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Operator: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Ispire Technologies Earnings Conference Call for the Fourth Quarter and Full Year for fiscal 2025. I would now like to introduce Phil Carlson, from KCSA Strategic Communications. Please go ahead, sir. Philip Carlson: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Ispire Technologies Earnings Conference Call for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 ended June 30, 2025. At this time, I'd like to inform you that this conference call is being recorded and that all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the company's prepared remarks we will be facilitating our question-and-answer session. Joining us today are Mr. Michael Wang, the company's Co-CEO; and Mr. Jie Yu, the company's CFO. Mr. Wang will start by reviewing the company's key fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial results and recent corporate highlights. Mr. Yu will then discuss the company's financial results in greater detail. Before I begin, I would like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements other than statements of historical facts in its announcement are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on estimates and assumptions made by the company in terms of its experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments as well as other factors that the company believes are relevant. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, and many factors could cause the company's actual results or performance to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Further information regarding this and other risk factors are included in the company's filings with the SEC. The company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent or current events or circumstances or to changes in its expectation, except as may be required by law. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Wang. Mr. Wang, please go ahead. Michael Wang: Thank you, Phil, and welcome to everyone, who has joined us today. I'm pleased to be here reviewing our fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2025 results and recent corporate highlights. Fiscal year 2025 was a pivotal period for Ispire. We made important strategic decisions to position Ispire for sustainable long-term growth and executed on this transformation across several areas of the Ispire business. While our revenue declined during the fourth quarter and full year 2025, this was due to our strategic pivot away from the cannabis industry to focus more on the higher-value nicotine sector. This intentional shift reflects our disciplined approach to building a more sustainable and a profitable business model. We have been selective in our cannabis operations. While simultaneously investing in our nicotine manufacturing capabilities. This includes scaling up our production in Malaysia. Additionally, our investments in breakthrough technologies like IKE Tech and our G-Mesh technology are beginning to gain significant traction with the interest from major tobacco companies. Positioning us well for future growth as we move through the regulatory approval process. As I just mentioned, in fiscal 2025, we continue to invest strategically in the build-out of our facilities in Malaysia and have several very exciting business development opportunities that we hope to report on in the coming quarters. Our Malaysian operations are planned to have capacity for up to 80 production lines. Significantly growing our manufacturing abilities from the 6 lines we are currently operating. Our focus on production in Malaysia not only diversifies our production base and derisk our operations from geopolitical factors, but also positions us to capitalize on the growing global demand for precision dosing vaping. As I have discussed, on the cannabis front, we made the intentional decision to refocus on quality of customers versus quantity. Given the ongoing uncertainty and the financial challenges, facing all of the players in the cannabis industry. This approach prioritizes building sustainable, long-term partnerships over short-term volume gains. This has already translated into improvements with a cut to expenses in several areas. We reduced our net accounts receivable on a year-over-year basis by over 21% from fiscal 2024 to fiscal 2025. This is the first time in the company's history that the net accounts receivable declined year-over-year. In addition, we reduced our quarter-over-quarter gross accounts receivable by $6.9 million or 9.1% from Q3 of fiscal 2025 to Q4 of fiscal 2025. We also reduced our general and administrative expenses from $7.6 million in fiscal Q3 2025 to $6.7 million in fiscal Q4 2025. These improved metrics as a result of our focus on reducing fixed costs, while further streamlining our operations. During fiscal 2025, we undertook significant cost optimization measures, reducing annual expenses by a total estimated annual savings of $10.2 million. These actions have positioned our company to become a more focused and more agile organization, while enhancing our path to profitability. We expect the trend of declining costs to continue in the coming quarters as we maintain our focus on larger and higher-quality customers with the improved payment terms and as we strengthen our financial stability. On the regulatory front, we continue to advance our PMTA activities for our own devices, while awaiting updates on the groundbreaking component PMTA submission filed by our strategic joint venture, IKE Tech LLC. As we have previously discussed, this blockchain-based age verification technology represents a potential game changer for the industry, requiring continuous real-time authentication rather than the single point of purchase verification used by traditional systems. The FDA's review of what could be the first-ever component PMTA approval remains a critical milestone that would unlock modular deployment across hundreds of [ ENDS ] products. Fundamentally transforming the regulatory landscape for nicotine delivery systems. We remain committed to our role as a regulatory leader, continuing to invest in compliance initiatives that position us at the forefront of the key evolving market. Looking ahead, our international nicotine ODM business. Represents a key growth opportunity that is now gaining significant momentum after a slower-than-anticipated start -- this acceleration in our ODM business, combined with our expanding Malaysian manufacturing capabilities positions us well to capitalize on growing global demand for precision rating technology. As we continue to build out our international manufacturing footprint, we expect our ODM partnerships to be a substantial contributor to our revenue growth in the coming quarters. We are also currently engaged in discussions with several major international nicotine and tobacco providers, who are looking to diversify their supply chain systems. Well, we cannot yet review more specific details yet. We look forward to providing an update to the market when possible. As we execute on these strategic initiatives, we have also strengthened our leadership team with the appointment of Jie Yu as our new Chief Financial Officer in May. Jie brings extensive public company accounting experience and has demonstrated exceptional performance, as our Vice President of Finance since June 2023. Building deep knowledge of our operations and financial structures. This promotion reflects our commitment to maintaining strong financial stewardship as we navigate this period of transformation. To sum up, we delivered substantial progress across our key strategic priorities during the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025, while maintaining financial discipline. Most importantly, our revenue decline this quarter was a result of our intentional strategic shift away from cannabis towards the higher-value mixing sector, positioning us for stronger and more sustainable growth ahead. I will now turn the call over to our new CFO, Jie Yu to review our financial results in more detail. Jie? Jie Yu: Thank you, Michael, for introducing me, and thank you to everyone for joining the call today. I'm pleased to be here to review Ispire's key financial results for the fourth quarter and the fiscal year 2025. As a reminder, I will refer to fiscal year 2025 as the year ended on June 30, 2025. All comparisons are to the prior fourth fiscal quarter or year ended June 30, 2024 unless otherwise stated. Dollar revenue for the fiscal year 2025 declined from $151.9 million to $127.5 million or by $24.4 million versus fiscal year 2024. As Michael has discussed, this was due to realignment of our business toward nicotine, while moving away from Cannabis customers, which we believe will deliver improved accounts receivable and more sustainable long-term growth. Taking a look at revenue by geographic regions. For fiscal 2025 European revenue totaled approximately $74.5 million, an increase of $8.8 million or 13.6% compared to $65.3 million last year. For fiscal 2025, North American revenue was approximately $32.6 million compared to $63.1 million in fiscal 2024. This was predominantly due to our strategic pivot away from cannabis and being more selective with larger and quality customers such as MSOs. For fiscal 2025 Revenue from Asia Pacific totaled approximately $12.3 million compared to $17.6 million last fiscal year. For fiscal 2025, revenue from other countries were $8.5 million, an increase of $2.6 million compared to $6 million in fiscal 2024. The majority of these sales are from South Africa. During fiscal 2025, gross profit declined to $22.7 million from $29.8 million for the year prior. Gross margins were 17.8% for fiscal year 2025, a decrease of 1.8% from 19.6% in fiscal 2024. As Michael has discussed, this was due to the strategic repositioning away from cannabis, which led to the revenue reduction for this period. Operating expenses over the 12 months period to June 30, 2025 were $60.5 million, up from $43.7 million for fiscal 2024. This increase was largely due to a rise in sales and marketing expenses with a ramp-up of marketing activities as well as an increase in bad debt expense for an allowance in credit losses, offset by a decrease in stock-based compensation expense due to CAR-T head count in streamlining North American operations and a reduction in R&D expenses. Importantly, since Q3 2025, general and administrative expenses declined by $0.9 million, this reflects the impact of our cost-cutting initiatives that Michael discussed in detail, which we expect it to continue into fiscal 2026. For fiscal 2025, net loss was $39.2 million compared to $40.8 million in fiscal 2024. Moving now to the balance sheet. At June 30, 2025, Ispire held cash of $24.4 million, a reduction of $10.7 million versus the previous year. With working capital balance of $0.4 million. For the 12 months to June 30, 2025 Net cash flow used by operating activities was $7.4 million compared to $18.3 million in the same period last year. Net cash used in investing activities for the 12 months to June 30, 2025 was $5.2 million compared to $3 million provided by investing activity in prior comparable period. Net cash provided by financing activities for 12 months to June 30, 2025 was $1.9 million compared to $10.1 million used in the same period last year. This concludes our review of the financial results for fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2025. I will now hand the call back over to Michael. Michael Wang: Thanks, Jie. In closing, I'm proud of the substantial organizational and operational transformation we achieved throughout our fiscal fourth quarter and the full year 2025. As I outlined today, we accomplished multiple critical strategic objectives this period. Further developing our Malaysian manufacturing capabilities dramatically accelerating our international ODM business with over $18 million in pipeline revenue. Strengthening our financial position through improved accounts receivable management and significant expense reductions and advancing our regulatory initiatives including ongoing PMTA progress. Furthermore, our successful pivot from cannabis to the higher-value global nicotine market, demonstrates our strategic agility and commitment to building a more profitable and sustainable business model. Looking ahead, Ispire is uniquely positioned to capture several transformative growth opportunities. Our exclusive Malaysian manufacturing authorization provides unparalleled competitive advantages in the global nicotine market. While our breakthrough technologies like IKE Tech's age gating system and our G-Mesh innovation, have the potential to reshape industry standards for safety and performance. Combined with our expanding ODM partnerships and strategic focus on regulatory compliance. We are exceptionally well positioned to emerge as a leader in the precision dosing vaping technology, while setting new benchmarks for responsible industry practices. Thank you to our investors for the trustee support through this pivotal transformation and to everyone, who joined us today. We look forward to reporting on our continued progress and exciting developments in the coming quarters. If you have any questions, please contact us through e-mail at ir@ispiretechnology.com. This completes our prepared remarks, and we are now open to questions. Operator, please go ahead. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Pablo Zuanic with Zuanic and Associates. Pablo Zuanic: Look, just the first question in terms of age gating technology. Can you tell us about what are the key milestones to look for here over the next few months or years what's the timetable? What's the realistic target date for approval, if you have any visibility on that, please? Michael Wang: Thank you, Pablo. Right now, the age gating technology is being, I would say, discuss not only within the United States, on a global basis, this has become a hot topic. So many countries are looking at this technology and progress, some could be much faster than others out there. Now back to the U.S. with this technology, we filed the component PMTA back in late-April. And within 4 weeks, we received the FDA's acceptance ladder, which is really speed-wise unprecedented. Never before did the FDA accept any applications regarding the nicotine business within 4 weeks. So of course, we are very encouraged with that speed. And this particular application is expected to be reviewed at so-called expedited basis. So we don't know exactly when the next step will happen but typically, a major next step is FDA's issuance of a letter called deficiency later. Generally, that's based on FDA's evaluation of your product. And if there are minor modifications or fixes that need to be done before the green light, typically FDA issues such deficiency letter I guess, to suggest the companies or brands to fix overcome the deficiency. So we within the U.S. FDA's response to Pablo, we don't know exactly when that letter would arrive. So that generally is the next step. It could be as quick as 3 months or as long as in some cases, over a year for other nicotine specific products. But this is a unique application. So certainly, it's the first case of so-called component PMTA that FDA is reviewing or has reviewed, so there is no prior experience regarding this. But we trust with youth access to e-cigarette being such a worldwide epidemic, we strongly believe lawmakers, regulators will find a suitable solution for this crisis per se. And we feel we are in the forefront of this solution offering, Pablo. Pablo Zuanic: Right. On the same topic, is it realistic to expect that perhaps in other major markets outside the U.S., maybe the EU that you could get approval for the age verification technology sooner than in the U.S. or the U.S. would probably happen first? Michael Wang: Pablo, of course, we are very optimistic about just project getting special attention from FDA for the purpose of solving this crisis and we certainly are hoping within short order, we would receive such letter from the FDA. That will be very encouraging to the industry and to us, specifically. However, at least 2 countries could potentially get ahead of FDA at this point. I'm not at liberty to share the name of those 2 countries, but the regulators are just embracing this technology with open arms. And in several other countries, we have been working with regulators as well. We don't have expected time line at this point, but 2 are moving real fast outside the U.S. Pablo Zuanic: Right. And I'm sorry, 1 more on the same topic, if I may. -- in terms of age verification. I know you said you believe that you're at the forefront of this technology. Can you talk about your patents, intellectual property, how are you protecting this because I'm assuming there are other companies that are also working on similar technologies, but as you think you will be first. But just remind us about the protections you have from an IP perspective? Michael Wang: Yes. Indeed, Pablo, we for every major development, we have filed the patents, especially in the United States and then EU, U.K. and China, et cetera. We now IP is a key enabler in this particular solution. So we own critical patents our IP in this space, especially in 1 key area, how the device communicate to the -- and then communicated to the back-end data processing to secure the mechanism, specifically for blockchain-based technology. So -- we strongly believe our IP defensibility is very strong. And we -- from the beginning of this project, we have been building IP as a key strategy not only in providing such solution, but more importantly, in defending such a solution. So both on the use for blockchain site and on the unique communication with data processing, generally government approved and compliant operators and such as CLEAR. Those are unique IP for us, Pablo. Pablo Zuanic: Right. Very much. If I may, I'm going to ask 2 more questions, and that's all for me. But the first 1 in terms of -- you had this -- you talked about the receivables. You had this big provision of $22 million, I think, in the fourth quarter. Was that related to just 1 client in 1 region. I don't know. If you can give a bit more color about that. It just seems like a big provision on receivables. And then the second one, I understand the pivot away from cannabis, but cannabis in the U.S. is still a $30 billion industry, vape it's about 25% of that. There's demand for vape parts. So we think that, that business is still there for someone to take, right? So I'm just -- maybe you can give more color in terms of -- I understand the economics are challenging, but there is the demand for vape parts. So just trying to understand the -- the pivot away from cannabis. But if you can answer those 2, that's all for me. Michael Wang: Okay. Pablo, I'll answer the second 1 first. The U.S. cannabis industry indeed, is very strong, and I think will continue to be a strong market from a revenue, from a sales point of view. However, we all know until cannabis is federally legalized and the correspondingly, there is a financial service or banking services available to the industry. Cash flow will continue to be the challenge. I think this is a typical case of a very promising industry with a lot of -- like you said, a lot of revenue, a lot of opportunities. We have been in this space for many years, and we have seen the challenges facing all the operators in terms of cash flow and it directly affects our business of the past. So to a large degree, our high amount of account receivable -- this has been largely driven by the cash flow challenges that our customers face. So yes, indeed, from a revenue point of view, there is continued opportunity here. However, we feel the cash flow challenges facing everybody is not facilitating to what we want to accomplish financially, at least in the near future, until the capital market becomes available to the cannabis industry. So legalization of course, will be step one. We are watching the development on that front. When the right moment comes, we will come back to the industry. So it's just -- in the near term, we don't see any ways of cash flow improvement. So that's why we made it a pivot. Pablo, sorry, remind me your first question again? Pablo Zuanic: In terms of the receivables, I mean, if I -- I think -- I mean, I went through the financials, I miss the details, but -- it seems there was a big provision of about EUR 22 million in the fourth quarter. And I'm just trying to understand was that related to just 1 client in 1 region or just bigger precaution in general. It just seemed like a big provision compared to other quarters. Michael Wang: Yes. Pablo, yes, that bad debt provision is not based on a few large accounts. It's really quite a cumulative effect of all the customers we did the business within the last 2-plus years after going public. So not a particular customer stands up to answer your question. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Nick Anderson with ROTH Capital Partners. Nicholas Anderson: First 1 for me is just on the U.K. supply agreement, you're starting to really monetize that deal. I was just wondering if you could maybe share the early feedback from that client and how the agreement is going in terms of order trends? And just going forward, is this the SKU you'll use to shop around to other larger clients? Or are there more additional iterations coming? Thank you. Michael Wang: Nick. So this particular ODM client, when we're launching this project now late calendar 2024. We had a version 1 of the product -- and correspondingly, as we all know, the U.K. disposable bans affected the dynamic in the e-cig industry in that particular market. And throughout the last 12 months, there have been several significant changes in the market trend. So -- as a result of such a dynamic, version 1 really didn't take off as the client originally expected. So earlier this year, collectively, we made several changes to their design and upgraded its product significantly. And we officially launched it right during the summer this year. Initial feedback is very, very encouraging. To a large degree, in my prepared speech, I mentioned that there was a backlog of $18 million from this space is really largely tied to this particular customer. So merchant tool is truly, truly taking off, and I feel it will meet the original target that the customer set more than a year ago for this product. Of course, I think, we are still working on the next iteration, we expect to Ispire towards the end of this calendar year. This is such a dynamic industry, competitive industry. Literally, if you don't introduce new products faster than other brands it is really, really challenging for the players. So we are trying to make our particular customer very, very competitive. Nicholas Anderson: Got it. I appreciate that color. Next 1 for me, just on the tariff landscape. You mentioned several larger companies looking to diversify their supply chain -- what do you expect just in terms of potentially onboarding some of these larger clients? And has that changed kind of the expansion road map for your Malaysian facility? Michael Wang: Okay. Yes. many companies, including brands, including manufacturers have been shifting production outside of China. Of course, largely to the Southeast Asian countries. So tariff was truly a consideration there. And from our point of view, we did see large, I would say, number of inbound increase from brands and even manufacturing competitors. So we have seen that part -- and certainly, we have been preparing for this moment a couple of years back with the selection from Malaysia as our key manufacturing base. So as we have been talking about for the last 2 years, Malaysian operation has been carefully scaled. We wanted to go faster, but we need to -- to obtain regulatory approval, this will take time so our expansion there is timed by how quickly, we get government permit and approval. So -- but on the other hand, with that careful consideration, we built 2 facilities, 1 small, 1 large, and 2 for demand that we anticipated a couple of years back regarding geopolitical situations. So -- right now, we are seriously considering a third facility, which will be much, much larger in nature to entertain what you just described as some potential large ODM projects. So it's slow going. Of course, we need to be mindful of the regulatory requirements and the compliance. But with the presence of a such large opportunities. It's important for us to get ahead of the wave of opportunities and get facilities in place before we scale. So we are working on building out the production line in the second facility that could house up to 80 e-cigarette production lines. So we are modifying that as the second building. So the first building, we already talked before, there were only 6 lines in that building far too small to support such expanding global e-cigarette ODM business. So second one comes handy for us. But still not enough to handle all the opportunities we could potentially entertain. Nicholas Anderson: Got it. Last 1 for me. Just wanted to build off the last cannabis question you answered. I appreciate the color you gave. Rationalization is playing out, and we understand the difficulties in that segment. Would you say the 4Q cannabis revenue number is a more realistic run rate for your U.S. business going forward? Just wondering what that segment could look like this coming year. And just off that, if rescheduling does happen, would it change the way you're looking at U.S. cannabis? Michael Wang: Okay. So yes, cannabis revenue, Q4 is really on the low side. Right now, we are already going at a higher speed per se, volume-wise, -- so I would say financial -- fiscal Q4 2025 is the bottom for our cannabis business and that largely had to do with -- as we pivoted. We purposely ended many customer relationships. So that was really giving us the biggest impact on revenue growth. Q4 really reached the very bottom, and we started gaining new customers who would need for, let's say, quality assessment. So plus, we, of course, are continuing with new product development before the end of the year, we'd have several new products were launched -- so combined with what we call high-quality customer base, but we think the new products will also bring additional revenue. So your second part of the question regarding risk scheduling. Yes, when the risk scheduling would take place, we would certainly evaluate the opportunity of beefing up the investment in the cannabis sector. Nick? Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question-and-answer session and concludes our call today. We thank you for your interest and participation. You may now disconnect your lines.
Andrew O. Davies: Okay. We'll start then. So good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our full year 2025 results presentation. For those of you who are here in person, and welcome to those joining us today by webcast and by audio as well. I'm Andrew Davies, I'm Chief Executive of Kier Group. And somewhat pointedly for me, this marks my last Kier results presentation. I'm joined today by Simon Kesterton, our Chief Financial Officer; and also by Stuart Togwell, currently our GMD for Construction, who will become the Chief Executive on the 1st of November this year. So just quickly before we go through the results, Stuart, if I can invite you to introduce yourself to those who you may not have yet met, Stuart? Stuart Togwell: Good morning, everyone. I'm Stuart Togwell. I'm delighted to see you all this morning, and I'm really proud and excited to become the next Chief Exec of the Kier Group. I've worked in this industry that I love for over 39 years now, the last 6 years of which has been working closely with Andrew and Simon in Kier. Initially, I came in as the Group Commercial Director, where I introduced the risk management and the operational discipline that we still use today. The last 2 years, I've been in the GMD for the Construction business and have also been a member of the main Board. I'm looking forward to talking to some of you here in person after the presentation, but in the meantime, Back to you, Andrew. Andrew O. Davies: Okay. Thank you, Stuart. And let's move on now to our FY '25 results. So firstly, I'll walk you through the highlights from the last financial year and then hand you over to Simon to talk through the group's financial performance. And this will be followed by an operational review, an update on ESG and we'll finish off with our outlook and recap of the long-term sustainable growth plan. And then, of course, there will be an opportunity for questions and-answers at the end. So working through the disclaimer, and we move on to the results summary and highlights. So starting with the highlights for FY '25, which is the first year of the long-term sustainable growth plan that we launched last September. In the year, the group's order book grew to a record GBP 11 billion, reflecting contract wins across our business and providing us with multiyear revenue visibility. Specifically, the order group -- the order book currently covers 91% of our targeted FY '26 revenue and around 70% of FY '27's. Group saw continued overall revenue growth of 3%, which delivered an adjusted operating profit of GBP 159 million. And this result represents a margin of 3.9%, which is above our own initial expectations and also progressing well towards our long-term target level of between 4% to 4.5%. This higher level of profitability continues to convert strongly into cash at a rate above our long-term target, leaving us with a net cash position of GBP 204 million at June 2025. We also saw a significant improvement in average month end net debt for the year to GBP 49 million. So given the continued progress that our group has made, I'm pleased to say we've significantly increased our returns to shareholders in year. We're proposing to pay a final dividend of 5.2p per share, representing a full year dividend of 7.2p, 38% higher than last year. We also launched a GBP 20 million share buyback during the year, which, as we speak, is roughly 50% complete. Additionally, we increased the capital deployed in our Property business where we're on track to deliver our long-term target of 15% ROCE, thus further enhancing shareholder returns. So overall, I'm pleased to say, as leadership of Kier now transitions to Stuart, that we're a business in very good shape, our strategy is progressing well, driven by our great people and now underpinned by our high-quality order book and strengthened balance sheet. We're progressing well to deliver against our long-term sustainable growth plan. So for this -- now my last set of results, I thought it's worth reflecting on Kier's track record of consistent delivery in the past few years and how that performance underpins our conviction in our ability to deliver our long-term plans. In recent years, we've proved that we can deliver for our customers and shareholders alike. As you can see from these figures, we've seen significant growth in revenue, profits and earnings since 2021. This has been achieved with growing levels of cash flow and as a result, significant improvement in the levels of debt, whereby we are now touching -- in touching distance of reporting average net cash. At this point, I'll hand over to Simon, who will take you through the detailed financial results. Simon? Simon Kesterton: Thank you, Andrew. Good morning, everyone. Turning to Slide 7. This sets out our high-level results. Revenue in the period, as Andrew mentioned, is higher than FY '24 and reflects strong performance across the group, especially in the Infrastructure Services segment, which I'll cover more in detail in the next slide. We delivered an adjusted operating profit of GBP 159 million, up 6% in the year and at a margin of 3.9% as we progress well towards our long-term sustainable growth plan target of 4% to 4.5%. We continue to generate significant levels of operating cash flow with net cash at the end of June 2025 as a consequence, materially improved year-on-year, rising to GBP 204 million compared to GBP 167 million at June 2024. This performance includes a strong working capital performance as inflows follow revenue growth to normal levels, allowing us to deploy additional capital to our property business, which will drive future earnings growth. In terms of average month-end net debt, this has improved to just GBP 49 million from GBP 116 million in FY 2024. The group has also been able to significantly increase dividend payments and further grow returns to shareholders through the launch of our initial share buyback as well as invest in the property business, as mentioned. Turning to Slide 8. I'll walk you through the group's revenue growth. Starting on the left-hand side, you can see FY '24 revenue of GBP 4 billion. Infrastructure Services revenue grew by 7%, primarily due to growth from water and nuclear, supported by continued HS2 activity. Construction revenue was steady with continued delivery of Justice projects. We have worked to increase the quality and profitability of our Kier Places business, resulting in us exiting some lower-margin contracts. Finally, for property, we saw a significant increase in transactions compared to the prior year, although the positive impact of this is only seen in operating profit given the mix of transactions with our property business being a return on capital business rather than a return on revenue business. So overall, growth was 3%. And if you adjust for property and the FM contracts, closer to 4%. Moving now to the adjusted operating profit bridge. We start on the left-hand side with the previous year's adjusted operating profit of GBP 150 million. Overall, volume, price and mix have resulted in an increase of GBP 0.6 million. As we just mentioned, we saw an increase in the volume of property transactions in the year, which resulted in increasing profit by GBP 6 million. Cost inflation was more than offset by management actions that delivered GBP 11.6 million during the year. These savings related to projects such as improving supplier onboarding, site setup optimization and Kier 360 and reflect the success of our performance excellence program as we demonstrate sustainable growth across our businesses. In terms of cost generally, it's worth reminding you all that more than 60% of our order book is made up of target cost or cost reimbursable contracts. And if we do choose to give price certainty to our customers, it's only done after key risks and opportunities are understood. The overall result is growth in adjusted operating profit of 6% to GBP 159 million and a margin of 3.9% that is progressing well towards our long-term target of 4% to 4.5%. Adjusted items, including -- excluding noncash amortization, amounted to GBP 26 million in the year, GBP 1 million lower than the previous year. The main element relates to fire and cladding costs, GBP 17 million in the year. The property costs relate to the sale of a legacy office in Manchester, which completes our corporate office space reorganization. This slide illustrates how our sizable attractive market opportunity flows ultimately into our strong order book and the visibility that we have on it. The government has committed to improving and renewing the U.K.'s infrastructure and in June this year, reaffirmed its 10-year strategy, setting out total spending to 2035 of GBP 725 billion. Also in June, as part of their comprehensive spending review, the government detailed their priorities in the next 3 to 5 years. This strategy and projected spend map to the markets served by our business via frameworks. Kier is well placed to benefit as we currently hold positions on frameworks worth GBP 156 billion. These frameworks cover key areas of government focus, such as health, education, defense, water and nuclear. As you can see on this slide. It is these frameworks from which projects are awarded to preselected contractors that provide the path by which we fill our order book, driving revenue growth, giving us confidence in the successful delivery of the long-term sustainable growth plan. This slide considers our order book in more detail, standing now at a record GBP 11 billion, as Andrew mentioned. This order book gives us a clear view of future revenue and cash flows, representing 91% of FY '26 revenue already secured and around 70% of FY '27 revenue. As I've just said, 60% of our order book is under target cost or cost reimbursable contracts or otherwise subject to a 2-stage pricing process, which reduces considerably a contract's risk profile. Furthermore, as we've just seen, our order book is fed by our sustainable long-term framework agreements, where the value of the positions that we hold amount to GBP 156 billion. As you can appreciate, the combination of our strong order book underpinned by these framework positions illustrated here provides us with considerable visibility of future revenue streams and cash generation. Now let's turn to our cash flow. Adjusted EBITDA in the year grew 10% to GBP 228 million. We then have GBP 28 million of working capital inflow, a great performance. It's worth noting that last year saw 17% revenue growth, which drove a higher working capital inflow, while FY '25 saw revenue growth of our expected GDP plus levels. CapEx in the period amounted to GBP 65 million, with GBP 48 million of that relating to payments made under leases now capitalized under IFRS 16. Net interest and tax increased by GBP 13 million in the year due to interest payments to new bondholders, which commenced in August 2024. The group's deferred tax asset of GBP 137 million relates to losses made in previous years, allowing us to offset half of our tax charge in any one given year, and we anticipate it will take around 7 years to fully utilize this asset. All this means that we generated significant free cash flow of GBP 155 million in FY '25 with a conversion of 125%, significantly above our long-term sustainable growth target. This strong cash generation has allowed the group to grow our cash balance while significantly increasing shareholder returns. Starting on the left-hand side with closing cash of GBP 167 million at June 2024, we then have the FY '25 free cash flow of GBP 155 million that we've just seen on the previous slide. Next, we have the adjusting items of GBP 18 million, significantly lower as we've seen in the GBP 37 million paid in FY '24, followed by the payment of GBP 8 million to our smaller pension schemes. The level of cash generation after these items provides us with considerable scope for capital allocation. Firstly, regarding dividends. It's notable that FY '25 is the first year to include payment of both interim and final dividends totaling here GBP 24 million. Then we have GBP 51 million of capital deployed to the property business. Lastly, we have the purchase of Kier Group shares, both the shares bought under the share buyback program as well as the shares for the group's employee benefit trust. As a reminder, this trust acquires Kier shares from the market for use in settling the long-term incentive plan scheme shares and the share schemes when they vest. This results in a net cash position of GBP 204 million, a significant improvement, as we've mentioned, compared to the GBP 167 million at the start of the year. Now moving to Slide 15 and as a reminder of the significant progress we've made by effectively eliminating our average month-end net debt. Over the last 4 years, we've reduced our average net debt and debt-like items by over GBP 500 million, a significant improvement, resulting in just GBP 49 million of average net debt in FY '25. This slide sets out our long-term funding arrangements that we have in place to support our strategy while retaining flexibility to deliver future growth. The long-term financing of the group is provided through the GBP 250 million of 5-year senior notes expiring in 2029, combined with our GBP 150 million revolving credit facility, which runs to 2027. In January 2025, we fully repaid all of the outstanding USPP notes and GBP 111 million of the revolving credit facility matured, both in line with their agreements. For my penultimate slide, I'd just like to remind everyone of our capital allocation priorities. Overall, we're focused on optimizing shareholder returns while maintaining a disciplined approach to capital allocation and maintaining our strong balance sheet. In short, we target dividend cover of around 3x earnings through the cycle. We plan to invest further in our property business to generate consistent returns over time, deploying up to GBP 225 million of capital, targeting consistent long-term return on capital employed of 15%. With regard to acquisitions, we will continue to consider value-accretive acquisitions in core markets. Lastly, in January earlier this year, we announced an initial GBP 20 million share buyback program, further increasing returns made to our shareholders. I will finish with a look at our shareholder returns. As we saw earlier, Kier has an astonishing record of delivery in the period under Andrew's stewardship. Material improvements have been made to grow the order book, improve profits, grow cash flow and reduce net debt. All this combined with the substantial revenue visibility now provided by our order book and the pipeline of growth opportunities gives us confidence in the group's future prospects. It allows us to propose a final dividend of 5.2p or 7.2p in total for the year 2025, an increase of 38% versus the prior year and representing earnings cover of 3x, in line with our long-term sustainable growth targets. This, combined with the GBP 20 million initial share buyback shows that shareholders will continue to benefit from Kier's significant financial improvement as well as the renewed strength of the group's balance sheet. And now before the last time I hand over to Andrew for his operational review, I'd just like to say thank you very much to Andrew. Thank you for his efforts, for his hard work in leading and putting together a great team, which has been very successful. And thank you very much for being a pleasure to work with. Congratulations for all of that success. And then, of course, finally, to wish him all the best for the future. And now, for the last time, back to you, Andrew. Andrew O. Davies: Thank you, Simon, and a real thank you to you as well for all you've done for the company. So if we move now to the operational update, and we'll start with Infrastructure Services first. In 2025, we saw revenue growth of 7%, driven by HS2 capital works as well as growth from water and nuclear projects, where our previously announced contract wins are now converting to revenue. In particular, our Natural Resources, Nuclear Networks or NRNN business has continued to build on our strong position in water market as the operating companies in the sector commence the next investment cycle of AMP8. Adjusted operating profit was GBP 111 million, representing underlying growth of 4%, allowing for a one-off GBP 6 million customer gain in the prior year. It's widely acknowledged that the industry remains affected by delays at the start of the works under Control Period 7 for rail and the deferred announcement of the RIS3 program for highways. Nevertheless, the strength and breadth of our design and build business in highways, where we maintain and build national and local highways and our excellent customer relationships, combined with our strong order book allows us to continue to effectively manage risk and return in this segment, providing us with good current throughput and future visibility of revenues. If we turn to a slide which emphasizes the strong position Kier has across the U.K.'s water sector. So here, we have a clear growth opportunity in what is a regulated market, which, of course, sits outside the public spending envelope. The AMP8 investment cycle is now well underway with operating companies set to deliver a significantly larger investment worth circa GBP 104 billion to 2030, and that's double of AMP7. As we said in the past, with the market doubling, we expect Kier's activity to match that growth, thus doubling in the same time frame. The momentum and determination behind this level of investment is clear. An aging asset base, which needs replacing or refurbishing, increasingly stringent environmental regulations and the focus on extending the life of existing facilities through maintenance. The operating companies are thus turning to Tier 1 contractors to deliver these upgrade and maintenance programs, particularly those with specialist mechanical and engineering skills where Kier is demonstrably well placed to take advantage of this opportunity. And this slide sets out our U.K. footprint in water. We're one of the largest Tier 1 contractors supporting the regulated water companies with their asset optimization. As you can see, at June, we held positions on a total of 17 frameworks with 9 water companies worth a combined GBP 15 billion of spend opportunity. Moving next to our construction business, where we build schools, hospitals, prisons and defense projects for government as well as projects for the commercial sector. Also included here is Kier Places, our facilities management and housing maintenance business. Construction revenue remained steady overall at GBP 1.9 billion. During the year, we successfully delivered significant levels of work for the Ministries of both Justice and Education, alongside starting work for HMP Glasgow for the Scottish government, where activity levels will ramp up through 2026. We also acted to better position Kier Places for enhanced future returns through the exit of some of the lower-margin contracts, which Simon mentioned. The adjusted operating profit grew 8% to GBP 75 million, seeing the benefit of an improved business mix. And lastly, let's look at our property business, which invests and develops commercial and residential sites, largely operating through joint venture partnerships to deliver urban regeneration projects right across the U.K. Operating profit grew significantly, driven by the higher volume of transactions Simon mentioned in the year compared to 2024 -- FY '24. Indeed, many transactions were achieved in the second half of the year as we continue to build momentum and scale in this business, and we expect this seasonal profile to repeat in FY '26. Just a reminder, we remain focused on the disciplined expansion of the property business through selective investments and strategic joint ventures with capital employed totaling GBP 198 million at June 2025. Our long-term plan is to increase capital employed to GBP 225 million, and we expect that this stable capital and the maturing partnerships will result in the business exiting 2027 on or around its targeted ROCE of 15%. So let's turn to our sustainability framework. It's through this framework that we align our activity to our major clients, the U.K. government and regulated companies by focusing on 3 key pillars: people, places and planet. As a reminder, our purpose is to sustainably deliver infrastructure, which is vital to the U.K. As a strategic supplier to the U.K. government, ESG is fundamental to our ability to win work and secure positions on long-term frameworks. U.K. government contracts above GBP 5 million require net zero carbon and social value commitments. And in order to help achieve these goals, we focus on our people pillar, which targets to build a workforce which has the relevant skills and capabilities to deliver these goals, ensuring where possible that everyone receives equitable treatment that our people reflect the communities where we live and we operate. Secondly, leave a positive legacy in our communities through our places pillar. We do this through the projects we deliver and the people we employ within them, mindful always in addressing the challenges of inequality. And thirdly, as the stewardship of the planet is vital to all of us, we're reducing our carbon emissions and supporting our customers with their infrastructure requirements as they adapt to climate change. Our sites aim to protect and enhance nature as well as efficiently use resources on our projects. To just review our environmental progress as we see carbon reduction as both an obligation and an opportunity. Overall, we're seeing increased demand from customers to deliver projects sustainably, which is reflected in our Green Economy Mark accreditation. Our net zero targets for Scopes 1, 2 and 3 have been validated by SBTi. And in line with these, we have reduced Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 4% in FY '25 and by 71% since FY '19, which is our baseline year. We continue to reduce our emissions according to our carbon reduction plan. In terms of our efficiency, we achieved a 3% reduction in our waste intensity overall in the year. And secondly, we'll reflect on our social responsibility. Safety as ever is our license to operate, and we're pleased to report a 26% reduction in our accident incident rate in FY '25. Kier's performance depends ultimately on our ability to attract and retain a dedicated skilled workforce. During the year, this included 590 apprentices with over 10% of the workforce in formal training and development or earn and learn programs. Furthermore, over 40% of our graduate intake in the year were female as we focus on making Kier a diverse and inclusive place to work, reflecting the communities we work within and we serve. And turning to our supply chain partners. In FY '25, over 60% of our subcontractor spend was with small and medium-sized enterprises, while we continue to adhere to the prompt payment code. So before we come to our outlook, I thought I'd just remind everyone of our long-term growth plan, which is laid out here and provides clear visibility of the direction of the group. We target revenue growth above GDP, driven by the attractive market dynamics combined with our market-leading positions. We're targeting to reach an adjusted operating margin of 4% to 4.5%. For cash flow, we target around circa 90% conversion of operating profit and the achievement of average net cash position to allow us to invest surplus cash in those areas that will deliver increased shareholder returns. This includes a targeted sustainable dividend policy of circa 3% earnings cover through the cycle, which we have, of course, now delivered for this year. And now to finish with a short summary and our outlook. The group has continued to make significant operational and financial progress in the year, delivering revenue growth with margins ahead of expectations and progressing well towards long-term target range. We've continued to grow our order book to a record GBP 11 billion, providing us with significant multiyear visibility. This has allowed us to significantly increase the proposed dividend payment, and we're well progressed with the initial GBP 20 million share buyback program launched in January 2025. And building on our outperformance in FY '25, the group has started FY '26 financial year well and is trading slightly ahead of the Board's expectations. And on a personal note, it's been a privilege to lead Kier over the last 6.5 years and to see the group transformed into a strong and sustainable business with enhanced resilience and a reinforced financial position. That transformation has only been possible due to the capability, professionalism and frankly, hard work of Kier's teams and the support of our clients and our partners. I'd like to thank them all for their support and commitment in ensuring Kier's continued success in delivering infrastructure that is vital to the U.K. And in particular, I'd like, of course, to wish Stuart and Simon the very best for the future and thank them both. And with that, I will open up the meeting to questions and answers. And I suggest we do questions first from the room, and then we'll take questions from the conference call. Thank you. Robert Chantry: Rob Chantry at Berenberg. Obviously, congratulations on the delivery and your time in the business, Andrew. So 3 questions from me. So firstly, thoughts around, I guess, the debt position. Obviously, tremendous increase in delivery in recent years and kind of business moving towards an average net cash position. The '29 bonds trading well. Can you just remind us of the options available on the refi, any longer-term thoughts around capital structure given the cash delivery? I think secondly, clearly, you've been successful on getting on the GBP 15 billion of frameworks in water and water revenues set to double. Can you just talk, I guess, a bit more anecdotally around what surprised you about the evolution of that market in the past years? Has it been more competitive? Has there been things where you've done better than you might have expected, things that might be more challenging? Just how that market has evolved in terms of the contracting structure? And then thirdly, property, clearly, kind of good step up this year. You're talking about 15% ROCE by '28, so that's GBP 30 million, GBP 35 million of EBIT. Can you just give us an indication of kind of what's working particularly well in that division at the moment? Any indication of the shape of going from GBP 12 million EBIT this year towards GBP 30 million, GBP 35 million 3 years out would be very helpful. Andrew O. Davies: Simon, do you want to take the first and the third, maybe I'll do the middle one. Simon Kesterton: Absolutely. So thanks, Rob. In terms of debt position, I mean, we're very happy with the balance sheet, GBP 49 million of monthly average net debt is pretty much there, plus or minus zero. And as I've mentioned previously, I think we're comfortable really even going up to probably 0.5 turn plus or minus on the balance sheet of EBITDA in terms of monthly average net debt. In terms of the refi, yes, we did that in February 2024. So the first time we could refi the bond would be in February 2026. And you're right, it's trading very well. So that would give us an opportunity. And of course, we've got our half year results probably out March that year in 2026. So that might be a good opportunity if things remain the same to refinance. Andrew O. Davies: Property? Simon Kesterton: I can cover off property as well first. So in terms of shape, it's probably going to be back-end weighted, Rob. So I'd expect a small increment in this current financial year on last year before we really start towards the back end of FY '27, delivering that 15% return on capital employed. And that's just sort of the nature of when you invest, it takes 3 years before you start to see the returns. Andrew O. Davies: Rob, just on the water question you're asking, I mean, we do see our revenues doubling because the AMP8 has doubled. We've got material positions on all of the frameworks circa GBP 15 billion by advertised values positions on the frameworks, which we've won. So we feel we are confident that we will double alongside AMP8. The competitive environment is they have sought out -- the water companies sought out Tier 1 contractors to deliver some of the larger schemes, and that's why we've been selected by many of the larger water companies to deliver those. But there are -- there is plenty of space within this sector for other companies to operate. But I think we're probably one of the leading Tier 1 companies operating in that sector. So yes, we're very confident over the next 5 years, certainly on AMP8 and probably thereafter, but we'll see what happens on AMP9 that water is going to come a mainstay of this company. There's no doubt about it. Andrew? Andrew Nussey: Andrew Nussey from Peel Hunt. Two questions. First of all, for Simon. When we look at the profit bridge, obviously, inflation and management actions are pretty big chunks there. What are the thoughts in terms of '26 and '27 and the ability to keep driving management action to offset those inflation pressures is the first one. Simon Kesterton: Okay. Yes. So firstly, I think inflation, the number that you're seeing there, obviously, our projects are quite long term. So you're seeing the impacts of prior -- a couple of years ago inflation there. So I would expect, firstly, the inflation number to start to tail off a little bit. And then in terms of management actions, I don't think any question that we'll be able to continue to more than offset that. Andrew Nussey: Second question is actually for Stuart. Obviously, you've led the Construction division, which has been a leader in terms of modern methods of construction and digital tools. I'm just curious, when you move into the CEO role, what other opportunities can you see for those developments across the group? And what might that mean? Stuart Togwell: Okay. I'll stand up. I was enjoying sitting in the audience. I think the most important thing to start with in terms of we're not being complacent, although we're already sitting with GBP 11 billion order book. I'm a big fan in terms of AI and digital, first of all. in particular, the work we've been doing around digital twin in terms of how that drives energy efficiencies and also product improvements. But alongside that, in terms of Simon's team is already using bots at weekends to run around to look at administration improvements. Alongside that, to make sure it's really important with AI that we create a safe environment for us to use. So we're working with our IT providers in terms of how we can do that. And even more importantly is to make sure that when we do have that technology in the business, we have a workforce that is comfortable and can embrace that technology to make the most of it. Regarding MMC, again, we haven't been complacent. And what we've been looking at is rather than just concentrating on volumetric, we've been looking at all forms of MMC to ensure that we can come up with the appropriate solution for our customers. And there are 2 key themes that I would take around from MMC. First of all, if you don't have the design right, you lose the benefits of MMC. So one of the huge benefits we have across the group is we were already sitting with 700 designers that can help us. And the other point in terms of that is just to remember, that provides us the opportunity to working with new clients like the defense when they're bringing out volumetric and single-living accommodation in terms of 2D models, we can provide very cost-effective designs for them to actually start working through at scale. The other key factor on MMC is you got to have integration with the M&E. So again, in terms of care, we have our own in-house M&E company that can help bring those both design and M&E to the forefront of any MMC solution. Jonathan William Coubrough: Tony Coubrough from Deutsche Numis. Could I ask firstly on Living Places, you mentioned exiting some underperforming contracts. Were those always underperforming or had something changed there? And how does the portfolio look today? Another question would be on property. What was driving the increase in transactions? Was there any particular sector there? And then last one, probably a follow-up on MMC, where you're able to access R&D tax credits. Is that predominantly in where you've been using MMC and a bit of detail there, please? Andrew O. Davies: I'll take the first one, Simon, perhaps take the second and third. On the Living Places, the key to getting efficiencies in housing maintenance is density. So you may have some very effective contracts. But if you don't have the density, you won't get the utilizations you need to make the money you need. So we elected to exit certain contracts where we didn't feel we could get the density around those contracts to make it profitable. We're focusing now on areas where we can get the density in both reactive and planned maintenance as well. So I think that was a fairly straightforward set of actions, which the team just delivered very effectively. So we're pretty pleased where we find ourselves now. We do think in the future, that will be an area of growth as society seeks to upgrade affordable housing in particular. So we want to stay heavily connected to that. Simon, do you want to take the one on property, the transactions? Simon Kesterton: Yes. I mean, property, Jon, it's just across the board really. So the 3 segments that we serve, really pretty much equal in transactions. So nothing really standing out. And then in terms of R&D tax credits, this isn't just focused on MMC. I mean Stuart touched on it, 700 designers go to it, and it's between 100 and 200 projects a year that it's spread across. So it's not one big chunky claim. It's lots and lots of little claims. Adrian Kearsey: Adrian Kearsey, Panmure Liberum. Another question on property, if I may. Simon, you talked about the lead time for property being sort of 3 years in order to do a project sort of from start to finish. And so therefore, you've got a building visibility. Could you give us some idea within that sort of 3-year sort of time frame, what types of property are you looking to develop and deliver? And also what kind of development relationships you have and perhaps give us an indication of how much JVs are going to be used within that context? Simon Kesterton: Yes. So as in JVs, we use extensively. That allows us to keep the amount invested in any one project small and hence, spreads risk and helps keep liquidity in the portfolio. So we intend to use JVs extensively. Where we focus on is last mile logistics, mixed-use residential redevelopment projects and, of course, environmentally friendly offices as well. And so those are the 3 sectors that I think we'll continue to focus on going forward. Andrew O. Davies: You mentioned the 3-year gestation. That's what gives us the confidence because we're putting the increased capital into that. That will take a period to gestate whether it's 3 years or slightly more, slightly less. It's never a precise number like that, but that's where we get the confidence and where we're getting the performance is out to the pre-existing financial investments we've made. So we put more money into that in the same strategy in the similar sort of areas which are paying well for us. That's why we're confident this thing will grow to 2027, hitting the 15% ROCE target. Any more questions? Are there any questions online? Operator: [Operator Instructions] At present, we have no questions on the conference call. Andrew O. Davies: Okay. Then with that, I... Andrew Nussey: I just thought as perhaps one of the elder statesmen in the room, I really just like to acknowledge all your efforts on behalf of the city over the last few years. 2019 seems like quite a long time ago, but Slide 5 clearly articulated the progress. So I appreciate it's a team effort, but you put the band together. So on behalf of the city, well done. Andrew O. Davies: Andrew, that's very kind of you, thank you. That's probably why I have the gray hair I have hanging in there. But can I thank everybody in this room and my team present and past for the enormous efforts and support. And thank you for all your help and advice over the years. It's been hugely appreciated. And I think we've got a great company back to exactly where it needs to be. And again, wish Simon and in particular to Stuart, the very best of luck in the future. They won't need luck. They're a great team, and they'll continue to do the great work. So thank you all very much.
Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to DAVIDsTEA's Second Quarter Results Webcast for fiscal 2025. Today's webcast is being recorded [Operator Instructions] Before we get started, I would like to remind you of the company's safe harbor language. This webcast includes forward-looking statements about expectations for the performance of the business in the coming quarter and year. Each forward-looking statement contained in this webcast is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in such statements. Additional information regarding these factors appears under the heading Risk Factors and Uncertainties in the Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, the MD&A, which was filed with Canadian regulatory authorities and is available on www.sedarplus.ca. The forward-looking statements in this discussion speak only as of today's date, and the company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any of these statements. If any non-IFRS financial measure is used during this webcast, a reconciliation to the most directly comparable IFRS financial measure will be detailed in the MD&A. As a reminder, all dollar amounts referred to are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated. Now I would like to turn the call over to Sarah Segal, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Brand Officer of DAVIDsTEA. Sarah Segal: Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. DAVIDsTEA stayed the course with its omnichannel growth strategy in the second quarter of 2025, supported by retail stores and wholesale channel sales increases of 9.1% and 2.5% year-over-year, respectively. Overall, we reported a net loss of $1.6 million on sales of $11.1 million in the second quarter, which is typical of our seasonally driven business. While our online sales have not grown to target, we are encouraged by the halo effect of our retail locations, which continue to drive brand awareness and customer engagement. As we expand our store footprint, we are intensifying our community and brand marketing efforts across both digital and physical media to ensure we remain top of mind with consumers heading into our peak selling season. If you recall, we generate more than 60% of our annual sales volume in the third and fourth quarters. For example, we have invested in online advertising, billboard ads, wellness influencers, affiliate programs and promotional events to raise brand awareness with consumers as they seek to buy gifts for themselves and their friends during the upcoming holiday period. We expect these initiatives to generate a strong return on investment and contribute to profitable growth. Against this backdrop, our business continues to operate in a challenging environment characterized by the imposition of tariffs in the U.S., higher unemployment and inflationary pressure, but our brand has demonstrated remarkable resiliency against these macroeconomic headwinds. Looking ahead, we fully intend to make retail stores the focal point of our omnichannel growth strategy. After all, the best advertising for DAVIDsTEA is a new store, which continues to provide a superior personal experience through our knowledgeable tea guides. We believe this positive in-store consumer experience in turn, will continue to convert non-tea drinkers or casual tea drinkers into devoted tea lovers. Accordingly, we are currently renovating our flagship store in Montreal South Shore and remain on track to reopen in mid-November. This represents an exciting first step in our renewed retail expansion strategy. We have also signed a second lease agreement in Quebec City. The opening of a store at Laurier in Quebec City's provincial capital will supplement our current offering at Les Galeries de la Capitale. In addition, we are planning to unveil a third store at the Square One Mall in Mississauga, one of the premier shopping centers in Canada come July 2026. This store will be based on a new concept that is more open, including an accessible tea bar that enables consumers to sample a wide variety of premium teas and blends with curated signature drinks that change seasonally. So notwithstanding these 3 store openings over the next 12 months, we are currently negotiating with high-end mall owners across Canada to introduce additional new stores within our portfolio and be well on our way to significantly increasing our store footprint over the next 3 years. In summary, DAVIDsTEA stayed the course with its omnichannel growth strategy in the second quarter of 2025. We reported as expected financial results in what can best be described as a stable quarter with preparations to conclude the year on target. More importantly, we are firmly on a path to increasing our store footprint over the next 12 months while also increasing our marketing efforts in new and exciting demographics with a focus on experiential marketing to ensure that DAVIDsTEA brand is top of mind with consumers. Ultimately, with these actions, we have our sights set on delivering sustained and profitable growth in the periods ahead. I will now turn the webcast over to Frank Zitella, President, Chief Financial and Operating Officer of DAVIDsTEA. Frank Zitella: Thank you, Sarah, and good morning, everyone. Consolidated sales improved 0.5% to $11.1 million in the second quarter of 2025. This slight year-over-year increase can be attributed to higher brick-and-mortar and wholesale channel sales, partially offset by lower online revenues. On a channel basis, brick-and-mortar sales grew by $0.4 million or 9.1% to $4.6 million in Q2 of 2025, driven by the contributions of 2 additional stores in the Montreal area and positive comparable store sales growth of 0.6%. Wholesale channel sales, meanwhile, rose by $0.1 million or 2.5% to $1.5 million in the second quarter as we restocked grocery stores, pharmacy chains and big box stores with our core products. For their part, online sales decreased by $0.4 million year-over-year or 6.7% to $5.1 million as macroeconomic headwinds and noise surrounding tariffs were a drag on e-commerce revenues. Geographically, Canada represented 90% of total sales in the second quarter of 2025, while the U.S. accounted for 10%. Revenue south of the border decreased by $0.3 million year-over-year. Gross profit remained stable at $5.3 million or 47.2% of sales in the second quarter of 2025 as a slight decline in product margin was offset by lower freight, shipping and fulfillment cost per unit. Selling, general and administrative expenses decreased by $0.1 million or 1.9% to $6.6 million in the second quarter of 2025. The slight year-over-year improvement was driven by improved IT expenses, resulting from the successful conversion of our full technology stack to a lower cost operating system. During the quarter, we also reversed previously incurred IT expenses. In addition, we reported an impairment charge on property, equipment and intangible assets in Q2 of 2024 that did not reoccur in the most recent quarter. These savings were mostly offset by increased marketing expenses in the second quarter of 2025, which Sarah referred to in her prepared remarks, along with higher wages and employee benefits. In terms of profitability, net loss remained stable at $1.6 million in the second quarter, while adjusted EBITDA amounted to negative $0.2 million compared to negative $0.3 million in the same period last year. Moving on to liquidity and capital resources. DAVIDsTEA's cash position improved to $7.6 million in the second quarter of 2025 from $6.7 million in the second quarter of 2024. On a sequential basis, our cash declined from $10.4 million in the first quarter of 2025 due to the seasonality of our business. Cash flow used from operations, meanwhile, amounted to $1.5 million in the second quarter of 2025 compared to $1 million in the same period of 2024. The year-over-year increase in cash used was mainly due to higher inventories in preparation in the upcoming selling season, partially offset by greater trade and other payables compared to the prior year quarter. In closing, the entire DAVIDsTEA team is brimming with excitement for the upcoming selling season with brand-new collections and innovative gifts prepared for our loyal customers. Behind the relentless push to elevate the wellness of tea drinking across our brick-and-mortar online and wholesale channel sales, we remain focused on delivering profitability on a sustainable basis. Consequently, all investments undertaken, including those to raise brand awareness and to be top of mind with consumers are judiciously scrutinized to deliver significant ROI over time. Finally, we announced that Ernst & Young LLP, Chartered Professional Accountants, resigned as auditors of DAVIDsTEA at the company's request and that the Board of Directors appointed Richter LLP Chartered Professional Accountants as the company's new auditors. DAVIDsTEA thanks Ernst & Young for its service as auditors since fiscal 2011. This concludes our review of second quarter results for fiscal 2025. We encourage investors wishing to obtain additional color about DAVIDsTEA to contact Investor Relations to coordinate access to management. Thank you for joining us today.
Operator: Hello, and welcome to the JTC PLC Interim Results Presentation. My name is David, and I'll be your host for today's event. Please note that the event is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Before we proceed, as you will have seen, JTC is currently in an offer period under the U.K. Takeover Code. As summarized in the company's RNS of 12th of September regarding possible offers, the Board received three preliminary nonbinding proposals from Permira in August, which were considered by the company and its advisers and unanimously rejected by the Board. The Board received a fourth revised proposal on the 9th of September and is in early stage discussions with Permira in relation to the possible offer. The Board also received two preliminary and nonbinding proposals from Warburg Pincus in early September, which were considered and unanimously rejected. A further proposal has been received and the Board is currently in early-stage discussions with Warburg Pincus in relation to the possible offer. In respect of these approaches, you will appreciate that management are very restricted in the comments they make only commentating on information already in the public domain, and we therefore prefer that most of the questions this morning are focused on the business. Thank you. I will now hand you over to the presenters for today. Nigel Le Quesne: Good morning. Welcome to the presentation of JTC PLC's interim results for the period ended 30th of June 2025. I'm Nigel Le Quesne, the Group CEO, and presenting with me today is Martin Fotheringham, our Group CFO. Let's move to Slide 1 and the agenda. We will begin with my CEO highlights for the period, after which Martin will run through the financial review. Following this, I'll take a deeper look at the group and the divisions and then go on to discuss how the rise in popularity of alternative assets positively impacts JTC's long-term growth potential and explain how we act as a key enabler of capital flows in these asset classes through both divisions. I'll also give a brief progress report on the integration of Citi Trust into our wider business post completion and we'll provide color on our focus areas for the medium to long term. Finally, I will summarize our key takeaways and my expectations for the group for the rest of the year. We will then open the forum up for questions. 2025 is the second year of our Cosmos era business plan, in which we aim to double the size of the business by no later than 2027 and for the third time since our IPO in 2018. The group has delivered a strong performance in the first half of 2025 with strong organic growth of 11%, record new business wins achieved through high win rates in what has been a more challenging macro environment. The results underline the benefits of having access to both institutional and private capital bases and continues to demonstrate the sustainable and evergreen nature of the JTC business model. As we approach the end of our 38th consecutive year of revenue and profit growth since inception, our unique shared ownership culture, diversified professional services business model and continued focus on client service excellence, all lead to our being well positioned to succeed and continue growing in any economic environment. In H1 2025, our group revenue was up 17.3% and EBITDA was up 15.1%, delivered at an underlying EBITDA margin of 32.8%. Our net organic growth was 11%, ahead of our guidance for the Cosmos era with growth at 14.6% and client attrition at 3.6%, an improvement on last year's 4.8%. We also achieved another record for new business wins in the period of GBP 19.5 million. As a result of our performance in H1, coupled with the benefit of our two most recent acquisitions, Citi Trust and Kleinwort Hambros Trust, we remain confident that we will achieve our Cosmos era goals ahead of schedule. The PCS division has performed particularly well in the period with outstanding net organic growth of 14.5%, continuing a strong trend. It is now established as the leading independent global trust company business and is the largest independent provider by some distance in the important U.S. market, which continues to be an opportunity-rich environment for the group. It is pleasing to report the completion of our acquisition of Citi Trust on the 1st of July, and we've made good progress to accelerate the integration and harmonize the business model. I will return to this later. Building on this, post period end, we were delighted to announce the proposed acquisition of Kleinwort Hambros Trust Company or KHT. The KHT deal is further evidence of the reputation JTC has established as the offtaker of choice for banks as they seek lighter operating models and retrench to their core capabilities. KHT is highly complementary to JTC's existing offering and brings us a U.K. trust presence for the first time. The deal was executed at an attractive price of circa 6x EBITDA, and we expect to complete in Q4 2025 and for it to be earnings accretive in 2026. The ICS division delivered net organic growth of 9.2%. This is a strong result in a market where macroeconomic headwinds have led to a period of volatility and uncertainty leading to prolonged sales cycles. Nevertheless, our pipeline has remained healthy, and we achieved robust win rates of over 50% and onboarded some significant clients in the period. At a group operations level, there's been heightened project activity in the period. In the process of implementing a global billing platform to enhance consistency and standardization across the group in support of our proprietary frameworks performance management tool. We are also enhancing our global risk and compliance framework, including a review and harmonization of policies and procedures underpinned by the implementation of an enhanced new RegTech solution [ CAMS ] . In addition we're using the Citi acquisition as a catalyst to accelerate the planned upgrade to [ Quantios Core ], our group-wide primary administration system. These important projects, together with our recently implemented group HR platform and our development of the ChatJTC AI tool, our infrastructure investments, which allow us to future-proof our global platform and capture the strong growth opportunities we see, both in the current Cosmos era and into the Genesis era that will follow. Although temporarily margin dilutive, these investments are all designed to improve commercial performance and enhance the platform for growth in the medium term. As always, I will wrap up my highlights by thanking the top-quality team we have at JTC. In July, we were delighted to award the second tranche of warehouse shares from our employee benefit trust to our global workforce for their individual and collective achievements in the Galaxy era between 2021 and 2023. We continue to believe that the power of our shared ownership culture is the foundation of JTC's 37-year track record of uninterrupted revenue and profit growth. Having 2,300 owners rather than employees makes an enormous difference to our working environment and the organization's culture, which is reflected in our industry-leading staff retention figures, which are currently 96%. This enables us to ensure that the team are happy, valued and empowered and highly motivated to improve our business and client experience every day. So now let's turn to Slide 4 and the financial highlights. Our revenues have grown to GBP 172.6 million and underlying EBITDA was GBP 56.5 million, delivered an underlying group EBITDA margin of 32.8%. As previously highlighted, our group net organic growth was an excellent 11%. New business wins were a period record of GBP 19.5 million as the group continues to benefit from excellent win rates of greater than 50% across both divisions. Now a consistent performance metric achieved in a competitive market. The new business pipeline remains strong and increased from GBP 49.8 million at year-end to circa GBP 60 million at the end of H1, indicating the probability of good momentum in the second half of the year. The Lifetime Value of work Won was another record at circa GBP 267 million based upon the 14.2-year average lifespan of our client book. This gives us visibility of over GBP 2.4 billion of forward revenues from our existing client book, i.e., what the business would generate without the addition of any new mandates from this point forward. This metric continues to demonstrate the long-term and compounding value of the group. And finally, on to the interim dividend, which has been proposed at 5p per share, up 16.3% from 4.3p. Now over to Martin for a deeper look at the financials. Martin Fotheringham: Thank you, Nigel. We've delivered a strong set of results that are in line with our expectations, where we've continued to focus on delivering growth. Organic growth was 11%, the sixth successive reporting period where net organic growth has exceeded 10%. The financial highlights slide shows that our overall revenue growth was 17.3%. We're performing well, led by net organic growth. It's pleasing to see the momentum we built in 2024 carry into 2025. Our underlying EBITDA margin dropped by 0.6 percentage points from H1 '24 and was 32.8%, and there's more on this later. Earnings per share increased by 7.1%. Cash conversion was 86% and is in line with our guidance range of 85% to 90% annual cash conversion. This is lower than our normal H1 performance, and I'll explain why later. Net debt increased by GBP 43 million, and this was driven by drawdowns for earn-outs. It was a busy year in 2024 for M&A with 5 deals completed, which we've continued to integrate throughout 2025. The Citi Trust acquisition also completed on the 1st of July, and we have the KHT deal, which will complete later this year. At the period end, our reported underlying leverage was 2.06x. On a pro forma basis, our underlying leverage was below 2x underlying EBITDA. And finally, our return on invested capital for the last 12 months was 13%, an improvement from the 12.6% we reported at the end of 2024. Moving on a slide, we'll start with revenue and our revenue bridge. On a constant currency basis, our revenue growth was 18.4%. This was above our reported growth of 17.3%, where we were again impacted by the weaker U.S. dollar during the last 12 months. As our U.S. presence has increased, so has our exposure to the U.S. dollar. Gross new revenue was GBP 36.8 million, a decrease from GBP 38.3 million in H1 '24. The prior period continued to enjoy the benefit of the immediate impact from the launch of our banking and treasury service. Gross attrition was GBP 9.1 million, which is 3.6% of annual revenues and is down from the 4.8% reported in the prior year. GBP 6.2 million of this attrition was end of life, and therefore, 98.8% of non-end-of-life revenue was retained. This is the highest retained revenue result we've posted since IPO. Revenue recognized on new business wins in the year was 54% compared to 51% recorded in H1 '24. Our new business pipeline at the period end was a best ever GBP 60.4 million, which is a GBP 10.6 million increase from the end of 2024. Let's move on to Slide 9 and take a look at the first of our key metrics, net organic growth. As I've already said, we delivered organic growth of 11% in the last 12 months with our 3-year average now standing at 14.8%. We've posted net organic growth in excess of 10% for 3 successive years. ICS recorded net organic growth of 9.2%, which was commendable when considering external factors where the continuing macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty has generally stalled fund launches and slowed down activity levels. The U.S. has continued to deliver good growth for our ICS business. PCS has excelled with 14.5% net organic growth with the U.S. and Cayman the key drivers. Pricing growth remained strong at 5.1%, demonstrating our ability to recover increased costs of doing business. To conclude on revenue, let's look at the geographical profile on Slide 10. All regions once again supported revenue growth in the period. The U.S. continues to deliver impressive levels of organic growth and has established itself as a leading growth region. At IPO, the region represented 4% of our global revenue, and this now stands at 31%. Taking into account the Citi acquisition, we expect the U.S. will represent approximately 35% of our global revenues. The rest of the world also recorded impressive growth of 74.3%, and this was driven by the inorganic growth of the FFP acquisition and the continued growth of our own Cayman business. We now move on to the EBITDA margin on Slide 11. The underlying margin was 32.8%, a drop from the 33.4% recorded in H1 '24. I said previously, there are many moving parts in our margin story. On the one hand, we've improved our margin over recent years through the introduction of higher-margin banking and treasury business. Typically, we also have a small operational gearing uplift each year of approximately 1%. As you know, we're committed to the future success of the business, and it's our strategy to invest in areas where we believe will ultimately benefit the business, whilst delivering an acceptable margin. This includes start-up services in new jurisdictions, current examples of which are our private office, ESG service and Irish Funds business, which we calculate drag our margin today by 0.6%. We also see margin dilution from investment in growth jurisdictions. These are jurisdictions where organic growth exceeds 15% or where the current infrastructure is disproportionate to the revenue generated. We currently have just over 10 jurisdictions that fall into this grouping. Gross margins from this cohort averaged 51% compared to mature jurisdictions where the average is 69%. Four years ago, 33% of our revenues came from these growth jurisdictions, whereas today, it's over 50%. Finally, on margins, I've previously noted our higher spend on risk and compliance. Notwithstanding the hard to quantify amount of chargeable time we spend dealing with regulatory obligations, we also continue to invest into our group capability. Over time, that alone has impacted margins by 50 basis points. Now focusing on cash conversion on Slide 12. Cash conversion was 86%, a decrease from 104% recorded last year. Our normal cash collection cycle is that we have strong collections in H1 that were above 100%. So this is a significant drop, albeit it remains within our guidance range. The drivers for the drop are temporary and do not impact our ability to meet our annual target. Adjusting for these temporary impacts, would have seen us delivering cash conversion of approximately 102%. The drivers for the decrease, as shown in the bottom graph, were as follows: 4 percentage points for temporary timing differences. These include cash outflows that we paid in H1 this year that we would normally pay out in H2. 4 percentage points for a change in billing cycles for one of our business segments, where we've moved to a biannual billing cycle for fees that were previously billed on an annual basis at the beginning of each year. These fees were collected in July. A 2 percentage point impact due to FX in the period. This can fluctuate and has been adjusted to show a constant currency position. The 6 percentage points is due to the impact of recent acquisitions, primarily FFP and SDTC, where the businesses do not follow our usual H1 seasonality and our cash inflows are not weighted to the first half of the year. As you can see, adjusting for these, our underlying performance in H1 was strong. We maintain our medium-term guidance range for annual cash conversion of 85% to 90%. Now let's look at net debt and leverage on Slide 13. At the end of 2024, our reported net debt was GBP 182.3 million. And by the 30th of June, it stood at GBP 225.1 million, an increase of GBP 42.8 million. This was driven in the main by the net outflows for acquisitions of GBP 47.8 million, where material outflows included the payout in full for the FFP earn-out of GBP 24.9 million, the SDTC earn-out of GBP 19.1 million and a total of GBP 3.8 million covering Hanway, perfORM and Buck earn-outs. Our reported leverage was 2.06x underlying EBITDA. However, annualizing recent acquisitions to achieve a pro forma leverage shows that we would be within our guidance range. With the Citi and KHT acquisitions, leverage will be above 2x at the year-end, but below our absolute peak of 2.5x. We expect to rapidly delever through 2026. As anticipated at the year-end, we completed on a U.S. private placement facility in the first half of 2025 for $100 million. As at 30th of June 2025, the group had total undrawn funds available from banking facilities of GBP 123 million. And finally, our return on invested capital. We delivered a return on investment of 13% in the last 12 months. This was an improvement of 40 basis points from the position at the end of 2024, and this continues to be significantly above our cost of capital. I'm really pleased with this improvement in a period of ongoing acquisition activity. The lifetime value of clients, which represents the revenue that our client relationships will generate in the absence of new business, increased by 4.3% from 2024 to GBP 2.4 billion. Since IPO, we've reported over a 700% increase from GBP 0.3 billion in 2018 to GBP 2.4 billion today. To conclude, we continue to deliver a solid and resilient set of financials in the second year of our Cosmos era. And on that note, I'll hand back to Nigel. Nigel Le Quesne: Thank you, Martin. As I've mentioned earlier, next, we will cover the macro environment, its effect on the M&A market and take a deeper look at the 2 divisions. Following which I will discuss 2 key topics. Firstly, how the growth of capital allocation to alternative assets acts as a tailwind for the group; then secondly, detailing the positive progress of the Citi Trust integration and how our ability to solve for banking institutions seeking lighter operating models provides JTC with a competitive advantage. In the wider M&A market, global deal volumes were down 13% in the first half of 2025 when compared with the previous year. This was largely due to the macro environment, including trade uncertainty, geopolitical instability and a difficult funding environment. The sentiment has definitely improved in H2 as the financing markets improve. Buyer appetite remains strong as firms face mounting pressure to deploy capital, demonstrated to some degree by the recent interest in JTC. Advisers have backlogs of deals creating a buoyant market. In our sector alone, we're aware of close to 10 deals of a good size attracting strong market interest. Given our current financial leverage and recent acquisition activity, we will concentrate on maximizing the opportunities presented by Citi Trust and KHT in the short term. But we will keep a close eye on the developments in the wider market, where we continue to be viewed as a good counterparty and long-term home for businesses by sellers and advisers alike. The regulatory regimes continue to prove challenging, as I've commented on previously. The propensity to look to impose regulatory fines on organizations for specific client matters, which are often minor in nature rather than systemic issues has been unhelpful. At JTC, this current environment has led to increased costs in the risk and compliance teams, created a need for greater technology spend and a disproportionate amount of time being demanded on the divisional fee earners. The number of regulatory interactions we've been required to engage with across our growing global platform continues to increase period-on-period, reflecting the trend of increased scrutiny across the sector as a whole. Regulation can, of course, also act as a tailwind to our industry, however, creating additional demand for our services and providing M&A opportunities as businesses consolidate to share the cost of the regulatory burden. As I mentioned earlier, the divisions have both performed well, although have been faced with slightly different challenges. In PCS, we have had opportunity of pre-completion work ahead of the delivery of Citi Trust, our largest acquisition to date. As mentioned, we have also been successful in our bid for the KHT business and are now following a similar but less complex integration process and expect to complete the transaction following regulatory consents in Q4. Alongside this, division has benefited from excellent net organic growth of 14.5% and continues to lead its market. In ICS, we have not had the benefit of M&A activity in the period. And as a result, it has been a consolidation phase. We have taken the opportunity to refresh our go-to-market strategy and implement operational and technological enhancements. As indicated earlier, the macro environment has been more challenging. As a result, we were pleased with organic growth performance of 9.2%. This has included the addition of some substantial clients, which will continue to grow and flourish on our watch. Overall, as we look across the group, what is crystal clear is that we have an abundance of opportunities to explore in the second half of the year and beyond. I mentioned earlier that our industry has developed to deal with greater complexity over time, leading to a several market participants leaving the sector. In part, this has been due to increased burden of regulation and internationalization, which in turn has led to sector consolidation. This has then been accelerated by the attractive nature of the business model to investors. However, in our view, the core underlying tailwind has been the growth and increase in popularity of alternative assets. This is particularly evident by the retrenchment of banks from the market where bankable assets alone do not provide the breadth of holistic solutions demanded by ultra-high net worth individuals and families. Similarly, on the institutional side, with the growth of alternatives came the need for new and innovative corporate and fund structure solutions to manage those assets, creating a powerful driver for the industry in the process. As a result, we are operating in a market which has undergone profound structural change. It has expanded, consolidated and become increasingly multifaceted, driving demand for sophisticated administration, advisory and governance solutions, all of which are core strengths of JTC. According to the data provider, Preqin, today, there's around $16 trillion in global capital allocated to alternatives across private equity, real estate, infrastructure, renewables, private debt and hedge strategies. This figure is projected to nearly double to $30 trillion by 2030, growing at 9.5% compound annual growth rate. The growth is driven by both institutional allocators, for example, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and endowments, all of which are supported by JTC's diversified model and by private capital from ultra-high net worth individuals and family offices, many of whom have a scale and sophistication that means they operate at a quasi-institutional level. JTC facilitates this capital deployment by providing administration for funds, companies and trusts. This places JTC at the intersection of two major flows, institutional capital seeking exposure to higher return illiquid strategies and private capital pursuing diversification and intergenerational wealth preservation. From an analysis of our own book of clients, we estimate that around 80% of our revenues are linked to structures that are designed for or contain alternative assets. This underscores the group's strategic focus and exposure to these long-term growth trends. As global allocation shift further towards alternatives, demand for sophisticated and scalable administration services like those provided by JTC can be expected to rise significantly. JTC is, therefore, not merely a professional service provider, we are an enabler of capital allocation in the fast-growing alternatives market. With strong exposure to both institutional and private capital flows, we are positioned to benefit from multiyear tailwinds. We have recently decided to update the names of the divisions to Institutional Capital Services and Private Capital Services, respectively, to better reflect both what we do and this important value driver that is common to both divisions and the vast majority of client types. The alignment between our service offering and expansion of the alternatives ecosystem across both institutional and private capital provides a clear, durable and scalable growth trajectory for the business. Now on to the progress of the Citi Trust integration. This deal has already had a significant positive impact on our profile and in particular, increased the awareness of the JTC brand in the United States and opened up greater access to very important markets in the Middle East and Asia. The Citi credentials have been particularly important in this regard, and we've experienced excellent collaboration from the bank with a sense of a true partnership, including the introduction to both potential and established clients, providing new distribution channels for JTC. We are already able to report that we have a clear route to improve the operating model, bringing an accelerated margin enhancement from our previous estimates made at the time of the acquisition was announced. As we indicated in July trading update, we are now confident the margin of the business will be 30% plus by the end of 2026. And this acquisition continues to look to be one of our most exciting deals to date. More generally, we have proved ourselves as a reliable counterparty for bank carve-out deals by concentrating on the priorities of the banks, which are focused on protecting their reputation and the client experience. We now have a track record that places us as the offtaker of choice for deals of this nature as a lighter operating model is sought as most recently demonstrated by the subsequent KHT deal. Finally, on to the key takeaways. We have delivered sector-leading performance with strong organic growth and stable margins that reflect our ongoing investment in the global platform. We are established as the leading independent provider of trust company services globally and the additions of Citi Trust and KHT are highly complementary to JTC's existing offering. The growth in capital allocation to alternative assets is a major structural tailwind for the group, and JTC is positioned at the intersection of those capital flows ready to capture significant growth opportunity for both divisions. We are progressing well towards achieving our Cosmos era goal of doubling the business from January 2024 and are highly confident we'll be able to do this ahead of schedule before the end of 2027. Looking at the second half of the year, we have a strong new business pipeline and consistent high win rates, giving us good momentum for organic growth in H2. While we will focus on the ongoing integration of Citi and early stages of KHT, we continue to track good opportunities to our M&A pipeline across both divisions and our key target markets. Return on invested capital is expected to continue to strengthen in 2025 with further improvement anticipated in 2026 as we realize the full year contributions from the Citi Trust and KHT acquisitions, both of which have been acquired at excellent multiples. As always, we will continue to invest the growth, ensuring that our global platform is always scalable and fit for purpose. Ultimately, we continue to concentrate on being the best service provider and less on being the biggest. Once again, we maintain our guidance metrics that define what sustainable success looks like for a business of our nature. So thank you for listening and for your ongoing support. We will now be happy to take your questions. Operator: Thank you to Nigel and Martin for the presentation. They're now unmuted. So we'll be happy to take questions. [Operator Instructions] I think the first one was Michael Donnelly. So Michael, we will come to you and unmute first. Michael Donnelly: Three from me. Could we take them in turn, please? First one, Nigel, you said the 20% new business pipeline growth from December to June suggested it was the effect of strong growth in the second half or good growth or something like that. Can you just confirm, should we interpret that growth in the second half as being in line with the 10% or 10% plus organic growth in that period? Nigel Le Quesne: I think, Michael, the signs are good, right? So it's the fullest pipe we've ever had. I think we've seen slower delivery, in particular, in the institutional market in terms of bringing clients through to a successful launch and into fee-earning territory. But the signs are really good, and it's a very strong pipe. So we're expecting, I think, to be keeping above our 10% plus organic growth metric. Michael Donnelly: That's great. Secondly, the 14.5% organic in private capital services, can you tell us how much of that you think came from U.K. Channel Islands? You may not have the exact number, but just a feel for was it the -- was it a major contributor? Or was it just in line with everything else? Nigel Le Quesne: I don't think -- the question is around the exposure to or migration from one to other. We're not really that exposed to the U.K. market to a large degree. So what I can tell you is the Jersey is probably the biggest single jurisdiction for wins in that period. And then we've had some really good wins in Cayman, Singapore and Dubai as well. So -- but not necessarily as a result of sort of driven by tax or other considerations. We're just not exposed to that market particularly. Michael Donnelly: Understood. And then finally, on Kleinwort and Citi, both trust businesses, do you think that once they're both completed and embedded in, the number of -- the amount of revenues exposed to assets under management will be very different from the sort of 15% that I think historically we've been used to that are AUM exposed? Nigel Le Quesne: No. The KHT book is actually a time and materials book in any event. So that doesn't change the mix at all. The Citi book, on the other hand, has got AUM elements associated or primarily as AUM. And the way we're dealing with that is we will use this year's fees to create, if you like, the minimum for future fees. So we create a floor and then we'll run the clock alongside the work we do for these clients and top up accordingly if we believe that's what it is. So in effect, we'll make it -- how can I put it, measured by time and materials. Operator: Thanks, Michael. It was great. Appreciate your questions. Next, could we unmute Vivek Raja, please. Vivek Raja: Thank you for your presentations. I found your results presentation very comprehensive. I don't have any questions. So apologies, I'm going to ask you about the bid situation. Just a simple question. You've set different PUSU dates for Permira and Warburg Pincus. I was just curious about why you've done that? Nigel Le Quesne: No, we didn't set separate different PUSU dates. It's really driven by when the bids were received. So they were just received on different days, and therefore, the dates are different. Unknown Analyst: Nigel, would help if I jumped in. It's [ Stuart ] from Deutsche. The PUSU dates are set by the date of the leak announcement. It's as simple as that, and there's sort of 2 different leak announcements. That's what sets those 28 days. Vivek Raja: Okay. I mean is that process -- how are you going to sort of align that process given you've got competing bids then? Unknown Analyst: There is no obligation to align it. Operator: Can we go to James Clark, next please. James Clark: My first is just on the wider industry and sector. There's obviously, as you know, right now, a lot of PE interest in all sorts of assets, both bolt-on and sort of larger platforms. I guess I just wondered from your perspective, when you take part in these bids and you see PE either out compete on price or maybe you outcompete them. I guess I just wondered what you are able to offer to some of these larger businesses privately that's drives their interest specifically, i.e., things like are they able to accelerate the margin profile because of greater automation or great use of AI? Are there any other areas that they're able to really explore that perhaps publicly as a publicly listed company, it's a bit harder. So I guess what really drives their specific interest? Obviously, it's a highly consolidating industry and there's lots of M&A potential. But what are they able to deliver, do you think privately that perhaps is harder publicly? I have a second question as well, which is more on the margin profile, but I'll wait for the answer. Nigel Le Quesne: I think -- well, can I just answer it from our perspective? Look, we like and have liked being a listed business. So -- but our industry is dominated by private equity, as you probably -- as you're alluding to, and it's at various levels. So if I look at it from our perspective, currently, it's fair to say that the ability to -- we have got balance sheet constraints in a consolidating market. So that is a challenge for us to work through as a listed business. And I think occasionally, it's meant that we couldn't compete for good assets over time. But we work it through and we find and we always have found very good deals to be done sort of away from and outside of perhaps the normal processes that you go through. But clearly, there wouldn't be the same balance sheet constraints in the business as a whole. In terms of what they can do that we couldn't do ourselves, I think it's debatable. I think there is a little bit of -- there can be a sense that we're in sort of period-to-period sprints as a listed business, which you may not be in quite the same place with a longer-term view that may be taken by a private equity house, particularly to, if you like, just we take time to sort of pit stop for a little bit and work out what it is you want to be doing in particular areas, technology you alluded to could be one of those. So there's obviously pros and cons with both, but there's definitely advantages for us for being the only listed business in our space, but occasionally works as a disadvantage for us as well. So I hope that answers the question. James Clark: That does. That's very helpful. And then my second question is just on the additional costs to do with compliance and risk management sort of spending centrally and the regulatory cost headwind. I think you flagged it was 50 bps headwind in the first half. Should we expect that heightened level of spending to kind of continue? And I guess, is it accelerating today versus a year ago? And then sort of follow-up to that would be the upper end of your margin limits being 38%. Is that now not really achievable because you've got this sort of, I guess, headwind structurally to your margin? And then I think -- so that's a big question here, but you also flagged that you can manage that margin headwind through scale. So I'd be interested to know how you sort of do that and why you wouldn't pass it on through price? Nigel Le Quesne: Happy to pick that up. I think it's too early to say whether the risk and compliance or risk and regulation environment we work in is necessarily always going to be a drag on margin to the degree it is today. But just to answer your question about sort of regulatory interactions, which we track, we've gone from 46 in 2022, 58 in 2023, 76 in 2024, expecting 90-plus this year. So that gives you an idea of -- now in fairness, we will have -- we're probably regulated in more ways, in more places than we were initially. But just gives you an idea of the burden and that is permanently some sort of regulatory interaction required. More generally, I think we were quite pleased with the Moneyval visits to Jersey and Guernsey, which obviously quite big jurisdictions for us that seem to go reasonably well. And we had a very good meeting with the group of international finance centers. I think we met 5 or 6 of them together in a forum around the beginning of the year. So having said that, we've seen a little bit more interest in the regulatory environment from both the Netherlands and Luxembourg in the last sort of 6 months or so. So it's there's sort of one area you feel is feeling -- is going quite well and then you'll get interest from another area. So -- but I wouldn't necessarily say that it will -- it means that 38% isn't doable. I just think there are different ingredients in different times, and there's other things we're doing all the time. I mean the margin is quite complicated. I'm sure as you know, growth can affect your margin, tech investment can affect your margin in the short term with a view to being long term. But I wouldn't say it's impossible for us to get to 38%, but it's probably a little bit more difficult than it was when we set the 33% to 38%. And then in terms of how we might address that, I think there's discipline, efficiency are all things I'm thinking of. Scale is part of it, technology is part of it. And frankly, pricing could be part of it as well. So I hope that's helpful. Operator: Thanks, James. We don't have any further hands up. So unless anyone wants to jump in quickly, I think we are through most of our time anyway. Great. Well, thank you very much to Nigel and Martin and all who have attended today. I hope you enjoyed the presentation, and the presentation will be on our website later today also. Many thanks. Goodbye.
Operator: Greetings, and welcome to Else Nutrition Second Quarter Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Alexandra Schilt. Thank you. You may begin. Alexandra Schilt: Good morning, and thank you for joining Else Nutrition's 2025 Second Quarter Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call. On the call with us today is Hamutal Yitzhak, Chief Executive Officer of Else Nutrition. The company issued a press release today containing its 2025 2nd quarter financial results, which is also posted on the company's website. If you have any questions after the call or would like any additional information about the company, please contact Crescendo Communications at (212) 671-1020. The company's management will now provide prepared remarks reviewing the financial and operational results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2025. Before we get started, we would like to remind everyone that today's call will contain forward-looking statements that are based on current assumptions and subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected and the company undertakes no obligation to update these statements, except as required by law. Information about these risks and uncertainties are included in the company's filings as well as periodic filings with regulators in Canada and the United States, which you can find on SEDAR and Else Nutrition's website. With that, we will now turn the call over to Hamutal Yitzhak, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, Hamutal. Hamutal Yitzhak: Thank you, Alexandra, and good morning, everyone. The second quarter of 2025 marked steady progress in our transformation journey. Despite continued macroeconomic pressure and funding constraints. We advanced on several critical fronts, including streamlining our operations and our retail distribution, gaining regulatory momentum and building our pipeline for future cost-efficient sustainable growth. Before diving deeper, I want to acknowledge the reporting delays. Finally, accurate reporting is central to building investor trust. And while delays were driven by technical and external factors, it does not meet the high standards we set for ourselves. Despite operating with a very lean and understaffed financial team, we have managed to catch up with the time lines of the financial statements, and we expect to file on time for Q3. We are taking steps to ensure our reporting processes are fully aligned with regulatory time lines going forward. We remain committed to compliance and transparency for our shareholders. We began 2025 with a clear mandate to operate more efficiently, conserve cash and position the company for long-term sustainability. In Q2, we continued to implement purposeful initiatives to simplify our organization, reduce overhead and increase operational agility. These changes are not only lowering costs, but also helping us to focus on the areas of our business that deliver the most value. One of the most impactful initiatives underway is our planned transition to European-based powder production. By moving key manufacturing closer to our international supply chain, we expect to reduce production costs, expand margins and mitigate tariffs and logistics risks. We believe this strategic shift is essential to scaling efficiently and effectively. On the commercial front, our kids ready-to-drink products continue to expand within Walmart, where we are now available in approximately 1,000 stores. Importantly, our products are resonating with consumers seeking healthier plant-based alternatives for their families. On the regulatory front, we continue to be actively involved and encouraged by the developing legislation around modernizing infant formula standards in the United States. The momentum we saw earlier this year from operations Stork Speed has carried forward with the financial year 2026 Agriculture Appropriations bill, both reinforcing the need to innovation and resilience in the U.S. instant formula market. In addition, the recommendations from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and medicine, particularly around phasing outdated PR testing in favor of more scientifically robust instant growth studies are especially encouraging for Else. These developments give us increased confidence that a regulatory pathway is opening for our plant-based infant formula, and we are preparing accordingly to advance clinical trials as soon as practicable. Beyond the U.S., we are seeing encouraging momentum internationally. Our Toddler Signature products manufactured in Europe continues to perform well online and is generating growing interest from distributors in key global markets. On the adult ready-to-drink line while cash flow constraints have required us to delay the full commercial rollout, retailer engagement has been strong. We are confident that when resources allow this product will represent a meaningful growth lever, particularly in North America and select international markets. At the same time, we are actively engaging in partnership discussions with several large companies that have international operations. These conversations stand both commercial distribution opportunities and strategic R&D collaboration. While no agreements are final, we view these discussions as highly encouraging as they validate Else brand strength, its unique intellectual property and the global demand for plant-based infant nutrition. Before reviewing the financial results of Q2, I want to address the revenue decline compared with Q1 25 and discuss some key factors that contributed to this. First, inventory constraints. We lost more than $300,000 in sales due to out-of-stock situations, primarily in serial, which typically contribute 15% to 20% of our online and retail revenue. given cash priorities, we were unable to replenish in time, but production is now underway and expected to restore availability this month. Second, normal fluctuations of retail sales U.S. retail sales were strong in Q1. Q2 reflects a normalization against that peak, a seasonal pattern, we also observed last year. We anticipate retail sales to strengthen again in the coming months. And lastly, Canadian market. Out-of-stock conditions across our Canadian product portfolio, again, tied to cash priorities reduced revenue from Canada. We are actively restructuring Canadian operations to build a more profitable and sustainable distribution model in parallel to avoid out-of-stock situations. Now let me briefly walk you through our financial performance for the second quarter, which is reported in Canadian dollars. Total revenues for the quarter were $1.5 million compared to $2.6 million in the second quarter of 2024, reflecting softer sales in our core categories, mainly due to inventory constraints. On a half year basis, revenues totaled $3.6 million, down from $4.8 million in the prior year period. Gross profit for the quarter was a loss of $55,000 a compared to the positive $263,000 in Q2 2024. This translates into a negative gross margin of minus 3.7% and versus a positive margin of 10% in the prior year. Importantly, a large portion of the revenue decline was caused by late 2024 U.S. and Canada deductions totaling CAD 270,000 recorded in Q2, which reduced revenue and gross profit that we believe are not reflective of Q2's performance. Importantly, we made significant progress on cost discipline. Operating expenses were reduced by almost 60% year-over-year, falling to $1.3 million from $3.4 million in Q2 2024. Notably, wages came down from $1.1 million in Q1 '14 and to $871,000 in Q1 2025 and to $573,000 in Q2 2025, a 50% reduction. In consulting fees, we cut costs by 90% and office and miscellaneous expenses by close to 60%. These efforts contributed to a narrowing of the operating loss which improved by 55% to $1.4 million from $3.1 million in Q2 '24. At the bottom line, nonoperating items, including the revaluation of warrants convertible impacts and foreign exchange losses weighed on the results. Net loss for the quarter was $1.4 million compared to $2.5 million in Q2 an improvement of roughly 43% year-over-year. We will continue to operate with a lean team structure through 2026 and remain committed to achieving cash flow positivity by late '26 or early '27. Looking ahead, we remain focused on balancing near-term financial discipline with long-term strategic growth. Our priorities for the next several quarters include: growing our online business, where we continue to see strong engagement from health-conscious families Accelerating international expansion with particular focus on Europe and select high potential markets, progressing regulatory discussions to bring our infant formula to market and create a new category in plant-based infant nutrition; improving margins through continued supply chain optimization and sourcing efficiencies and broadening our product portfolio with innovations tailored to both children and adults. At this point, I'd like to address questions that's coming from investors, Alexandra, please lead the Q&A session. Alexandra Schilt: Thank you, Hamutal. Our first question is, can you elaborate on your regulatory strategy and time line? Hamutal Yitzhak: Certainly, we see meaningful progress at both the legislative and scientific levels. operations store speed in the financial year 2026 Agriculture appropriations bill are key milestones that support broader access to alternative formulas. Meanwhile, the National Academy's recommendations to replace outdated testing methods, give us confidence in the FDA's willingness to modernize. We believe these developments will enable us to advance clinical trials in the near future, a critical step in bringing our infant formula to market. Alexandra Schilt: Thank you. Are you exploring M&A or partnerships to accelerate growth? Hamutal Yitzhak: Yes. We continue to evaluate opportunities for strategic collaboration that could expand distribution, enhance our R&D capabilities and accelerate regulatory approvals. While we remain selective, we are open to partnerships that align with our mission and deliver value to shareholders. Alexandra Schilt: Thank you. Our next question, gross margins turned negative in Q2. What drove this? And how will you improve them? Hamutal Yitzhak: The negative gross margin of minus 3.7% in Q2 was driven by a combination of lower sales volumes, higher per unit production costs that were based on when for production costs as the inventory sold was produced in '24 and on the late QS and Canadian reductions that drove revenue down by an additional $270,000. Additionally, some extraordinary cost items in supply chain and distribution weighed on results. Going forward, we are negotiating better supplier terms, improving logistics efficiency and managing inventory more tightly. We expect margins to recover to positive territory in the quarters ahead. Alexandra Schilt: Thank you. When do you expect to achieve positive cash flow? Hamutal Yitzhak: Based on our current trajectory and operational plans, we expect to achieve cash flow breakeven between late '26 and early '27. This time line reflects both the ramp-up in revenue as new distribution channel scale and ongoing cost optimization. Importantly, every quarter between now and then should show progress towards narrowing losses and improving gross margin. Alexandra Schilt: Thank you. With the cease trade order still in effect, how are you addressing regulatory challenges? Hamutal Yitzhak: Upon filing the Q2 '25 financials, the BCSC British Columbia Securities Commission has lifted the cease trade order on the closing date at trade of September 12, 2025. And we are currently awaiting the Toronto Stock Exchange approval. Alexandra Schilt: Thank you, Hamutal. That does conclude our Q&A session. At this point, I'll turn it back over to you for closing remarks. Hamutal Yitzhak: Thank you, Alexandra. In closing, the second quarter reflects the continued progress we are making in transforming else into a leaner, stronger and more focused business. We have stabilized revenues, improved gross margins and significantly reduce our operating losses, all while positioning ourselves for future growth. We remain deeply grateful to our investors partners and customers for their continued confidence and support. We are excited about the road ahead and look forward to sharing further progress in the coming quarters. Thank you for joining today's call. Operator: This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.
Robert Bishop: Good morning, everyone, and apologies for the slight delay. Thank you for joining us for today's presentation. I'm Rob Bishop, Chief Executive Officer for New Hope Group. On my left, I'm joined by Rebecca Rinaldi, our CFO; and Dominic O'Brien on my right, who is our Executive General Manager and Company Secretary. This morning, we released our full year results for the 2025 financial year. Hopefully, you've had a chance to go through the presentation. But in any case, I'll step you through our key highlights for the year before we open up the line for a Q&A session. Despite a softening coal price and a challenging operating environment, 2025 was a strong year for New Hope, where we delivered another considerable increase in saleable coal production as we continue to execute our organic growth plans. Pleasingly, we've seen a significant improvement in safety this year with our 12-month moving average TRIFR decreasing by 35% to 3.22. It's positive to see these metrics improving, and we'll continue to focus on this area as we move into 2026. During the year, we navigated significant wet weather and logistics constraints at our operations in both Queensland and New South Wales. Despite these uncontrollable factors, the group delivered run-of-mine coal production of 16.4 million tonnes, up 33%; saleable coal production of 10.7 million tonnes, up 18% and coal sales of 10.5 million tonnes, up 21%. In terms of our financial highlights, we delivered an underlying EBITDA of $766 million and a statutory net profit after tax of $439 million. Both earnings results were largely impacted by lower realized pricing with the Newcastle export coal price hitting a 4-year low during the 2025 financial year. This year, our business generated $571 million in cash flow from operating activities, which funded investment in our organic growth pipeline and has enabled us to continue to deliver returns to our shareholders. On that note, I'm pleased to announce the Board has declared a fully franked final dividend of $0.15 per share. This brings total dividend for FY '25 to $0.34 per share, all of which are fully franked. Turning to safety. The safety of our people is a key priority, and we are focused on ensuring our people operate in an environment where they are unharmed. As I mentioned earlier, we have seen an improvement in our TRIFR and our All Injury Frequency Rate since we reported to the market last year. Pleasingly, our TRIFR now sits below the 5-year industry average for New South Wales open-cut coal mines. While there's still opportunity for improvement, it's pleasing to see the safety programs we put in place during the year have had a positive impact across our sites. Turning to our operational performance. This year, our Bengalla mine in New South Wales faced notable operational challenges due to significant weather events and logistics constraints across the Hunter Valley. These disruptions led to elevated shipping queues, increased rail cancellations and stock management challenges at site. Despite these headwinds, Bengalla mine delivered a solid performance, producing 7.9 million tonnes of saleable coal, just 2% lower than the previous year's output. Despite lower-than-expected production, Bengalla mine achieved an FOB cash cost, excluding royalties and trade coal, of $76.50 per sales tonne, within guidance range, and a 2% improvement from the previous period. The ramp-up of our New Acland mine progressed throughout the 2025 financial year, supported by commencement of night shift operations in the prep plant and increased workforce intake. As a result, the mine delivered 2.8 million tonnes of salable coal and continues to ramp up towards its target of becoming a 5 million tonnes per annum operation. Overall, strong operational performance at both sites contributed to an 18% increase in group saleable coal production, reaching 10.7 million tonnes. Group FOB cash costs improved by 8% to $82.40 per sales tonne. In terms of our financial performance, the group achieved an average sales price, including hedging, of $161 per tonne and an underlying margin of $64 per tonne. During the year, the thermal coal market was impacted by oversupply, economic uncertainty and a mild winter in Asia, resulting in a softening in coal price. Despite these market conditions, the group's low-cost assets remain resilient and continue to generate solid margins through the cycle. Our business generated $571 million in cash flows from operating activities, enabled continued investment in our assets, allowing us to return $347 million to our shareholders by way of fully franked dividends. This represents $0.41 per share paid during the period, which equates to a gross dividend yield of 12%. Our approach to capital management is underpinned by a disciplined focus on delivering sustainable returns to shareholders. Our two forms of capital returns are fully franked dividends and on-market share buyback. As at the end of 2025, the pace of the share buyback has slowed in conjunction with increase in the company's share price. As previously mentioned, our Board has declared a fully franked dividend of $0.15 per share. New Hope has a significant franking account balance, and we continue to utilize this value for our shareholders. Today and in conjunction with our results release, we announced the introduction of a Dividend Reinvestment Plan, providing shareholders with the option to reinvest their dividends. The DRP is in operation for the 2025 final dividend. Our group strategy is to safely, responsibly and efficiently operate our low-cost, long-life assets with a focus on disciplined capital management, providing valuable returns to our shareholders. We believe our investment proposition is underpinned by these six key areas, which I'll briefly touch on in the following slides. The outlook for our industry is strong. Our strategy is underpinned by the belief that demand for thermal coal produced from Australian operations will continue to play a vital role in providing reliable and secure energy supply to the world. Whilst we expect coal's share of global power generation to reduce over time, the sheer increase in global power demand will continue to support seaborne thermal coal exports into the future. In addition, the aging of existing thermal coal assets, combined with underinvestment in new projects suggest a potential supply shortfall and attractive pricing outlook for the industry. Regardless of pricing dynamics, our low-cost assets produce high-quality coal, providing resilience in cyclical environment and ensuring continued margin generation. In a year where the coal price has touched multiyear lows, our assets were still able to generate margins of circa 40%, which showcases our low-cost nature as well as the significant upside potential available to New Hope and ultimately, our shareholders. New Hope holds a key focus on delivering returns to shareholders. In the last year -- in the last 4 years, fully franked dividends have totaled $1.9 billion, which equates to nearly 55% of the company's market capitalization as at 31 July 2025. In addition, New Hope's share price has outperformed the ASX All Ordinaries by nearly 8x since its initial public offering in 2003. At New Hope, we take pride in our people and the communities in which we operate. We aim to effectively manage our economic, social and environmental impact to ensure the resilience of our business so that we can continue to create stakeholder value. Key aspect of being a responsible operator is rehabilitation. At our Bengalla and New Acland mines, we have disturbed approximately 3,000 hectares of land for mining operations and rehabilitated 36% of that disturbance. In addition, the majority of our land is used for agricultural operations once successfully rehabilitated. Looking ahead, we remain focused on the organic growth of our business throughout the continued ramp-up of New Acland mine, the sustained production at Bengalla mine and the development of Malabar's Maxwell Underground mine, all of which are low unit cost assets. Our pipeline targets a significant increase in coal production over the next 3 years, which represents low-risk, cost-effective growth. Looking ahead to the 2026 financial year, we are focused on remaining resilient, low-cost coal producer while executing our organic growth plans, which will enable us to continue to deliver shareholder value. Thank you very much. I'll now hand over to the operator to start the Q&A session. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question is a phone question from Rob Stein from Macquarie. Robert Stein: Just looking at Slide 14 of your presentation, you've outlined the growth program or a growth profile. Just sort of chipping into it a little bit more, I noticed the Maxwell mine progressive ramp-up and the long-term rate there providing an indication of absolute volumes. Just wondering if you could comment on that as to how you see the ramp-up potential of the mine. And then similarly, just looking at the constant sustained basis for Bengalla, just thinking through the long-term CapEx requirements there. Robert Bishop: Sure. So I guess with our organic ramp-up, we're looking to double our production from -- I think your first question was in relation to Maxwell mine, Malabar's mine. That is already in ramp up. Bord and pillar pit is fully operational. And really, the increase in -- material increase in tonnes will come from the longwall pit or the Woodlands Hill pit when we should see first longwall coal first quarter calendar year 2026. So from that projection, and you can see the uplift on that chart, that should get up to around sort of 6 million to 7 million product tonnes from that operation around about sort of FY '29 onwards. So -- and then I guess, with regards to Bengalla, growth project there has been very successful. Both the prep plant and the pit has achieved targeted production from that growth project albeit hampered by uncontrollable events offside. So you would have seen in the report, we touched on weather events and resulting logistics impact. So that's hampered us in the final quarter of the FY '25 year, and it continued to hamper us into the beginning of this year, and we'll be putting out guidance for this year, I think, in mid-November. Robert Stein: So just as a brief follow-up, in Maxwell, you've got 6 -- sort of ramping up to the 6 million tonne rate there. That's what we should be looking at modeling and taking forward in terms of a view on the mine's potential? Robert Bishop: Yes, I think somewhere in the 6 million to 7 million is what the expectation is. I guess where that asset is at the moment, it's developing up the first longwall panel. So obviously, when you get into a longwall pit, despite all the exploration you can do, you don't really get to understand geological conditions until you're down there. So that's progressing well. And like I said, we're expecting to get the first year of the longwall in first quarter of next year. So assuming everything goes to plan, that should get up to sort of that circa 6 million to 7 million product per annum. Operator: [Operator Instructions] We'll now move to our webcast questions while we wait for any other phone questions to register. Your first webcast question reads, with thermal coal now having retraced back to $102 per tonne, what are your views on the state of the market. Anything we could look out for into the second half other than typical seasonality in coal demand in industrial production and renewable energy generation? Robert Bishop: Yes, that's quite right. And I think we've almost dipped under $100 for the Newcastle index. So pricing is certainly challenging at the moment. We've seen good, consistent supply across the globe of thermal coal. And we've also seen the impact of low coking coal prices affecting thermal coal with some semi-soft products being pushed into the thermal coal market. So if you overlay a fairly soft demand for this calendar year, that's obviously put downward pressure on pricing. As to what that's going to do moving forward, it's a good question. I think there could be some restocking as we go into the Northern Hemisphere winter, which is those typical cyclical changes which you mentioned. But I think our view is we don't see a significant increase in coal prices in sort of the next 6 months or so. I think that oversupply, which I talked about, that really needs to push itself out of the market, and we'll see what this Northern Hemisphere winter brings. Operator: Your next webcast question asks, during the new year, New Hope Group increased its equity interest in Malabar Resources Limited by 3% to 22.98%. Is the business looking to increase its equity interest in Malabar again this year? Robert Bishop: So I guess overarching, our key focus is our organic growth, which we've touched on at both Bengalla and Acland. Yes, we did take an additional 3% in the financial year just gone, and that was really off the back of an approach from another major shareholder. I guess with all M&A, we consider acquisitions as a put forward. But obviously, any acquisition we do would need to meet stringent returns, et cetera. And obviously, with the soft market at the moment, we'd need to take that into account. Operator: Your next webcast question asks, your final dividend is much higher compared to what your peers have announced. Are you able to sustain this level of dividend in the current coal price environment? Robert Bishop: Yes, that's a good question. And as always, we like to reward our shareholders with dividends. And I think the $0.15 fully franked, which we announced today, has been well received. I guess our underlying assets really put us in the position to reward shareholders, the low strip ratio and as a result, low cost, we put a lot of focus on cost control. And as a result, we continue to make a strong margin even in the cyclical lows, which we're seeing right now. So we're confident that's going to continue, and we'll see what this year lies ahead for us. Operator: There are no further webcast or phone questions at this time. I'll now hand back for any closing remarks. Robert Bishop: Well, thank you for joining. And again, apologies for the delay in our start, a few technical issues, but it's been a pleasure delivering this result, and we'll see you next time. Thank you.
Operator: Good morning, and welcome to the EKF Diagnostics Holdings plc Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Gavin Jones, CEO. Good morning, sir. Gavin Jones: Good morning. Thank you. And just to reiterate, that's EKF Diagnostics, and this is our interim results for 2025. Thank you all for joining us today. I really appreciate it. I think I'll start with describing the team. Hopefully, by now, you know who I am. Joining me in the room is Stephen Young, our CFO; and slightly off camera is our Executive Chair, Julian Baines. You may hear him chip in every now and then, he can't help himself. But getting to the meat of the bones today, I think it's important to say what we're going to be talking about is a fairly simple but significant update for the business. If you look at the revenues for the first half, we're at GBP 25.2 million, which is very much in line with the same period last year. So you could say that it looks flat. But if you look at it on a constant currency basis, we're closer to GBP 26 million. If you also consider the fact that we've taken out some of the lower-margin products that were causing us some challenges previously. Then actually, it is -- we are delivering significant growth in the first half and will continue to do so into H2. You can see the impact of the reduction of those lower-margin products by the improvement in gross profit and the gross margin now to 50% from 48% in the previous period. In terms of increased EBITDA, we're up 7.4% to GBP 5.8 million versus GBP 5.4 million in the same period. Profit is also up 16.1% and the cash continues to grow, GBP 16.6 million at the end of this period, but has continued to grow and is certainly looking a lot better, and we will be on target to hit the numbers that we previously talked about somewhere in the region of GBP 20 million by the end of the year. I think last time we spoke, I talked a lot about implementing the strategy that we had for the business. And I think it's important to keep coming back to that and communicate that, that has now been implemented right throughout the business. I personally have gone around to every site and spoken to everyone and made sure that they understood what the strategy is, how it's going to work so that we have that clarity and vision and focus right throughout the business. We continue to look at our production capacity, as you'll see a little bit later on. I'll talk about the number of analyzers we put out into the market. So it's important that we do continue to support that improvement in production capacity for our point-of-care products. We have improved the output in that area, but we look to continue investment in that space to get to a 30% increase. Our hematology analyzer production is up 60% versus the same period last year, and we anticipate that, that will deliver significant consumable growth in H2 2025 going into full year 2026 and beyond. Most of you would have seen the announcement that went out earlier on this year where we talked about signing 3 new contracts in some of the strategic growth areas that we have been targeting, specifically in Africa and Latin America. And that will continue to deliver that growth over the next 12 to 24 months. If you look at one of our other areas, Beta-Hydroxybutyrate, that's up 12% or 16% on a consistent currency basis. That is always a really good measure for how EKF Diagnostics is performing and has a big influence on our gross margin. Certainly, a lot of the reason for that is the increased focus with the splitting of the sales team to focus entirely on BHB or Point-of-Care depending on which area they find themselves in and also some of the development of our key partners within the U.S. market. Each time I do this, I will come back to what the Board expectations are, I think it's important to give an update on what the Board is expecting to see and how we're delivering on that. So the first thing they wanted to see was some capital deployment to deliver sustainable growth and unlock unrealized potential. First part of that was really to invest in operational excellence to increase production capacity, improve efficiency and implement new technologies. So that has been initiated, and you've seen some of the benefits of that by the fact that we've been able to get so many analyzers out in the first half. This will continue to run into 2026 and beyond. This is an ongoing program and something that we will continue to invest in. It's -- where we really focus at the moment is developing the analyzer production to be able to be more efficient by looking at subassemblies, but also be able to really get more analyzers out there and make sure that they are going out at a lower cost to the business. Second phase of that will be to look at the consumable production, and that's currently ongoing. We have two projects in that space to deliver at the end of the year, which will give us a better idea of what we need to invest moving forward and how we will do that. We also wanted to make sure that we had a commercial team that was able to respond to the growth that we anticipate, certainly in the focus areas of hematology, Beta-Hydroxybutyrate and fermentation. That's still ongoing. It does take time when you're restructuring your sales team, but we have put in new people within the marketing side and also within the sales side, certainly within the U.S. market, which has been a key focus for us. Some of that will continue into the rest of this year, but we do anticipate that we will have a complete expanded commercial team by the end of 2025. In terms of our new product development, that is specifically aligned to our growth strategy. We are on track there. We are looking to work within Beta-Hydroxybutyrate area and also hematology and the projects that we have in that space are ongoing and look to be on track to continue according to schedules that have already been set down. In terms of our second point, we implement the share buyback to improve earnings per share. We have utilized some of our cash reserves to implement a share buyback. I know that a lot of people have been asking whether we would be reimplementing the dividend, and that's not something we're currently looking at the moment. We feel that this is a much more controllable way to use our cash reserves and to improve the earnings per share. So far, we bought 4.6 million shares, which I think is probably went a little bit slower than we want and some of that's down to the liquidity that we have in the market. We're a very stable share. There aren't as many shares to buy out there as we might like. But we have continued with that share buyback, and we will continue with that share buyback for as long as we need to. So we're certainly continuing into H2 2025 with that process. So from the 5-year strategy, again, I think it's important to be consistent with our messaging and make sure that we come back to that 5-year strategy and keep talking about it. So for the 2029 target where we're looking at increasing revenue and EBITDA, revenue target for 2025 looks to be in line with expectations. We have had high volumes of low-margin analyzer build in the first half. Obviously, that does have an impact on our profits and our EBITDA. So I think we'll wait and see where we get to with EBITDA, but we are looking like we are in a good position. For the Point-Of-Care hemoglobin business, evaluations are ongoing in U.S. blood banks. They've been established and are still -- we have to get results in each of those spaces. This is a long-term investment. This is a conservative market, but it's the most highest value part of the business for us and certainly something that we are looking to grow. We have won new tenders in both Africa, and we've now seen Peru come back online, which is an important partner for us. For the #1 in ketone testing in BHB for lab and Point-of Care, as you know, we are already #1 for the lab testing, but we are developing our lab tests further to make sure that we can secure and extend that business even more. We will also be launching the Point-of-Care products in this area and the development program for that is ongoing and on track and looking to be in good shape. So in terms of where we are with the 5-year strategy from a geography point of view, I think it's important to note that we shouldn't focus too much on the APAC negatives where we've seen a drop of 26%. That does seem to be a lot, but we're really talking about a much smaller part of the business. And a lot of that business was really focused on the discontinued products, so the clinical chemistry. And that's one of the reasons why we chose to take those products out. They weren't really contributing to the business in terms of margin. So it made sense to realign the business, focus on the Point-of-Care side of things. And that's really what you're seeing now is a realignment and refocus in the APAC region. By the same rationale, you can see that the Americas has grown by 3%, driven by continued BHB expansion in the U.S. and hematology coming back online in Peru. EMEA has also grown with opening new markets. We certainly signed a new contract in Africa, stabilized the Russian business, and we're looking to deliver extensive growth in that area in H2. Obviously, there's been a lot of analyzer build, and that's something I'll talk about in a second. But what that does mean is that we exceeded those markets and now we anticipate to see much higher consumable usage within H2 2025. So in terms of that analyzer build, I think it's important to really reiterate just how much we've seen going out the door versus the previous period. So 125% growth in our hematology analyzer build, which is pretty substantial, most of that going into Peru, Brazil, U.S.A. and Italy. HemoControl is obviously one of the key products in our hemoglobin range, but it's also partnered there with Diaspect, which has previously seen huge analyzer growth. That's not quite as big as what is looking HemoControl, we're only looking at 40%, but that's still a huge jump up in where we anticipate to be. A lot of that's going into blood banks. And we certainly new business that we have in India and Uganda leading to that 40% uplift. Overall, we're seeing a total 60% hematology analyzer increase in terms of the demand. That obviously then means that there's a bit of a reduction in HematatSTAT and Ultracrit. Those are somewhat legacy products. There is still a market for them certainly in the U.S., and we are still serving that market, but the focus is without a doubt on our HemoControl and Diaspect product ranges. In terms of our Life Sciences business, I think it's important to keep making sure that we give a good strong update here. It's challenging because we can't always talk about some of the partners we're working with. They would rather remain anonymous for certainly business and commercial reasons, and that's perfectly acceptable to us. It would help if we could talk a little bit more about them. But unfortunately, what I can do is talk about the size of the pipeline. So we've got a $1.5 million pipeline on new business currently coming through, one of which is due to deliver anytime soon. I wish I could have said something different, but we do have a significant contract in the final stages of agreement. It's just going through the signing process. Again, I won't be able to announce this to the market, but we will try to give you regular updates on new customers and new contracts as they do come through. As you can see, there's a various number of different sized opportunities in the pipeline. I think it's important to say that some of these would be simple tech transfer, which is great. That's exactly what we want. Some of them, like the one big opportunity we have here, which is worth nearly $0.5 million in terms of dollars will take a little bit more effort. There's a little bit more development in that, and that one is going to be an 18-month project. Hopefully, we will be able to announce that when that comes through. But as you can see, there is a pipeline. It is relatively significant. And this is all new business and new customers. So it's important to make sure that people understand that we are bringing in more customers than we ever have done before. We've got more people coming on to site to do audits, more people looking at our capacity and really being attracted by what we have to offer in Life Sciences. And I think this is a significant turnaround from where we were previously. We were seeing customers before, but we weren't seeing the level of interest that we've got now. And a lot of that's down to the sales team and what they're bringing in, but also the new site management that we brought in our life science facility and how they're running that operation. So for the rest of 2025, it's certainly important that we make sure that we continue to deliver on that broader pipeline of new life science opportunities. I said that we will deliver on that one significant partnership. I'm hoping that we can add to that. Whether we can announce that, we'll see. But yes, we will definitely deliver on one new customer, and it will be significant in the Life Sciences side of things. We will focus on the pull-through of consumables and that aligning with our record hematology analyzer production achieved in H1 2025. It's key to our strategy is to really get those consumables out there and make sure that the analyzers that we've used to see the market are being utilized in the right way. And then we'll continue to support the strategy development by boosting supply of our hematology products into new markets. whilst developing existing markets further. We've got a long history in this space. We do have a lot of well-established customers, but we are looking to add to that and redevelop some of those markets as we move forward. Like I said, I thought it would be a simple update today just to tell you where we are, but also very positive. Thank you very much. I think we'll go to questions. Operator: Stephen and Gavin, thank you very much for your presentation. [Operator Instructions] I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed by our investor dashboard. As you can see, we received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. Can I please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Stephen Young: Okay. I think there's a first couple of questions, which we can see relate to CapEx. Julian Baines: Read them out... Stephen Young: The first two are linked to. Julian Baines: Can you quantify CapEx Point-of-Care capacity expansion? Is the Fermentation CapEx done? What's the total CapEx budget for '25, '26, which is similar to with production capacity expansion plans underway, what capital investment is required. So they're pretty much the same and what's the effect on short-term margins? Gavin Jones: Go ahead. No Stephen go ahead. Stephen Young: In terms of capital expenditure for -- it's mainly Point-of-Care. The Fermentation CapEx is done in the U.S. There will always be some small pieces of equipment that we continue to buy each year just to enhance our service offering, but no any other level of the money was already spent. So in terms of the split of this particular year for 2025, our budget Point-of-Care is probably GBP 2.5 million and GBP 1 million -- GBP 2.5 million spent on the German facility, which is all Point-of-Care and then a mixture of about GBP 1 million being spent in the U.S., which is the Point-of-Care BHB and Fermentation. So we're looking to spend around that level, maybe a little bit less than that this year in terms of the actual amount, but that will be a follow over then into next year. We were expecting probably to spend again probably another GBP 3.5 million to GBP 4 million on CapEx next year, mainly in relation to Point-of-Care capacity. And we don't really see that having a major impact on the margins in the short term. Gavin Jones: Okay. And in terms of which production capacity expansion plans are underway, it's a question from George. So we've done some work in terms of subassemblies, so rather than produce everything in-house, we have outsourced some of our subassembly work that's allowed us to basically put more out there. That has been implemented, and that's been successful. So we've had a few months of that now, and we're looking to expand that further. We do have an external project ongoing, which is due to deliver two stages to that, one delivers in October, the other delivers in November. And that will -- that's very much more focused on our consumable side of things. The point of that project is to really review where we are right now, look at what improvements can be made to our consumable lines, especially in the hematology area and then also to produce a plan for how we can extend that completely. So really redeveloping our consumable lines from scratch. But there will be an interim period where we look to improve the efficiency and capacity on those lines. So that project is ongoing, delivering in H2 2025, but they will continue into 2026 and beyond. Go ahead. Julian Baines: Next question. Yes. Tim has asked, first of all, very encouraging set of results and congratulations to you and the team -- can you talk a little bit more about the Life Sciences plant in South Peru and put this in context on ROI on return on investment and the facilities there? Gavin Jones: Yes, sure. I think in terms of where we are with the Life Sciences pipeline, it's going well. I think it's something that takes time. I think we said that a lot, but we need to be patient with it. In terms of return on investment, at the time when we did make the investments in Life Sciences, we had the cash available. We needed to make an investment in that area no matter what, just to be able to serve our existing business and that existing business that exists and it still really underpins everything that we do there. So that would have probably been in the region of anywhere between GBP 5 million to GBP 6 million, GBP 7 million. So yes, we have added to that, but we are looking for -- this is a long-term investment here to be able to build a business that really is something different than anything we've ever done before. So I think it's challenging to say when we'll hit that return on investment. I don't want to make any promises there. But really, what we do need -- we always needed to make that investment or some level of investment. We may have gone a little bit higher than what we needed to originally, but that has given us the opportunity to grow that business, something that we wouldn't have had if we've made that investment. Stephen Young: And that particular site does manufacture the BHB site. Gavin Jones: Exactly. Stephen Young: And as Gavin was explaining, that investment needed to be made to a certain level to protect that BHB business. Julian Baines: That's growing year-on-year I think it's important to mention, as you've already mentioned, there's a lot of visitors coming to that site. It's becoming very clear that strategically, we've chosen now making sure we do tech transfer contracts and people are coming and saying that there's very little capacity globally. And so seeing our new site coming to it, we're starting to feel a little more comfortable that we've taken our time. We've got our strategy right. We've got the right salespeople, and we're targeting the right customers. And we're seeing encouraging signs this year where we didn't particularly previously. Gavin Jones: Yes. I think that goes some way to answering in line with [indiscernible] question as well, which is how are you progressing with increasing utilization at the South Peru facility. Yes, very well. I think as Julian alluded to, we've got a lot of customers coming to us now. And one of the things that they're interested in is the fact that we do have capacity I think we wouldn't be seeing so many customers if we didn't have that capacity. One of the things that they do tell us is that they have been to see other partners, potential partners, and they've not been able to serve them. So you've either got the very, very big kind of food production facilities that the type of customers we're talking to, it wouldn't suit their purposes or then you have other sites who maybe are closer to our site, but they don't have any available capacity. So it is helping with bringing in new customers, and we are moving towards filling that site. We're nowhere near it yet. We're still at around maybe 10%, 15%. We can certainly take on more and will take on more. But yes, we will update the market as and when we can. We may not be able to tell you exactly who we're working with, but we'll be able to tell you what we're doing. Julian Baines: Next question. Does such a strong increase in analyzer volumes and thus revenues mean that consumables were down in H1? Gavin Jones: Not necessarily. No. I mean, I think one of the things that's important to know is every time we sell analyzers, it does come with consumable sales. I mean the normal business is still going on. It's just that when we win tenders, we do have a very big influx of analyzers at the front end of that tender. You can't work in that tender until someone has an analyzer to work with. They also -- when they do take those analyzers, they also take a percentage of consumables as well. But once you've done that initial outlay, you then have nothing but consumables for the period of that tender. So no, I'd say consumables were not down, but I just say they were not down. It's just that the focus has been very heavily on putting analyzers out there in the field because you need to see that market. Julian Baines: We would expect to see significant consumable growth on those? Gavin Jones: Absolutely. I mean we've talked about this before where it takes -- it can take anywhere from 3 to 4 months to start seeing the consumable pull through. So we're already in that phase, but we'll see that continue into H2 2025 and beyond because a lot of these tenders aren't just a single year, they're 2-, 3-year tenders. Julian Baines: From George, given consolidation in the diagnostics space, do you see EKF as a consolidator or a potential target over the next few years? That's an open question in E-mail? Gavin Jones: I think it depends on who you ask. I mean, we'd never say no to the right type of opportunity if the right opportunity came about. But at the same time, yes, I mean, we certainly could be a target for the right type of partner, and we certainly take anything serious into consideration. Julian Baines: And then Tim has said again, because I think you were a politician the last time [indiscernible] expected time line, say, 3 to 5 years from making sufficient target return on this investment. If I say, I think it's part of that 5-year plan, we expected to get by the end of the 5-year plan full ROI on that facility by 2029. Gavin Jones: Yes, absolutely. Julian Baines: Hopefully sooner. Depend on the pipeline, but it's developing well. Gavin Jones: Yes. And I think, yes, you're right, it was a politician answer. But the reason being is I think we needed to rebase that business and relook at it. And promises were made previously that we haven't followed through on, and we accept and understand that. I don't want to make those mistakes myself. So I've got to be careful to make sure they don't overpromise. But yes, certainly, within that 5-year plan, Life Sciences is a significant part of that and we should be hitting the levels that we need to in that space within that time. Any more questions that... Operator: Julian, Steve and Gavin, thank you for answering all those questions you have from investors. And of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, Gavin, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments? Julian Baines: Should we answer the last question. Gavin Jones: We did just have one last question from Tim. Tim you've been very busy this morning. So lastly, for the share buyback, would you consider embedding this policy as part of your ongoing positive free cash flow generation and having, say, a monthly rolling program? I can say quite simply, yes. That would be something... Julian Baines: It's not even a monthly rolling program, Tim, it is continuous. Always on and problem when we're inside, obviously, we couldn't do it for the last 4 weeks. But then we reinstated it again this morning, and we certainly intend to carry on indefinitely just having the buyback in place. And we slightly increased the price of the buyback as well. So we think that there's a very positive future for EKF. We think that Gavin's 5-year strategy plan is implemented and this team is very, very strong. Also to answer the -- would we be a target for some people. I think that there's a real strength in EKF at the moment of being on our own because actually, we are finding that very valuable that people are coming to us more and more because we have better customer service, better delivery times, better response. And so at the moment, EKF is in a very good place to deliver this 5-year plan, and that's what we're totally focused on. So we will continue to buy back in that. Gavin Jones: Yes. So just to wrap up, I'd like to say thank you for everyone joining us today for this simple yet significant update on the strategy on where we are as a company and how we're choosing to deliver sustainable growth within the market, and we will continue on that route and continue to update you as we move forward. Operator: Julian, Steve and Gavin, thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of EKF Diagnostic Holdings plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you.