been done in the last two quarters. So this year, we don't have any. This year, although we're having from the Syngenta payment for the full year is the -- what comes from the profit sharing that we've been doing, not the upfront payment, right?
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Yeah. But then we have a minimum profit sharing of how much. So I think Ben there, what we have is probably that the profit sharing from Syngenta comes on a calendar basis. So it's -- we can give you that number. But I think the -- for fiscal year '25, part of the calendar is still not done because I mean, half of the year is still remaining. So we know from '23 and '24, they were on target based on the minimum payment requirements.
Now the Syngenta has been selling probably at a slower pace than anticipated so that the minimum payment requirements are being considered in terms of gross profits that we are materializing and not -- we're not seeing results in excess of that.
Paula Savanti - Head, Investor Relations
For the full year, we have somehow something like -- for the fiscal year, which is not -- which doesn't correspond to the calendar year targets with them. Look, for the fiscal year, we have about $18 million gross profit from them.
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
1-8?
Paula Savanti - Head, Investor Relations
Yeah.
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Sorry, 1-8 is the number then.
Ben Klieve - Analyst
Okay. That's helpful. I'm sorry, you broke up a little bit at the end there, but I think I caught it, and I'm sure that was on my end. Okay. So next question, the HB4 outlook. I understand this is a fluid situation and the -- you've got a lot of different efforts here to try to extract some value from this.
But I'm curious if you can look back over the last year, a year ago on this call was when the -- I think really the air began to go out of the balloon regarding HB4. What specifically has been done within HB4 over the past year that you can point to as efforts that are really beginning to get traction here that could give you a hopeful outlook here for the future of that product?
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Yeah. That's a great question, Ben. So I think the most important effort over the last year was the agreement with (inaudible) , which we announced in the February earnings -- in the February call. So even though that might have been a bit overshadowed by other things that were discussed during that call, I think the key there was that in soybeans, which was the one crop, where obviously, we have a huge opportunity in Latin America where we have struggled the note in terms of the ramping up of the HB4 technology, we achieved an agreement with them, where they now are using exclusively the technology in Latin America.
And repositioning that technology, not just for the drought tolerance effect, but also a way to provide a weed control platform that should be attractive to farmers in the region. That new platform that is branded (inaudible) that's the GDM brand for this new approach has already been launched. This is now being scaled up with a selective number of GDM multipliers and the different channels. And we'll be starting to generate revenues in the upcoming fiscal year, which is very meaningful to us.
Obviously, we don't control the go-to-market effort there or that's or the inventory ramp-up or less -- even less sort of destiny of the grain like we did in the identity preserve channel. But that, to me, it's kind of the most significant achievement over the last 12 months to reignite the opportunity around the HB4 event under a different strategy in soybeans.
In wheat, what we have done is open up the business to some of our key customers in Argentina so that we wouldn't have to do the multiplication and the go-to-market ourselves. That is work in progress. But I would say that the most important achievement in wheat was the -- basically structuring of a master agreement in the US with Colorado wheat growers, as an entry point to a consortium of different breeding programs and an herbicide partner, which we cannot disclose due to confidentiality purposes that will now scale that opportunity in the US market.
Even though this is still a few years away, I think that jointly with what we are doing in Latin America, with EMBRAPA developing the varieties for the Cerrado region in Brazil and the major customers that you said, is executing commercial in Argentina, that will completely reshape the opportunity behind the soy and the wheat events.
That's what we have done. I think that, obviously, we've learned from the past, and we're not going to provide any guidance in terms of revenues. But I think it's a dramatic shift, one that can be managed with a small group of people that are dedicated to the regulatory staff and the technology demonstration work and not with an extended sales force that was trying to, if you will, scale this up beyond our capacities to (inaudible)
Ben Klieve - Analyst
Okay, very good, I appreciate that. Thanks for plenty more to talk about, but thanks for taking my questions. I'll get back in you.
Operator
Austin Moeller, Canaccord.
Austin Moeller - Equity Analyst
Hi, good morning. I know you talked about earlier in the remarks about the plans for further diversification of revenues into the US and Brazil. But how should we be thinking about the upcoming spring planting season in Argentina? I mean it just looks like at least so far, there hasn't been a lot of advanced purchasing of inputs yet, and there's still a lot of currency and on-farm economic risk in Argentina.
Operator
Team, I think you're muted. Can you please check that you need to unmute?
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Can you hear me, okay?
Operator
Yes, we can hear you now. Please go ahead.
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Okay. I don't know if -- asking, can you repeat the question? We had some interference here with the audio.
Austin Moeller - Equity Analyst
Sure. Yeah. So I guess what I was just asking was, I know you had previously discussed looking ahead to a more promising spring planting season. But I guess what is your confidence in that just given there's not been a lot of advanced purchasing of inputs and there's considerable currency and on-farm economic risk in Argentina? And then could you just go into a little bit more detail on what you expect in terms of diversification of revenues into the US and Brazil?
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Yes. Thank you for your question, and apologies for the technical difficulties. So basically, in terms of Argentina, the situation here is a bit counterintuitive now because whenever there is a risk of devaluation that tends to drive farmers to prepurchase products like they did in fiscal '24. So even though that was not an issue last year because of the more stable macro situation, after the elections of last weekend, I think it's becoming a bit of a driver. So we expect an accelerated pace of input sales just because of that.
Most importantly, I would say, rain and weather conditions have been very favorable. So we are looking forward to great planting season. And that, I think it's obviously a key factor in terms of our expectations in Argentina. And remember that we operate on a dollar-denominated business. And whenever there's kind of devaluation potential that tends to accelerate our sales and eventually dilute part of our fixed expenses, which are the peso-denominated salaries we pay in countries. So that's in terms of the Argentine dynamics.
In terms of diversifying away from Argentina, we've seen good growth last year in the US and in Brazil as well as in the rest of the world there. The key drivers are the biostimulant platform, which is important in Europe as those products go into the Americas, the US and Brazil will see revenue increases from the UBP derived technologies. Also the recent registration of RinoTec in both the US and Brazil is allowing us to become more competitive on seed-applied insecticides and nematicides. And that I think will also give us significant growth in those markets.
So there's an aspect of these two products, which I also wanted to emphasize, which is the opportunity of selling them not as standalone biologicals, but as a way to functionalize some of our big revenue generators. So you can use UBP today in adjuvant, as we've discussed in the past to improve the recovery of herbicide applications on certain crops. And that is a very meaningful technological aspect that we're planning to seize importantly because we have installed capacity in adjuvant and a customer base to which we can translate this message.
And on the RinoTec front, I think similarly, using that as a way to functionalize the adjuvants that are used in insecticidal applications is a way where we can see some revenues and growth without sort of the necessity of selling the product on a stand-alone basis.
So those are the initiatives in play. I think they will significantly help us in those geographies outside of Argentina. And that is, I think, going to give us a more balanced geographical mix on a few years. It's not going to happen from one year to the next. But after two to three years, I think we can be less exposed to the type of ships that we saw last year in the Argentine market.
Austin Moeller - Equity Analyst
Okay. And just a follow-up. How should we be thinking about like the cadence of the Syngenta revenue ramp in the new fiscal year? Previously, you discussed that as sort of being a two-year ramp process to hit what you expect to be the run rate over the term of the agreement for $230 million in minimum profits. But I guess, how much should we be thinking about in next fiscal year?
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
So basically, the $230 million are over the 10-year period, we started with smaller numbers, and that's why we had the down payment upfront to compensate in part for the gap in the first and second year. I think Paula recently alluded to the $18 million we had in fiscal year '25 coming from the Syngenta agreement. So we are not yet at the average of $23 million per year, if you will.
We expect that to be coming up in the current fiscal year as we continue to discuss the agreement with Syngenta and look for opportunities to fortify the relationship. So I think this is ramping up as projected without sort of undermining some of the challenges that we have seen in agriculture in general, particularly early on in the agreement in Brazil and other geographies where we are just now coming out of the down cycle in the ag-inputs market now.
Austin Moeller - Equity Analyst
Great, thanks for all the details.
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Kemp Dolliver, Brookline Capital Markets.
Kemp Dolliver - Analyst
Could you talk a little bit more about the current state or level of inventories held in the channel. There seems to be a, probably, one of the most significant obstacles other than improvement in on-farm conditions to your driving -- getting some growth, improving your profitability, et cetera.
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Thanks for joining the call. I think in terms of Argentina; the inventory situation has been almost depleted. So that's been the case over the last 12 months. And I'll give you a very concrete example. For instance, in the micro-beaded fertilizer business, which is obviously one of the business that was most significantly affected over the last 12 months. If you go back to fiscal '23 and '24, in both years, we did about 30,000 tons. Of the 30,000 tons we sold in fiscal '24, 5,000 were in inventory. And this year, fiscal '25, I think we did less than 15,000. We were at 14,000. And consume the 4,000, 5,000 that were in inventory from the year before.
So if you look at sort of the actual numbers, maybe in fiscal '24, it was 25,000 that were consumed, fiscal '25, 19,000. And we believe on a forward-going basis, we'll be seeing some recovery because those basically dynamics are indicative of zero inventory in the channel. I think there might even be a supplied concern, if at the end of the day, product cannot be manufacturing time to fully address the planning needs of farmers. So I think that's been reverted fully in the Argentine market. And that is just one example to highlight a product line that is very meaningful for us.
In biologicals, in general, inventories are less of a concern because of the self-life issues. You cannot keep inventories forever when you're talking about seeds or when you're talking about my crops, they have -- they declined over time. So in general, the sector -- or those products are less exposed to inventory situations.
And in the US and Brazil, I think the inventory problems were prior to last year. So this take back to the '23, '24, but mostly fiscal '23, so we see now that the level of utilization of product is consistent with our pace of sales. So that is something that we are tracking in both those geographies to make sure that we are not running into inventory hurdles as we execute on the current business plan.
Kemp Dolliver - Analyst
Great. And do you have your accounts receivable and inventories and accounts payable at year-end at hand?
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Give me a second, I'll pass it on to Paula for that information.
Kemp Dolliver - Analyst
Yes, thank you.
Paula Savanti - Head, Investor Relations
Can you hear me? Yeah. Sorry, can you repeat what was the question? The level of accounts receivables?
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
At the year-end, also account payables and inventories.
Paula Savanti - Head, Investor Relations
Account payables at year-end are $145 million. Inventories were $90 million, I'm rounding numbers, but fairly close. And trade receivables, $170 million.
Kemp Dolliver - Analyst
Thank you. And then one last question and that relates to the changing role of the Chief Commercial Officer. what thoughts do you have with regard to what that position will look like -- should look like going forward?
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Look, Kemp, that's a great question. I think we're still discussing with the Board whether this should be something that integrates operations more fully or be strictly dedicated to commercial the way it was before. I have to sort of also indicate that the departure of Milen Marinov, it's because he has accepted the CEO position of a company called Horizon starting September 1. So it wasn't something that was planned. I mean we were probably intending to continue with the current Chief Commercial Officer role.
And because of that departures that we are reconsidering whether we should keep that format or have one that is probably more integral in its nature. And by that, I mean, have some incremental operating responsibilities beyond the commercial aspects of the company.
Kemp Dolliver - Analyst
Understood. Thank you.
Operator
With that, that concludes the Q&A portion of today's call. I'll now hand back over to Federico for some closing comments.
Federico Trucco - Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director
Well, I want to thank everyone for participating in the call. And obviously, for the patience, we had some technical difficulties today. We are available to address further questions and hopefully, turn the page on a very difficult year as we look forward into a more normalized set of circumstances and a sort of a new path of growth for Bioceres Crop Solutions on a forward-going basis. Thanks, everyone, and have a great rest of the day.
Operator
Thank you all for joining. That does conclude today's call, and you may now disconnect your line.