Thank you very much and welcome to everyone to the Elders Full Year Results Presentation for FY 2021. Thank you for joining Tania and myself for the session today. Tania's our relatively newly appointed CFO, having joined Elders in May this year. She's very, very quickly come up to speed with the business. I think Tania and her team have done an excellent job in providing further transparency and clarity of our business drivers in the presentation pack that we'll run through today. From an Elders view, this is the first year of our third Eight Point Plan. The Elders philosophy since the first Eight Point Plan has been to control what we can control and not dwell or waste resources on things that we can't control.
To have a cost and capital base to allow us to make good returns in bad seasons and therefore make great returns in good seasons. The full year results this year are an example of making great returns in good market conditions. We use our multiple diversifications by product, by service, by geography, by crop segment, by commercial model, and by channel to market and our financial discipline to deliver consistent growth and high returns for our stakeholders. In summary, we control and we aim to control what we can control.
When we look through the results today and we go into the detail, you'll see that of the controllables for us, obviously the market and commodity cycles are not in our control, and that accounts for some 30% of the uplift year-on-year, the market conditions and season. 22% of the uplift comes out of our acquisitions, so particularly the bolt-on acquisition pipeline that we've been working through. 48% of the uplift year-on-year comes from our organic self-help initiatives, including backward integration, margin management and a bunch of other initiatives that we'll go through in more detail on the presentation.
Controlling what we can control and not just relying on the season is a critical point for us and that's why we're confident that as you were last year when some commentary was around that this is it can't get any better than this. While we're confident that we're controlling largely the upsides through the self-help initiatives and therefore for this year we say we've made great progress and there's even more to come as we run out the final two years of the Eight Point Plan. In terms of the three Eight Point Plans, we've experienced periods of floods, droughts, bushfires over various geographies and markets and the COVID impact that everyone's experienced.
We've also experienced positive livestock prices with the crop commodity prices and coming into this year's summer cropping conditions. There's a mix. Our point is to be able to deliver consistent high return results throughout all of these cycles. The result today is strong in safety, sustainability, profit, strong in return on capital, strong in cash conversion, and strong in the strategic delivery that we've committed. Our commitment to provide 5%-10% growth in EBIT and earnings per share at a minimum of 15% return on capital in a sustainable manner through a safe and inclusive workplace remains paramount and we continue to show an over delivery on this commitment.
The approach today as we run through the presentation will be I'll provide an overview of the results. Tania will then go to the detail of our financial performance, and I'll then provide an update on the focus of the third Eight Point Plan and also the outlook for the next 12-18 months. With that I'll move to the first slide of the presentation on page four with the highlights for the year.
We go column by column from a people viewpoint. Our lost time injury frequency at 0.7%, which equates to three people being injured, is not acceptable to have anyone being injured, but compares very favorably with the 33 people that were being injured at the beginning of our Eight Point Plan process. The lost time injury frequency of 0.7 also reflects favorably on the Ag industry benchmark of 9.7. In terms of employee engagement, very strong, and I'll talk to more detail on that. The 41% female diversity and an increase in net increase of some 256 people throughout the business and through regional rural Australia.
From a customer viewpoint, we maintained our position as number one most trusted brand in agriculture and our closest rival in this Roy Morgan research so we're 3 x higher than our closest rival, which shows a very strong position. Where we've come from, we were not quite as trusted at the beginning of the Eight Point Plan process due to a number of other factors. The Net Promoter Score at 53 is a 7 increase on the previous year and against an average of most like companies in agricultural industry of 43. We've also invested heavily with our For Australian Agriculture campaign.
From a community viewpoint, a total of AUD 4 million in contribution and support throughout broad regional rural Australia, as we've been doing for 182 years. Always core to our DNA and as we've been able to get ourselves back in a position to be able to support our local communities in a more financial way, we've done that. Finally from a shareholder viewpoint, a 38% increase in underlying earnings per share, a 91% increase in the dividends per share, and the dividend payout ratio sitting at 43% within the range of 40%-60% from that we've set. We'll go to the next slide on financial summary.
If we just start across the top, you see strong growth in sales, strong growth in gross margin and a 38% increase in EBIT. As mentioned at the beginning, significant contribution across our backward integration strategy and our other initiatives and with growth, as you'll see across most of the product areas. In fact, when we go to our key products, six of the eight products and services have demonstrated an increase in market share with the other two being flat. As an impact, as we've moved through that slide, our cost to earn reduced. The cash conversion was at 36% at the half year and finished at 94%, and Tania will go into detail on our cash conversion.
Leverage ratio having reduced 30%. Pretty solid progress in the financial area. Moving to safety, health and wellbeing. You can see the lost time injuries reducing 16% over the last five years. As I mentioned, that's a 91% reduction since the start of the Eight Point Plan period. Significant progress, although our target has been ongoing to have zero injuries to anyone within the business. Also a significant reinvestment in safety throughout our branch network and in Killara, as we've been able to invest more in these areas across the board. Moving to the final slide of the first section on sustainability.
Strong contribution on the sustainability front through our customers. We've launched our carbon farming advisory service. It's in the very early stages to assist our clients around Australia come to grips and understand with the requirements and their opportunities in this area. I mentioned the most trusted brand position. The 40,000 Ag chemical containers diverted or recycled is our contribution.
Many of you would be aware that the overall industry waste reduction agreement, which drumMUSTER forms part of, I was, as chair of CropLife and Agsafe at the time, I was the one of the original signatories to that program, which has done such good work across Australian agriculture in recycling chemical containers. From a people viewpoint, again, very high engagement and enablement scores, and we'll talk in more detail on those. From an environmental viewpoint, we took the decision midway through the year to move our emissions target setting ahead from FY 2022 to FY 2021. With that, we've announced the three targets, the 2025 target of 100% renewable energy in all Australian sites.
The 2030 target of a 50% reduction in Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions intensity, particularly around our feedlot, that is subject to the technology and innovation development, where there's a lot of joint projects at the moment through the industry as we move forward to that. Then the 2050 target of net zero, Scope 1 and Scope 2. Finally, on the sustainability front, the publication of our first modern slavery statement and also the alignment and very well detailed in our sustainability report of our alignment with our climate-related disclosures that we need to make. With that, I'd like to hand over to Tania, and she'll run through the financial detail.
Great. Thanks, Mark. I'd like to take you through just some of the finer points of our financial performance. Starting with sales, you can see we've had strong sales growth, about 22% or AUD 466 million. Just a couple of highlights in our sales. Fertilizer growth was up 31%. AgChem growth was up 23%. Wholesale growth up 34%. Livestock turnover increased by 15%, and our real estate turnover increased by 39%. You can see strong performance across all of our product lines. Our gross margin was up AUD 91 million or 21%, so very similar off the back of strong sales. Our EBIT increased by AUD 46 million or up 38%, which is well above our Eight Point Plan ambition of 5%-10% growth through the cycle.
We also delivered an EBIT to sales margin of 6.5%, which compared well with FY 2020 at 5.8%. If you look at our earnings before interest and tax up 38%. Oops, sorry, I just repeated myself there. Costs were up 15%. This is off the back of our nine acquisitions during the year and organic growth of the network, adding over 256 FTE and 23 new locations. Our underlying net profit after tax was up 40%, obviously consistent with our EBIT, and our stat net profit after tax was up AUD 26 million or 22%. Last year, we had more tax losses that we brought on balance sheet, hence the difference between EBIT and stat net profit.
Return on capital was a healthy 22.5%, up 3.6%, and well above our Eight Point Plan aspirations of 15%. Pleasing to see our net debt also decline. Leverage ratios improved. Cash flow remained flat. Underlying earnings per share up 38%, again, consistent with EBIT growth. Our dividends per share increased AUD 0.20 per share, achieving that 43% payout ratio, franked to 20%. Moving over to the summary over the last five years, you can see consistent growth. Since the conclusion of our first Eight Point Plan in 2017, we've delivered over AUD 1 billion in additional revenue growth and up 12.7% over the last five years.
As well as EBIT more than doubling from where we started in FY 2017 at AUD 71 million up to AUD 167 million or a CAGR of 23.8%. You can see in 2021, we've allocated the value of our growth between acquisition growth was 22%, organic 48%, and market factors 30%. In the bottom left-hand side, you see our cost growth, which is 15% or AUD 46 million. Pleasing to see though our cost to earnings ratio falling from 72%- 69%. We've also got sales growth exceeding our cost growth, so 22% versus 15%. Bottom right-hand side, you see the CAGR over the last five years of 17.2% earnings per share.
We haven't had a lot of change in our underlying share numbers over the last 12 months, except for the long-term incentive plans issued. Moving across to the favorable performance across all of our products. The only exception in this is our feed and processing business. On the left-hand side, you can see our underlying NPAT increasing from AUD 107 million- AUD 151 million. This is an increase of AUD 43 million or 40% year-on-year. We start with retail products. Really good performance. They're up AUD 48 million or 27%. This is off the back of increased sales activity, good summer and winter cropping, and our backward integration strategy starting to pay off. The second item there is wholesale products. As you can see, they're up AUD 17.2 million or 38%.
We've had the benefit of the full year of the AIRR acquisition. In FY 2020, we only had 10.5 months of AIRR. Really good sales performance, up 34%, and a lot more of our product being sold into the Elders network, which is really positive. Agency services was up AUD 12.8 million or 10%. Really high livestock prices. Cattle were up 31%. Sheep prices average per head was up 9%. We obviously had a few bit less in volume, so that was a partial offset and really good seasonal conditions across all the states. Our real estate services business increased AUD 12.5 million or up 32% off the back of strong residential turnover and farmland turnover, ongoing network expansion and favorable market conditions.
You might say property is not getting any cheaper at the moment. Our financial services business did AUD 4.2 million growth or 11%, which is off the back of strong growth in our insurance product, of which is called Elders Insurance. We also had a full year of our livestock funding product, which we introduced in FY 2020. Our feed and processing business was down AUD 2.9 million or 18.7%. Pricing pressures on feeder cattle impacted our margin in the Killara feedlot. This forms a natural hedge to our agency business, so as cattle prices are higher, we often see margins suffering on the feed and processing side. Our costs were up AUD 46 million. We had more people. We increased our performance incentives due to outperformance this year.
We had nine acquisitions and our systems modernization program is starting to really take off. Finally, interest, tax and non-controlling interest. As you know, we don't pay much tax at the moment, but our non-controlling interest in the ABMW, of which we own 75%, we eliminate through this line, which had outperformance this year. Moving on just to share with you a bit more detail about our gross margin and highlight the diversification across our business model and categories. As you can see, our largest business is our agency service business, which grew 10%. It's comprised of sheep, livestock, and wool. On the left-hand side, you see our AgChem and vet business, which is number two, growing 35% over the year and represents 25% of our overall value.
You can see livestock and AgChem combined make up, you know, over 60% of our gross margin performance. Just to touch on rural products, you can see AgChem increasing 25% and it's been a positive year in favorable cropping seasons and our backward integration strategy starting to pay dividends. Our Fertilizer product grew 24%, to AUD 38 million. Some very high demand for fertilizer. Makes up around 7% of our margins. Animal Health increased 20%, up AUD 32 million and contributes 6%. Then other retail, which looks like it's grown not very much during the year, but this is where we also book our incentives. If we remove the incentive growth from that, we'd be 14% increase.
Our wholesale business finished with an increase of 39% year-on-year, as I mentioned earlier, off the back of full year of performance. The agency services business benefited from livestock prices during the year. Our volumes were slightly offsetting that benefit. Real estate had another standout year with up 32% or AUD 12.5 million, driven by demand for farm and residential property. We had a number of acquisitions in 2021 as well. There were four small acquisitions filling out our geographical footprint. Financial services was up 11% or AUD 3.8 million due to strong insurance growth and feed and processing, just 2% of our business, where we suffered from margin decline, as I mentioned earlier. Moving on to financial performance by geography.
I thought this is a good way of just sort of showing the strong performance across all the geographies and the exposure and how the mix of our states contributed to our overall performance. You can see Western Australia in the top left corner and Victoria and Riverina in the bottom right corner are our two largest regions, comprising 26% and 30% respectively. Nearly 50% of our earnings were from those states, but good contributions from the residual states. Western Australia was up 35% or AUD 15 million. Really strong demand for fertilizer and chemical products. In South Australia, we're up AUD 6 million or 23%. Again, Fertilizer and Chemical products were the emerging theme. We also had the YP Ag acquisition, which was five locations in 2021.
Tasmania is the smallest of our states, but still a respectable 13% growth year-on-year. It also benefited from the opening of the Smithton branch. Queensland and Northern Territory in the top right were up 53%, benefiting from fertilizer, chemical sales, margin improvements, high cattle prices, and strong demand for residential and farm assets. Really across all product lines there, and we sort of believe that there's more growth in Queensland. New South Wales, recovering from a couple of years of drought, a really healthy 35% growth, particularly if you consider that Killara Feedlot is also included in this segment. We've got new management in place there, and our ABMW business is performing well this year. Victoria and Riverina up AUD 14 million, 28%. Strong cattle prices were a feature for the result here.
Just to run through our financial performance on costs. There's really three themes to the AUD 46 million or 15% increase in costs. It's addition of people, it's our acquisitions, and investment in systems and organization. To start with people, up AUD 20 million. We've added 116 FTE across all of our states throughout the year. We also supported that with an additional 23 people in corporate services, plus some increased incentives for outperformance. Secondly, our acquisitions were up AUD 15 million. We had the whole cost of AIRR in our business this year, as well as nine acquisitions adding 88 FTE throughout the year. Our property and lease costs, you can see that's a large expense for us, about AUD 33 million each year. Really not a lot of difference year-on-year there.
Depreciation and amortization, we increased our capital expenditure for safety and sustainability initiatives throughout the year, adding some extra costs. Motor vehicle, very little change at around AUD 21 million year-on-year. Our systems modernization and IT costs, this is associated with the first wave of our systems modernization implementation. We'll share with you some more detail of that later in the slide pack. Insurance, it's not getting any cheaper. It was up AUD 1.5 million off the back of higher premiums and higher assets and our credit insurance program for our large exposures. Advertising and sponsorship was up AUD 1.6 million. We had the For Australian Agriculture brand campaign and an extra AUD 600,000 in sponsorships during the year. Our other operating expenses are just all the residual printing, consulting, travel, entertainment.
Nothing significantly increased in that category during the year. Moving on to capital. We've already spoken about our return on capital at 22.5%, up 3.6, and pleasing to see it's above the three-year average of 19.9%. On the right-hand side, you can see our average working capital increased by AUD 85 million, and at balance date, we're up AUD 67 million or 17%. If I take you through the bottom chart, which, starting with trade and other receivables, you can see our trade and other receivables were up AUD 133 million or +22%. This is really consistent with our sales growth year-on-year. Our debtor days have remained consistent at around 35 days, and our provisions for doubtful debts have remained low and represent just 1% of our total debts outstanding.
The biggest increase in our trade and other receivables is rural product debtors, and this is consistent with sales growth and the in-industry norm of clients receiving deferred terms. Livestock debtors were up AUD 20 million, and this is off the back of both strong sheep and cattle prices, and the introduction of our livestock funding product added an extra AUD 10 million. In our inventory, this also includes livestock, was up AUD 77 million or 25%. Our rural product inventory comprises of AUD 69 million of that AUD 77 million increase. This is supported by our sales growth and outlook for 2022. Our stock turns were relatively flat year-on-year at 6.9 x versus 7.3 last year. Stock obsolescence has remained low, with less than 1% of our inventory being provisioned for.
Key movements in our rural product inventory balance are relating to Ag chem products with increased demand and outlook as farmers are looking to lock in orders in anticipation of price rises. Fertilizer and our wholesale business also increasing their inventory in anticipation of FY 2022. Finally, trade and other payables increased AUD 143 million or 27%. This is also aligned with the increase in our inventory, which is consistent year-on-year. Our livestock creditors increased by AUD 38 million. That's probably the biggest increase relating to the higher prices. We also have some deferred acquisition consideration and a payroll accrual of about AUD 8 million as we move from monthly to fortnightly pay. Moving on to cash flow. At the conclusion of 2021, we achieved an operating cash flow of AUD 142 million. This is consistent with FY 2020.
While our EBIT grew AUD 46 million, with similar non-cash adjustments for depreciation, amortization, and those provisions, which are non-cash, the difference between this year and last year is the growth in our debtors. You can see on the right-hand side, our cash conversion fell from 132%-94%, and that is absolutely related to the increase in debtors to support our sales growth, which is consistently increasing with our sales. It's worth noting that our target on cash conversion is 80%. The second chart down, you can see our working capital to sales ratio. This has remained relatively flat year-on-year and is consistent with our peer averages. Finally, you see our net cash flow falling from positive AUD 43 million to negative AUD 2.7 million in FY 2021.
If you look at the left-hand side table, you can see our investing cash flows are much lower year-on-year. Last year we had the AIRR acquisition, which was a significant cash outflow, whereas this year we've only got nine smaller acquisitions. You can also see on our financing cash flows, which are AUD 109 million out versus a positive AUD 24 million last year. This again is associated with the debt we raised for the AIRR acquisition in FY 2020, whereas this year we've had a smaller number of acquisitions. We paid down debt of AUD 29 million, and we also increased our dividends from AUD 23 million- AUD 48 million. Those were the key drivers of our cash flow performance. Moving to net debt. You can see our debt's reducing. We're improving our leverage, interest cover, and gearing ratios.
We've reduced our net debt AUD 20 million year on year. You can see on the right-hand side, we've included our ratios, including AASB 16 and beneath it, excluding AASB 16, which is how the bankers like to look at our ratios year on year. You can see our leverage ratio has fallen from 2 to 1.4. Our interest cover, 17.5-23.6, and our gearing ratio has fallen from 47%- 38%. We've got significant headroom in our borrowings. Our undrawn facilities at year-end were AUD 293 million out of AUD 450 million, and we're well within our banking covenants, as you can see on the bottom section of the slide. Moving to dividend and capital management. Our earnings and dividends per share continue to grow.
Underlying earnings per share was up 17.2% to AUD 0.97 per share and consistent with our EBIT growth. On the right-hand side, you can see our dividends per share increasing 53.8% CAGR over the last five years. You can see the uplift in our dividends per share from 22 to 42 in FY 2021. In FY 2021, the second half dividends of AUD 0.22 per share was franked to 20% or AUD 0.044. Bottom left-hand chart, you can see our franking credit reducing to AUD 11 million. This is part of the challenge of not being in a tax paying situation. We have a low franking credit balance and until we arrive at a tax paying situation, we probably won't be paying fully franked dividends until 2024 or thereafter.
Our dividend payout ratio was 43%, increasing on last year's 31% and within the board policy range of 40%-60%. Now, this might not be the most exciting slide in the pack, because I know not all of you like to talk about tax, but I know that tax has caused some confusion in the past. I'm hopeful that this will sort of explain our tax situation. As you know, Elders has been progressively recognizing our historical tax losses in our financial accounts as a deferred tax asset. That recognition of the deferred tax asset and an income tax credit effectively negates the tax expense at the corporate tax rate of 30%, with the exception of a small amount of tax on our non-controlled interest. In FY 2021, we've recognized all tax losses on the balance sheet.
The first chart shows AUD 110 million in deferred tax asset that we are carrying forward relating to tax losses. We used AUD 49 million in FY 2021 to offset our tax expense. Based on the FY 2021 performance, all tax losses will be utilized in around FY 2024 when we estimate we'll start paying tax. From 2022 onwards, income tax will be recognized in our P&L without the benefit of the tax loss recognition to offset it. This is required by the accounting standard AASB 112. The second chart shows the tax impact on NPAT. This is important. It's just showing what FY 2021 looks like today at AUD 150 million. Then if we excluded tax, you can see that our NPAT will fall to AUD 45 million.
If you assume in FY 2022 we make about the same amount of money, then you will see a reduction in our NPAT as the headline number. The third chart shows the impact on EPS, which we'll be reporting at an impact of around AUD 0.28 per share year-on-year. To summarize, we've got AUD 110 million of deferred tax asset carried forward to fund our future income tax liability. Next year, we'll be reporting income tax expense in our P&L, and our reported NPAT and EPS will fall by this amount. About half the analysts have factored this into their models, but some have not. Importantly, no tax is payable till FY 2024. I'll just run through a few of the finer details of the business performance. Rural Products, you've got, which is retail and wholesale business.
Our gross margin is improving year-on-year and supported by our backward integration strategy. You can see on the left-hand side, our sales is up AUD 390 million or 24%. Strong performances across AgChem, Fertilizer, the wholesale business, has really been driving that result. Our gross margin is increasing by AUD 65 million or 30%. Pleasing to see that our gross margin percentage is increasing from 13.4%- 14.1% off the back of our backward integration strategy. In the bottom left-hand chart, you can see Elders' own brand versus third-party sales. What you can see here is we've been continuing to invest in our Titan Ag and Pastoral Ag, in Animal Health.
What you can see is that our share of own brand is increasing from 24% of sales to 26% of sales. This doesn't mean our third-party suppliers are not important to us. We've, they're very valuable relationships, and you can see that, while the overall share of our third-party suppliers declined by 2%, their actual sales increased by AUD 250 million or 20% year-on-year. Our agency services business, you can see that cattle and sheep volumes were down as a consequence of restocking. In the top left-hand corner, you can see cattle volumes over the last five years have been relatively flat at 1.3% and actually declined in the last year by 150,000 or 9%.
Our sheep volumes also were reasonably flat over the last five years and declined 200,000 or 2% year-on-year. Obviously, the high cattle and sheep prices offsetting the volume decline. The bottom left-hand corner, you can see our wool bales increasing by 108,000 over the last year, up 41% as the wool market starts to make a recovery. Finally, in the bottom right-hand corner, AuctionsPlus volumes is the online trading platform of which we own 50%. You can see that it's been steadily increasing over the last five years and up 36% in terms of millions put through that trading platform in the last year. User registrations have also increased by 48%, increasing the popularity of that channel. There has been strong demand for farmland residential property.
It doesn't seem to matter where you are at the moment, it's expensive. Our farmland sales are up 12% over the last five years, and in 2021 increased by 26% to AUD 1.6 billion. Our residential sales also showing a healthy 21% CAGR over the last five years and increased 68% to AUD 1.46 billion in the last 12 months. Properties under management, 6.1%, and we're up 12.9% in FY 2021. You can see the strong performance across all of the components of the real estate services business. We also added a number of small acquisitions during the year just to expand our network of high-quality agents to close those geographic gaps.
In the bottom right-hand corner, you can see our gross margin by category increasing 12.3% over the last five years. You can also see that farmland and residential contribute roughly equal amounts to our gross margin. Financial services. If you look at the top left-hand chart, you can see our Rural Bank loan and deposit book reasonably subdued over the last 12 months, but a CAGR of 3.2% over the last year. Not a lot of demand from loans at the moment, given farmers are generally cashed up. For deposits, obviously, the low rate environment means that people are looking for alternative places to invest money.
Our StockCo book, which is a business we own 30% of, was up AUD 15.9 million or 20% in the last 12 months off the back of really strong cattle prices. The bottom left-hand corner, you can see our livestock funding balance. This was a new product we launched last year to complement our StockCo book, and you can see it's growing nicely up AUD 10 million year-on-year. Finally, our gross written premiums is our Elders Insurance business, which we own 20%. A nice CAGR of 8.3% over the last five years, but particularly strong over the last 12 months, up AUD 180 million or 15%, with good market conditions and product growth driving that outcome. Finally, our feed and processing business.
You can see in the first chart our Killara feedlot, a CAGR of 4% over the last five years. However, in FY 2021, high cattle prices impacted the number of cattle sold and so led into a reduction year-on-year. Our Elders Fine Foods sales business up 8% over the last five years. Sales grew AUD 3.4 million or 23% in FY 2021. However, there are some challenges with supply chain and subdued margins, impacted margin there. This concludes our business performance section. I'll hand it back over to Mark to take you through growing our business.
Okay, thanks, Tania. We'll move on to the Eight Point Plan and progress against the Eight Point Plan. First of all, focus on our 2023 ambition, which is have 5%-10% growth in EBIT and EPS through the cycle to above 15%. When you do the calculation from our FY 2020 starting point, what we're trying to do is to get to between AUD 140 million and AUD 160 million EBIT by 2023 and at a minimum of 15% return on capital. Clearly, at AUD 166 this year and 22.5% return on capital, we've outstripped that three-year target.
We do believe that we have significant additional growth potential regardless of the seasons as I indicated in the introduction and as Tania also demonstrated with some of the self-help initiatives and the progress we've made against those. When we look at the second part of our ambition, the industry-leading sustainability outcomes. We issued our second sustainability report today and, as mentioned, one of the highlights, but it's quite a comprehensive report and rated among the best in agriculture by a number of independent organizations.
One of the highlights is bringing the setting of our emissions targets ahead to 2021 with our 2025, 2030 and 2050 targets set in that report. On the final ambition of being most trusted brand, we've been able to maintain that position and have come a long way back over the last eight years in terms of trust in regional rural Australia. As mentioned, we're 3 x ahead of the closest rival in terms of trust. Of the five strategic priorities around winning market share, capturing more gross margin, strengthening and expanding our service offerings, optimizing our feed and processes of the business and the sustainability program. They're. I'll deal with those page by page as we go forward.
Also the enablers around systems modernization and attracting and developing our people in a safe and inclusive environment and also the unflinching financial discipline. Moving to the next slide as we look at the delivery of our, the first year of our third Eight Point Plan. On the win market share side, component, the first one, I'd just like to highlight our bolt-on acquisition strategy, which I think many are very aware of and with the nine acquisitions this year. I just, we've spoken about for a number of years our, the discipline involved with our business development activity, our bolt-on acquisitions. I just wanna run through some of the metrics for this year.
There were 55 financial models, which means that we most likely had 80 or so targets to get to 55 financial models. We took it to the point of 16 non-binding indicative offers, and then we had nine completions with an annualized EBIT around of AUD 6.9 million. At the same time we had 11 post implementation reviews to ensure that the business case and the discipline that we put in place on integration was complied with or exceeded, and they were all successful reviews. I think the first point is around this acquisition component, the bolt-on acquisition component, being a critical part of our growth.
As you see towards the end in the appendix of the pack, there are multiple blue-chip farming areas and agricultural areas around Australia that Elders isn't strongly represented and we have through multiple products and services. One of the questions and one of the commentary on it's as good as it gets from last year, which was 120, which was as good as it got until this year, which is 166. One of the commentary is, well, you know, the pipeline's running out for these bolt-ons and this just won't continue.
Just to put some color around that, we currently have 27 targets in our pipeline, and they will go through the same sort of review process as we've done for the last few years. And also to paint a picture of the universe of opportunity, and is this reducing? There's roughly 1,730 branches, rural service branches around Australia. Half of those, so 850 or so, are independent. Of those 850, they may be larger independents, smaller independents. They're continually looking for succession plans or for monetizing all their work and effort, and that's where our pipeline comes from.
The prospect of the pipeline running dry in this market is highly unlikely and our ability to remain patient, methodical and financially disciplined is very, very high. I just wanted to make that point. On the other market share consideration, I mentioned that of the eight areas that we had reliable market share information, six of those have shown an increasing market share over the last 12 months, and two of them are flat. Generally we've continued to grow and we've continued to win new customers and we've continued to expand as per our strategy.
Looking at the capture more gross margin in rural products, and we already spent a bit of time on the backward integration strategy. Again, a reason to believe that given that 70% of our growth this year has come out of the bolt-on acquisition strategy and the organic activity, the self-help and backward integration, there's strong. We're not halfway there in our backward integration at this point, so regardless of market conditions, there's significant opportunity for continued profitability being driven out of that area. The second point I'd like to make is around the AIRR acquisition.
Two years ago when we bought AIRR, we targeted AUD 6.9 million-AUD 9.3 million synergies through the AIRR acquisition. We've now completed year two, and we can report that number is actually AUD 14.1 million, and that benefit continues to flow through. When we look at strengthening and expanding our market, I have some slides that show the increase in branches, people and agronomists coming up. In terms of the feed and processing, optimizing feed and processing, item four, it's the upside for our agency business, as Tania indicated, is the downside for our feed and processing business.
Having said that, again, with the view of controlling what you can control, in that frame of increasing cattle prices, we've been backgrounding to reduce the cost as we bring longer lines of cattle into the feedlots. The area that we could control was to drive efficiency in the farming operation at Killara. We've invested in the center pivot irrigation systems against the less efficient flood irrigation systems. This has significantly increased our productivity. You may be aware we grow our forage silage for our rations, and forage crops, corn as well at Killara. That initiative, the lower cost in grain and the farming activity, has offset the increase in cattle prices at Killara by roughly 25%.
Obviously only part of the way, but, again, to the philosophy of controlling what you can control. When we go through the sustainability program, we've spoken about that and we'll, and there are separate slides on systems modernization, people safety, and the cost and capital efficiency. Moving to the next slide on ambition and the point I made a couple of times around the most trusted brand and our increase in trust from last year. I mean, our objective was just to hold on to the number one spot, but we've actually been able to increase in trust, which is a credit to all of our people throughout the business.
As I've mentioned a couple of times, that the closest competitor to us is, we're 3x higher than the closest competitor. On the Net Promoter Score, I also mentioned that, we've increased there and, on an average of like businesses. It's very difficult to benchmark because of, insurance, banking, rural products, fertilizer, et cetera, et cetera. On the average of like business, it sits around 43 and we sit at 53 there. To the next slide on our brand. We launched a significant campaign around the four pillars of Elders for experience, Elders for community, Elders for our people, and Elders for sustainability. We've also, as you can see on the right-hand side, significantly increased our digital coverage and activity.
Going to the next slide on strengthening our service offerings. Just a very quick pass through the points of presence. 23 additional points of presence in the business. 256, net 256 more people and 30 more agronomists throughout regional rural Australia as we try to significantly complement the Thomas Elder Institute and Thomas Elder Consulting initiatives that we have in place. With the next slide on strengthening our service offerings, I won't go into detail, but I will comment on those key areas, innovation and digital activity, our research partnerships and our strategic partnerships. It’s worth noting that Elders has been a leader in this area.
I mean, we've been one of the strong partners of the introduction of Vodafone in Australia and also of AdvanceAg South Australia, which have been highly successful platforms for Ag tech development and growth in the Australian market. When we look at systems modernization, you can see the multiple wave approach that we're taking here. I think we spoke at the half year that our thinking was that to ensure that we were able to deliver consistent growth through the cycles, that we break our systems modernization into six waves, running from internal financial and people foundation, supply chain, and all the way through to continuous improvement in wave six.
Build them in a way which they are, where they're modular, and if circumstances change, unexpected conditions occur that we aren't locked into expenditure and activity where it may not be appropriate at that time. I mean, it seems that that's unlikely, but we always like to take a very conservative and methodical approach. As you can see, wave one, which focuses on the internal financial and people foundation, we've made the two selections there with Microsoft and Workday respectively. The cost for wave one, AUD 18.9 million, split roughly AUD 14.5 million as CapEx and AUD 4.4 million as OpEx. That's the FY 2022 program.
These six waves, we're thinking a three- to five-year program. We'll just do a low pulse rate management of the project with Vivian Da Ros as our CIO as he brings the program together. Our thinking on this is quite an important component of it with the front-end savings that occur, particularly the people component. With our branches throughout regional rural Australia, people are multitasked as you'd expect. Our thinking is that the time and the effort and the rework that may currently be done, which is released by systems modernization, will actually release those individuals to expand their customer-facing activity and interaction. It's quite exciting.
The project itself is not based on core cost reduction. It's based on a customer centricity and in providing platform for future growth and development of the business. When we look at the next slide on the highly engaged and diverse workforce, as you can see the stats there with 60% NEDs, 80% women in management positions. I'll just make a comment around that because when the Eight Point Plan process started, there was 7% of women in management positions, but now we're at 80% and we're below our self-imposed target and we're doing a lot of work in terms of pipeline development in this area.
I would compare that with the Ag industry benchmark of women in management positions at 14%. We've got a long way to go, but we feel, you know, from 7%- 18%, it's not too bad, but we need to drive this pipeline of development. In terms of enablement and engagement, you see the very strong position that we've been able to achieve there, and that comes and shows through every day with our team at the front and the back of the business. Moving to the outlook, we thought we'd start with the ABARES outlook first and the data that you all have available to you.
You can see that there's a relatively strong view across most areas in agriculture in Australia. I think when we look at the target of AUD 100 billion production by 2030, when we started at AUD 60 billion four or five years ago, dropped to 47 during the drought, and this year we've hit AUD 70 billion. There is significant growth across agriculture in Australia, and fortunately Elders is very well positioned through the key growth areas. The point that worries a lot of people is around market access and having markets to sell to in the light of some of the reductions out of China.
I think it's worth noting that our key markets, particularly the big commodities being beef and grain, have been Indonesia, North Asia, Japan, South Korea. The ASEAN countries have also opened up significantly, as well as our Middle Eastern markets and European markets. I think from a market access viewpoint, we have the EU free trade agreement being negotiated now, the UK agreement, the India Free Trade Agreement. There are multiple areas, and certainly, I think Elders' perspective on this is that it is not a limitation to our growth.
I think it's also worth noting that the global markets that may be seen as a problem for Elders are actually driving a significant upside for Australian agriculture with failed and reduced crops in the northern hemisphere in Central Asia, which has driven up commodity prices. I think that outlook looks pretty good. We go to the consequences and implications for Elders in terms of outlook and our view as we run through our rural products, agency, real estate. Basically, as we run through all of the areas, the outlook, our thinking is that there's another 18 months to two years of solid conditions.
Our planning is always at average season because of the big component of self-help and control, what we can control in our strategy. The outlook looks pretty positive and our thinking is that we will continue to have a very strong market to play in and with a lot in control with our many initiatives internally. With that, I'd like to open up to questions for Tania and myself.
Thank you.
If you wish to ask a question please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on speakerphone please raise your hand to ask a question. Your first question comes from Michael Peet from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Morning, Tania and Mark. Just first one, just Mark on opportunities for top-line growth. I'm just thinking about organic and acquisition and probably look at slide 41, tells us a bit about that. But I'm just trying to dig a bit deeper in terms of where you see the biggest opportunities, geographically or by product, division category.
Yeah. Thanks, Michael. A good question. I think geographically, there are multiple areas. I mean, as you're aware, we're relatively weak in New South Wales and Queensland, and our thinking is that, Queensland, you know, sugarcane, tropical horticulture, I think we've talked about it before.
That's an area where we don't have a strong position, and we need to get stronger. I think but there are other areas, as you can see from that slide, with multiple opportunities through multiple products. I think one of the issues that we're working through as an Executive Committee given our weighting to rural products, now with our backward integration with our retail business and our wholesale business, we're you know looking for a bit more balance in our portfolio because this has been the success of our portfolio. If we could find opportunities in the financial services area, the real estate area, and or even in our core agency area, that would be a nice balance for the portfolio.
You know, I think our broad market share at 18%, there are still multiple opportunities.
You mentioned those nine completions, I think 6.9 of EBIT. Just wondering what sort of multiple they were acquired at and what's the sorta outlook for multiples, I guess? Or multiples are going up across the board, I guess. Just wondering if you're seeing any upward pressure on acquisition multiples.
Our template is the 3-5 x multiple of EBIT with normalized working capital and then the phased 50% payment on completion, 25% year two, and then the 25% reconciliation for the second payment in order for us to organize the transition if we're transitioning the vendor from the business. I think it's fair to say that the multiples have moved to the top end of the range. But it's quite an interesting dynamic because although it's competitive for the businesses, historically, two years ago, we had two additional competitors in Landmark and Ruralco bidding for these businesses.
Now as they've combined business with Nutrien, they've hit the upper end of ACCC market share headroom, there's less competition in there and more from a couple of other players that are building their business. Our thinking is that we've got room to move if we need to go above 5%. We have in a couple situations, but that's still the template we're using.
Just a final one from me. Your own brand percentage, 26%. Have you got a target for that, and what sort of impact should we see or benefit on the gross margin going forward, as you implement that strategy?
I think that the 26% is across the board. If you honed it in on something like, on an area, a product category like crop protection, our belief is that we can get to 70% of the addressable market at 2023. I think it's around 40% at the end of this year for the crop protection market of the addressable market. And with that, it's like for that increase, it's a 10%-15% upside in margin, which falls directly to EBIT. Hence, the control of controllables comment that I've been repetitive on.
Great. Thank you.
In Animal Health, it's slightly different. Thinking at 70%, we believe that allows us room to manage, or work with our third-party supplier partners who have off-patent products as well as patented products.
Great. Thanks, Mark.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Alex Paton from Citi. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Mark and Tania, and congrats on the results. Just a couple of questions from me. There seems to have been pretty strong prices for crop inputs, particularly in the second half of the year. Could you maybe talk about how these have contributed to your second half results and how you're thinking about FY 2022?
Yeah. I'm not sure if there's a lot of impact. I guess one of the big impacts is where we have fixed margins, say for Fertilizer. If it's a fixed margin, you've seen the dilution of the margin because the dollar value, the absolute dollar value is the same, whereas the revenue's gone up with the increase in price. And that's actually one of the reasons that the raw product margins increased 0.7% versus the 1.4%, you know, we can narrow down to specific crop protection products.
In terms of the FY 2022, a major issue for us in terms of the increase in prices, I mean, we've Liz Ryan runs our retail area, and she's been working very closely with our wholesale business, the Titan business, and the branch network to ensure that we aren't underselling the market. You know, glyphosate prices almost look like they're doubling through this period. So generally we're passing the increase, but clearly that's a bumpy ride because there are pre-commitments to farmers at current prices, and then the replacement price may be 40%, 50%, 60% higher. So we're managing it very tightly. It is one of the threats to our business.
Our supply chain's also extended by an extra month to 8-12 weeks now, in terms of bringing product into Australia because of other supply chain issues that are being experienced globally. It's an area that we believe we can manage and control, but it is one that we're watching like a hawk.
Got it. Thanks, Mark. I guess on your customer base, have these consistent price increases impacted them pretty heavily in terms of, you know, grower margins? Or have the higher commodity prices generally, you know, managed to offset these increased input costs for your customers?
I think largely, yeah. I mean, there's so depending on the product or service, some areas we put caps on, some areas we I mean, we're always on a pre-commitment. You know, there's. It's a positive environment. I guess it's not like deep, dark drought situation.
Got it. I guess everything's looking pretty good, in terms of crop inputs demand at the moment with the summer crop coming up?
Yeah. It's quite positive. We, you know, the summer crop's probably going to, with water in dams and further rainfall recently through those summer cropping areas from the MIA north, it looks very, very positive. There's also obviously there'll be expanded cotton as you'd expect, but also with sorghum and rice and other summer crops being planted. It remains quite positive.
Great. That's all for me. Thanks, guys.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Philip Pepe from Blue Ocean Equities. Please go ahead.
Hi, Mark, Tania. Yeah, well done on a very, very strong result. Good CFO, obviously keeping the ROIC up, let's see.
The numbers are perfect. Thank you.
I give you all the credit for that, Mark. It's none. Just on the outlook, though, I mean, phenomenal, EBIT up 38%. Even if I strip out what you've defined as market, it still gets 11.5% growth in terms of what you can control. You've still got a long way to go in terms of backward integration. You've outlined a number of, you know, 27 M&A targets. It's pretty difficult to see livestock prices coming off in the next 12 months, same with property, and there's plenty of moisture in the ground to carry the crop for another 12 months that would shorten the ABARES data's positive.
On that analysis, it seems to me like the underlying growth for the next couple of years is probably 10%-15% EBIT, with market moves maybe up, on the upside. Is that a fair analysis?
I think there's an opportunity for us to continue our under promise, over deliver paradigm, yes.
No, fair enough. I mean, you commented on recent rainfall. Obviously, the press likes to talk about the bad areas, but you're suggesting the extra rainfall is actually positive for the tail end of the winter crop and the summer crop ahead.
Yeah, I mean, it's a good question, Phil, because a number of the a lot of harvesting you know many farmers that I'm talking to are have been able to get a lot of their crop off. The rainfall now does go to yield and slowing harvest where it hasn't been done. There's upsides and downsides. We don't think that that's significantly widespread but we do we are mindful that there is a negative impact in some areas.
No, thank you. Well done again.
Yeah, thanks, Phil.
Thank you. Your next question comes from James Ferrier from Wilsons. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Mark and Tania. Thanks for your time. First question, can you just confirm, perhaps in a sort of a dollar sense, the benefit that Elders achieved in FY 2021 from the backward integration? I know you referenced a few margin figures, et cetera, but just a dollar number would be handy if you've got it.
Yeah, we'll have a look.
Yeah, like sales to Titan were up 31%, and growth margin was up 44%. Our EBIT on Titan was up AUD 11 million year-on-year.
Yeah, okay. Great.
That's the Titan Ag product, and then there's the Pastoral Ag product, which is the Animal Health product.
Yeah, that sort of leads on to my second part of that first question there, Mark. The AUD 14 million of synergies with AIRR, does that include the backward integration on the registrations that came out of that business?
It will pick up the Pastoral Ag products.
Yes, it does.
Yeah.
Yeah, okay. That's great. Second question's sort of following on from an earlier one, just around the rise in input costs and supply chain constraints. How are you preparing the business for the year ahead in terms of demand? I ask that partly in the context of the supplier financing facility within the payables number increased from AUD 8 million- AUD 26 million. Do we read that as you've forward bought more product in anticipation of that demand being there and in the context of these freight delays probably increasing?
I think our view is to not encourage panic buying. I mean, because you know, panic buying normally with our customer centricity means extended terms. The loser in that case is us holding the stock and funding the grower. Our thinking on it is that there's another month, well no, another four weeks that we're exposed to in our supply chain for our own products, for the backward integrated products. That's a hit that we'll you'll see. You saw it for half with our cash conversion for half.
I think it's fair to say, Tania, that we'd expect that in the next half as well, the same sort of implications for cash conversion.
Yeah, absolutely. Like, you can see like forward buying and farmers being concerned about supply and obviously the supply chain's increasing and we wanna make sure we're not short. So, you know, there has the potential for us to be holding more inventory in the first half of next year.
Then on the in terms of product availability, going category by category, we're pretty comfortable around crop protection, although you know with the same risk profile that I painted earlier, and we're watching it like a hawk. With Fertilizer, we feel comfortable in Western Australia and in Eastern Australia. In discussions with our major suppliers, our sense is that our forecast will be honored and that the price and margin issue is another issue. In terms of forecast as input to production function for farmers, that seems to be fine. Animal Health, we don't see too many concerns at all. General merchandise, we're relatively comfortable as well.
Okay, great. The last question I had was just around the system modernization. I mean, you've got a fantastic opportunity to really catapult the business forward, in terms of the broader systems and the way customers can interface with Elders. Can I just clarify some of your language you've used today relative to what language you used back in May with the first half results.
I didn't realize.
Where you talked about 15% of the
I didn't realize I was with you, James.
Sorry, Mark. Yeah. You talked about 15% back in May, 15% of the total spend likely in FY 2022.
Mm-hmm.
Today, you're talking about AUD 19 million as the first wave. Am I right in saying that in total, at this stage of the program, you're looking at total spend of something like AUD 120 million?
No. I think the information now that we've actually scoped it out significantly and run it wave by wave as we've done it. I think key off that number, because at any stage we can delay or hasten. Our approach will be to keep the market fully informed on what we're doing with systems model as we've done today. I don't think an extrapolation is helpful, to be honest.
Yeah, okay. No, that's helpful. Just to finish off that and clarify that last question then. You made this point earlier, Mark, in terms of the benefit to your networks, whatever you end up spending, and in this first wave, it's AUD 19 million, you'd anticipate that it's not just sort of catch up or sunk cost. What you're saying is that in the networks, you would expect the efficiency from a people perspective, to free up time for them to engage more with customers, and Elders is gonna generate more sales and more gross margin. This is actually a spend that will generate a return on capital.
Yeah. The focus of it is exactly as you describe it there.
Okay.
So it's not-
Great.
The focus is not just to reduce the heads in head office or whatever. That is the focus to us to allow us to serve our clients and make it much more convenient and easier and more transparent for our people to serve their clients.
Yeah. Understood. Okay, thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from, David Pobucky from Macquarie Group. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Mark and Tania. Congratulations on the strong result and the good color in the pack as well. Just a couple from me. The first one on AIRR. Solid synergies numbers there of AUD 14 million. Do you expect to eke out some more incremental synergies from that business going forward?
I think definitely in the Animal Health registration portfolio component. That's pretty solid in that area. That's largely through the Elders network that benefit, because AIRR has its own home brand in Animal Health called Hunter River and independently owned. But I think the other thing to watch with AIRR is the actual growth in the business. Do you wanna-
Yeah, look, we're really positive about the Ag growth this year, and I think we're just getting started, particularly with our own brand, Pastoral and our Hunter products. The network has really embraced the Ag products, and we're seeing growth year-on-year in network uptake. Both have been really positive.
Yeah. I think with AIRR, it's a bit like you know building roads and shopping centers and hope people turn up. But we've got two more warehouses, distribution warehouses planned, one in Queensland, one in Tasmania. Our sense is that will provide a significant platform for both servicing the Elders brand network, but also to drive independents who wanna swing across. I quoted those numbers on independents, like 850 independents that are looking for a you know well-priced, efficient wholesaling company.
Thank you. Just the second one, a good EBIT margin of 6.5% versus PCP. I think you've touched on this a little bit, but is there a medium-term target that we should be thinking about at a group level? I mean, what are some of the key drivers of that expansion going forward? I think you touched on that you're halfway through that backward integration strategy.
Again, it's not. I've never found it particularly helpful on a group EBIT to sell off target because of the mix of products, you know, the banking versus insurance versus real estate versus grain, different business models. Our targets are pretty focused and hardcore on Crop Protection margin and Animal Health margin, which are the two big backward integration areas. For general merchandise, a big part of general merchandise is fencing and the benefit we're getting there is not from backward integration as such. It's by the combination of AIRR and Elders' purchasing power with the key suppliers. We are seeing uplift there as well.
Thank you very much. Very helpful.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Richard Barwick from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Good day, Mark and Tania. I just wanted to make sure we're understanding the split that you provide on slide 10, we break down the proportion of gross margin uplift from acquisitions, organic and market. The acquisitions are 22%. You've talked about the nine acquisitions contributing about AUD 6.9 million. Is the remainder there just the annualization of AIRR coming through? Is there anything else we need to be thinking about to understand that component?
Yeah, just before Tania runs through it. The 6.9 is an annualized number, so it's not matched with that mix.
Yeah. Sorry, Tania.
Yes. We've got in our acquisitions like AIRR, which is 1.5 months of full year, and then also the nine acquisitions we've made during the year. How we think about organic is our growth margin improvement in our crop product business and the upside of real estate and financial services. In the market proportion, this is sort of our livestock price, volume, wool and grain, Killara, China. What we consider in the retail business, that's gross margin. That's how we've sort of segmented the three areas of acquisition, organic and market growth.
What I mean, thanks for that explanation. I guess what I'm trying to get to is how do we think about this? Or how do we convert this sort of number if we're thinking about what would be a normal, more normal seasonal operating environment? It's not a case of we just can't take off the 30% contribution because that's just a comparison with last year. Is there any sort of, I don't know, anything you can tell us there as the way to think about it? Just to try to convert this number back to, as you say, what's a-
Yes.
an average season.
The market's tricky because when you look at livestock prices and livestock volumes, they sort of move in, like, counter to each other, right?
Mm.
As the prices have been high, the volumes have been lower as we've gone through a restocking period. You can imagine in that market component of 30%, in the future, we might see prices come back a bit, maybe at some point, not anytime soon, I sense, but it should be offset by volumes and the same with our Killara business. When I look at that 30% market component, you would say half of that is sort of counter. Like it will be offset by volumes or our Killara business will be a natural hedge to that. Does that make sense?
Yeah, that does. I still don't know if it helps me get converted back to a normalized number. I'll have to have a bit more of a think about it. Might come back to you.
Yeah.
The other one I wanted just to clarify also, I mean, you've identified, you're saying 27 targets for acquisitions in the pipeline. I'm just trying to marry that up with your, the slide 41, where you've got the map with the strategic opportunities. Do each of those dots, is that what you'd view as a potential acquisition? Because if I tally them up, I can count 43, you know, give or take. And how do we reconcile that 43 with your 27 in the pipeline? Is this 43 just a, "Okay, this is a longer term number. Right now we've got 27 that we're currently actively pursuing"?
The strategic opportunity map is just to give you an indication of the high likelihood and the gaps that we've got throughout Australia. I wouldn't use that. I would have put more numbers if I thought people were gonna count it up. It makes it difficult there. No. The way to think about it is that, for instance, through Western Australia, that strip, and let's say eastern Western Australia, you know, there may be a, it may be a real estate opportunity, it may be a finance. Like in Esperance, actually, Esperance has got a big bubble there. We've got a branch there.
Yet our sense is that we could be stronger with satellite branches, that there are other service opportunities that we can grow there. That, that's the way to think about it. It's really just to guide us on our target areas.
Right. As opposed to specific targets.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
Under this internally we have maps with specific targets.
Okay. All right. Then, just the last one from me. This, the backward integration, you know, there's lots of questions. You talk about it from lots of different angles, but I sort of struggle to think about the broad metrics in terms of, perhaps a revenue and a GP or revenue and an EBIT opportunity. I mean, you've been very clear that you see yourself as not quite halfway through the process.
Yeah.
How do we think about that on a go forward? If we've got another half and a bit to go, what does that look like in terms of revenue? What does it look like in terms of EBIT or GP, depending on how you wanna present it?
Yeah. Well, the revenue is not helpful because the revenue stays the same. It's just that we're supplying the product.
Okay.
-to another party. Revenue is not helpful in the equation. What's helpful is gross margin, and gross margin will be EBIT. It falls exactly through because there's no change of SG&A or anything like that. The addressable market. Have we put the addressable market there? Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. If we're halfway through the addressable market, we're saying. I'm just looking at the exact numbers here. At AUD 250-300 million. We've got another, say, where are we, 40, so another 20%-30% to go. At a 10%-15% uplift in margin.
Hang on, 30% to go at a 10%-15% margin. How does that square off with the 50% of the way through the process?
No. They're the broad ways for you to work on it. By doing it ourselves rather than-
Yeah.
through a third party, our uplift is 10%-15% margin. The addressable market I gave you. For your models, if you wanna like think in that way, the revenue doesn't change, the margin and the gross margin percentage, the gross margin actual and the EBIT changes.
Okay. All right. Very good. Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Paul Jensz from PAC Partners. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you, Mark and Tania. Two quick ones. Just on market share, I think, Mark, you mentioned 18% market share. I just wanna make sure if that's a sort of a broad based market share number or is that specifically for-
Yeah.
one area?
No, that's broad-based. The market shares differ obviously by categories. For AgChem, based on some of these verified numbers, based on the AgChem it's about 18.5%, Animal Health 8.5%, Fertilizer 13, just under 14%, Seed about 8%, Cattle about 11%, Sheep just under 25%, Wool just under 20%. As you're aware, by product and service, it varies. Really when we call out 18% just to give a sense of the growth opportunity, like we're not at 99% of the market, so there's significant additional growth opportunity.
What sort of target have you got with yourself, Tania, and the board? Where do you think you can get with market share?
Yeah, no. We don't look at weather maps, we don't look at commodity cycles, we don't target market share either. What we try to do is just make money for our shareholders.
Okay, fair enough. The final one was just on sorry to revisit the system modernization program, but maybe just wrapping that up with the backward integration and a lot of the internal change, is there sort of an EBIT number that you are sort of looking to achieve over say a three-year period?
You mean in terms of the system modernization benefits?
It's just, I suppose we're just trying to balance out the seasonal change that we think is gonna happen when we come back to that average season that a number of the analysts are correctly sort of trying to get their head around. To balance that out, have you got? I mean, my feeling is you've got a bigger internal number than the seasonal number coming back, but I just wanted to hear you talk about it, Tania or Mark.
Sure. Like, the system modernization program will obviously be able to deliver cost efficiencies over time and for reinvestment choice in FTE numbers. Importantly, like having seamless systems and customer interaction over a long period of time and increasing the digital component does mean that, you know, you would hope it would deliver sales upside. We definitely have a very thorough business case that outlines each of the waves, and this one happens to be the foundational wave and over the next three to five years, six waves to obviously justify the investment in modernizing our platform. I should add that our AS400 is 30 years old, so not doing nothing is really not an option when it comes to the foundation.
Thank you, Tania. We'll talk later. Thank you. Bye.
Thanks, Paul. Okay.
Thank you.
Uh.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Evan Karatzas from UBS. Please go ahead.
Morning, Mark and Tania. Thanks for squeezing me in. Just quickly on the working capital. Can I please confirm that the increase is largely driven by higher sales and not an increase in debtor days or any sort of deterioration in receivables aging or recovery?
That's correct. We're absolutely flat-ish on debtor days. I think it's increased half a day and we've got no degradation in our underlying doubtful debts. In fact, we've got the lowest percentage of total outstanding more than 90 days that we've had in some years.
That's pleasing. Just finally, my second question on that. Backward integration strategy. Obviously you've been quite successful in this first foray with Titan. Can you just talk through if there's a willingness to further that backward integration into other adjacencies and what the thinking there is in terms of potential opportunities for Elders to further backward integrate?
Yeah, I think it's a good question. Our primary focus has been crop protection, as you're aware, and that's with, you know, 80% or so of the products in Australia being off patent. It's quite a fertile ground for us to work in to start with. That's the first focus and we're running that through over this three-year period. The second focus is Animal Health. Although animal Health and those veterinary products is quite a bit smaller than crop protection, the upside in backward integration and the regulatory requirements are higher than crop protection. So the margin that we can capture through backward integration is stronger. It's it could be 20%-25% in Animal Health products.
That's the second one. In terms of other areas, in general merchandise, maybe direct procurement would target those. You know, the Fertilizer certainly from my experience having run a couple of fertilizer companies is not an area that we would be interested in. In terms of specialty fertilizers, so these are foliar fertilizers, either for horticulture or glasshouses or that sort of intensive production, that is something that we're interested in and we've got a range called OPTIFERT that we're progressing now. There aren't that many other areas that are big and juicy in terms of margin that are on our agenda.
It's crop protection, Animal Health, specialty fertilizers and maybe a couple of general merchandise areas. This is the big chunk that we're targeting now.
Yeah. Okay. Got it. I mean, just quickly, is the formulating capacity in crop protection an area of focus at all given I mean, you obviously sort of outsourced that Titan formulating?
Yeah. No, it is a focus and the attractiveness of formulation facilities for us is not around the size of the margin because the margin component in formulation in the margin pool for crop protection is quite small, relatively small. For us, the interest there is around flexibility of being able to have active ingredients that aren't formulated until we know which product they need to go into. It just provides significantly greater flexibility geographically because of the freight and supply chain costs. It's not the size of the prize. It won't move the dial in terms of impact like crop protection, Animal Health.
Yeah. Got it. Okay. Thanks for your time.
Okay. I think we're close to the end.
Thank you. That does conclude our time for questions. I'll just hand back to Mr. Allison for closing remarks.
Yeah. Well, thank you, everyone. Tania and I will look forward to speaking with many of you over the next few days. Thank you for coming into the call.