Okay, welcome everyone to the Cobram Estate Olives Limited full year results presentation. ASX: CBO is a public company. Thanks so much for your interest in Cobram and for your attendance today. There's approximately 200 people Zooming in for today's meeting, which is fantastic. I'm Rob McGavin, one of the co-founders and the non-executive chair of Cobram Estate Olives. Joining us today is our co-CEO, Sam Beaton, who really heads up finance and commercial, and Leandro Ravetti, who heads up technical and production, and we're also joined by our CFO, Russell Dmytrenko. The presentation will take around 30 minutes, and after that, we encourage questions, and we'll take questions at the end of the presentation.
To ask a question, all you need to do is raise your hand by clicking the hand symbol in the middle bottom of your screen, and I'll prompt you verbally to ask you a question, and you'll be unmuted by the administrator, who will allow you to be live, ask your question, and then we'll work out who's the best person to answer that, for you. I'll run through that at the end, again, at the end of the presentation. So, I hope you enjoy today, and over to Sam Beaton, our co-CEO, who is head of finance and commercial.
Thank you, Rob, and thanks to everyone for joining us. I'm pleased to present the financial results for the 12 months to 30 June 2023. This financial year has been a strong year for the company. We've reported sales growth of 21% for the year, up to AUD 169 million. Pleasingly, we reported growth in both the USA and the Australian businesses, and we also reported growth in Cobram Estate, both in Australia and the USA, and our Red Island brand. From an EBITDA perspective, we reported statutory EBITDA of AUD 40.8 million, up 63% on the prior year.
This was expected because this year is a higher cropping year, and as a lot of you know, the majority of the profit is recorded in the year of harvest, not in the year of sale under accounting standards. We also saw a turnaround in the U.S. business, reporting an EBITDA profit, which contributed to that increase in profitability. From a two-year rolling EBITDA perspective, we reported AUD 30.1 million average EBITDA, down from AUD 47.9. The reason behind this is that our last on-cropping year, we produced over 16 million L of oil in Australia. This year producing 12.5.
So I'll Leandro will talk more around the climatic conditions that affected this year, but that did decrease our two-year rolling average EBITDA, which takes into account both a high and a low cropping year. Pleasingly, we reported a record operating cash flow of AUD 54.1 million, up 60% on the prior year, and this is really driven by the increase in sales turnaround in the USA business and stabilizing costs. At 30 June 2023, we had available cash and undrawn debt facilities of AUD 56.4 million. Moving on to the detail of our profit and loss. Pleasingly, we reported growth in profitability across all our business segments, the Australian olive oil business, the USA olive oil business, innovation and value add.
The Australian olive oil business, our EBITDA was AUD 38.5 million, up from AUD 32.4 million. The drivers of this were the higher Australian crop, increasing from 9.5 million L-12.5 million L. It was offset slightly in the first half of the year, where more of our products were sold through Red Island private label than planned, which affected our margin. This was rectified in the second half of the year, and particularly after we put through a price increase on the Red Island product range in February 2023, and our Cobram tins. We also sold some of our low-value bulk oil through the USA operation, so some of that profit is taken through the USA division and some through the Australian division.
Our USA operations, we're very pleased with the result here, where we've recorded an EBITDA profit of $2.9 million. This was up from a loss of $4.7 million in the prior period. The turnaround in this profitability has been driven by an increase in sales. Sales increased from 29 up to $42 million, and also an increase in gross margin, particularly after the price increase that we put through in October, November 2022, across our package range in the USA. Our innovation and value add, a small loss of $800,000, up from a loss of $2.6 million in the prior year. We continue to focus this business on B2B, around continuing to add value to our waste streams.
So for example, we sell our pits and pomace this year as a biofuel through B2B channels, and we also move into next year with a continued lean cost structure. Probably the only other item to point out here, our interest increase. A portion of our interest is floating. We do have a AUD 60 million fixed interest element within our core debt, but the balance is variable. So of course, we've seen a rising in interest costs up to AUD 8.4 million this year. From a cash flow perspective, I think this really demonstrates the ability for the company to manage variability of oil between an on and off year.
And we do that because we need to, because our customers purchase oil from it very consistently, month in, month out. So we see operating cash flow much more consistent than our statutory profit. This year, we reported the cash flow from operations of AUD 54.1 million, up from AUD 33.8 million. This was driven by a few factors: the increase in sales levels, the turnaround in the USA business, and of course, well, not of course, but stabilizing costs. On an after interest and tax basis, we recorded cash flow of AUD 39 million, up from AUD 27.4 million. Capital expenditure, so our cash invested into capital expenditure was AUD 56 million.
The majority of this was invested into large-scale projects, which we expect to add material value to the company in the medium term. Particularly, and Leandro will cover off more on these, but particularly our investment in growth assets in both Australia and in the USA, and also expanding our milling capacity. At the end of the financial year, so 30 June 2023, we had available cash and debt facilities of AUD 56.4 million, which will allow us to continue to fund growth CapEx in the coming 12 months. And we paid, of course, we paid a dividend of AUD 11.3 million, and that's net of the dividend reinvestment plan. From a balance sheet perspective, net assets of AUD 288 million.
There's probably a couple of key points I'd like to highlight here. Our trees and irrigation infrastructure are recorded at written down cost, not at fair value. There's AUD 121 million of value, fair value, that sits outside our balance sheet relating to those items. Our brands are recorded at acquisition cost of AUD 6.3 million within that intangible assets line. The brands are not recorded at fair value, just to reemphasize that, on our balance sheet. From a liability perspective, just one thing to point out there, the majority of the AUD 80 million tax liability relates to the historical write-up or accounting write-up of asset values, particularly around the land and building. That would only be payable if we sold the assets outside of the group.
Our gearing increased from 25%-30% debt ratio. This was expected as we drew down the facilities to fund the major growth capital projects during the year. This slide shows our asset values compared to borrowings. We've got a table on the right-hand side which reconciles the amounts from our balance sheet to this chart, and we deduct intangible assets and the right of use assets. Then we're adding in the external valuation that's not on our balance sheet. As you can see, our asset value increased to just under AUD 720 million this year against our borrowings of AUD 191 million. Really important to note here, this does not include any value relating to the brands, despite now having global sales of AUD 117 million.
Moving on to sales. This is Australian packaged food sales. Pleasingly, we reported a good growth within the Australian business. Packaged goods sales are 14.9% year-on-year, and we reported growth in all our different segments, so Cobram Estate, Red Island, and private label during the year. We did put through a price increase on the Red Island range and the Cobram tins in February this year, and our Cobram Estate bottle range is currently under review. The Cobram Estate brand accounted for 50% of the total sales and 25% Red Island, and about 10% private label, and 8% bulk. Again, pleasingly, a lot of this growth came from volume, so we sold an additional 1 million L this year at a higher net return.
From a market perspective, so this is of the total olive oil category, with 35% market share. Cobram Estate remains the number one olive oil brand, and Red Island, the number three olive oil brand. Cobram Estate at supermarket grew 6.8% in value and 6.4% in liters. From a marketing perspective, we continue to invest heavily in marketing. Most of our marketing dollars is invested through Cobram Estate. With Cobram Estate brand, we this year we've tried to emphasize the quality of our product for our marketing campaigns, and of course, the health benefits and usage of extra virgin olive oil. You may have seen us on mainstream media and TV, some outdoor advertising, and we've also, we're also very strong, have a strong digital presence.
We've continued to do innovative marketing, such as our online tastings, which has been a real success. Moving to the U.S. The U.S. sales returned to growth, which was very pleasing for us. Our sales increased 46% for the year, up to $42.6 million. Probably most pleasing for us is the growth is driven by Cobram Estate, which grew 69.3% year-on-year. We also, private label did decrease, and that's due to, well, really due to oil availability and our prioritization towards our Cobram Estate brand. Bulk did increase, the majority of that bulk relates to low-value Australian olive oil that we sell through our U.S. customers. At a supermarket level, so this is some supermarket data. It doesn't include all supermarkets.
The likes of Costco and Whole Foods don't provide data, but this just shows the growth in at supermarket level based on what consumers are paying. We reported 22.8% year-on-year growth at the supermarket grocery and a 19% store count. Pleasingly, we had some big wins in the USA towards the end of the financial year, where we've been accepted into the Publix chain and Kroger, which accounts for almost 1,900 stores. In terms of marketing, again, the marketing in the USA, we use very similar messages to Australia around local quality, freshness, and health. More of our marketing spend is in store and really trying to increase the consumer awareness, and we're very strong in the digital channels.
In terms of our financial outlook, we've had a good start to the financial year from a sales perspective, albeit very early on. The sales outlook remains positive, and we certainly are benefiting from the global shortage of olive oil and record high prices of European oil, which we're starting to see flow through to the Australian and USA markets. Despite a lower than expected crop this year in Australia, we do have sufficient oil to meet our packaged goods sales plan. From a USA perspective, Leandro will talk more around this, but we're expecting a significantly higher crop in the USA. Just as a reminder, the USA harvests in October, November 2023, and we anticipate that this will help us continue to drive sales into the FY 2024 in the USA.
The Australian input costs remain soft in areas like Woolies, which still trades below long-term average, and other major costs, such as fertilizer and electricity, remain contained, and we expect that to continue into the financial year 2024. From a dividend perspective, the board currently intends to pay a dividend of AUD 0.033 per share in December 2023. The formal announcement and details around this dividend will be announced at our AGM, which is scheduled for the November 3rd, 2023. We'll also announce payment dates and DRP details and level of franking. And before I hand to Leandro, I'd just like to thank our wonderful employees. You're a great team to work with, and there's been some outstanding efforts over the last 12 months, and I'm really looking forward to the next 12 months.
So I'll hand over to Leandro, and I'll be back at the end for question time.
Thank you, Sam, and thank you very much to all of you for joining us today for this presentation. I'll provide you now with a brief update on our operations in Australia and the USA, and so we can flip to the next slide, and how we continue actually to make progress strengthening the company's four growth pillars. I won't go through the figures of this slide in detail because Sam has already spoken about some of them, and the rest will be covered throughout my presentation. But fundamentally, they show the consolidation of Cobram Estate Olives as one of, if not the largest, fully vertically integrated olive oil company in the world. We can move to the next slide now.
From the operations point of view, this financial year, 2023, saw arguably, you know, some of the most challenging environmental conditions, not just to our business, but to many other agricultural companies across the eastern seaboard of Australia, with well above average rainfall conditions, particularly during winter and spring, that led to widespread floodings, for example. That's why the overall positive results that I'm about to detail are so encouraging and reflect the resilience of our business model and the extraordinary group of women and men within our staff that makes it possible. As we previously announced through the year, the higher-than-average spring rainfall and sharply cooler-than-average spring and autumn temperatures led to a 10-day delay in flowering and a shortened growing season overall, that produced smaller-than-average olives with lower-than-normal oil accumulation that ultimately impacted in our olive oil yields.
The achieved volume of 12.5 million L was 32% higher than our 2022 harvest, but 24% lower than our original projections. This production, combined with the 1 million L of third-party growers we processed, was of really, really good quality, and it guarantees our supply to meet the company's packaged goods sales plan for this financial year. Although it is far too early to call, you know, good growing conditions during summer and the lighter crops in 2023 have resulted in pleasing levels of vegetative growth and good productive potential ... across our groves as we head into the 2024 harvest year. We can change the slide now. Let me touch on this, a positive aspect of the wetter-than-average year has been its impact on water prices.
As you can see from the graph on the right-hand side of the screen, we have paid a weighted average price of AUD 38 per ML for all our water requirements in this past financial year, which is approximately 20% of our long-term historical average price. We anticipate that water prices are likely to remain below that long-term average for this financial year, as the water storages across the Murray-Darling Basin are at 94% capacity, being at a higher level than last year. We also expect that the prices of other key growth input costs, such as fertilizer and electricity, will also remain contained over the coming 12 months. Move to the next slide. The weather conditions have been certainly more favorable for our American operations.
A significant rain and snowfall during the Northern Hemisphere winter and spring provided a welcome relief for Californian water users in general, including the irrigation district where our groves are located, resulting in full water allocations for the growing season. Californian groves are typically harvested between October and November, with all the groves having been through the peak flowering period and having already started their oil accumulation phase. Flowering was favorable, and we are hopeful of a materially larger harvest than in 2021 or in 2022, and this is a consequence of a few things. On one hand, our maturing orchards, also more acres under contract, and the fact that it is largely an on year for California. Although, as usual, obviously, final results would always be subject to the weather conditions over the coming months. Move to the next slide.
Just to wrap up the presentation, 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 maturing trees and efficiency gains, growing our fully vertically integrated business in the United States, growing branded product sales with a focus on improving the net price per liter for our oil, and capitalizing on our sustainable position and upcycling of our olive oil by-products. Let's start with the first growth pillar. With our modern production system, olive trees reach maturity and maximum production levels when they are approximately eight years old.
You know, given the significant investment that the companies have done over the past decade in new groves, our mature area in Australia is set to increase by 64% over the next nine years, as 28% of our trees are still immature and 11% are not yet productive. This is extremely relevant in terms of the future, as many of our production costs are fixed, and this first growth pillar is directly related to the improvement of the company's financial performance, with the value of the additional oil to come mostly flowing directly as profit. It is also relevant in terms of the limited world supply, that Sam mentioned, and also considering that Australian-grown olive oil still accounts for less than 60% of the total domestic consumption. So move to the next slide.
Two main capital projects took place in this past financial year in relationship with this very important growth pillar. The first one has been the upgrade of our on-site mill at the Boort Grove, and you can see some photos there on the screen. This great engineering project was completed on time for the start of the past harvest in late April, increasing our future capacity by over 160%, making this mill one of the largest in the world. Our sincere thanks to all our staff and the contractors involved, as the tight timeframe of having it completed between the end of the 2022 harvest and the beginning of this one, made even worse by the excessive spring rainfall, was certainly no easy task. In particular, to Ruth Solomon, our head of horticulture, who led the project from the beginning until the end.
Move to the next slide. The second large-scale capital project in Australia has been the completion of a greenfield, 407-hectare olive grove, planted between March and April in 2023, at our Boort Grove in Victoria, just to the southeast of the existing groves. And as a result, our total olive plantings at Boort have increased by 13%. It is worth highlighting that after the 270 hectares redevelopment of our Wemen Grove, planned for this financial year, no other significant capital project will be required in Australia in the near future to support the organic growth of production expecting from the maturing orchards that I explained before. Move to the next slide.
Well, as we heard from Sam, and we've seen in the slides and we've seen it in the past, oil supply continues to be our main growth limitation in the USA. You know, consequently, I just want to highlight some key operational achievements aiming at improving this situation. As you can see from the graph and table in this slide, we're expecting a significant boost to our California supply from the maturing profile of our groves, given that over 80% of the currently planted area of 558 hectares is either immature or yet to start bearing fruit.... Almost equally important in terms of securing future olive oil supply, we have increased our third-party grower area under contract to 2,500-2,100 hectares.
You know, which is up from less than 1,300 hectares that we had in the financial year 2021. There is a growth in contracted area of more than 60% over the past couple of years. Move to the next slide. Regarding this, this growth pillar, we have other two key capital projects on the go. Firstly, we have the execution of the phase I of what we call the Dunnigan Hills Ranch development, with 205 hectares of olive planted in May and June 2023. There is a further 158 hectares of the phase II, which are planned for development in this financial year.
Secondly, we are currently undertaking, and you can see the photos, you know, on the right-hand side, the much-needed expansion of our mill, oil storage, bottling, and warehousing operations in Woodland, California. The expansion will double our milling capacity and will increase our olive oil storage capacity from 2.9 million L-4.5 million L, and we will be also installing a new bottling line and expanding our finished goods warehouse in line with the projected growth, both in oil availability and sales as well. Move to the next slide. In terms of our third growth pillar, focused on increasing the return per liter on each liter of olive oil sold, there were several concurrent initiatives that included: using innovative marketing and education strategies to grow higher-margin packaged good sales, such as our virtual tastings, for example, or the ongoing healthcare professionals educational campaign.
Also, developing and launching higher-value items across grocery and online sales channels, such as our direct-to-consumer recyclable pouches, shown on the left photo, or our ultra-premium collection listed in major supermarkets to the right of the screen. And finally, obviously, optimizing the actual selling price, you know, through the management of depth and frequency of promotions and regular pricing reviews. Move to the second last slide. In terms of the fourth pillar, 2023 have been another very active year in our sustainability and value add area. You know, we are very pleased with the results of this strategic change we adopted regarding this area of the business a couple of years ago.
We're moving, as Sam touched on, into this new financial year with a lean cost structure for this division, mainly focusing on selling our by-product directly to food manufacturers, hospitals, nurseries, and other businesses, as ingredients and as renewable energy sources for heat and electricity production. A total of 7.4 million kg of olive biomass was sold to external parties in this past financial year alone. You know, the nearly AUD 2 million performance improvement of this division in financial year 2023 would have been even higher if it hadn't been for the necessary provision of the obsolete stock of AUD 1.1 million, linked to the decision to discontinue retail sales of our wellness products in Australia and the USA, since a couple of years ago. And last slide.
Finally, I would like to highlight that we have submitted our Australian carbon sequestration project with Verra, as a first step to potential certification of our olive growth-driven carbon credits. Just remember that based on independent studies we commissioned, carbon sinks on our groves, both in the below- and above-ground biomass, entirely offset the emissions associated with growing and marketing the olive oil, leading to a net removal of approximately 4 kg of carbon dioxide per liter of olive oil produced and sold. Pleasingly, all these efforts and a few more that you can see, you know, listed there on the screen, were independently recognized by the Australian Financial Review and Boston Consulting Group by naming us as a sustainability leader in agriculture and environment for the second year in a row.
We were also declared winners of the 2022 Woolworths Better Tomorrow Award, formerly known as Sustainability Supplier of the Year, and winner of the 2023 Coles Sustainability Award. So it's great recognition from our main partners. This is all what I have for today. So happy now to hand it back to Rob for any closing remarks that Rob may have, and to help us coordinate any questions you may have. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Sam and Leandro. What a wonderful company we have, and how lucky we are to have such a resilient business that's in such a wonderful space with regards to health and nutrition, owning the growth, so many tangible assets, such a sustainable position, great people, strong brands, and I think just a lot of tailwinds in an environment that we're sort of going into, where people are going to be looking at discretional spend more and more. So great credit to you both. You're doing a wonderful job leading this company. Thanks to all of our staff who, you know, are ably led by you both, and there's so much work both here and in the USA. Obviously, to our board, and of course, our shareholders, for their ongoing interest and support.
We greatly appreciate it. I should mention also our loyal customers who turn up every single day and buy our product and recognize its quality and its health benefits due to that quality. On a sad note, the unexpected passing of one of our Executive Director, Professor Jonathan West, was a real shock in mid-July. Jonathan was a really highly intelligent man. He was forthright, but so practical. Most importantly, he was just a wonderful man of impeccable integrity, and he'll certainly be sadly missed by all of us, including Susan and Eric. We might go to questions. Again, feel free to ask as many questions as you like.
We can stay here for as long as needed. I'll direct the questions through to the most appropriate person to answer them, if you don't have a preference for who answers the question. So if you click on that button in the middle, that is a hand signal at the bottom, I'll read out your name and ask you to ask your question, and you'll be unmuted by an administrator. So you can ask, everyone on this call will hear the question you're asking, and then we'll do our best to answer it. So, Charles Penguin, if you can ask your question, please.
No worries. Thanks, Robert, it's Charles Penguin here from Tribeca Investment Partners. First I'd like to say congratulations for the year, given the tough growing conditions. In regards to storage, once you harvest the olives, so maybe use the example that, you know, once you open a bottle of olive oil, you've got to go through it within six weeks. You know, how long can you store the olive oil for so you can use it throughout other seasons, compared to on and off use?
Thanks, Charles. I'll hand that to Leandro.
Yes, hi, Charles. The olive oil stored in our stainless steel tanks under nitrogen and temperature control could last, you know, within that category of extra virgin, somewhere between 24-36 months, which is way more than what we normally store them. Think about in a normal year, at the most, we would use the oil within 14-15 months from production, so there's still plenty of shelf life left in the oil, given those really, really good storage conditions that we have in our facility.
So the trick there is to have really fresh olives and crush them quickly, because when you pick them from the tree, they start to deteriorate because the tree's not looking after them. So the light, heat, oxygen, any damage is what starts to deteriorate the olives. Once you crush them and turn it into oil, it's stored in just pristine conditions where it's hugely stable, as Leandro said, away from heat, temperature control rooms, nitrogen blanket over the top, so there's no oxygen comes in contact with it. And because the antioxidants in it are what drives the health benefits and the freshness, they're not having to sacrifice themselves or any oxidized the oils, if that makes sense. So they stay there a number of freshness, which makes it hugely stable.
We also bottle just in time, so we don't have more than about four weeks stock. So that oil is super fresh when it gets to the customer, because when you bottle up and put in a smaller vessel away from a larger sort of vessel or stainless steel and temperature control, obviously it starts to deteriorate a bit quicker, and each bottle has a best before date on it, which is scientifically calculated by our laboratory. In fact, the guys in the lab wrote the globally recognized standard for how to calculate best before date accurately. Then once you open it, obviously, you put oxygen in it, and the antioxidants have to sacrifice themselves. But the off fresh, say, four to six weeks after you open it, is a reasonable guide on how quickly that it goes off.
So, maybe if we go to Jonathan Snape, if you can ask your question, please.
Sorry, can you hear me okay?
Yes, perfect.
Great. Thank you. Look, can I just ask two questions? One, around the Australian division, now your EBITDA was AUD 38.5 million, and the cigars contribution, you know, I'm assuming all the second half was the Australian business, so about AUD 42 million, which kind of says that there was a loss in the sell-through on the branded side of the business, and it looks like it was quite large in the second half, like up near, like AUD 6 million bucks. Is there any particular reason why that happened? Like, when I've gone back, I can't see that ever having occurred before. Was there like some low-quality stuff that you had to take an impairment on and, and just clear, or was there something else going on in there, or am I missing something?
No. Sorry, no, you're not missing something. I think, the majority of that would be the low-value bulk oil that we sell through our U.S., so most of the profit margin is taken through the U.S. division. You know, we also, as you know, we value our oil, you know, at the prior 30 June based on expected sales mix, and we had more of our sales mix to Red Island and private label, than planned. Now, that certainly started to reverse in the second half of the financial year, particularly the last few months, once the Red Island price rise was implemented.
But a lot of it to do with the sale of the bulk oil and recognizing some of that profit where it's sold through the U.S. and to our U.S. customers.
Okay. So if I'm looking into kind of next year, obviously, you've made a crop valuation on this year's expectation. I shouldn't expect to see that again, should I? Probably should, should it be reversing back to kind of those historical levels it was doing, which is, you know, high single digits?
Yeah, that, that's the correct assumption.
Great. Look, just the second one, on capital expenditure for next year. I think in the accounts you had committed CapEx is somewhere around AUD 24 million for next year. I think at this time last year it was about AUD 11 million. How should I be thinking about the CapEx? Because I think you said that Australia will come back a bit, but there's still some catch-up in the US. How should I be thinking about next year's CapEx number, given it was over AUD 50 million this year?
Yeah, I think we, you know, we talk about a maintenance CapEx of, you know, around AUD 10 million for the Australian business. The majority of that committed CapEx is in the USA, relating to our milling plant and planting, where we're halfway through both of those projects. So yeah, and as we said during the presentation, a lot of our capital expenditure going forward will be around increasing production in the USA, but we'd expect it to come off this year as an aggregate.
All right, great. Thank you.
Thanks, Jonathan. Peter Parker, you can ask your question, please. I'm just not getting your question, Peter. If you can try again, please.
It seems unmuted, but we're not hearing anything.
No. Maybe we'll go to Mark Toby, and we can come back to that at the end. Just not sure what the issue is there.
Good morning, gents. You can hear me okay?
Yeah.
That's good. Just, just two questions. Just, I guess in terms of consumer spending here in Australia, we're seeing, you know, obviously areas of weakness. I'm just wondering, you know, from your point of view, what you're seeing in sort of the consumer. Is there some shifting down or, you know, how do you read the consumer overall? Or, is it the case that people are eating at home more and maybe consuming more product? Just to get a sense of how you might see things in the next two years.
Yeah, just to answer that, we, we've certainly seen, you know, really strong demand both here and in the USA over the last eight months. So, you know, the assumption there that is, there is more eating at home, it certainly hasn't impacted our composition of sales either. And having said that, we have seen... You know, we are benefiting from, you know, a global shortage of olive oil and record high prices for our competitors. But we have overall, we've seen really strong demand up until today, particularly over the last eight months.
So no trading down then or you say, Rob?
Yeah, sorry. Obviously, there was a, you know, there was a bit of a movement to Red Island that Sam discussed in the first half, where we then put the price up of Red Island, also tins, but, historically, and the GFC is a good example, and maybe someone on this call is too young to remember that, but it was a pretty scary time for a number of years, and that was probably the strongest sales growth we'd ever had. And I think that as people weren't eating at restaurants as much, they were also not compromising as much on what quality food they were buying for the house.
I think the other thing that's good for us is that most of our customers are buying it for health and quality, and, you know, when things get tough, they will probably ditch quality or something to a certain extent, but when they know how much better for their health, for their health and their family's health, high-quality extra virgin is compared to normal or average or poor. I think it really reinforces those buying habits of it's an important thing to spend the money on. And so, yeah, we're, we're optimistic, but of course, you know, you don't know, but signs at the moment are really terrific.
Would you see Red Island as being the fighting brand or, you know, like, you know, I suppose a lot of companies are trying to put that value kind of proposition to consumers? How do you see that? Or is it just about promoting your own brand, like on MasterChef and some of the other promotions that you did, the brand strength is pulling you through?
Sam, do you want to-
Yeah, I think, I think probably just going back a step, that we, you know, which is really important to us, we only put the very best half of our olive oil into Cobram Estate. We then, the next best goes into Red Island, which is good oil and, you know, plays at a lower price point and then into private label. So each of those brands plays a, you know, a very important role to us. And of course, Red Island being a lower price, it does typically compete with the imported brands on a price level.
In terms of price inflation, I guess we're hearing from most food companies that inflation is starting to moderate or the sort of price increases they might have put through. Is that what that... Well, you sort of see that 2024 now?
Yeah, I think we put through a major price rise in the USA across all our packaged goods in October, November of 2022. Red Island and Cobram tins in February, and as I said during the presentation, our bottle range is under review.
Okay, sure. And then just lastly, just on competitor behavior, obviously, with the sort of the slipping of the Aussie against the euro, and as you mentioned, the sort of global conditions, what do you think in terms of imports? You've seen some competition there, but, do you think that strengthens your position there on the shelf or the likelihood of less imports?
... I mean, in theory, it should. I mean, the cost of importing olive oil with the, where the global price is, the European oil and, you know, the weakening Australian dollar has made it, obviously a lot more expensive for our competitors to import oil. So you'd think that it would naturally benefit us.
Yeah, great. All right, thanks for that.
No worries. Thanks, Mark. Ben Rodney, if you're happy to ask you a question, please.
Hi, guys. Can you hear me?
Yes, perfect.
Great. And apologies if I missed this: Can you just talk through the dynamics of that big increase in the bulk oil sales in USA from Australia? You know, what was that? And it's not particularly profitable business. Yeah, what's the kind of rationale behind that?
Yeah, we always have an element of our oil that we sell in bulk, and certainly they are profitable channels, and we always have a certain amount of low value oil that we sell mainly B2B. Again, you know, these are long-term, predominantly long-term customers where we have good relationships with them, and we make good money out of it. So we've got some very strong relationships with some of the customers in the U.S. It's obviously a much bigger economy, so there's much more scale there. But it's been a real benefit also of having the US business because we can store that oil over there and sell it progressively through the year. So it's about really about assessing where the best return for that excess bulk is.
And so just what's the use of that oil, if it's not private label, is it more food services, and why is it so variable year to year?
Well, we sold more this year through the USA. So it depends on—really depends on our quality and, and demand. In terms of usage, it's typically used as either food service or as an ingredient, for a product.
Anything else, Ben?
No, that's all good. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Ben. Thank you. Alex Martin.
Great, thank you. Can you hear me?
Yes, perfect.
Yeah, great. Just a follow-up question, with regards to imports and maybe for you, Leandro. You talked about the potential harvest for North America, but with regards to Europe and Spain, is there already a view forming with regards to their harvest for this year? Will it be as bad as the last couple of years, or it's gonna be bad, but not as bad? What are the prospects there for the harvest of 2023?
Yes, obviously they passed a flowering period, which was not a bad flowering period. However, they had, as you probably have read on the news, pretty significant heat waves, you know, throughout the flowering period and immediately after that, that reduced the crop prospects significantly. Obviously, it is very difficult to have an accurate projection, but most of the views of the most recognized government agencies in Spain are talking about a clearly below average crop again. Most likely not as bad as the one of last year, which was a record low, but, still very much on the low side. And this is coming into a year where there's virtually no leftover stocks on storage.
We expect that the tension on pricing and the tightness of the market will remain at least certainly for another, you know, 14, 15 months.
They have. And notwithstanding there's a heatwave, but I know in northern Italy there were a lot of floods back in probably spring or early summer. Has there been any rainfall to help them for the next couple of years or, or not?
Yeah, it certainly has been more recent rainfalls in southern Spain. Obviously, northern Italy, where they had the floods, there's no olives growing in the colder part of Italy. But in the southern Spain, they have some summer rainfall. In some cases, it got a bit too late to rescue this crop, but most likely we'll have a potential, you know, benefit for the year, for the next year's crop. So we're talking about 2024-25 season.
Okay, great. Thank you. Great.
Thanks, Alex. Is there any other questions? I can't see Peter Parker with his hand up, but more than happy to give that another crack if you still have your question, Peter. Yep, if you can ask your question now, that'd be great. I'm not hearing you, sorry, Peter.
Yep, we hear you now.
Oh, sorry. It seems that they've just changed Zoom or something. When I logged on, there's some different questions they asked. Anyhow, doesn't matter. The government's decision or talking about buying back water rights, do you think that will get up, and how would that affect? Because obviously, water is a big input cost for you guys.
Yeah, terrific question, Peter. I'm gonna have a go at that. Look, obviously any water that's bought back by the government is less water for irrigation. Victoria, I see, have said that they're not participating in that. I mean, nothing's finalized, but we are in Victoria, even though that there's water trades between states in certain places, probably the key is that there's still an enormous amount of water. It's just when it gets dry, who can afford to buy it? If that makes sense. So-
Yeah.
It comes down to probably price, because long term, it'll all adjust. And I suppose what gives us confidence is that we are such a repeat business, that we're strong brands and we lowest cost, highest quality producers, that we don't know of any other mainstream crop that can even come close to us for what they can afford to pay per megalitre. Now, of course, we don't want to give it away to, you know, someone else who's got the water, and quite often that's farmers, because if they're growing annual crops and the price goes high and they're only getting a percentage of their allocation, you know, they would, they'd like to trade their water off to someone else because it's more profitable than growing a crop and it's only getting half an allocation, there's no point in planting it often.
So we've got every confidence about the source of water. The price is very much unknown, but it goes without saying that if there's more water moved out of the system, it will over time lead to higher prices. So the underlying assumption is that it'll be better if that wasn't from purely a price point of view. There's also some other, I suppose, benefits, if that makes sense, is that, you know, there's less people set up to irrigate. You know, when those adjustments take place, in wet years, the price is lower, so maybe more volatility, but that would be what happens. You know, cheaper in the flood years because basically demand's disappeared, because dry years puts too much pressure on producers and then higher prices, you know, when the droughts hit.
So I think it's intended to promote you expect regionally higher prices. But again, being able to adjust your price, having real pricing power and not having almost any currency risk is an absolutely wonderful place to be, which is our business. So we're not particularly worried about it, but we know that it's a cost. And when we do our normalized EBITDA, we put in the long-term average price of water, AUD 200 a ML or whatever it is, rolling average, because that gives a better... Just taking out the water equation rather than how the underlying business is performing. So obviously, the two-year rolling EBITDA would have been high this year if we only used AUD 38, which is what we paid for water, but we used AUD 200 in that analysis because that's the long-term average, so it negatively impacted this year.
But if the price goes to AUD 500, 500 in one year, we've still got AUD 200 in as far as that, I suppose, non-accounting standard analysis to try and normalize the account and make them more understandable.
Yeah, fair enough. Talking about water, you had a very big water event in U.S. and California the other day. Did that affect the crops or anything over there?
Leandro?
No, most of that cyclone really impacted Southern California, and all our growers are more in Central Northern California. Actually, we didn't have any rain at all during that event. So it's a big, big, big difference in that big state. So, no, it had no impact at all on our growth.
Oh, good.
But the water situation, Leandro, just is very good from huge rains during the winter. These summer rains were unseasonal rains, but during winter there was terrific rain, so allocations were really good. Do you want to touch on that, Leandro?
Yes, and a lot of snow as well, which really, in California, plays a pretty significant role in terms of feeding the different both aquifers but also the surface water system.
Yeah. And probably the last question, we see every night on the TV, people under pressure in supermarkets and buying things. Are you finding the supermarkets are putting a lot of pressure on you to discount the product? You know, you go in, you see 50% off of Coles and water. Are you finding more pressure coming on, on the company?
They always have that. I'll have a bit of a crack, but the retailers have always wanted to look after their customers, the discounts they contribute to, and it's a negotiation, but I wouldn't say it's, you know, it's any more than normal, although, you know, you never know. But we're in a, you know, in a very good position with the amount of olive oil that we produce. There's a global shortage. The supply doesn't have heaps of miles on it. We're a really reliable super producer. Both Coles and Woolies, we won their sustainability award across all suppliers this year. We were Supplier of the Year across their 30,000 suppliers, you know, in on time, in full deliveries.
Terrific relationship that they, they value and, you know, everyone's under cost pressures, so we can just do our best, but I wouldn't say it's any more. In fact, I'd say that the relationship's probably better than ever, but again, Sam, do you want to make any comment?
Yeah, no, that's a fair comment. I think we've got, you know, a good promotional program that rewards our, you know, customers at different price points, and I think it's a really good balance.
Yeah. Okay, and probably the final one about the share price. I know, did you go to, is it a Bell Potter , an agricultural thing or something, a forum that you went to? Are you starting to get some institutional interest in the company now?
... Sam?
Well, the institutional shareholding is still relatively, relatively small. But yeah, no, we do have, we have good interest in the company, and you know, Leandro and I, you know, regularly speak to institutions. But yeah, done no more than sort of the last 12 months.
No. Oh, well, hopefully with this good result, we see a bit of a northward projection like the olive oil price.
Yep, thank you. We hear, we hear you there. We won't agree with that statement. But perhaps-
Well done. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you, Peter. Perhaps like we did with olive oil, we have to do a period of education with this one as well. Training the market to understand that our business is vastly different than most other agricultural businesses, particularly as Rob said, with the ability not to be exposed to currency risk or commodity risk, and very strong brands that allow us to control the pricing to some extent, but also, unlike most of the other oil brands, to control supply as well, especially in years like this one, where there's shortages. Having that secure supply shows us how important it is to be fully vertically integrated.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it's not really... It doesn't seem to be valued greatly, that we own hundreds of millions AUD worth of tangible assets and other farmland, and there's just appreciation every day over a period of time in farmland. It's probably my better investment, as well as having, you know, controlling that cost of input. It's not like we've just got to go and pay the spot price on the market for our inputs, and it gets slammed and up and down. But I think the market will start to understand, and it's our job to communicate that better. But I think as we move forward, it will also speak for themselves, and it will be differentiated, I'm sure, over time. So, I can't ask any other questions.
Put your hand up if I am, or Sam, Leandro, I'm not missing anything?
No, it looks right.
Yeah. All right. Well, moving on. So thank you very, very much, everyone. I really appreciate your interest. Your attendance level is fantastic and, you know, again, thanks to the team for all they do every day to make this company such a wonderful company.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, everyone. Bye.