CEO of Hoa Phat Agriculture explains the reason for setting the plan backward

At the annual meeting held for the first time after listing on April 21, many shareholders wondered why Hoa Phat Agriculture set its business plan to go backwards in 2026. Accordingly, the business is expected to record revenue of 7,200 billion VND and profit after tax of 1,005 billion VND, down 11% and 37% respectively compared to the previous year.

Reporting to the congress, Ms. Pham Thi Hong Van, General Director of the company, said that many shareholders may be “stunned” by this information, but the business scenario is built based on careful assessments from the market context. This CEO said geopolitical tensions in the Middle East have seriously affected the livestock industry.

After the conflicts, sharp fluctuations in oil prices in March caused logistics costs and imported raw materials for production to increase. In addition, fertilizer prices also escalated along with energy prices, causing strong impacts on corn and soybean growing activities, the main raw materials for animal feed.

Speaking more about the business context in 2026, Mr. Nguyen Viet Thang, Chairman of Hoa Phat Agriculture, commented that the recent increase in energy prices has not fully reflected in the economy in the first quarter. “These risks still have a lag from the remaining inventory, especially with gasoline,” Mr. Thang shared.

In the second and third quarters, Mr. Thang forecasts that the impact from the gasoline story will be clearer, creating pressure on the inflation index. In that context, production costs are likely to escalate, causing pig prices to improve by 7-8%.

Therefore, he said the company can push up the price of pigs, but it still depends on market supply and demand. According to Mr. Thang, the peculiarity of the pig industry is that the third quarter often has the lowest prices, while the fourth and first quarters are more favorable. On that basis, the plan is built in accordance with these factors.

Besides market factors, disease risks continue to be a big challenge in 2026, according to General Director of Hoa Phat Agriculture. African swine fever (ASF) has not yet been completely controlled. In Vietnam, this disease is more complicated than in some countries in the region due to the appearance of recombinant strains between type 1 and type 2 – a type with high and long-lasting virulence. This continues to be a worrying unknown for the industry.

In addition, Hoa Phat Agriculture leaders also noted that the livestock industry has a clear cyclical nature, with peak periods falling in 2015, 2020 and 2025. The development of the 2026 plan has taken this characteristic into account.

Despite facing many challenges, Ms. Pham Thi Hong Van believes that Hoa Phat Agriculture still has certain advantages. The company has built a closed livestock chain platform towards biosecurity. Thanks to that, if a new epidemic arises, the impact on business operations is forecast to be negligible.

Sharing with shareholders about the first quarter business results, Hoa Phat Agriculture leaders said the company reached VND 1,813 billion, down 10.8% compared to last year’s performance. Gross profit also decreased by 1.2% compared to the first quarter of 2025. Excluding expenses, the business’s after-tax profit is 345 billion VND, equivalent to 34.3% of the year’s plan.

According to the General Director’s share, the decrease in business results in the first quarter of 2026 compared to the same period mainly comes from two factors: pig price and output. Accordingly, the average pig price in the first quarter of 2025 is about 67,000-70,000 VND, while in the first quarter it was only 66,000 VND. In addition, the company’s production output decreased because the My Duc farm had just been renovated.