Castilla Agrícola S.A.

What it is

Castilla Agrícola grows, harvests, and sells sugarcane; it also runs a dairy-cattle operation and sells liquid fertilisers to neighbouring farms. The company operates primarily in the Pradera district of Valle del Cauca, Colombia’s main sugar-producing heartland.

Beyond sugarcane, the business spans cattle breeding and fattening — animals that graze in the alleyways between cane rows — as well as other crops and administrative activities. More recently it has added MD2 pineapple cultivation, processed pineapple products, and small real-estate projects to its portfolio.

Who owns it

A Superintendencia Financiera filing revealed that Amalfi Botero y Cía — the original controlling shareholder of Castilla Agrícola as well as sister companies Riopaila Castilla and Riopaila Agrícola — restructured its stake through a formal corporate split. Its roughly 2.3 million Castilla Agrícola shares were redistributed among five Botero-family holding vehicles: Arat y Cía, San Mateo y Cía, San Martín Botero, Santa Carolina Botero, and San Antonio Botero.

The board was last re-elected at the ordinary shareholders’ meeting of March 2023, and under Colombian securities law (Ley 964 of 2005) all of its members must be classified as independent directors. The name of the current chief executive was not disclosed in available sources after searching the company’s corporate-governance page, exchange filings, and regulator databases.

Who runs it

The company was legally incorporated on 12 July 1951 and is domiciled in Santiago de Cali, Valle del Cauca. It was operationally founded in 1945.

The CEO and CFO names are not disclosed in available public sources; the company’s corporate-structure pages load under a redirect that blocks external access.

The money, in plain words

In fiscal 2024 (January–December) the company took in COP 137.19 billion (~US$ 40.5 million) in sales — up 8.8% year-on-year — and kept COP 27.35 billion (~US$ 8.1 million) as profit, an increase of 7.6%. In fiscal 2025 revenue rose a further 1.5% to COP 139.18 billion (~US$ 41.1 million), and net profit jumped 19.6% to COP 32.72 billion (~US$ 9.7 million) — meaning it kept nearly 24 cents of profit from every peso of sales, a net margin of 23.5% (our calculation), which is strong for a pure-farm business.

At the current price of COP 21,180 (US$6)per share, the market values the whole company at COP 415.55 billion (~US$ 122.7 million) — about three times annual sales — and assigns a price-to-earnings ratio of 12.7×, modest by regional standards. The most striking number is the dividend: the company pays out almost everything it earns — a payout ratio of roughly 92% — and the indicated annual dividend of COP 5,717 per share (~US$ 1.69) against that price implies a yield of around 27%, far above any Colombian savings rate.

What it is doing now

The most immediate event on the calendar is a dividend payment with an ex-dividend date of 14 July 2026, disbursed monthly in keeping with the company’s established pattern. The 2025 earnings result — net income up nearly 20% on flat revenue — shows that cost discipline more than offset the near-stagnant top line: the gross margin widened from 42.2% in 2024 to 46.7% in 2025, meaning Castilla is selling smarter or growing cheaper, or both.

The wider Riopaila-Castilla group, of which this company is a key agricultural supplier, celebrated 108 years of operating history in 2026. Castilla Agrícola’s own diversification into pineapple and processed fruit is a small but watched bet on products that carry higher value than raw cane.

What to watch

• Dividend sustainability: a 27% yield is extraordinary; it can only persist if earnings hold. Any drop in Colombian sugar prices or a bad harvest season would squeeze both.
• Ownership transparency: the Botero family controls the company through multiple private vehicles; the exact combined percentage and any changes to that structure are worth tracking in Superintendencia Financiera disclosures.
• Diversification payoff: pineapple and processed fruit are small today; watch whether they grow enough to reduce dependence on sugarcane, which is exposed to weather, biofuel policy, and global commodity swings.
• Governance: with fewer than 300 employees and an all-independent board, the company is tightly run — but executive names are almost invisible in public filings, which limits outside scrutiny.

This is news, not investment advice.