Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Cobram Estate Olives Limited Financial Year 2025 Results Presentation. Thank you for joining us. My name's Sam Beaton. I'm one of the Joint CEOs. I'm joined here today by Leandro Ravetti, my other Joint CEO. In terms of how we operate as Joint CEOs, we both oversee the Australia and the U.S. operations, but we focus on our core areas of expertise, me on the areas of finance and commercial, and Leandro on operational and technical. In terms of the agenda for today, I'll take you through a summary of the results and also a commercial update. I'll then hand to Leandro, and Leandro will take you through an operational update and also an update on our growth strategies. We'll have plenty of time for questions at the end.
There's an icon at the bottom of your screen which has a little hand symbol. If you do wish to ask a question, please press that icon. We will then call your name when it's the appropriate time, unmute your microphone, and you can ask your question. During Leandro and my presentation, please make sure all your microphones are muted. This year's been a fantastic year for the business, where we've recorded record profit and operating cash flow. We continue to see strong demand for high-quality, locally produced extra virgin olive oil in both Australia and in California. We reported double-digit sales growth in Australia and significant growth of Cobram Estate in the U.S.A., where sales of Cobram more than doubled. From a capital point of view, the business is now through predominantly its growth CapEx phase in Australia and will move now to our sustaining CapEx program.
Our growth CapEx will now be focused on the U.S.A., particularly around increasing supply. This year, we reported an EBITDA profit of AUD 116.6 million. This was 75% up on last year, or a profit after tax of AUD 49.6 million, up 167% on the prior year. From a cash flow perspective, we reported record operating cash flow of AUD 83 million, which was up 29.6% on the prior year. Driving these results was our increase in sales at a group level. We reported sales of AUD 234.4 million. Pleasingly for us, the sales were driven by strong growth in branded sales. In Australia, our branded sales grew 16.6%, up to AUD 141.4 million. In the U.S.A., our Cobram Estate branded sales more than doubled to AUD 42.3 million. A more detailed profit and loss, and just a reminder to investors how we account for our olive crop.
Under accounting standards, we are required to value the crop in the year of harvest. We do this by taking the expected net selling price or the fair value. We then deduct the actual costs of selling, and that difference is taken to our profit or loss in the year of harvest, not in the year of sale. The inventory of the olive oil then sits on our balance sheet at that higher fair value, and then is taken through our profit and loss through our COGS line as we sell the oil. This year was an on-year, so we expected that value gain to be higher than last year. We look at our business on a segment basis: the Australian olive oil business and the U.S.A. olive oil business. Looking at Australia, our EBITDA was reported at AUD 110 million, up from AUD 60.9 million.
The growth in this EBITDA was driven by the higher crop, where we processed 14.2 million L compared to 10.1 million L last year. Also, from the strong growth in branded sales of 16.6% compared to prior year, and we had a higher percentage of our olive oil going into packaged goods, up to 94.4% of Australian sales. In the U.S.A., our EBITDA was reported at AUD 6.6 million, up from AUD 5.8 million. Growth in profit was driven by the increase in branded sales. This was partially offset by the increase in people and investment in our brand through marketing as we gear up to sell more oil as our groves mature. Cash flow is more consistent than our reported profit, and that's because of the way we manage our oil over two years. Our customers buy oil from us consistently month in, month out.
When we've got a higher cropping year, we'll sell the oil over as long as 16 months. When we have a lower cropping year, like the year before this, we'll sell the oil for as little as eight months. That means we get more consistent operating cash flow. Having said that, we have managed to grow operating cash flow again. We reported a growing operating cash flow up to AUD 83 million, up from AUD 64.1 million, and that was a record for the company. On an after-interest and tax basis, our operating cash flow was AUD 58.1 million, up from AUD 47.9 million. The business continued to invest in capital, mostly growth CapEx projects. We invested AUD 81.5 million compared to AUD 66.2 million last year. Predominantly, the major projects for that capital spend were the finalization of the Boort mill upgrade.
The Boort mill now has enough capacity to process all our fruit at full maturity and our third-party growers. We have enough capacity at our other mill at Boundary Bend to handle full maturity. During the year, we also paid a dividend. Net of DRP, our dividend was AUD 12.1 million. At 30 June, we had available and undrawn debt facilities and cash totaling AUD4 1.5 million. This chart shows our growing operating cash flow over the last five years. The dark green is before interest and tax, and the gold is after interest and tax. As you can see, our operating cash flow has grown at a rate of 39% compound growth over that period. This has really been driven by the maturing growth, the increase in branded sales, and also the maturing profile of our U.S.A. business. Just a quick recap on capital projects over the last five years.
We've invested in excess of AUD 250 million cash in capital projects, predominantly all growth capital projects in Australia. We've developed 1,145 hectares of new olive groves. We did a major upgrade and rebuild at the Boort olive mill, doubling capacity to 80 tons per hour. We also completed a warehouse automation project at our Lara bottling facility, which Leandro will talk more about in his section. As I said earlier, the growth CapEx phase has concluded this year in Australia, and we'll now be transitioning to a sustaining CapEx program from FY 2026 onward, which we estimate will be around AUD 10 million- AUD 15 million per annum. In the U.S.A., over that same period, we now have 1,025 hectares of our own groves. We've recently purchased 1,596 hectares of new land, which we estimate will be able to plant just under 1,000 hectares of new groves over the coming 18 months.
We've completed a Woodland site expansion where we doubled our mill capacity to gear up for future growth in production. We've also commenced the bottling warehouse upgrade at that site. Our CapEx will be all focused on the U.S. going forward, and particularly around increasing oil supply. Our balance sheet, our net assets as reported increased to AUD 365 million, up from AUD 321 million. A couple of things to point out on our balance sheet. Our trees and irrigation infrastructure, we carry at written down cost, not at external valuation, and I'll talk more around that in the next slide. Our brands, so Cobram Estate and Red Island, we record on our balance sheet at purchase price, which was around AUD 6.5 million. It's within that intangible line, so under accounting standards, you can't revalue them to fair value.
The other key item on our balance sheet, just to point out, is the deferred tax liability. The majority of that relates to historical asset write-ups of our olive groves that would only ever be payable if we sold those assets outside of the group. From a net debt ratio perspective, our net debt ratio increased to 32.7%, up from 31.5%. The bar chart on the left, the left two bars are 30 June 2025 asset value against borrowing, against the two bars on the right, 30 June 2024 asset value and 30 June 2024 borrowings. The assets include the assets that sit on our balance sheet, and the top light green part is the irrigation infrastructure and trees over and above book value when you compare it to external valuation. On that basis, our gross assets sat just under a billion dollars at AUD 978 million.
When you compare our borrowings against our adjusted asset value, our ratio sits at 27.1%. Moving on to sales, this chart shows the sales over the last four years split into Australia and U.S.A., so all olive oil sales. As you can see, we've grown at 20% compound growth. Our sales of the group are now at 237.4% olive oil sales. As you can see, the U.S.A. now contributes more than 25% of our group sales. If you look at just packaged goods sales in Australia, this slide is, on the bottom part, so the purple part, it's branded sales, so Cobram Estate and Red Island, and the top part, the green part, is private label. Growth in branded sales represented a 16.6% growth rate. We're now up to AUD 141.1 million.
We continue to see that strong demand for product, and it was a really pleasing result, particularly given the supply constraints we've faced over the last several years. The U.S.A., this is U.S.A. only packaged goods sales over the last four years. Cobram Estate, the whole lot of this chart has more than doubled, so sitting at AUD 42.3 million compared to AUD 21 million last year. We've seen growth in sales has been contributed to a number of factors, including increased turn rates at store, increased distribution, and some price. We're now the number nine top selling brand in the U.S.A. and the number two U.S.A.-produced brand and ranged in 18,748 stores. Moving on to marketing, we continue to invest heavily in marketing, and we've actually increased our investment in both Australia and the U.S.A. in readiness for increased supply coming on in both of those countries.
The key pillars around marketing remain the same, promoting the quality of our product, the usage occasions, and of course the amazing health benefits. We're now in the 10th year of a healthcare professional program where we educate healthcare professionals around the health benefits of extra virgin olive oil, and ultimately that flows through to educating our consumers. We've just released our new marketing campaign. You may have seen this on various media channels. This is around education of the freshness of our product, really highlighting the health benefits of olive oil, particularly the link between heart health and consumption of fresh, high-quality extra virgin olive oil. In the U.S.A., we continue to invest heavily, and we have upped our spend in the U.S.A. in readiness for future supply. Our marketing strategy is very similar.
We do spend more of our dollars in store, whether it be sampling, coupons, catalog, targeted socials. We've also developed some good relationships, and we have some formal partnerships with some influencers and a celebrity chef, Curtis Stone, who has a great profile over in the U.S.A. and has been a fantastic partner. In terms of business update and outlook, we're still seeing strong demand for our quality product in both Australia and in the U.S.A., and we expect that to continue through the year. The U.S.A., we commence harvesting in October, November. Leandro will talk more around that, but we don't expect a materially higher crop this year, but we do expect oil from our own growth to be significantly higher. In Australia, this year is an off-year. However, we only expect our crop to be moderately lower than FY 2025. Harvest is in April, May, June 2026 in Australia.
We have previously announced that my co-CEO, Leandro Ravetti, will relocate to Australia. It certainly won't change the way we jointly manage the business, but it will allow Leandro to invest more time in our executives in the U.S.A. and also assist with the rollout of the land acquisitions and plantings where we'll be investing a lot of our capital. In terms of funding growth, as we have done over the last several years, our strong operating cash flows combined with debt facilities, we expect it to fund our committed CapEx, and that's helped by the Australian business transitioning to a sustaining CapEx program from this year. From a cost perspective, input costs actually remain relatively stable. Water, we are expecting to be more expensive this year. Leandro will cover that in more detail during his section.
A dividend we previously announced that the board is intending to pay a AUD 0.045 per share dividend will be fully franked to be paid in late November 2025. The details of this dividend payment will be announced at our AGM on October 31, 2025. Before I hand to Leandro, I'd just like to thank the outstanding help and support from our Chair, Robert McGavin, our board, our outstanding executive team, all of our employees. Nothing would happen without you, our great suppliers, and importantly, our customers that continue to buy an amazing product. We thank you so much for your support. We're really, of course, looking forward to the 12 months ahead and beyond. I'll now hand to Leandro Ravetti, my Joint CEO, and he'll take you through an operational update and an update on our growth strategies. Thank you.
Thank you, Sam, and thank you very much to all of you joining us today for this presentation. I'll provide you now with a brief update on our operations, expanding a little bit on some of the points that Sam discussed before, both for Australia and the U.S.A. If we move to the next slide, I won't go through the figures on this coming slide in detail because they will be covered throughout my presentation. Fundamentally, they show in a very simple way the consolidation of Cobram Estate Olives as one of, if not the largest, fully vertically integrated olive oil company in the world when we combine our geographical reach, the area planted, the level of production, and the brand strength. More excitingly, we will also see how much inbuilt organic growth is yet to be realized in both countries. We'll move to the next slide.
From the operations point of view, our Australian olive harvest was successfully completed on time by the beginning of July 2025. As it was said before, the total production of 14.2 million L of oil was 40% higher than last year and 10% higher than 2023, which was our previous comparable on year. It is important to point out also that 2026 is expected to be an off-year on most of our Australian growth, but based on the current condition of the trees, which obviously we can see, and the maturing profile of the latest plantings, we forecast the crop to be only moderately lower than the crop that we achieved in 2025. Move to the next slide. Just to give a little bit more color to this amazing harvest operation that goes on 24/7 for 10- 11 weeks.
You can see some photos of this year's Australian harvest in this slide, including some of our equipment, infrastructure, and amazing staff that makes this happen. We will be in touch over the coming months to invite you to come and see it firsthand during the upcoming 2026 season at our shareholder open day. Move to the next one. Sam briefly touched on this. In general terms, most growth inputs and overall general operating costs remain relatively stable. In line with previous years, during FY 2025, we sourced nearly all the water required for our Australian olive groves on the temporary water market at a weighted average price of AUD 139 per ML, with current water prices trading at higher values than this time last year.
As always, we stay away from predicting water prices, but to provide a better context, on average over the past few years, water accounted for 5%- 8% of our annual growth operating costs, including depreciation, and every AUD 100 per ML change in temporary water price has an impact of approximately AUD 4 million on us. Moving now to an update on the U.S. Californian groves are typically harvested between October and November, so we are a couple of months away from the start, with the groves having been through already the peak flowering period in May and having already started the oil accumulation phase.
Winter and spring weather conditions were beneficial for flower induction and fruit set, and while the proportion of oil from our own groves is expected to increase this year, the total production is not anticipated to be materially higher than last year, and consequently, short-term size growth may remain somewhat limited by overall supply constraints. To finalize our presentation, as we normally do, I'll touch on the key developments related to our four growth pillars. These pillars are quite simple and focus on producing more oil from our Australian olive groves through the maturing profile of our trees, growing our fully vertically integrated business in the United States, improving the net price per litre for our oil through focusing on the growth of branded product sales at higher values and increased efficiencies, and finally capitalizing on our naturally sustainable position and upcycling of the olive oil byproducts.
Moving to the first pillar, our modern production system: olive trees reach maturity and maximum production levels when they are approximately eight years old. Given the significant investment that Sam described, you know, we have done over the past decade in new groves. Our mature area in Australia is set to increase by 42% over the next seven years, as 20% of our trees are still immature and 10% are not yet productive. When all that area reaches maturity, I'm assuming no further replanting or new developments or additional long-term third-party growth, they should reach the potential production figures shown in the graph to the right of your screen, between 19 million L- 23 million L.
This growth in production, when compared with the last two years, is extremely relevant in terms of the future, as many of our production costs are relatively fixed, and this first growth pillar is directly related to the improvement, as it has been over the past few years, of the company's financial performance with the value of the additional oil mostly flowing directly as profit. During this past financial year, we completed the last significant growth capital project in Australia with the additional processing lines installed at Lara. This equipment that we can see in the photo increased our overall milling capacity to some 1,800 tons of olives per day, making the Lara facilities one of the world's largest olive mills.
Our Australian operations, as Sam explained before, will require no further growth capital expenditure to support the organic growth of production expected from the maturing groves that I explained before, and we'll transition now to a sustaining CapEx program from FY 2026 onward. If we switch to the second growth pillar, our business in the U.S.A., in the case of California, you can see from the graphs in this slide that we are expecting a significant boost to our California supply from the maturing profile of our groves and expected new plantings in the short term, given that nearly 30% of our existing groves are immature and a massive 52% are yet to start bearing fruit. That means that they're less than three years old.
To put it in a different way, the expected supply from our own existing groves, as you can see in the graph to your right, and those to be planted over the next calendar year, when they reach maturity, they will increase approximately 11 times the amount of oil produced and available when compared with the average comparable production over the past two years. In the case of the U.S., we have several key capital projects on the go related obviously to this growth pillar. Firstly, we have completed the phase two of our Esparto South Ranch and the phase three of our Dunnigan Hills Ranch with a total of 180 hectares of olives planted between October and November 2024. We move probably to the most exciting part.
Now, very important to make, and which is we can see in this next slide, is that the ongoing expansion of our operations in America not only strengthens the future olive oil supply and delivers greater economies of scale, but given the current land prices and the project returns, it also represents a compelling standalone investment opportunity. That's why we have recently completed the strategic acquisition of nearly 1,600 hectares of land in California, all located near our existing groves. This will allow us to access 109 hectares of an existing olive grove and to develop approximately 980 additional hectares of new groves, which are scheduled to be planted over the coming 14 months, nearly doubling our planted area to reach around 2,000 hectares by the end of 2026.
Additionally, we also still have a strong pipeline of new properties currently being considered for acquisition and future development, with, as Sam explained, the committed CapEx for these projects being funded through a combination of operating cash flow and debt. The last point regarding the US, to meet the expected growth in olive oil supply over the coming five to eight years, we have upgraded our mill, our storage facilities, and we are now currently undertaking the expansion of the finished goods warehouse and the installation of a new bottling line. That bottling line currently being factory tested in Italy will increase bottling capacity from 3,500- 16,000 bottles per hour, significantly enhancing the throughput and packaging efficiency of our facility. Move now to the third growth pillar that is linked to increasing the net return per litre.
We are continuously evaluating and trialing several initiatives across all areas of operations, both in Australia and the U.S.A., where technology could unlock higher efficiencies and lower production costs. One of those initiatives became a reality during FY 2025 with the commissioning of three automated guided vehicles, or AGVs, at our Lara bottling and warehouse site. These AGVs that you can see on the right-hand side of the screen are delivering cost efficiencies and optimization in the use of existing warehouse space while improving work safety. In other words, this investment enables us to handle the increased volumes of finished goods products as olive oil supply continues to grow, most likely at a lower cost per litre.
Wrapping up my presentation, sustainability has been in our DNA from the very beginning, more than 25 years, although in recent years we implemented a more formal approach to sustainability that is in line with mainstream expectations and corporate best practice. As a result of this, we have identified a list of priority topics that have been clustered into the pillars of people, planet, and business, and all of them have been integrated into the 2030 sustainability strategy that was adopted and presented last year. In this financial year, we advanced key sustainability initiatives aligned with that strategy across both Australia and the U.S.A., including a sustainability-linked loan with CBI, conservation and certification programs, and expanded education and advocacy on the environmental and health benefits of extra virgin olive oil.
In the body of our FY 2025 report, you can read in more detail about our formal commitments and targets across a wide range of topics, from safety to healthcare professional education, and from protection of biodiversity to quality and diversity and inclusion. Given the time constraints of this presentation, we'll not go through all of them in detail, but to all of you that are particularly interested in these areas, I would encourage you to read it, and we would welcome any feedback that you may have. Only one very important aspect worth highlighting is that based on the FY 2025 greenhouse gas assessment, we continue to deliver a better and neutral position considering our sinking sources and all Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions.
This is a very encouraging result given the inclusion in these calculations of a fully comprehensive list of Scope 3 emission categories and still maturing profiles of our growth, particularly as we have seen in the U.S.A. I think this is all what I have for today, so happy to ask Sam to join me back for any questions that you may have.
Thank you, Leandro. It was pointed out that I said you're moving to Australia during the presentation, but of course you're moving to California. Just to clarify, I think that's reasonably clear to everyone. I will call your name, and there's a couple of people with questions here. Sarah from Cobram will, and you need to, we'll allow you to talk, and please unmute your microphone. We've got Larry Gandler from Shaw.
Yes, can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes, Larry.
Thanks, Sam and Leandro. Well done and a fantastic result. Just want to ask a few questions about cash flow in the U.S. When you look at the U.S. next year, what sort of constraints will you have in terms of the growth because of supply? Are you indicating that because of the shape of the harvest this year, you will have constraints in terms of volume?
Yeah, sorry, Leandro.
No, you're up.
Yeah, as Leandro said, we don't expect our harvest this year to be materially higher than last year, which will constrain our sales growth. Within that, though, the growth of our oil from our groves will be materially higher, but unfortunately, our third-party groves we're expecting to come off slightly from their existing groves.
Okay, great. That's understood. With regards to Australia, you've obviously got supply there. Last year, FY 2025 was more of a year of price growth than volume growth. FY 2026 will be more of a year of volume growth than price growth. I'm just wondering, in terms of margin and cash flow, are there any things to call out because of the shape of those two years?
No, not really. I think, you know, like other years, it will remain strong and reasonably consistent. You're right. The year just gone was mostly price growth. We were constrained, unfortunately constrained, by supply, and we started selling new season oil from Australia in April, actually, and had new season oil on shelf by the end of April, which is very unusual, but it was really due to the high demand. We wish we had more oil, but that's all we had.
Okay, that's my questions for now. I'll come back with other questions.
Great, thanks, Larry. We've got [Mark Topi] next.
Yes, good morning.
You're here, yep.
Yep, hey Mark.
Just a question now around the sort of the global supply and demand now that you're, and I know that Cobram 's historically been very resilient to imports coming into Australia, but even in context of the U.S. and seeing the very dry conditions, almost drought conditions in Spain again, just wondering how the global supply position looks and what's your take on that, and obviously the tariffs on the Europeans as well.
I'm happy to cover a little bit of an update on what's happening from a supply perspective. Sam will touch mainly on the influence that it has on our strategy, which, as we've always seen, is quite little, but I think that after a return to sort of rather normal conditions and yields in FY 2025, the prices softened from historical highs to what is the current levels, which is important to flag that they're almost 100% higher than what they were five years ago. I'm talking about commodity prices. There were some initial expectations of an above-average crop in Spain for this coming season, but those forecasts have dropped on the back of an extremely dry and hot summer. You all probably have seen the images of the fires in Spain and so on.
In the case of olives, it led to a bit more fruit drop and poor oil accumulation than normal, downgraded a little bit of the adjustment of crop expectations, and that combined with record sales globally over the past few months, that's stabilized and slightly strengthened the commodity prices. We don't really expect, not that we really pay a lot of attention, but we don't really expect the world prices to change dramatically over the short term. I think fundamentally how we read is that these are a great indication of the strength of the industry where record volume sales are being achieved at commodity prices close to historical highs if you don't consider the spike that we had during 2023. Sam will probably touch more on that.
Yeah, I would certainly carry on that. We've seen more normal supply conditions from imported oil into Australia probably since the last nine or ten months, and same with promotional programs has gone back to what we call more normal. It certainly hasn't impacted the demand from our product, and we just focus on, continually focus on selling our differentiated product, which is a locally produced high-quality extra virgin olive oil in both Australia and the U.S.A., and we think we're giving our customers terrific value because of that. Your question on tariffs, in the U.S.A., nearly all the oil we sell is locally produced, and just as a reminder, about 95% of oil that's sold in the U.S.A. is imported, so that certainly puts us at an advantage, at a cost advantage to our competitors.
Yeah, I'm just sort of wondering how that's going to play out. How do you see that happening over the next 12 months, or have you seen any of the price sort of movements as yet on Europe, or are they absorbing the pricing tariff increases?
Oh, it's very difficult because it's such a fragmented market over there. We haven't seen material changes though as yet, although it's all relatively new and takes a while to flow through supply chains.
Yeah, sure, sure. On that water side, I guess we've seen the water obviously hit AUD 200 or more a meg, so I'm just, we have had some rain now. Can you give us a sense of where you've seen the prices, and if we do have some more rain, your expectation whether that might improve the situation?
Yeah, happy to comment on that. I mean, you're right, so water, depending on which system, is trading sort of between that high AUD 100s to high AUD 200s. Having said that, there's been a significant increase in storage levels over the last two months. The Bureau are forecasting reasonable rainfall over spring, but we don't know. Mark, it's likely to be more than last year where we paid AUD 139 a ML, but where it ends, we don't know.
Sure, sure.
As Leandro said in his presentation, AUD 100 per ML will cost us roughly an additional AUD 4 million.
Yeah. Lastly, just on port, I think at various times the company said maybe the yield to port might even be higher than some of the existing olive groves in Boundary Bend. I'm just wondering how you're seeing that now in terms of the yield on some of the newer olive groves.
Where in California?
In port, around port, yeah.
I think that the new groves at Port are evolving, just all the latest plantings are evolving sort of naturally as we expected with our significant ups and downs, and it is in part the maturing profile of those trees that are sort of leading to the idea or the view that we have that the production next year will not be significantly lower than the production of this year.
I was just thinking longer term that, you know, longer term the yields from that region might even be better than some of the historic ones around Boundary Bend.
I don't expect that to be any materially different. Certainly, we are aiming at better variety in the replantings and everything else, but as a combination, considering all the ups and downs, we believe that the yields are likely to be quite consistent.
Very good. All right, thanks for your time there.
Thanks, Mark. I've got Ian Munro from Ord Minnett.
Morning, Sam and Leandro. Thanks for taking my question. Just looking at the investment in the U.S., are you able to call out any kind of lumpy CapEx items for the next 12 months ahead? It's just trying to understand whether we get kind of year-on-year increase in CapEx relative to FY 2025, kind of based on what's been disclosed thus far. Thank you.
Yeah, no worries. The 1,500 hectares of land that we've purchased, about half of it was paid for in FY 2025 and the other half in 2026. Other than that, it's really steady investment in developing groves, and then land that may or may not come up can be lumpy, and there's a number of acquisitions or a number of pipeline properties that we're looking at that could settle this year, next year, the year after, depending on which property you're talking about. It's a little bit hard to comment on, but certainly the Australian CapEx we're expecting to be significantly lower and CapEx focused in the U.S.A.. To give you a sort of a sense, if when we were a 1,000 acre development, it costs us roughly AUD 25,000 per acre, so $25 million over three or four years.
Just a reminder, you know this, but with the exception of obviously committed land purchases, most of the rest of the CapEx, basically the development of the groves, is largely a discretionary decision that we obviously evaluate closely throughout to ensure that that can be properly supported.
Very good. Thanks, Sam. Thanks, Leandro. Congrats on the record result.
Thanks, Ian.
We'll give Peter a Peter Parker, and then we'll come to you, Larry. You have to unmute your microphone, Peter, and then fire away.
I think you're okay now, Peter.
You're right now?
Yes, thank you.
Okay. A couple of questions with the share price. Congratulations. I see it tipped over AUD 3 this morning. That's a magnificent effort. I've seen we've only been listed now about four years, isn't it?
Yeah, that's right.
How would the position we are now compare to what we issued when we did the prospectus? Are you on track, or are you a bit ahead of it, or is it better than you thought, or what?
It's a good question. I think when we listed four years ago, we've done a significant amount of investment since then, and when we talk through the last five years of AUD 250 million invested in the land that we've developed in Australia and the U.S.A. and processing oil upgrades, I would say probably the U.S.A. is ahead of where we thought it would be in terms of land acquisition and development. The Australian business, of course, is a significant improvement in cash flow and profit compared to four years ago as well. Overall, we'd say it's well ahead of where we would have expected it to be back when we listed.
Right, because the share price, you know, for the first three or so years held well under that AUD 2 mark, you know. What do you think has been the catalyst? Has it been more institutionals hopping on board? There's been a massive jump in the number of shares trading over the last, you know, couple of months. What do you put that down to?
Yeah, I mean, we don't know. It's sort of something we can't control. I think we announced our unaudited EBITDA in early July of AUD 115 million. It was reported AUD 116 million today, so very close. Our harvest results and Leandro Ravetti relocating to the U.S. There's certainly, it looked like there's a lot more volume traded after that announcement. I would say that's most likely the catalyst.
Yeah, we've seen.
We don't know.
Yeah, we've seen Perpetual move from 6.69%- 7.8%. Are there any other institutions on board you know?
Not that we can see. We do a look through of our share registry only every six months. I'm sure there's more interest with more volume. I'd say some of those at the institutions, whether they're existing or new, we don't know.
Yeah, on a personal one, have the directors been selling any more shares?
No, definitely not. If we sell shares, we have to disclose it within a pretty short period, but I can tell you, no, they definitely haven't been selling shares.
Yeah, a final question. When Woolies and Coles put discounts on, so you know they have price or whatever they call a 40%, who actually pays for that?
Slightly different, I would say, with every supplier, but typically it's shared between the supplier, so us and Coles and Woolworths, and based on a pre-agreed plan for the 12 months ahead. You work very collaboratively with the supermarkets on that and plan things appropriately.
Yeah, I suppose because the supply has been so tight, you haven't had to discount very much like you had in the past, have you?
We had a reasonably, I would say, normal year with discounting overall, but we had to stop discounting early this year for three months because we were short of oil because of the demand. Then we pushed some heavier discounts into May, June when we had new season oil. Overall, we still invested in discounts and obviously giving our customers a chance to buy at a lower price is important to us and, of course, the supermarkets.
Okay, well done again. Keep up the good work.
Thanks, Peter. We've got Larry back again from Shaw.
Yeah, thanks, Sam and Leandro. A couple of other questions on third-party supply. One of the interesting things that's developing in Australia is your ability to use your infrastructure, your platform to encourage new substantial growers and then capture that volume. I think you alluded to a 1,000 hectare third-party supply in your slide where you kind of map out the future. I also believe you're in discussion with other major growers. They're pursuing other initiatives there in Australia. Can you talk to where we're at with building out that third-party supply?
In Australia, yeah, you're right. We signed with a grower before Christmas, which was announced then to the ASX, 1,000 hectares, which will be planted over the next 18 months. We're constantly talking to a number of different parties about third-party supply arrangements, and they're all at various stages, but of course we'll announce that if any materialize.
The thousand hectares you referred to in the presentation on the slide where you map out the future growth, where is that? That wasn't.
Yeah, that amount that was forecasted at AUD 19 million-AUD 23 million, that wasn't including the order to come for the new 1,000 hectares.
Oh, okay.
It's only including the 1,000 hectares that we're currently working with, which is the group that was planted five years ago. It's not taking into consideration this new deal or any future deals that may come over the next few years.
That's interesting. With the U.S. and third-party supply, reflecting on your constraints this year, how nimble can you be in capturing third-party supply? I know you're very focused on planting your own growers, but can you talk to further developments in third-party relationships in the U.S.?
I think it's a bit twofold, Larry. Existing growers in the U.S., it's quite a very limited pool of existing third-party growers that you can access, and roughly the amount of supply has been relatively stable over the past few years, mainly with sort of medium longer-term contracts. I think there's a very limited chance, although we continue to talk to different existing growers, but it's a very small pool. I think that the most likely way of growing that pool is through new funds coming into the industry. We felt that we needed to drive that process for a number of reasons: quality control, quantity, availability, and also to lead the industry, and that's why we're doing the planting.
As I said, because they are also a very good investment on its own right, and I feel, we feel in general terms that a similar view may happen to others that will potentially join us as new third-party, but nothing that is actually firm and happened today. That's probably the most likely way of growing third-party supply really moving forward, through new investment in the industry.
Okay.
I think just to add to that, Larry.
Yeah.
In terms of spot purchases, it's very difficult to get either California or Australian oil, but we're certainly in the market trying to find more just to help plug any supply demand gaps.
Okay. Your constraints in the U.S., I just need to be clear, that's not indicating flat sales. It's constraints in the context of your growth ambitions for FY 2026, is that?
Yeah, exactly. We certainly will, you know, we're targeting to keep growing our branded sales. The overall oil that we have to market though will be relatively flat next year, and then we really start to pick up the year after as our growth starts to contribute more material, you know, amounts of oil out of the total pool.
If you see, Larry, our age profile of the trees in the U.S., you'll see that the significant new plantings really occur from late 2023 onward. The fruits or the olives on those new plantings will really start to materialize more from the FY 2026 harvest, the FY 2027 harvest, which is the 2026 calendar year harvest onward.
Okay. If sales are going to be flattish in the U.S., I'm assuming there's not significant price growth. The marketing demands could continue to grow in the U.S. You need to stay relevant. Is that fair that maybe your marketing costs could grow faster than your sales in FY 2026?
Probably relatively similar in percentage terms. I think it's, you know, it certainly doesn't constrain us from chasing distribution though. In the U.S., things move, you know, quite a bit slower. The meetings the guys are having with retailers now, you know, you're talking about slots in 6, 12, 18 months. We work towards our supply forecast. No, I don't think as a percentage it'll be reasonably similar. It certainly won't be materially in dollar terms.
Okay, fantastic. Thanks, Sam. Thanks, Leandro.
Thank you, Larry.
Thanks, Larry. I've got [John O'Snape from Belts]. Hey, John. I can see you up there, but you might need to unmute your mic.
We're still capped here, John. I think that came down. We'll make a round circle question.
Give it another minute. It doesn't look like there's any more questions, but feel free to ask if you would like to. We'll just wait another minute or so. For those that missed part of this presentation, it is recorded and we'll put it up on our website under the investor section later on this afternoon.
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Looks like that's it. Thank you. Thank you so much for everyone for joining. It was a good roll-up today, so I really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks for the terrific support as shareholders, and we look forward to continuing to deliver in the years to come. Thank you.
Thank you.