EFOR’s annual report does not romanticize tea; it describes it in factory language. Fresh leaves first carry 70-80 percent water, then they are withered, rolled, oxidized, fired; in the end, moisture falls to 2-4 percent. Before tea reaches the glass, its water is removed.
The stock’s first-quarter 2026 question is just as plain: has the profit’s water been removed? The income statement shows 116 million TL of net profit. The cash flow statement says 760 million TL of cash left operations in the same quarter. On the financing side, there is 949 million TL of borrowing inflow. EFOR’s story is no longer merely the story of “one of Turkey’s large tea producers”; it is a working-capital machine growing through tea, fertilizer, coal, wheat, solar power plants, the Ofçay merger, and capital market moves.
In the first quarter of 2026, sales were 3.74 billion TL. Gross profit was 497 million TL, operating profit 199 million TL. These are not empty figures. The company has real facilities, real tonnage, a real port and factory rhythm. But on the same balance sheet, inventory is 4.12 billion TL, trade receivables are 2.08 billion TL, and short-term liabilities are 7.51 billion TL. The current ratio is 1.17; once inventories are removed, the quick ratio falls to 0.62. This is a machine that is growing, but breathing through working capital.
A Body Stretching From Tea to Port
Efor’s public mask is new: “Efor Yatırım Sanayi Ticaret.” The older body is tea in the Black Sea. The company traces its roots to Ak Tarım in 2005, Akpaş Çay in 2014, and the Efor Çay brand in 2019. It processes fresh tea leaves and packages tea across the Trabzon Of, Artvin Arhavi, Tokat Erbaa, and Tuzla line. According to the 2025 annual report, it accounts for roughly 10 percent of annual tea sales in Turkey, and in 2025 its tea sales tonnage rose 36 percent to 25,076 tons.
But today’s EFOR is not only tea. Efor Gübre sources chemical fertilizers domestically and abroad; at its Samsun facility, it has 151,200 tons/year of granular fertilizer capacity and 23,040 tons/year of inhibited/water-soluble NPK fertilizer capacity. Fertilizer sales tonnage rose 66 percent in 2025 to 143,361 tons. Efor Global sells coal, petcoke, and metcoke; 2025 coal products sales tonnage was 456,688 tons. On the grain side, 34,218 tons of wheat were imported in 2025. This company has become less a tea brand than a platform that puts Black Sea tea, Samsun port, a fertilizer plant, imported fuel, and agricultural commodities onto the same balance sheet.
The good side of this transformation is scale. The bad side is also scale: every new business line first asks for inventory, receivables, warehouses, port capacity, raw materials, and financing. That is why EFOR’s first-quarter 2026 cash flow statement speaks more honestly than its income statement.
The Wetness Inside the Profit
First-quarter net profit was 116 million TL. Inside that same profit is 148 million TL of net monetary position gain; deferred tax expense is 92 million TL. In other words, net profit cannot be read as simple operating cash generation. Operating profit was 199 million TL, depreciation and amortization 43 million TL; simple quarterly EBITDA was 242 million TL. Annualized by multiplying by four, that becomes 968 million TL. The company’s enterprise value of roughly 24.09 billion TL is about 24.9 times that annualized number.
Looking at 2025 makes the picture somewhat fairer, but still not cheap. The management EBITDA metric in the 2025 annual report was 1.79 billion TL. Operating profit plus depreciation and amortization calculated from the same year’s financial statement lines was 1.32 billion TL. Today’s enterprise value is 13.5 times management EBITDA, and 18.3 times simple operating profit plus depreciation and amortization. These multiples are being paid not for a software company, but for an industrial-trading mix carrying the rhythm of tea, fertilizer, coal, wheat, storage, and financing.
| Item | Value | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Market value | TRY 23.13bn | Based on 18 May 2026 price |
| Net debt | TRY 0.96bn | 2026Q1 financial debt less cash |
| Enterprise value | TRY 24.09bn | Market value plus net debt |
| EV / management 2025 EBITDA | 13.5x | 2025 activity-report EBITDA: TRY 1.79bn |
| EV / simple 2025 EBITDA | 18.3x | 2025 operating profit plus depreciation: TRY 1.32bn |
| EBITDA required for 10x EV/EBITDA | TRY 2.41bn | 35% above management 2025 EBITDA |
That is why my judgment is not “Cheap.” EFOR is expensive. Expensiveness does not mean the company is bad. Expensiveness means that, at the current price, the investor is already paying for three things to work properly: the Ofçay merger will create value, the fertilizer/mining side will prove separate value, and working capital will turn into cash without choking growth.
The Hole Opened by the Till
The main hole in cash flow is working capital. In the first quarter of 2026, the change in working capital absorbed 1.03 billion TL of cash. The increase in trade receivables created a 436 million TL cash outflow, and the increase in other receivables created a 305 million TL cash outflow. The decline in trade payables took another 753 million TL of cash. Inventory worked positively by 175 million TL this quarter; deferred income provided 200 million TL of cash support. But the total picture does not change: there is profit, but no operating cash.
This is not a conviction by itself. For the full year 2025, operating cash was positive. The tea business has a season; harvest, processing, and sales rhythm are not limited to the first quarter. But the market is also not pricing the company as a first-quarter company; it is pricing it as a grown platform. Then the investor must see concrete cash conversion in subsequent quarters before treating the first-quarter cash gap as temporary.
Net debt must be watched for the same reason. At the end of 2025, financial debt was 1.54 billion TL and cash was 1.35 billion TL; net debt was roughly 191 million TL. At the end of the first quarter of 2026, financial debt reached 2.49 billion TL and cash reached 1.53 billion TL; net debt became 963 million TL. This is still not a disaster balance sheet. But the direction of debt matters once operating cash turns negative.
The Family Table and the Ofçay Shadow
At EFOR, control is not only a question of “who owns how many shares.” Group A shares carry 5 voting rights and grant the privilege to nominate candidates to the board of directors. The management form in the 2025 annual report gives the largest shareholder’s ownership ratio as 63.73 percent. Free float is 24.79 percent in the year-end 2025 shareholding table. This is a structure in which the market investor participates in the growth story but does not hold the wheel.
That is why the Ofçay merger is critical. According to the annual report, for Of Çaysan to be acquired by EFOR, the merger ratio is 0.815390879 and the exchange ratio is 0.125472593; due to the merger, a capital increase of 493,111,555.35 TL and the same number of new EFOR shares are envisaged. Against today’s 2.178 billion shares, that means roughly 22.6 percent new shares. If the merger comes at a good price and with real EBITDA contribution, it can accelerate growth. If it comes at a poor price or with opaque economic benefit, it dilutes the platform premium paid by minority investors.
| Topic | Source data | Investor reading |
|---|---|---|
| Class A shares | Each Class A share has 5 votes and board nomination privileges | Control can exceed economic ownership |
| Largest shareholder | 63.73% ownership ratio | Minority investors do not control the wheel |
| Free float | 24.79% in the 2025 year-end table | Liquidity exists; control remains inside |
| Ofçay merger | 493.1 million new EFOR shares expected | Roughly 22.6% of the current share count |
| Pro forma value at same price | Approx. TRY 28.37bn market value | Requires roughly TRY 2.93bn EBITDA for 10x EV/EBITDA |
The related-party map is not light either: Efor Holding, Akkuş Grup, Efor Filo, Of Çaysan, Akkuş Antrepo, and İbrahim Akkuş are listed as related parties in the report. The annual report states that no transaction occurred within the scope of Articles 9 and 10 of the Corporate Governance Communiqué; that is positive. But for the investor, the real issue is this: in multi-sector, family-controlled platforms, value is often created or lost not through operational growth itself, but through the terms on which that growth is carried to the minority shareholder.
The Belief Priced Into the Stock
According to market data dated 18 May 2026, EFOR has a market value of roughly 23.13 billion TL at a price of 10.62 TL. Adding cash and financial debt gives an enterprise value of roughly 24.09 billion TL. For this enterprise value to look reasonable at 10x EBITDA, a multiple that can still be considered generous for an industrial-trading mix, annual EBITDA would need to be 2.41 billion TL. That is more than 35 percent above the 1.79 billion TL management EBITDA in the 2025 annual report, and 83 percent above the 1.32 billion TL simple EBITDA calculated from the financial statements.
If the Ofçay merger is completed and 493.1 million new shares are considered at the same market price, pro forma market value rises to 28.37 billion TL. If we leave net debt unchanged, enterprise value becomes 29.33 billion TL. The annual EBITDA required for 10x EBITDA then becomes 2.93 billion TL. This figure is about 64 percent above management’s 2025 EBITDA. This is not impossible; but the burden of proof is now on the company, not the investor.
The anti-thesis is fair: EFOR is genuinely growing. 2025 tea tonnage, fertilizer tonnage, and coal sales are not just on paper. Q1 may be seasonally misleading. Efor Gübre’s public offering may reveal value. Ofçay may create economies of scale. In Turkey, the tea, fertilizer, and agricultural input chain carries strategic and sticky demand. If cash flow improves in the second and third quarters, debt growth stops, and the Ofçay merger increases EBITDA per share, today’s price may not look too harsh.
But today’s evidence does not yet show that. Today’s evidence says the growth story has been written into the share price before the cash proof has arrived.
Verdict
EFOR is not a company with a collapsed balance sheet. But the company priced by the market is a cleaner, more cash-generative, less diluted, higher-EBITDA EFOR than the company visible in the first-quarter 2026 file. That gap can be closed; until it is closed, the stock is expensive.
My clear verdict: Expensive.
This stock belongs less to a patient growth investor than to an investor who can debate the working-capital cycle, family control, merger arithmetic, and the risk of profit that does not turn into cash every quarter. To become a partner in EFOR is not to become a partner in a glass of tea; it is to become a partner in the inventory, port, debt, and control table behind that glass.