Cresud Shs Sponsored American Deposit Receipts Repr 10 Shs (NASDAQ:CRESY) Q4 2020 Earnings Conference Call - Final Transcript

Good afternoon everyone. I am Santiago Donato, Investor Relations Officer of CRESUD, and I welcome you to the Fiscal Year 2020 Results Conference Call. First of all, I would like to remind you that both audio and slide show maybe accessed through company's Investor Relations website, at www.cresud.com.ar by clicking on the banner webcast link. The following presentation and the earnings release are also available for download on the company website. After management remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session for analysts and investors. If you want to make a question, please click the bottom labeled raise hand.

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. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to our fiscal year, we are finishing our balance sheet of 2020, June 2020 results. First of all, I hope everyone is safe and well in this rare and special occasion of the COVID-19. We are closing the balance sheet in page number 2, and we can see that the adjusted EBITDA that we are achieving is ARS33.4 billion. That is 21% higher than last year numbers. And something to remark, we can see related to the agriculture, the agribusiness, the adjusted EBITDA for the year is 31.3% higher to last year numbers adjusted by inflation. We have a very record planted area for the whole story of the Group, this is 264,000 hectares through the four countries, that did represent 6.5% higher than last year plantation areas.

Related to agribusiness, we can see that the main issues of the balance sheet, we sold 6% of the stake of Brasilagro, that represented for us, $15.6 million. A part of that in the middle of the period, Brasilagro made a merger between Brasilagro and Agrifirma, that was a company formed in Brazil to replicate our strategy, that finally decided to leave the business and gave us the option of merging through shares -- we paid them through shares and we added to our portfolio 29,000 hectares of farmland in Brazil in the Bahia region. This year, we had normal operation in the region, because this is an essential activity, so the agribusiness was normal. When we look at the net results of the year, we can compare -- and we see again in this year of ARS20 billion comparing to a loss of almost ARS41 billion last year. And if we go to the net result attributable to controlling company, we see a gain of ARS3.9 billion pesos comparing to a loss of last year of almost ARS27 billion pesos.

There were some sales. I will talk later about the sales