Good day, welcome to the Noumi Limited FY 2023 half year results presentation. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there'll be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star one again. For operator assistance throughout the call, please press star zero. Finally, I would like to advise all participants this call is being recorded. Thank you. I would now like to welcome Michael Perich to begin the conference. Martin, over to you.
Thanks, Gavin. I'd like to welcome everyone to the presentation of the half year results for FY 2023 for Noumi Limited. Just to correct that, this is Michael Perich calling. I do have Peter Myers here, Group CFO, to also present the financial results. 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. We've uploaded the presentation. 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. Firstly, I would like to acknowledge the ASIC proceedings that we announced yesterday. As previously disclosed, ASIC has been continuing investigation into the legacy matters relating to the company's 2018-19 and 2019-20 financial accounts.
The investigation commenced in 2020 July. Noumi has cooperated fully with ASIC's investigation. Noumi yesterday advised that ASIC has commenced civil penalty proceedings against Noumi in the Federal Court of Australia in relation to alleged historic breaches of continuous disclosure obligations and associated matters. ASIC has also commenced these proceedings against Rory Macleod, the former managing director and CEO, and Campbell Nicholas, the former CFO. We're currently reviewing ASIC's statement of claim. Given that the matter is before court, Noumi will not be providing any commentary in relation to the progress of these proceedings. Slide 3 is the agenda for today's call. We'll focus on the call-outs from the results and discuss the key elements of the company's evolution. Pete will present the financial performance for the period.
I will then talk regarding future strategy of the company, followed by closing remarks and will be available for questions at the end of the presentation. I'd like to highlight a couple of key messages for today's call. Two years ago, with the management team, we put a strategy together that we are absolutely focused on the turnaround and delivering positive results. The results confirm the strong progress that the management team has executed. We have a record result in plant. We have improvements in dairy, although we are still addressing the challenges in dairy export markets that I will talk about later. Moving to Slide 5. The reset, transform, and growth strategy continues to deliver improved results. This includes the impacts of inflation and macroeconomic uncertainty. As mentioned earlier in the call, we are focused on delivering positive results.
The adjusted operating EBITDA for the first half of FY 2023 is AUD 11.4 million. This is up 149% on the previous corresponding period. The plant-based beverage business is up 19.8% to AUD 18.6 million, with continued growth in our MILKLAB brand across both domestic and export channels. Dairy Nutritionals has also seen substantial improvement, with operating EBITDA improving 38% on the first half of FY 2022. Margins have improved through price increases and improved operating efficiencies, reducing losses to AUD 4.3 million. We saw unprecedented and long-awaited farm-gate milk prices increases, which were passed on to the domestic customers during the first half. Our export business, as stated previously, has been more subdued in accepting these price rises.
More recently, global demand has since softened, bringing the global commodity price for milk and milk products lower. Pleasingly, the operating cash flows for the half are improved. On Slide 6, we present the key financial and operational metrics for Noumi. Revenue for the first half was up 5.5% on the back of price rises and focus on higher-margin sales offsetting lower volumes. The revenue for the first half was AUD 279.8 million. As already mentioned, the adjusted operating EBITDA is AUD 11.4 million, pleasingly up 149%. As we continue to rebuild the company, the statutory profit improved 64% to a loss of AUD 23.6 million. Sales volume in both plant and dairy were down 11.3% and 12.9% respectively.
This is a result of our disciplined approach to focus on products with higher margins. Lactoferrin rebounded to 14 tonnes for the half as we continue to focus on operating efficiencies. With the lower volumes in export dairy continuing, forecast for Lactoferrin production remains a constant focus. MILKLAB sales by volume were up 10.8% as we focused on our market-leading brand. Almond still leads the portfolio, but we continue to see increased ranging of our oat product. Slide 7. Previously, I laid out the transformation program to deliver long-term growth. We, like many others in manufacturing, have been focusing on continuing to build the business under the shadows of a number of headwinds. The team have performed superbly, and I'm super proud of the achievements. We wouldn't be in the position we are today without our dedicated team across our sites, locally and internationally.
There are a number of highlights. We continue to transform the business with improvements in domestic margins and improve efficiencies of metrics across both sites. Pleasingly, we have replaced the discontinued revenue in the plant-based business. We will be continuing to strive to replace earnings from lower export dairy volumes and rebuild the domestic dairy margins. As presented last time we spoke, the plant-based business is firmly in the growth phase, anchored by our core brand, MILKLAB, and supported by Australia's Own. To continue the growth, MILKLAB Oat has been further refined, which will pair nicely with our MILKLAB Almond for the customer looking for a chance to switch to another plant-based beverage. Moving to Slide 9. As you're aware, we've continued to talk about our three-part reset, transform, and grow strategy. We are firmly in the transform phase in dairy Nutritionals and focused on the growth phase in plant-based.
The company is focused on the great brands and world-class assets that we operate to produce our products. Actions to transform your company are now well underway, with operational improvements across the business already driving improved sales and margins with our new values incorporated to all work practices. Those improvements provide the springboard to grow the business through three streams: products, channels, and geographies. I'll now hand over to Pete to go through the financial performance of the business.
Thanks, Michael. Good morning, let me add my welcome to this Noumi results call. This is my second results call since joining Noumi nearly one year ago, I'm delighted that we're able to report meaningful progress in our transform and grow agenda. Michael has summarized the key messages in our results for the half year that were contained in the material released to the ASX this morning. First, Michael delivered three important messages of progress. Overall EBITDA and margins up, another record result for plant, dairy losses reduced. In our plant-based beverage business, we've optimized our revenue mix and improved our margins have opportunities for growth in range and geography. In dairy nutritionals, we've rebuilt our domestic margins to offset cost inflation, we've not yet had the same success in our export markets. We are encouraged by our progress.
The second important message was that Michael made it clear we're very conscious of the fact that there is still much to do. Whilst the COVID challenge may have eased, macroeconomic conditions have delivered cost inflation and potential consumer spending pressures that Australia has not faced for decades. We continue to call out that export market profitability in dairy needs to be improved. Let me turn to some of the specifics of the result. A couple of grounding comments. We have generally referred to our adjusted operating EBITDA numbers as being the numbers most useful for investors. This number includes only continuing operations. It adjusts out the impact of AASB 16, the leasing standard, so that the numbers are comparable with the numbers that we've used in previous periods. It excludes all one-off style restructuring amounts such as impairment charges and things like US litigation expenses.
There is a complete reconciliation of these adjustments to the statutory numbers in the appendix to the presentation today. Turning to Slide 11, I'm pleased to report that all of our key earnings metrics have improved during the half. Revenue up overall compared to the prior period, but with a few moving parts. Price increases in domestic dairy, lactoferrin sales up from a disrupted result last year. Export dairy down as volumes of low-margin business were reduced. In our plant business, MILKLAB up, largely offsetting the discontinued product lines from last year. Adjusted operating EBITDA of AUD 11.4 million is more than double last year's result, and margins were up despite significant cost inflation. The statutory loss was reduced and it's less complicated.
Last year had US litigation costs and impairments, whereas this year just has normal interest and depreciation and a AUD 21 million fair value adjustment on the convertible notes. There is a full bridge from EBITDA to the statutory impact in the appendices as well. In terms of cash and capital, we've reduced net debt, excluding the convertible notes by AUD 2.4 million. We have also included a pro forma view of the balance sheet in the event that our convertible notes were to be converted. Conversion would obviously make our balance sheet much stronger. Of course, our balance sheet does not include any value for our flagship MILKLAB brand since it was built from scratch. We consider the MILKLAB brand to be worth hundreds of millions and it would transform our balance sheet were we to include it. Moving to Slide 12.
This is one of our major messages, another record result for the plant-based business. There is a lot to be pleased about and still some opportunities to be pursued. Growth in our key brands, MILKLAB plant sales up 11.2%. Growth in Asia, sales up 21%. Growth in margin. Adjusted operating EBITDA margins increased to 22.7% and growth in our range, oat milk and other new products getting traction. One of the keys to understanding the result is that the prior period included AUD 9.3 million of revenue from brands previously distributed under licence. As part of the US litigation settlement last year, it was agreed that distribution would end. In this year we have largely replaced that revenue with sales of our own brand, MILKLAB.
This change in mix enabled us to improve our margins and increase our earnings, notwithstanding that overall revenue is relatively flat. As noted by Michael, we're beginning to get traction in the fast-growing oat segment with sales more than doubling, albeit off a modest base. The operating performance of our Ingleburn factory was above expectations for the period, with positive yield and efficiency metrics contributing to the strong result. For example, yield losses have halved from 5% over the last year and overall conversion cost per liter are tracking below expectations. The facility has sufficient capacity to meet the midterm growth ambitions we have for the brand, and more volume would make it an even more efficient operation.
We continue to believe this business has a great future, albeit we do need to make our plans recognizing the cost of living pressure on the Australian consumer. It's a great business, great brands, and as I noted earlier, very little of this value is sitting on the balance sheet. Turning to Slide 11. Sorry, Slide 13, we have the second big message, which is we are beginning to deliver on our commitment to improve the performance of Dairy and Nutritionals. The transformation plans which were established back in 2021 were centered around optimizing the portfolio and formats and a series of operational reforms at our Shepparton processing site. In a post-COVID environment, we've had to add margin rebuilding as cost inflation emerged globally.
In particular, the unprecedented 30% rise in the farm gate milk price in June of 2022 had to be passed on to our customers. This creates some industry issues that Michael will talk to shortly, but for us, it demanded a highly disciplined approach to dairy margins. In the domestic market, we work constructively with our customers to rebuild our margin structure and adjust shelf prices as soon as possible, albeit it took some months for the full effect of the domestic price increases to come online. In our export markets, as we foreshadowed as far back as our full-year results announcement in August, the situation was less certain. Whilst we have great customer relationships in our China and Southeast Asian markets, we have had to approach pricing on the basis that we would reduce volumes where the margin structure was not profitable for us.
It is also the case that the contract structure is different in those markets, and accordingly, in the first half, we had to honor orders that were placed prior to the increase in the Australian milk price. All in all, in our export markets, we've achieved some price increases, but these should have more impact in the second half of the year rather than the first. We are adjusting to lower but more profitable volumes for the time being. Overall, therefore, for the half in Dairy and Nutritionals, we were able to almost halve the EBITDA loss to AUD 4.3 million and improve our margins by 160 basis points. In addition to the margin discipline described above, there are also positive achievements in the six months, including more consistent processing performance at Shepparton.
For example, yield losses reduced from 9% in FY 2022 to 6% in Q2 of FY 2023, a 12% uplift in liters per day per operating line over the past 12 months due to the impact of our operational excellence program, which commenced during FY 2022. The team managed a significant flooding that occurred in Shepparton and our milk supply markets with minimal financial impact. Our procurement team has been actively managing our spend to minimize the impacts of global cost inflation, to protect our margin, and to ensure we minimize price increases for our customers. Turning to Slide 14, our improved cash flow performance reflects very active working capital management. Inventory up 8%, this was mainly due to cost inflation rather than volume. Receivables were down and payables fairly flat. Our approach to capital expenditure has been very disciplined.
Cash flows for the period allowed net bank debt, excluding leases and the convertible notes, to be repaid by $2.5 million. We finished the half-year with $24 million in cash and $8 million of undrawn facilities. The cash balance includes $9 million of payments that were delayed into the early days of January. In January, we also agreed an additional $10 million of limit for our revolving credit facility. The cash flow for the period includes almost $30 million from the sale of our non-core shareholding in AFMH, of which $25 million was placed in a security deposit to cover the future installments under the U.S. litigation settlement that was finalized last year. While the litigation was finalized last year, there were $8 million of litigation-related costs that weren't paid until this current half.
Net finance costs, mostly interest, were AUD 9 million, not including any cash interest on the convertible notes, where interest was capitalized and rolled up for the period. To recap the key financials, overall EBITDA more than doubled. Dairy and Nutritionals improved earnings and margins are having to accept and adapt to lower export volumes, and another record result from our plant-based business, with strong performance from MILKLAB and the opportunities to expand our range and footprint. With that, I'll hand back to Michael for some further remarks.
Thanks, Pete. We appreciate your commentary on, and analysis on the results. On Slide 16, I'd like to talk further regarding our strategy. Our strategy is to develop high quality and innovative Dairy and Nutritionals and plant-based products to meet the nutrition and taste needs of our customers and consumers across their different life stages. We have five strategic pillars. Transform Dairy and Nutritionals profitability, accelerate plant-based growth, deliver world-class supply chain, embed high performance culture, and develop next generation Noumi. Through these five key pillars, we have developed strategic priorities to focus on. These drive the focus of the business to bring shareholder value. I wanna highlight a couple of priorities. Some of these you have seen before as we continue the reset, transform, and grow strategy.
We wanna grow UHT dairy profitability in the domestic and international markets, invest to grow in international markets and new markets to help accelerate our plant beverage growth. Mitigate inflation in supply chain through value creation. Build a high-performance, high-integrity culture. We wanna deliver clinical validation of PUREnFERRIN to help develop next generation Noumi. Slide 17 focuses on our ESG strategy. This is brought together in our integrated Healthier Tomorrow Plan, which was released in 2022 following consultation with suppliers, business partners, and our own team. Our ESG strategy is integrated across our value chain, from dealing with our supply partners, to manufacturing, to delivery of our products to our customers. We will strive to improve our processes to meet our ESG targets. I'd like to update you on a couple of key targets.
Noumi will be moving to have all packaging APCO compliant by 2025, and aims to complete this early. We will have our dairy farm suppliers as part of our food safety program, which helps them continue their stewardship of the land. With continual engagement within our own team, we're aiming to continue to lift our employee engagement across all our sites. We wanna help our team members grow. We have an achieve and grow strategy that all team members can access to empower them with their own development. Noumi's core values are integral to the company's aim to have positive impact on those whom we interact. With integrity, respect, creativity, excellence, collaboration, and accountability, the foundation for all we do. Through healthier lifestyles, we are focused to have more than 75% of our branded products carry nutrition and healthy claims by 2025.
We'll aim to fortify our branded plant-based beverage dairy alternatives to match the calcium content of cow's milk by 2025. On Slide 18 is our strategy for the plant-based segment. As highlighted by Pete, we continue to see our own brands in plant-based grow year on year and deliver positive earnings across the group. With COVID-19 restrictions easing, our sales force team are engaging more and more with our baristas as activity increases. Our new campaign, Made with. Made for. Baristas., is helping show our customers that MILKLAB, in our opinion, is the best product to partner with coffee. Our MILKLAB Oat product continues to perform for us and our customers and is key to drive our range through the cafe segment. In retail, Australia's Own is continuing to build presence in the plant-based space.
Once again, the at-home coffee occasion is important to us as well as our consumers, so ensuring the right performance of each pack is important. As we look further outside domestic, we see coffee culture growing. MILKLAB is an internally traded brand that recently turned seven years old. Our success has been working with exciting coffee culture, and we are identifying these areas to drive future growth. We are already in 15 countries with our plant-based beverages, typically where we have presence in our dairy portfolio. Our big opportunity is to concentrate our effort in growing key international markets with attractive demographics, with strong coffee cultures, where we can benefit from the skills and experience we gained from the establishment of MILKLAB in Australia. Slide 19 is the Dairy Nutritional strategy, and this is multifaceted. This is about operational efficiencies and margin growth.
Our team in operations have performed well against targets to improve the operating efficiency of the Shepparton site, which Pete highlighted earlier. We are seeing continuing improvements across the site under very demanding conditions, impacting with higher farm gate milk prices, supply chain disruption, and changing customer buying behaviors. We recently launched cholesterol-lowering UHT product, which will be coming to a retailer near you soon. This is thanks to our great innovation team. This is just one of the projects that the team have been working on as we wanna build Australia's Own as a key dairy brand here and internationally. Healthier lifestyles are key to our innovation. Our Consumer Nutritionals portfolio is being strengthened with promotional activity and an updated portfolio.
Vitalstrength, Crankt, and UProtein being the key brands for this part of the segment. As noted by others in the industry, dairy pricing in Australia has seen some dramatic shifts over the past year, combined with the shrinking milk pool off-farm, which is also impacting the sector. This has been influenced by a number of factors, not at least the floods across the country through calendar year 2022. International competitiveness is a challenge for the Australian dairy industry. For our part, we are maintaining a strong discipline on volume and margin. We are working on our own operational efficiencies. Together with dairy industry reform, we can ensure that our products remain competitive and attractive to international markets. Further alignment of all industry participants is required to ensure longer-term success across the sector. Our suppliers across Noumi are key to our success.
This is particularly the case for our farmers. We have, across our business, a group of loyal farmers whose long-term contracts have been put under enormous pressure. We look forward to working with our farmers as we navigate these industry challenges. On Slide 20 is our trading outlook. Plant-based beverages is firmly established in the growth phase. We expect the performance of our plant-based beverages to remain strong as it benefits from demand in Australia and targeted overseas markets. As presented, Dairy has made significant progress in the domestic markets. Export competitiveness remains an issue for the Australian dairy industry. We expect export level volumes lower in the second half to protect margin. Operating efficiencies will continue to support overall improvements in performance. We continue to build on the great work from our team in the domestic markets to rebuild our margins in our dairy business.
We've seen our domestic margin increase, and we need further market alignment to see improvements in export margins. While macroeconomic conditions create some uncertainty, the company remains positive about the progress being made. We are doing what's in our control. We are setting up for medium to sustainable long-term growth. In wrapping up, I'd like to thank you all for listening today, and I want to reiterate the significant transformation of your company is well underway. The results we are delivering today is a testament to that. From the board down, we are committed to the pathway forward, and we hope this is evident. I wanna thank all our stakeholders within the business, not at least our staff. We would not be here without them today, and I wanna thank them for their efforts. That concludes the formal presentations. We'll now take any questions. Operator, are there any questions?
At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. That is star one if you wish to ask a question. I will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Once again, that is star one if you wish to ask a question. Currently, there are no questions online, so I'd like to hand back to Michael Perich.
Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone, for joining our call. Hope you all stay safe, we look forward to presenting to you later when we have our final year results. Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect.