2025 was an important year for Thai Wah as we focused on delivering transformative growth. After a difficult 2024, we returned to profitability and strengthened the quality of our earnings through our commitment to building a global multi-core business. We delivered a net profit of Baht 155.9 million, a turnaround of Baht 227.3 million in a single year. We also achieved remarkable results in other dimensions. Gross profit increased 30.1% to Baht 1,961.5 million, gross margin expanded by 630 basis points, and EBITDA rose 57.4% to Baht 796.5 million. This is a result of our disciplined execution across our businesses, factories, and markets.
Our strategic focus on building a balanced multi-core portfolio has been central to this recovery. Across our three engines – Food, High Value-Added Ingredients, and Native Starch – each business contributed to the Group’s improved performance. Over the past year, we have been steadily shifting our portfolio toward Food and High Value-Added ingredients, and this has strengthened the resilience and quality of Thai Wah’s earnings. We remained focused not only on top-line growth, but also on profitability, cash generation, and operational efficiency, laying a stronger foundation for sustainable growth in the years ahead.
Our High Value-Added ingredients business also made meaningful progress in 2025. Volume and gross profit increased as we made deliberate choices to prioritize higher-value applications across snacks, bakery, dairy, and sauces. We continued to strengthen our specialty ingredients platform and deepen customer relationships across Southeast Asia, India, and China. This business remains central to Thai Wah’s long-term transformation, given its stronger margin profile, technical differentiation, and regional growth potential.
Our Native Starch business remained an important cash generation engine for the Group. Volume grew 8%, outpacing market growth of less than 3%. Performance improved through better procurement, stronger operational efficiency, and contribution from our new Cambodia plant, which helps reduce unit costs and diversify our production base. Although pricing conditions remained challenging, we continued to improve our cost position, enhance asset utilization, and strengthen overall competitiveness.
Despite the challenges faced during the year, we continued to work diligently to improve cost efficiencies and accelerate our growth agenda across the organization. In 2025, we achieved more than Baht 96 million in cost savings through operational improvement initiatives and reinvested these savings into growth, including marketing for our Food brands, R&D for specialty ingredients, and capabilities to serve our customers better and faster. These efforts are helping us become structurally stronger and more competitive for the future.
Our people are at the heart of Thai Wah’s journey, and we remain committed to attracting and developing quality talent, fostering a high-performance culture, and supporting the well-being of our employees as they grow with the company. In 2025, we continued to invest in our SFB DNA, Stronger, Faster, Better, as a shared way of working across Thai Wah. From our factory floors in Thailand and Vietnam to our commercial offices in India and Indonesia, we are building a culture that will support the next phase of our transformation journey.
Stronger means continuing to build technical, commercial, and leadership capabilities across the organization. Faster means shortening the distance between insights and action. In 2025, we doubled down on our digital transformation journey, embedding artificial intelligence and data analytics into procurement, commercial decisions, and factory operations. Better means continuous improvement across all aspects of our business, including product quality, customer service, and the way we collaborate seamlessly as an organization.
With a more resilient portfolio, disciplined execution, and stronger culture, we have not only returned to profitability but also strengthened the financial foundation of the company. Interest-bearing debt to equity declined from 0.39 times to 0.22 times, our current ratio improved from 1.80 times to 2.19 times, and finance costs reduced 42.8% to Baht 55.7 million. A stronger balance sheet gives Thai Wah the flexibility to invest in capacity, talent, innovation, and market expansion with confidence and discipline.
As we look ahead, we believe the progress made in 2025 was not simply a one-year recovery, but a crucial step in building sustainable profitable long-term growth. In Food, we will continue to invest in brand building, innovation, and distribution expansion in Vietnam and export markets. In High Value-Added ingredients, we will deepen our presence in existing markets while scaling into new geographies and applications. In Native Starch, we will remain focused on improving our cost position and asset utilization while managing commodity price volatility with discipline.
By 2030, our ambition remains clear: to build Thai Wah into a leading high-value global food company. The transformation is already underway, supported by a stronger portfolio, a healthier balance sheet, and committed teams across the region. We will continue to accelerate investments in innovation, capabilities, and strategic partnerships to support this ambition.
We are deeply committed to building Thai Wah’s legacy and to remaining at the forefront of innovation and sustainability from Farm to Shelf. I extend my sincere gratitude to our associates, partners, customers, shareholders, and stakeholders for your continued trust and support. Together, we will continue to build a stronger, faster, and better Thai Wah for the years ahead.