Cresud SACIF y A (CRESY) 2026 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon everyone. I'm Santiago Donato, investor relations officer of Cresud, and I welcome you to the first quarter of 2026 results conference call. (Operator Instructions)

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call is being recorded and that information discussed today may include forward-looking statements regarding the company's financial and operating performance. All projections are subject to risk and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially.

Please refer to the detailed note in the company's earnings release regarding forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Alejandro Elsztain, CEO.

Thank you very much, Santi. We are beginning today, our first quarter of 2026. And if we begin in page number two, we can see the main events for the quarter.

We are beginning a big campaign. This is our biggest campaign in our history. And overall, the weather conditions are good. The winter plantation in Argentina, it's under very good condition. And the rest, the beginning of summer plantation that it's now beginning, it's with enough humidity on the land in majority of the areas in South America.

Related to the prices, there was a slight increase in commodity prices, and we are going to share with you some events that happened in the first quarter related to export taxes. The government in a moment of the quarter affected this market that affected a lot the grain market of Argentina. In some days there was temporary zero rate for taxes on exports for mainly for soybeans, that is the 26%, and that boost prices in Argentina.

Related to wheat, as I said before, 100% was planted, and now we are very close to harvest. November and December are going to be harvest time of wheat and barley, and the rest, and we are beginning the planting in Brazil and the rest of the region. Argentina is just beginning the soybean plantation.

Related to cattle, the cattle of the world, is spending good time, high prices on the cattle business in the world driven mainly by US but the rest of the world too, and margins and productions are very good. So we are intensifying our activity of cattle in the region of Sarta and La Pampa in our farms in Los Pozos and in El Tigre.

Related to real estate and when we compare the balance sheet and later Matthias will show, there are no farmland sales during the first quarter of this year and last year, yes, we had, and that's a big difference in the activity that doesn't reflect what we expect for the year, but it's true that in the 1st quarter we didn't show this year and last year, yes, there was in Brazil.

Related to dividends, this in November of this year we received from our subsidiaries $66 million from IRSA and close to $5 million and [$0.66] dollars in total in 5 in Brazil and $61 related to IRSA. So a lot of dividends coming. From our subsidiaries and 2 that it's paying dividends sooner.

And for the other side, Cresud was paying dividends, and we paid $64 million 70% in cash and 30% in kind between Irsa shares and a part of that some shares of Cresud itself, yielding 8%. So very important quarter related to dividends.

If we now move to the next page, the page number 3, we can see the expected planted area and when I spoke about beginning of very important campaign, we see this evolution. We are growing at 7.4% year to year. This is a growth mainly driven by Argentina and Brazil, the two countries and mainly leasing a little more land. And that made us to grow 7.4%, so 321,000 hectares total plantation in the region.

We move to the next page and we see the evolution on the prices during the year and the small rebound, and I will speak about the rebound on the prices, and this is a lot affected by the tariff discussion.

Today, the tariff discussion between China and US is really affecting from where the Chinese are bringing and importing the beans, mainly the beans.

In the past, 25 million tons came from US, but the last discussion from Trump's administration made that volume go down. And today, there is no certainty what portion will come from this, the North from US and what portion will come from Brazil and Argentina.

That is the affection, main affection on the prices on the soybean and the combination of prices on Chicago and bases on South America is making a not very different balance to South America. To do what I'm meaning is this changing on prices is a discussion about which is coming from the US and which portion is coming from South America.

The reality in reals and in dollar terms is not changing dramatically the price for South America, but it's changing the basis of Chicago because of the discussions on the tariffs. So what do we mean is margins for farmers are much smaller. Some in cases in US margins are directly negative. In South America with these prices, we make gains.

And in Argentina, with the reduction on taxes, we are going to make much better gains. And if we move to the next page, we are going to show what happened in a few days that Argentine affected that market going to zero taxes on exports. They were for 3 days really. These last not a lot. The government announced up to $7 billion or up to the 30th of October, but finally they achieved the $7 billion in three days of market. Those three days taxes on exports disappeared. They cancelled to zero what was in 26% the soybean, in 9.5% the sorghum and corn, 9.5% of wheat on the rest. So at these three days, the exporters mainly.

Sell majority of the future market and achieve the $7 billion and the government cancelled that program in 3 days. And that made a big rebound. And if we see in the graph, in the part of the right up, you see from the price of soybean in Argentina that was at $300 the soybean.

In those days, we went to 360 because of that measure and we had some stock. Cresud sold those days of stock, so there was a gain because of the stock part that Cresud had in the past. Later that price went to the $335. And for the future campaign that was below $300 a ton, today we are in a level of 311. What does it mean?

The government showed the ability of taking taxis. They promised they're going to take taxis from exports forever, but they are not doing from now. What they did, there was a cancellation for a few days, but the signal is clear. They began the government with 33. They went to 26, a few days of zero.

Now they do the current, that it's the 26, the 99, but it's in this graph. But farmers are waiting for the signal for reduction, and we think the government is going to accomplish what it promised at the beginning. Slowly they know that they need the surplus, and they are not going to do as fast as we expected, but we are expecting to keep reducing taxes on exports as they promised.

This is a portion of this graph, but if we see The part in below, we see the GAAP between the $2 the official and the unofficial dollar. And look at what was before 23. The GAAP was huge. The GAAP between the $2 was up to 164%. But that GAAP almost disappeared and recently in 25, the GAAP is close to zero. What does it mean now? Farmers are receiving close to the dollars when they're selling.

Remember Argentina when the prices on the US were $500 a ton? Argentinians were receiving $170 because of the gaps of the dollars and taxes of 33%. Today, that GAAP is below the 26% of taxes. So this is a very important signal. And why do I spend so much time in here improving the margins for Argentine farmers? That cost of Argentina for production is the cheapest of the world. So if we survive with these taxes and with these gaps, imagine what will be the picture, the picture for margins for operation and for the real estate.

When the combination of the two affecting the farms, the liquidity for real estate was close to zero because you were expecting for the price of a farm that the origination or the operational business was not giving. Now the operational is coming back because of these two measures.

If we move to the next page, the page number 6, we can see the evolution on the good regional weather conditions that we see that it's in green, meaning we have humidity.

The winter crop is in a very good shape, passing the forecast, passing the budget. For sure in Argentina, there is not that in Brazil because they have no winter yet, they don't do winter plantation there, but for winter it's very good condition and for summer it's good condition for planting.

We are beginning to planting here. We see that the sowing progress is 21% in soybeans, just 9% in corn. 100% on waste value in the winter, that it's very close to harvesting. So, meaning we are entering to a normal campaign related to the two winter and summer crops.

And so, we are optimistic in the 320,000 hectares in normal conditions. We can move now to the next page about livestock and related to livestock activity. Look at what happened in the prices of the cattle. This is the international steel price in the region, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Paraguay. The big rebound on the prices. The best is US. What happened on US price is at records.

US is spending very good time because it, that is probably the liquidation time of the stock. US liquidated a lot and today consumption is very firm and there are not enough cows in US and not in Argentina and in the region, enough for a population that is really liking to eat beef, and that's the reason we are seeing so good prices and that is making us to having a more or less same stock we see on the right.

Our stock is at the 60,000 heads. But we are increasing productivity. Look at our production coming from 7 million kg to 8 million kg, 9. Now we are achieving and surpassing for next year in 10, more than 10 million. And that, 10,000 tons, meaning we are improving productivity in the cow and calf and feedlots.

We are today intensifying our production, and we are doing two professional feedlots, one in La Pampa in our Tigre farm and in the other one in Lopozos farm. Now we are going to have two feedlots close to 10,000 heads each instantly, and you rotate 2 or 3 times a year.

So we are going to improve a lot. The activity and the rotation of the cattle the company owns. And here we see the margin of the past. In the past, cattle was not relevant, but now it's achieving yields of close to $10 million the activity for cattle. So the combination of cattle, grain, and sugarcane are the three main operational businesses. Here we didn't bring nothing related to the real estate because in the quarter we didn't sell any asset.

We can now move to page number 8, and the third step of our strategy, the service, commercial services related to farmers. And let's see what happened when we closed last year, evolution of field, where Cresud owned 51% of the stake. Here, this company from zero existed on the market. Today is the largest broker of the country. We achieved 7.

This number is not exactly, we finally finished with 7.56 is the last number in September. This company closes in September, the balance. So, the last number related to campaigns, 7.56. That represents more than 6% of market share of Argentina crop. So, largest broker of the Country, advising farmers, helping with money, giving credits, give advising digitally, advising with specialties. So this company is relevant. The EBITDA of this company, it's close to $24 million. It's 400 employees now in Argentina and Brazil, expanding the service in Brazil too. So this, the service step is beginning to be relevant in our strategy. So these are the 3 main operational and without any real estate, we didn't put any page today. Now, I will introduce Mr. Matias Ivan Gaivironsky.

Thank you very much, Alejandro. Good afternoon, everybody. So, if we move to page 9, we can see the evolution of our investment in IRSA where currently we own 53.3% stake.

IRSA had a good quarter with net gains of $163 billion on net results, mainly driven by the fair value of the investment properties that we will see later.

About the shopping malls, there was a good quarter with EBITDA increasing by 4%. Revenues and occupancy went up.

There was also a busy quarter regarding acquisition. There was a new acquisition of a new mall, shopping mall, for $9 million that there is a thing planned to reconvert in an outlet in that area. There was no major news about offices and good progress in all the developments in the street of Diagonal and the infrastructure works in Rambla El lata project that are on time. As Alejandro mentioned, also, IRA paid dividends during the quarter, soreul received part of that. There was the dividend yield for ISA was 10%.

About the rest of the segments, there was an increase in EBITDA on the right part of the slide. You can see an evolution of positive in shopping malls and in offices and a reduction in hotels. Basically, the rental segments increased by 3.5% compared with the previous year.

Now, if we move to page 11, we have been talking about the effects on the drivers of what generates inflation and the devaluation on our results. During the last year, we had an appreciation of the peso with an inflation higher, sorry, an inflation higher than the evaluation. This quarter was the opposite. So we will see some effects that are generated because of this.

If we move to page 12 to understand the results of Cresud, first on the operational side, the agriculture business on the left part, you can see there is a reduction. This is basically related to the real estate activity where last year we have some disposals during the first quarter.

This year we haven't any and also here we include the results from all the receivables that Brazillaro had because the disposals of farms in the past that they have a portfolio to collect in the future and in that segment, we include the evaluation of the bags of soybeans that they have to receive.

So we mark to market every quarter, the fluctuation of prices on that. If we see on the right part of the slide, what is the production, agricultural production, we see positive numbers, compared with the previous year, 10% up. In the case of grains, although this is not the most main important quarter that.

We are starting the campaign. So here basically during the quarter, we have the results, the fluctuation of our estimations at the end of the year that we have to give impact during this quarter. So last year that generated negative numbers. This year generated positive numbers. So when you see performance of this grains between Argentina and Brazil. In Argentina, we have very positive numbers and there is upset with some lower numbers in Brazil.

About the sugarcane, during this quarter was affected by climate condition basically and lower prices, so that generates this drop from last year to this year. And regarding the cattle raising we have the results that are basically last year, the holding results on our stock and this year, there was made a higher cost of productions and higher costs because of the incentive of the production, and the limitation, the feed of the of on the feedlots

Moving to the next page, the most important driver during the quarter is the change in the fair value of our investment properties that is most related to IRSA and shopping malls, offices and Land Bank of IRSA, that if we see these numbers in dollar terms remain very stable compared with June, but when we have to give impact on the evaluation and inflation that generate this positive number and last year was completely the opposite.

Finally, about the results, the net financial results this quarter, we see a loss. This is related to all our dollar-denominated debt on a consolidated basis that with a higher devaluation than inflation, we are generating negative numbers compared with last year, that was the opposite. . The rest remains stable. Net interest here it appears like an increase in interest payment. This is related also with the evaluation that in pesos term, we are paying more interest.

With all these drivers, we finished the quarter with a gain of $110 billion pesos attributable to our controlling interest, $36.8 billion pesos compared with a lost last year.

About our debt structure, as you can see, there was a decrease against last year from $350 or $349 million to $329 million is related to the dividends that we collected and that generate positive cash and the data amortization scale that we have part of the cash that we already raised it during the last quarter with two new issuances that we have part of the cash to cancel the upcoming amortizations and then we are planning to go to the market to refinance the rest.

Finally, about the dividend payments, as Alejandro mentioned during the November, our shareholders meeting approved in October, the payment of part dividends in cash and part in kind with shares of IRSA, so 70% in cash, 30% in shares of IRSA. That was a dividend yield of 8.4% that we already paid in Argentina and related to our ADR holders. Probably Bank of New York will establish the record date, probably next week and the payment will be probably or probably 10 days after the record date.

So with this, we finish the presentation. Now, we open the line to receive your questions.

Well, we'll start with the quantization. If you have a question, please use the chat. We will take the questions in the order we received them.

There is one here related to the payment. Matthew mentioned something related to the payment abroad to the ADRs, both in Cresud and IRSA. Here we are in Cresud, but we can answer both, which we have already fixed the date of payment and record date.

No, that is not upon us. No, we already paid to Bank of New York and they are in charge of converting those pesos into dollars and setting up the record date. So they are in the process, so we expect that they fix their record dates during the next week.

And the payment then because of the process is 10 days after the record date.

Here a new question regarding farmland sales. There were no farmland sales in the first quarter. If there are any plans to sell any assets in the region for the coming quarters, and how do we see farmland prices going forward?

Yes, for sure. It's part of our strategy for every country every year.

The first quarter without any sales doesn't reflect, we have 3 quarters more and there are some sales under discussions the situation of Argentina is not comparable to the rest. The reconnection of Argentina because of what I explained before.

The GAAP on the dollars and the taxes and exports is bringing liquidity, so that bringing liquidity probably will be much easier, the selling of farms of Argentina. So Argentina is rebounding the price of the land we are seeing in the mainly in agricultural areas but slowly in cattle areas too.

So in Argentina, appreciation of price of the land and more liquidity because of the new situation of the farmers of Argentina. For the rest, it's different because the drop of prices in Brazil and the increasing on the cost of capital for Brazil is probably affecting prices of the land. And so there the liquidity is decreasing for farmers, but still enough, and we are expecting sales on Brazil, but the prices on the land in Brazil are adjusting for slower, not for higher like in Argentina it's happening and in Paraguay I would say it is in the same condition of Brazil. So yes, for sure we are expecting activity in real estate for the next 3 quarters.

Another question regarding buybacks, if we plan to make share repurchases given the optimistic outlook for both Argentina and the farming sector.

Well, we did it in the past, that we have been doing some buyback programs in both in Cresud and IRSA. For this quarter, we get privilege to the cash payment. So we decided to distribute the cash. So if you believe that it's a cheap then you have the cash to take the opportunity, but it's something that we, in the last 3 years, we have been doing that, so it's something that we all always consider, that is more related to results and liquidity. So if we find, if we believe feel comfortable with cash situation, and we have the results to do that, it's something that we could consider.

Good. Another question, Argentinian agribusiness is seeing a huge gain it's margin. Do you plan further leasing in Argentina or purchases going forward?

If there is a chance of 12, or 3, the two of them, because we are trying to buy in the agricultural areas of Argentina. We are in that search and so we are going to grow more in leasing in size than in because the capital for purchasing, it's much bigger, but we are trying at the same time to grow in the leasing and in the purchasing mainly for agriculture. Meantime, we are intensifying. Buying in the cattle business through improving the pregnancy, having the same cows, and making faster the rotation of the cattle. So but related to the agriculture, it's more leasing and more purchasing in the agricultural pampas.

And more irrigation we like very much the irrigation. The irrigation is growing now mainly in Brazil because we have a lot of landbank that has the ability to irrigate, but we would like to grow not only in agriculture but agriculture and irrigation. We began in one farm with 100 hectares with a new system, and we expand the irrigation. Today the combination of Brazil, Argentina irrigation is 10,000. We'd like to have more 1,000 hectares and the irrigation too that yields more, it's more margin, more productivity too.

I will give some minutes more. If there is any additional question, use the chat please.

Not having more questions, I would finally remark the farmers of the world are suffering the drop of prices and higher costs. So many or a big portion of the farmers of the world are under negative margins.

But Argentina, that was a lesson of scarcity in inputs, in tariff, in taxes, in effects made us to be very effective. And the conditions for Argentina are changing a lot and with these prices, Argentina has positive numbers. So, and in our case in Brazil, because of our portfolio is having positive numbers too.

So, we are optimistic on our position on the business and probably taking the opportunities when sums are not being able because we're ready for these kind of situations. So we are facing a big campaign. We are well hedged.

We are having big volumes and we are giving service to farmers that is giving another return to and the real estate, and the combination of the three is the key element for Cresud. And we hope using these 3 tools to keep growing on the region. So just to thank you, this is the first quarter. Let's see the next 3 quarters. Have a very good afternoon.

Thank you very much.

Bye.