Empresas AquaChile S.A

What it is

AquaChile is a Chilean aquaculture company whose business falls into three segments: salmon and trout, tilapia, and food — with the salmon division, covering Atlantic and coho salmon and sea trout, as its core. It holds marine, river, and lake concessions along the Chilean and Costa Rican coasts and sells into the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

Farmed salmon is Chile’s second-biggest export by value, after copper. AquaChile is Chile’s largest salmon farmer; its ultra-premium brand, Verlasso, has been sold in the United States for more than a decade and has since expanded to France.

Who owns it

Agrosuper S.A. acquired 67% of AquaChile in August 2018 and launched a takeover bid for the rest; the deal was cleared by Chile’s antitrust authority in December 2018 and closed in January 2019, leaving Agrosuper holding 99.71% of voting shares. Dissenting shareholders then exercised their statutory right to exit, selling their stakes to the controlling shareholder so that Agrosuper ended up holding, directly and indirectly, all voting shares.

Agrosuper itself is 100%-owned by the Vial Concha family — the children of founder Gonzalo Vial Vial — through a chain of holding companies including Inversiones VC Limitada, Agrícola GV S.A., Agrocomercial El Paso S.A., and Promotora Doñihue Limitada. The Vial family, through Agrosuper, now presides over the second-largest farmed salmon production operation in the world.

Who runs it

The general manager (CEO) of AquaChile is Sady Delgado. The administration and finance manager — the equivalent of CFO — is Miguel Lavagnino Contreras.

José Guzmán Vial was confirmed as chairman of AquaChile’s board in May 2024. Gonzalo Vial Vial, founder of Agrosuper and a director of AquaChile, passed away on 30 January 2024.

The money, in plain words

The most recent year of full financial data is 2017 — the last full year before the Agrosuper takeover. Revenue was USD 632.7 m (CLP 581.3 bn (US$633 mn) at today’s rate), up just 2.3% from 2016 (our calculation).

The more important story is profitability: AquaChile swung from a net loss of USD 97.6 m in 2015 to a net profit of USD 59.5 m in 2017 — a three-year turnaround driven by recovering salmon prices after a sector-wide disease crisis.

AquaChile kept about 9 cents of profit from every dollar of sales in 2017 — a net profit margin of 9.4% (our calculation), a sharp recovery from the near-zero 1.4% in 2016. For every dollar of owners’ equity in the business, it generated about 15.5 cents of annual profit — a return on equity of 15.5% (our calculation), respectable for a capital-heavy farming operation.

The balance sheet held USD 40.8 m (CLP 37.5 bn (US$41 mn)) in cash at end-2017, with total debt not separately disclosed.

What it is doing now

AquaChile has been the target of an investigation by Chilean environmental NGO Fundación Terram, which accused the company of exceeding its authorised salmon production limits by more than 73,000 metric tons across 30 production cycles at concessions in the Las Guaitecas National Reserve and Isla Magdalena National Park. In response to government pressure, AquaChile — Chile’s largest salmon farmer — has indicated it is prepared to relinquish its concessions inside national parks entirely.

CEO Sady Delgado, speaking at a Deloitte industry event in December 2024, argued that the salmon sector could double its production in Chile if the country’s concession-granting system were unblocked. The regulatory environment for new concessions remains the single biggest variable for AquaChile’s long-term growth.

What to watch

• Regulatory reform. A new aquaculture law is under development in Chile, alongside a broader national strategy for sustainable aquaculture. Its terms will determine how much AquaChile can grow.
• National park exit. Allegations of exceeding production limits at concessions in protected areas and the ongoing government push to remove salmon farms from national parks could force site closures and volume reductions.
• Disease risk. ISA — infectious salmon anaemia — is a highly contagious, untreatable virus that can cause up to 100% mortality at affected farms. Sporadic outbreaks at AquaChile sites have been reported in recent years and remain a permanent operational hazard.
• Family succession at Agrosuper. With founder Gonzalo Vial Vial’s passing in January 2024, the four Vial Concha siblings now control 100% of Agrosuper through holding vehicles; how they govern the enlarged group is an open question for AquaChile’s strategic direction.

This is news, not investment advice.