Good morning, and welcome to the Noumi Limited Full Year 2022 Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star one again. For operator assistance throughout the call, please press star zero. Finally, I would like to advise that this call is being recorded. I'd now like to welcome Mr. Michael Perich, Chief Executive Officer, to begin the conference. Mr. Perich, over to you.
Thank you, operator. Good morning. I'd like to welcome everyone to the presentation of the full year results for FY22 for Noumi Limited. I'm sorry for the delay, and we've just had a technical issue regarding lodgment and release of the accounts. It's a pleasure to be with you today. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land, which we meet today. I'd also like to pay my respects to elders past and present. The results will be presented today by myself, and I'd also like to introduce Peter Myers, the Group CFO, who'll go through the financial results of the company. I'm delighted to have Peter here today with me for his first results presentation for Noumi. Peter brings a wealth of turnaround experience in manufacturing and media together with ASX experience.
We've already uploaded the presentation, and you can navigate to the slides as you choose. We will talk to each of the slides and refer to the page numbers as we progress. Slide three is the agenda for today's call. We'll focus on the call-outs, on the results, and discuss the key elements of the company's evolution. Peter will present the financial results for the period. I'll then talk to the future strategy of the company, followed by closing remarks, and we'll then be available for Q&A at the end of the presentation. On slide five, we show our trading results have been impacted by the unpredictable effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, together with the geopolitical uncertainty that have brought together a difficult trading environment with cost pressures and other impacts.
Our plant-based segment had a standout performance with revenue and volume both up this financial year, with revenues closing 7% up on previous year and EBITDA up 30%. As announced in February, we have resolved the U.S. litigation, which now frees our market-leading brand, MILKLAB, to continue its strong domestic and export trajectory. The Dairy & Nutritionals segment still has challenges that we continue to focus on. While I'm disappointed with the results for the Dairy segment, although immensely proud of how the team have responded to the challenges we have faced during the year. In the first half, we saw COVID disruptions, and in the second half, we saw impacts of cost inflation impacted from COVID. The Dairy revenue compared to previous year is lower, impacted with lower trade milk as our procurement strategy to contract milk from our farmers closer to our requirements comes into effect.
The rigorous cost controls we have continued to implement have helped partially offset the broader macroeconomic and supply chain issues. We felt it prudent to take a non-cash impairment of AUD 95 million in the Dairy & Nutritionals business based on the current trading conditions, which include discount rates coming from global capital market changes at increased pressure on margins, especially in export markets, as we work to offset cost increases. We are confident the changes we are making across the company will deliver a return to profitable and sustainable long-term growth. In slide six, we present the key financial and operational metrics. Revenue for FY22 was down 4.6% with operating EBITDA of AUD 7.3 million. The statutory loss was AUD 161 million, including the litigation expenses and the non-cash impairment.
As we have announced previously, we are focused on positive margin product lines, which has seen a 3.8% decline in dairy UHT sales with 246 million liters for FY22. Lactoferrin was below expectations as we had supply chain delays with processing materials for manufacturing due to COVID impacts. This temporary issue was resolved during the second half of FY22. Pleasingly, plant-based sales are up 3.4% with close to 90 million liters of sales as consumers continue to lean towards healthier lifestyle choices. We have seen export sales grow in the year over 15% to circa 130 million liters. This was led with MILKLAB up 18.7%, just shy of 50 million liters. Moving to slide seven. Eighteen months ago, I laid out the transformation program to deliver long-term growth.
Despite difficult trading conditions and a disappointing Dairy & Nutritionals result, I'm extremely proud of the attitude, the mindset, and the effort that the team have done in executing to the plan. There are a number of key highlights I would like to talk through. Regarding reset, the Noumi AFMH shareholding sale was completed last week, funding the US litigation and the sale of Specialty Seafood, enabling us to focus on the core business. Moving into the transformation phase, we've seen new product launches through both MILKLAB and Australia's Own plant-based product lines. We've invested in a number of areas across the business towards the transformed phase of our strategy. These have helped offset the challenges we face during the year. We've seen numerous gains with a reduction in waste across our sites and overall productivity gains, more so in Q4.
The transformation phase is beginning to be embedded into our business and will continue to rebuild and maintain our margins. The plant-based business is poised for further growth with our strong brands and new product launches, looking into Southeast Asian markets for future growth. Moving on to Slide nine. As you're aware, we have continued to talk about our three-part reset, transform, and grow strategy. We are firmly in the transform phase, and we move into the grow phase. As presented previously, the company's focused on great brands and world-class assets that we operate to produce our products. Actions to transform your company are well underway, with operational improvements across the business already driving improved sales with our new values incorporated into all work practices. These improvements provide a springboard to grow the business through three streams, products, channels, and geographies. Slide 10.
We are doing what is in our control. We are setting up for medium to sustainable long-term growth. I want to talk to what has been achieved in the transform phase of the business and since we last presented to the market. We are continuing to see our plant-based business gain market share in new markets. As previously announced, we have settled the U.S. litigation with the license agreement terminating on the 30th of June, allowing us to focus on our plant-based range, mainly MILKLAB, as all restrictions on nut-based beverages are removed. With newly appointed CFO, Peter Myers, as of 28th March this year, we have an executive team that is focused and aligned to the strategy. The leadership team are now embedded into the business and are continuing to focus on the transformation and growth parts of our strategy.
We continue to focus on the cultural and governance change within Noumi. Overall investment in our people continues to pay dividends in this tight labor market. It is still not without its challenges, but we continue to build strength in the team, enabling us to be more resilient. I'll now hand over to Peter to go through the financial performance of the business.
Thank you, Michael. Good morning, and let me add my welcome to this Noumi results call. Before we get started, let me introduce myself. I joined Noumi in March. Very excited about the challenge that the turnaround and rebuild represents. My experience extends to many sectors, from manufacturing to media, from retail to satellite communications, with all of those assignments, including some component of turnaround and change management, and almost all of that time with ASX-listed entities. In my discussions with Michael and the board prior to my onboarding, I was taken with the strength and clarity of the reset, transform, and grow messaging. It creates a very clear compass for all of our stakeholders. The one thing I've learned over the years is that progress is never linear.
Agility and resilience are key attributes, which seems like a decent segue into the results, which are the focus of today's call. As noted by Michael, we've made some significant progress during the year. We took a critical step in the reset phase, strategically and financially, that was financed with the support of our note holders and the recent completion of the sale of our AFMH shareholding, and it clears the runway for our plant-based business to continue to grow. Noumi's progress has not been linear this year, especially in Dairy & Nutritionals. A very difficult first half with COVID interruptions to key elements of the plan.
While we sit here today, looking forward to spring in a couple of days and lockdowns a thing of the past, we must not forget that just a year ago, in the first half of the year we are reporting on today, things were different. They were very different. Lockdowns everywhere, impacting us in all sorts of ways. At one stage, we were trucking milk from Shepparton to our Ingleburn plant just to maintain supply to our customers. Even the post-lockdown environment delivered unexpected challenges, not just for Noumi, as the economies of the world face the first serious inflation pressure for decades. Our plans for FY22 remained strategically focused but required us to be tactically agile also. We will continue to be agile.
The customer price reset and the margin resetting that Michael described earlier is now one of the most critical issues to Noumi as we pursue a successful transformation phase. While the transformation phase was buffeted during the year, we have also achieved a great outcome with our plant-based business, which is leading Noumi into the growth phase of this turnaround. Led by the exciting MILKLAB brand, plant sales grew 7% for the year, 24% since 2020. Further expansion of our world-class margins and a successful investment in our sales team. As I move to the detailed financial slides, I wanna be clear on two key themes I hope you'll take from the call today.
First is that there is a very strong focus on turning the Dairy & Nutritional business around in terms of both earnings and cash flows, and noting that we must do that at the same time as we address new challenges around costs and our negotiations for price increases. The second key message is that we are continuing to drive the performance and prospects of our plant business, enjoying the tailwinds of consumer preference trends with a more subdued cost inflation environment, which means the pressure for price increases is less acute, and with opportunities for growth in both range and geography. Let me now turn to some of the specifics of the results. First, a couple of grounding comments. We have generally referred to our adjusted operating EBITDA numbers as being the most useful for investors. This number includes only our continuing operations.
It adjusts out the impacts of AASB 16, the leasing standard, so that the numbers are comparable with that we have previously reported. It also excludes one-off style restructuring amounts, such as the impairment charge and things like the U.S. litigation expenses. There is a complete reconciliation of these adjustments to the statutory numbers in the appendix to the presentation. It seems like about half the companies I've looked at have focused on pre-AASB 16 numbers, and about half have reported under the new standard. We'll consider when it's appropriate to do so. Moving to Slide 12. It has obviously been a tough year for Noumi. Adjusted operating EBITDA, down AUD 15.2 million on the prior year. Whilst we're disappointed with the overall result, it's worth noting that essentially all of that shortfall to last year was reported in H1.
While cost inflation meant earnings did not spring back in second half as we had expected, we nonetheless remained ahead of the prior year. Revenue grew, if we exclude the impact of a couple of decisions to reduce the extent to which we acquired and then trade out milk at no margin, and we dropped unprofitable two-liter product lines. Within the revenue number is a story of growing plant revenues up by 7.2%. Dairy & Nutritionals down in H1, especially in lactoferrin sales, which was a significant year-on-year impact in earnings in the first half. Up slightly in H2 for Dairy, excluding traded milk. Costs were an issue, increased cost of working in the first half and cost inflation in the second. In terms of cash and capital, we've increased net debt, excluding the convertible notes by AUD 21 million.
While the additional notes that were issued covered the majority of the reset and restructuring items, we are nonetheless focused on improving earnings to cover our CapEx and financing requirements. We have included a pro forma view of the balance sheet in the event that the convertible notes were converted. That would obviously make our balance sheet much stronger and reminds us all that improving earnings and making conversion an attractive option is in everybody's interest. Moving to Slide 12. We are mindful that the AUD 160 million headline loss for the year will capture people's attention. We've included some detail in the presentation to make sure that people appreciate that the vast majority of the headline result is attributed to two specific issues. First, the U.S. litigation settlement of AUD 55 million, which was announced months ago as part of the first half result.
Second, the AUD 95.7 million impairment charge. It's important to note that this is a non-cash book entry. The impairment adjustment is being taken having regard to the very recent change in circumstances as the pandemic has eased and the geopolitical situation has changed, especially in Europe. Cost inflation has emerged globally, and this has in turn impacted capital markets and interest rates. The impairment charge arises primarily to, due to a combination of the discount rate for the impairment calculation, which has increased along with all the global interest rate movements. Second, the consumer nutritional business valuation, where the recent spike in protein prices, which seems to be trending back down, has not yet been fully offset with price adjustments.
The Dairy impairment, which reflects the volatility of the current circumstances and the fact that we're still working our way through the price increases we're looking for out of our export markets. As you know, if things improve, we can begin to write these assets back up. More importantly, we should remember that we're not allowed, because of the accounting conventions, to have the group's most valuable asset on the balance sheet being our MILKLAB brand and the plant-based business. It's a massively valuable asset worth AUD hundreds of millions that's not recorded in our books. Moving to slide 14. I think I said slide 12 there before. Moving to slide 14. This describes the diversity in our revenue base. We like the diversification of our channel mix and our brand mix. This has seen little change since we reported at the half year.
Regional splits have also remained similar, with a slight increase in Southeast Asia as we continue to build our presence in that region. To slide 15. This is the opportunity to celebrate the progress that continues in the plant-based business. As I mentioned earlier, this is one of the key takeaways from the presentation today. Growth in our key brands. MILKLAB plant sales up 25.2%. Growth in Southeast Asia, sales up 37%. Growth in margins, adjusted operating EBITDA margin to 20.4%. Growth in our range, oat milk and other new products getting traction, and investment in our sales effort to bring more of our brand control back in-house. We continue to believe this business has a great future, and as I noted before, is a highly valuable asset that's not sitting on our balance sheet.
Moving to Dairy & Nutritionals, this is the second big takeaway of the results, that we are committed to improving our performance in Dairy & Nutritionals. We tend to think of the disruptions of the 2022 year as really having delayed our transformation effort for about a year. Within the 2022 result, and in the second half in particular, there are some improvements that we can build on coming into FY23. Revenue on a comparable basis was up in the second half by 1.5%. In the first half, we had significantly increased costs of working, many of which were pandemic-related at Shepparton. These are no longer such a factor. In the first half, we were unable to produce a normal level of Lactoferrin, which cost us more than AUD 10 million.
This has returned to more normal levels in H2. We began to improve productivity in the last quarter, and we are working hard to make that repeatable and reliable. Just as we began to overcome the issues that were hurting us in the first half, as COVID pressures began to ease, we were then confronted in the second half by the early impacts of cost inflation, and that predated our ability to pass those cost increases on. This cost inflation impact is estimated at AUD 8 million in the second half alone. We've seen cost increases pass through to consumers in Australia across a range of industries during this reporting season. We have been able to work with our domestic customers to achieve a similar outcome, importantly, addressing some instances of historical underpricing at the same time.
Now we're actively engaged with our export market customers to achieve similar improvements across the whole portfolio. Turning to cash flow. Cash flows for the year saw net debt increase AUD 21 million, with reasonable cash conversion from our AUD 7.3 million of operating EBITDA into AUD 3.6 million of operating cash, which is satisfactory having regard to the inflation pressures on working capital late in the year. Restructuring and the U.S. litigation costs amounted to AUD 35 million in the cash flow, and they were not fully offset by the AUD 27 million we raised from note holders. We are working hard to minimize the restructuring costs and improve our cash conversion. Net finance costs, mostly interest, were AUD 16 million, not including any interest on the convertible notes, where interest was capitalized and rolled up for the year.
Capital expenditure was restrained for the year and will continue to be carefully managed to projects that have strong payback economics like the Marrickville relocation project or are essential stay-in-business requirements. With that, I'll hand back to Michael for some further remarks.
Thanks, Peter. Moving to slide 19, I'd like to talk further regarding our strategy in our plant-based segment. As highlighted, we continue to see our plant-based grow year-on-year and deliver positive earnings across the group. With the launch of the oat-based product line, together with our blends, we are continuing to drive expansion into high-potential markets with focus in Southeast Asia. The continued focus with our field team in Australia to grow and protect our market share. We have new products that are key to our strategy, and the team is focused on innovation within the plant-based segment. We can see this with two recently ranged products with our Power Blend and Hazelnut range, with leverage investment in the out-of-home market and building production capability. This is further evidence of our commitment to plant-based beverages. We continue to drive both innovation and targeted investment in our plant-based segment.
It is a credit to our whole team to see this continued growth in the background of the challenges that we have seen during the last few years. We have capacity to continue to leverage the growth trend and also the brands which we own, such as MILKLAB. On slide 20, our suppliers across Noumi are key to our success. This is particularly the case with our farmers. We have across our business a group of loyal farmers who with long-term contracts, who have also been put under enormous pressure. The bidding for milk in the last period of June was intense, with significant increases on the previous year. This is really a reset for our dairy farmers, and it has been a long time coming.
We've seen high prices in the global dairy market at the end of FY22, which has since softened with demand coming off in export markets. We've continued to work hard with our customers on milk price pass-through and the domestic customers for dairy making moves generally in line with farm gate milk price. This is a testament to the skill and dedication of our team, who are able to work with our customers to secure price rises in a challenging market. Our export customers' response to the milk price has been more subdued based on differing local conditions. We'll be working with our farmers in the coming months to secure mutually beneficial long-term partnerships and sharing in a price pass-through. I can say in my career, I've never seen movements in farm-gate milk price at this level before.
This has all come at a point in time when we are aiming to rebuild margins in our business, increasing operational efficiencies, and growing our profitable product lines. We need to improve our Dairy & Nutritionals business to continue to be good partners with all our suppliers. This has been an important objective of mine. We've seen improved yields and improved quality, which we spoke about last year, so these have helped mitigate the challenging year. The consumer nutritionals portfolio has suffered the same challenges with increasing raw material costs, so the attention on this category is identifying the areas of focus. Timing delays of cost pass-through is challenging in these conditions, but with global markets softening, we may see some reprieve. We are committed to improving yields and continue to improve efficiencies across the product lines.
With the challenges that we face, it is not surprising that we are working hard on the Dairy & Nutritionals business with further operational improvements to strengthen financial performance. On slide 21, we have launched our Healthier Tomorrow Plan, which is focused on continuing to build on the work that the business has been focused on through the reset phase. Through healthier lifestyles, healthier planet, and healthier workplace, the business is well-placed to show all of our stakeholders how we can enter the third phase element of our strategy, that being the growth phase with disciplined activities. The Healthier Tomorrow Plan is an important part of our growth strategy. There are a number of focus areas with more detail in the annual report that has been released to the market this morning.
With healthier lifestyles, we aim to create and offer resources to improve consumers and communities' nutritional and social outcomes. By 2025, more than 75% of our proprietary branded products will have a health star rating of 4 or above. We'll fortify all our proprietary branded plant-based dairy alternative products to match the calcium content of dairy milk by 2025. Under a healthier planet, we aim to continuously improve our environmental footprint for future generations. We'll do this by having 100% of Noumi packaging APCO compliant by 2025, zero waste to landfill from our operations by 2030, 90% of our farmers partnering with us on carbon reduction initiatives by 2030. By 2030, we will reduce scope one and two emissions by 50%. Under our healthier workplace, our people live our values and are supported through positive work experiences.
As we always have, we continue to focus on a diverse workforce with specific targets for diversity and inclusion. A 4% year-on-year improvement on employee engagement through our development plans. All of these activities build to a stronger business for our stakeholders. They help protect the business and ensure its resilience. Moving to slide 23. We continue to focus on the key drivers for future profitability. The key areas of the operational initiatives focus on rebuilding margins in export, growing volumes in plant-based, and investment into our brands and our people. The individual key drivers are listed with progress listed against these. I'd like to highlight a few. With continued focus on the operational initiatives, we have launched an operational program that will embed these improvements to assist in bringing your company back into profit with consistency at our sides.
Launches of innovative products are designed with the consumer in mind, utilizing our field force to continue to promote our products in the out-of-home market. Growing our brands, looking towards the Southeast Asian market as a growth area for our plant-based products. We have an update of the trading outlook on slide 25. We continue to build on the great work from our team in the domestic market to rebuild our margins in our dairy business. We've seen our domestic market shift well to have further alignment with the farm-gate milk price. Export is progressing, but incomplete. The competitiveness of export dairy is being impacted with higher cost base domestically. The plant-based business is well into the growth phase. We are building from a strong brand platform with new product offerings and new markets. Global uncertainty creates concern around cost and market access.
We are monitoring these areas to manage any changes. With farm-gate milk prices at record high levels, we're seeing global demand soften, although our domestic market is positioned well. I wanna thank you all for listening today, and I wanted to reiterate the significant transformation of your company is well underway. The results of Noumi is firmly in the transform phase of its five-year reset, transform, and growth transformation strategy. Our market-leading plant-based beverage division set new records. While there have been delays in some elements of our operational improvements program as a result of the external challenges we faced in FY22, these are being overcome as we restore momentum, building the springboard to grow the business in the years ahead. That concludes the formal presentations, and we'll now hand over to the operator for any questions. Sorry, operator, are you there?
Are there any questions from the call?
Thank you, speakers. At this time, I would like to remind everyone that in order to ask a question, please press star then number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Tiina Wilson for E&P Capital. Ms. Wilson, please go ahead.
Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to start with Lactoferrin, if possible. Firstly, just wanted to sort of clarify. It sounds like the challenges for this year were really sort of production, so not producing enough Lactoferrin. Is that sort of fair statement?
Yeah, no. Thanks for your question. Regarding the production of Lactoferrin, yes, it was some supply chain issues around the material to help production. It wasn't an issue regarding market of Lactoferrin.
Yep, great. Following on from that, you kinda mentioned that the productivity in Lactoferrin is sort of important going forward. I just wanted to understand a little bit more. Does that mean sort of efficiency in having workers there or machinery working? Like, if you could just give us a bit of color on, like, how do you improve productivity?
In terms of improving productivity, as I mentioned, it was more of a supply, the materials required for manufacturing of the product versus around people or equipment at the site. Overall, you know, we continue to focus on the team. It's an important part of our business, and we continue to work through the tighter labor market that we have, but continuing to build on the operational experience of the people at site and the equipment continuing to get us back to the capacity at the site for our Lactoferrin production.
Okay. It's more, that the, kinda like capacity hasn't quite got there, not that, not that you don't have enough, like, raw material milk, input. Is that right? Sorry, just I wanted to clarify.
The raw materials, the milk was fine. There's a particular resin that's used within the production facility that was a delay of being able to replace that due to some of the COVID-related impacts on supply chain. It wasn't an issue regarding milk supply or any actually site impacted issues.
Great. Thank you. Just on that, I think from memory, some of the lactoferrin contracts are more long dated. Does that mean a impact on, you know, cost inflation or price on market for lactoferrin has a different impact for this business versus the rest?
Regarding the contracts, I mean, we don't speak individually to contracts. We do have some longer-dated contracts for our Lactoferrin. We continue to make a higher grade of our specification, which tends to be able to attract a better price due to the quality specification that we can maintain with our Lactoferrin.
Yeah, great. I think what I'm trying to ask maybe a little bit different, just saying that in terms of, like, cost inflation pressures, get the sense maybe for this part of business is not as bad as the other parts of the dairy nutritionals. That's sort of what I was trying to ask.
Yes. From a cost inflation impact, you know, there is less of an impact that flows through from a Lactoferrin point of view versus other materials.
Yeah. Great. Sorry. That was sort of my question. Thank you very much. That's all from me. Thanks.
Once again, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, please press star and then the number one on your telephone keypad. There are no further questions at this time. Actually, we have another question again from Ms. Wilson. Ms. Wilson, please go ahead.
Oh, thanks. If no one's asking questions, I might try to sneak in another one. Just in terms of going back to dairy nutritionals again, going forward, if you can get the price increases, are you sort of. How are you feeling about being able to offset all of the cost pressures there? Because noting that you have mentioned you have some more high value types of products, I just wanted to get a sense from you know, what you think will be, you know, the biggest impact in terms of firstly passing on that price increase or trying to sort of pivot so that you can get more of the high value products within your production. Thanks.
Yep. No, thanks for your question. Regarding, yeah, we've done a lot of work around our domestic price ups around that flow through of pricing. We continue to focus on building that into the export markets and, you know, demand overall for products out of Australia continue to be of high demand. What we see is around the differing local conditions and not seeing inflation as high. Looking at other alternatives. Continue to focus on higher quality product, but our efficient production outside and, you know, maintaining volume is important around on top of rebuilding our margins. Continuing to focus around profitable product lines as we continue to go through our three-part reset, transform, and growth strategies. You know, wanting to focus on profitable product lines within both segments.
Great. No, thank you. That's very helpful. Thanks very much. That's all from me.
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn back over to our presenters.
Great. Thank you very much, and thank you everyone for joining us. Once again, sorry about that delay with the technical issue around uploading our documents, but they should all be up on the portal now with our annual report as well. Thank you for your time listening, and thank you for your questions and have a good day.
That's today's conference call. You may now disconnect.