Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Nufarm Limited FY 2022 results call. All participants are in listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Greg Hunt, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Chad, and good morning, everyone. Welcome, and thanks for joining us on today's call. I'm joined today by our CFO, Paul Townsend. Also joining us are Rico Christensen and Brent Zacharias, who I think most of you know. I'll take this opportunity to provide an update on the growth and the aspirational targets that we spoke to in February this year. Before we start, I'd like to draw your attention to the disclaimer on page three, particularly the section on forward-looking statements. Look, this is a great result for Nufarm. With earnings up in all of our operating segments, we have benefited from seasonal conditions and attractive soft commodity prices.
However, this result also demonstrates the benefits of our transformation program, our focus, deeper rather than broader approach, and the recent investments that we've made in supply chain and portfolio. As you can see on this slide, record revenue's up 17% to AUD 3.8 billion and EBITDA up 24% to AUD 447 million. Crop Protection enjoyed stronger returns thanks to an increase in prices, and as I said earlier, on our continued focus on core crops and key geographies. Our Seed Technologies continue to accelerate with earnings up 26% for the period. Importantly, we continue the building blocks for future growth. We continue to reposition the company and now see ourselves as more of an agricultural innovator, where technology and innovation will play a greater role in driving the future of our business.
Our activities in this area progressed strongly during the year, including recent expansions of our biopesticides, Omega-3, and bioenergy platforms. We are leveraging our existing Crop Protection and seeds market presence to accelerate that growth. As a result, we expect modest earnings growth in financial year 2023, and I'm pleased to say that we are on track to meet or exceed our FY 2026 growth aspirations. The outlook for Nufarm in both the short and long term remains very positive. I've already mentioned the record earnings and revenue. The other key highlights include the working capital result, which reflects the continued focus and discipline that we've had in this area. Overall, a very positive result. Our balance sheet is strong, and we've had positive cash flow generation.
This has allowed us to declare total dividends of AUD 0.10 per share, including a final dividend of AUD 0.066 per share. I'm pleased to say that each of our operating segments achieved revenue growth during the year, and I'd like to reinforce that this result goes beyond attractive commodity prices and what you might refer to as peak ag. While I acknowledge that we have benefited from price increases, particularly in the first half, it has been our capacity to advance new products, navigate supply chain challenges, continue to invest in growth, and meet key milestones. In Crop Protection, our geographic mix and our increased focus on higher margin products, which complement our diverse portfolio, are reducing risk. Our revenues are more linked to area planted and seasonal conditions than directly to the price of soft commodities.
In Seed Technologies, our innovations are providing new and diversified revenue sources with strong growth potential. The technologies and products that we're investing in today are not those that you would have expected from Nufarm five years ago. Turning now to each segment. North America delivered strong revenue and earnings growth. We saw early demand in the first half, followed by some dry conditions in the south and the west, which tempered demand in the second half. Volume growth was also restricted by supply constraints, which I'm pleased to say have eased towards the end of the year. New product introductions supported margin expansion and an improved product mix across the business. Overall, the strong result also reflects the investments that we've made in domestic manufacturing capability. Our presence on the ground has allowed us to build stronger relationships with our customers.
We are planning for another year of continued growth. Forecasts from the USDA for 2023 show that planted areas are expected to increase, adding to our confidence as we head into FY 2023. We anticipate strong demand in the first half as channel restocking occurs in preparation for the spring planting season. In Europe, we delivered strong revenue growth, up 15%, despite losing EUR 33 million in revenues from products that were deregistered during the year. We offset this through introducing new products and organic growth. Unfortunately, earnings were dampened by procurement, logistics, and manufacturing challenges, particularly at our site at Wyke. Operations were impacted by interruptions to raw material supply, mechanical issues, and extended maintenance. These issues will be progressively addressed through our CapEx program over the next three years. For FY 2023, we expect older de-registrations to impact revenue by EUR 21 million.
However, as we did this year, we believe that we can offset the revenue impact with what is in our current portfolio, organic growth, and further new product introductions. Weather conditions have been favorable for winter crop plantings, and we expect to see strong demand in the second quarter as preparation for spring planting gets underway. APAC enjoyed another very good year. Higher revenues, improved margins, and lower costs delivered a 21% increase in EBITDA. We continue to see benefits from our manufacturing footprint rationalization and the performance improvement initiatives that we've put in place over the last couple of years. We are now firmly focused on growth and driving synergies across the region. As previously discussed, these synergies revolve around manufacturing, logistics, and portfolio. During the year, we launched a number of higher-margin products. Each of these contributed positively to the result.
Active ingredient pricing softened for some of our foundational products in the second half, particularly glyphosate, but prices have now stabilized, and we have commenced restocking at the lower price levels. In the short term, current conditions on the East Coast support another positive summer fallow and cropping program. While it is too early to accurately forecast winter plantings, indications are highly positive for another large planting program. Looking further ahead, we continue to work with major local institutions such as the CSIRO and the University of Queensland to complement our own resources to further develop our portfolio, and we expect these developments and investments to be a key part of our growth in this region over the next few years. The Seed Technologies result was very encouraging.
Revenue and earnings were up by 25%, and this reflected the very strong demand for our sorghum, sunflower, and canola seeds in multiple markets. During the year, we continued to make progress with our Nuseed Omega-3 canola. We've now produced and sold 16,500 metric tons of Aquaterra oil since commercial launch to key and repeat customers in Chile. We recently completed our first commercial sale in the North American market. We are on track to book our first sales of our Nutriterra product into the human supplement market in the next few weeks, another important milestone for this technology. As most of you know, during the year, we signed a strategic 10-year offtake agreement with BP for our Nuseed Carinata.
Over the past year, we have increased the area planted to over 35,000 hectares in Argentina and Uruguay and recently expanded our program into the northern hemisphere, planting 6,000 hectares in the United States. As you know from our 2022 aspirations, seed technologies provides a very exciting and meaningful growth platform for the company. This result continues the earnings momentum of recent years. Brent will talk to our program over the next year and provide some more detail about our growth aspirations over the next few years, including our recent Energy Cane acquisition. I'll now hand over to Paul to take you through the financials.
Thanks, Greg, and good morning, everyone. As Greg noted, the financial year 2022 financial result was underpinned by strong demand for our crop protection seed products. 17% revenue increase includes sales of AUD 193 million at zero margin to Sumitomo under a transitional services agreement. This compares against AUD 197 million the prior period. Underlying EBITDA was up 24% at AUD 147 million, while underlying EBIT also increased 55% to AUD 237 million. Underlying net profit after tax was also up significantly to AUD 133 million, an increase of 118%. Statutory net profit after tax also increased 65% to AUD 107 million. Material items are detailed on page four.
Underlying net external interest decreased to AUD 52 million for the 12 months ending 31 2022, largely reflecting interest savings achieved from the completion of the high yield bond refinancing undertaken in January 2022. Our underlying effective tax rate, 6.9%, and we expect to see that fluctuate around the 30% mark. The average net working capital sales ratio sits at 28%, well below Nufarm's target and an improvement of six percentage points versus the prior corresponding period. This has been driven by our continued focus on customer terms, supplier negotiations, and effective stock management. On the back of the excellent earnings and strong balance sheet position, leverage improved further year-on-year. The positive earnings and cash flow outlook, together with our current low leverage of 0.8x, has enabled the directors to declare the final dividend of AUD 0.06 per share.
At this point, we've decided to not pursue any further capital management options beyond the payment of this dividend for FY 2022. However, we are continuing to evaluate appropriate capital management options in line with our capital management principles with the focus maintaining on growth. We remain disciplined in our expense management to ensure increases are aligned to support our growth agenda. As the chart shows, the increase in SG&A relates primarily to the increase in headcount and other costs associated with growth initiatives across both businesses. Increased selling and distribution costs, predominantly supply chain related, CPI increases in staff costs, and an increase in employee incentive provisions associated with the strong earnings achieved. G&A expenses also increased related to Europe and Nuseed and other increases such as post-COVID increases in travel and insurance.
Currency translation added a net benefit of AUD 5 million to our final SG&A outcome. The next chart reconciles our underlying EBITDA to free cash flow. Obviously, EBITDA and net working capital are dominant contributors to this bridge. I'll talk more to net working capital in the next slide. Tax and interest payments of AUD 32 million and AUD 60 million respectively were as forecast. While capital CapEx investment of around AUD 160 million, PPE plus intangibles, has increased largely due to increased PPE spend which was delayed through the impacts of COVID. As we foreshadowed at the half, the full year free cash flow generation was positive. Just as a reminder, free cash flow is the cash flow derived by the business before any distribution to shareholders. A very pleasing result of AUD 179 million pre-application to growth initiatives and dividends.
This outcome afforded us the ability to deploy AUD 80 million of free cash flow towards growth initiatives, including increasing our investments in Enko and CROP.ZONE, and acquiring the energy cane assets from GranBio. Net cash flow post AUD 30 million in dividends paid to shareholders and payments under the Nufarm step-up securities of AUD 10 million is AUD 59 million, which leaves us well-placed as we head into FY 2023. In terms of inventory and payables management, the supplier financing facility utilization further increased during the year, largely due to raw material price increases. This facility remains an important element in strengthening Nufarm's relationship with key raw material suppliers, which helps secure product supplies in the current tight market conditions. Inventory increased at year-end, driven principally by price increases in active ingredient costs.
We experienced an improvement in payable days and saw a strong collections profile with a significant reduction in receivables days compared to the prior corresponding period. The focus on net working capital management has yielded an effective flat position over the past two years, which is an excellent result given the growth in sales and supply chain constraints. The average net working capital to sales ratio, as shown on the right-hand side of the chart, has come down significantly since the prior year, is now at 28%, well below our target range and in line with the outcome of the first half.
While this is an excellent outcome for Nufarm, the focus on net working capital will continue and will need to be balanced with ensuring continuity of supply given the global logistics and supply chain challenges and the need to optimize our commercial relationship with our customers. Our CapEx spend is focused on supporting our growth ambitions. As you can see, CapEx has increased significantly versus the prior year due largely to investments in Enko, Crop.zone, and energy cane as mentioned earlier, and also to support organic growth. During the year, we commenced projects at Wyke and Chicago Heights aimed at optimizing productive capacity and efficiency measures. These projects will continue over the next two to three years and will enhance our reliability, competitiveness, and market position.
In line with our capital management principles, we assess growth opportunities with regard to return on funds employed, and we aim to see the target return on funds employed above Nufarm's weighted average cost of capital. Pleasingly, return on funds employed has increased significantly versus the prior year and is now at 9.5%. Turning to the debt summary. As you can see, net debt and leverage have continued to improve. Leverage is at 0.8x EBITDA on a rolling twelve-month basis, which is lower than our core leverage target of 1.5x-2x including leases. Liquidity maintains strong with undrawn facilities at 30 September of around AUD 510 million and cash balances at around AUD 586 million.
The high yield bond refinancing has delivered interest savings as expected since March 2022 following the transition to the new arrangements. In FY 2023, we expect interest expense to remain stable on a constant currency basis, with the savings from the high yield bond to be offset by increases in interest base rates. Post year-end, we announced that we have entered into an asset-based lending credit facility, ABL facility for $800 million. An additional $150 million available in a standby facility. The combination of the high yield bond and ABL facility strengthens Nufarm's capital structure through funding diversification and an extended debt maturity profile, and therefore supports our growth. To summarize, our balance sheet is in great shape. We have the capacity and flexibility to seize opportunities as they arise and support our growth aspirations. I'll now hand over to Rico to take you through our Crop Protection revenue aspirations.
Thanks, Paul. As Greg mentioned earlier, Nufarm is contributing to and also benefiting from the shift to more sustainable agricultural solutions. We are enabling our growers to produce more with less, while providing products that help them adapt to climate change and minimize unintended environmental consequences. Innovation and technology will drive Nufarm's sustainable growth. This slide showcases some of the innovations and technologies we are working on, which we presented in February at our Investor Day. We have a pipeline that will deliver across our core crops, our targeted geographies over multiple years. Over the past year, our product launches performed as planned, and we are on track to launch all scheduled NPIs for financial year 2023. This is a pipeline that will continue to support our customer relevance and support our revenue aspirations.
As a reminder, our top 22 projects have all passed proof of concepts with an estimated market size of $6.6 billion. We are no longer waiting for products to come off patent. We are driving our destiny by continuing to target opportunities in the areas we believe we can win. During the year, we launched a number of products, including, as examples, new corn and cereal herbicides such as [Serason], Tendus, and Fierce EZ. These are products that enhance our market position and all contributed positively to the FY 2022 results. In our pipeline for FY 2023, and what gives me confidence that we are at least on track to meet our 2026 aspirations, are some key launches, including a new corn herbicide, FirstRate Pro and DROPZONE, a proprietary herbicide that has proven lower drift.
These are just some examples of the new products and technologies that demonstrate benefits that are important to customers. In the relatively short time that I have been with Nufarm, I have been very impressed by the experienced and capable people that we have in our global portfolio development and regulatory teams. We've also been very successful at partnering with other technology providers and like-minded organizations to advance our portfolio offer. This will continue to be a feature of our growth aspirations. I wanted to take this opportunity to touch on a couple of investments that I believe could feature prominently in our future. The first is Enko. We invested in Enko for three reasons. The first is the rise of resistance to current crop protection products, which is slowly but surely becoming a major problem for farmers across the world.
The second is the fall of innovation from the major R&D companies, which is mainly driven by inefficiencies and lack of priority in their approach. They have multiple choices for capital allocation, seeds, traits, digital platforms, biologics, biostimulants, and so on, which makes them jack of all trades, but master of none. Lastly, Enko, through their use of DEL, which is DNA-encoded libraries, which was developed for the pharmaceutical industry, has shown that with the right enabling technology, you can deliver innovation faster, cheaper, and with higher likelihood of success. We invested in CROP.ZONE for similar reasons.
Today, there are four ways weeds are controlled, with chemistry, mechanical control, manual control, and biological control. CROP.ZONE is completely unique in the sense that it combines a conductive liquid and mechanical control for organic farming. It is an alternative and an economically viable long-term solution to control herbicide-persistent superweeds. As Greg mentioned earlier, these are exciting developments, and these are not technologies one would have expected from Nufarm in the past. They are, however, examples of technologies that will drive our future. I will now hand over to Brent, who will talk more about the exciting growth opportunities.
Yes. Thank you, Rico, and good morning, everyone. Greg has already taken you through the key highlights of the current year's results, so I will focus more on growth and outlook. Last February, I outlined our growth aspirations for the Seed Technologies business over the medium to long term. Today, I am pleased to share that we are well on track to deliver or exceed the internal targets on which these aspirations are based. Our confidence in continued strong growth is driven by the increasing rate of technology and market adoption, both at the farm gate and with our downstream customers. Looking to our core seeds platform outlook, market conditions remain positive for global oilseeds and our positions in canola and sunflower.
Increasing global demand for oilseeds, combined with the conflict in Eastern Europe, is driving greater demand for sunflowers in North and South America, and greater canola demand in North and South America and Australia, all aligning with Nuseed market positions of strength and will further support our growth. Nuseed also aims to continue to grow share and value from our global position in sorghum as we expand our leading ultra-early animal nutrition and bioenergy traits within the crop. In summary, our seeds portfolio is highly strategic, holds a strong growth profile, and is expected to remain a very important component of our growth aspiration delivery. Now, looking to omega-3.
Having established strong technology adoption with leading industry players, we are now very focused on expansion of market share with existing customers while continuing to scale our operations, expand our margins, and secure further import market approvals as key outcomes for the next 2-4 years. The scaling of market adoption is anticipated to continue in our now existing Chilean and North American markets, while we also plan to extend into further geography and other aquaculture species within the 2026 timeframe. With adoption trajectory established, we now intend to increase market adoption and produce more than 16,500 metric tons of oil in calendar year 2023. Post calendar year 2023, we will continue to accelerate market adoption and production of Aquaterra.
Our trajectory and demand has us on track to meet or outperform our internal targets for the omega-3 platform contribution to our stated 2026 aspiration. The Nutriterra launch is on track with our first order expected in the next few weeks, and we're poised for growth in FY 2023 and beyond. Within the next 2-3 years, we intend to expand our customer pipeline, grow sales and market share in North America, and expand into additional markets as we achieve further regulatory approvals. Turning to our bioenergy platform outlook. Today, Nuseed Carinata is a drop-in feedstock solution to the European renewable fuel regulated market. Within the next few years, we plan to also access the valuable low-carbon renewable fuels market in the United States.
With the success we are seeing in the 2022 harvest, benefits of our new hybrid technology and increase in grower adoption of Nuseed Carinata, we expect to at least double the hectares planted in FY 2023 to greater than 80,000 hectares. Carinata trajectory is on track to meet or surpass the contribution required from Carinata to meet our 2026 seed technology aspirations. The newest technology in Nuseed's bioenergy platform, Energy Cane, provides a significant opportunity to enable advanced agriculture feedstock generation for energy transition, including a significant boost in productivity for the existing Brazilian sugarcane biofuel industry. Research indicates that with existing 1G mill infrastructure, Energy Cane can increase ethanol output by 20%-30% per hectare and increase bioelectricity generation by 2-4 times in degraded soil areas that are less suitable for primary crops.
Over the next two to three years, we aim to complete the development and launch of these next-generation products in the acquired pipeline. Additionally, the combination of Energy Cane with advanced 2G processing has the potential to generate net zero ethanol, biogas, bioelectricity, green industrial products, and low-carbon feedstocks for sustainable aviation fuel. In FY 2023, we'll be advancing our research development and commercial teams to further advance existing product adoption and demonstrate the next-generation products in the pipeline. To summarize, FY 2022 has been a very strong year. Collectively, our financial strategic accomplishments and growth outlook all indicate that we're on track to deliver on or exceed the AUD 600 million-AUD 700 million revenue aspiration by FY 2026 at 20%-25% EBITDA margins as was stated in February. Thank you. I'll now hand back to Greg.
Yeah. Thanks, Brent, and Rico. Now, I guess while, you know, elements of Rico and Brent's commentary don't sort of directly relate to the FY 2022 result, it does underscore why we are confident that we are on track to meet or exceed our FY 2026 revenue aspirations. We've now reported multiple periods of continued growth, and we believe that we've built the foundations and the building blocks to continue that growth. At a macro level, the drivers for our business remain very positive. Global food demand is set to rise significantly with the rise in the global population. At the same time, there is increasing pressure to meet our food needs more sustainably. Advances in science and technology are rewriting the way that we use land and plants to supply not just food, but energy and a wide range of other new products.
Nufarm's at the forefront of these changes, and a large part of that is about our focus on innovation and technology. We believe demand for our products will continue to grow and drive our revenues. We have the balance sheet strength to deliver this growth and benefit from any opportunities as they may arise. Turning to the immediate future, the outlook remains positive. We've delivered a very strong result in financial year 2022, and we believe that we can deliver modest growth in underlying EBITDA on a constant currency basis again in FY 2023, assuming of course, normal seasonal conditions. Full year earnings are expected to be proportionately weighted to the first half, however, less skewed than in FY 2022.
The first six weeks of the new financial year have seen favorable seasonal conditions continue in most key grain growing regions, and the outlook for soft commodity prices remains positive. These conditions are likely to support continued strong demand for seeds and crop protection products. Given easing supply conditions and higher channel inventories than this time last year, we don't expect to see the same level of full forward sales that we experienced in the first half of last year. In summary, we've a clear plan for growth. We've shared our growth aspirations with you, and we are on track to meet or exceed those aspirations. We've delivered a very good result this year, and this builds on the momentum from previous periods. We've started financial year 2023 with positive trading conditions across all of our business segments. With that, I'll hand back to Chad, and we can take some questions.
Thank you, sir. At this time, if you wish to ask a question, please press star then 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 a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. In the interest of time, we ask that you limit to two questions per person. Press star one to rejoin the queue if you wish to ask further questions. The first question will be from Belinda Moore from Morgans. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Greg and the rest of the Nufarm team, congratulations on a great result today. Greg, just turning to the outlook, I suppose, can you just talk about how you're seeing sort of the current cropping outlook around the world, but particularly can you focus on Australia and the recent, you know, wet weather and floods? Is it sort of like a short-term negative followed by a big positive? Can you talk about sort of what sort of maybe percentage skew we should see in 2023 first half versus second half? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks for the question, Belinda, and good morning. Yeah, well, let me take Australia first. I sort of understand that, you know, it could be causing some confusion or uncertainty. I guess the immediate impact is both a challenge for the winter crop harvest, you know, which has got little to no impact on Nufarm, and of course, the prospects for the summer crop planting, so the summer crop for 2022-2023. I guess the main pain point there really is northern New South Wales. There's certainly plenty of activity going on in the Darling Downs and Central Queensland. The latest estimates are that, you know, we expect a summer crop of about 1.5 million hectares.
Again, I'd sort of point out that that's not really material to Nufarm because, you know, our prospects are more around the hectares of summer fallow. That's country that's sort of held over for the winter crop in 2023. It's actually a much bigger opportunity. In fact, we'd estimate that the summer fallow hectares is probably closer to sort of 5 million. So, you know, 3x-4x the size of the summer crop, which is mainly sorghum and canola. So we would see summer weed spraying in sort of Victoria, South Australia, and WA on the back of the rainfall that we've had, you know, to be pretty strong. I guess on a global level, you know, grain and oilseed stocks remain pretty tight.
I think the latest USDA expects global ending stocks, minus China that is, to be the lowest since 2013. Global stock to use ratios, you know, almost the lowest it's been for 20 years. I guess with the uncertainty surrounding Ukraine, Russia, you know, we think that'll support healthy grain and oilseed prices well into 2023. You know, really encouraging farmers across the globe to continue to invest in their crops to improve their yields. I guess that's the part that we play. Certainly in the U.S., the projections are an increase in planted area by about 1%, but including a 4% expansion in corn acres planted.
Here in Australia, you know, one of the benefits of the rain that we have had is that strong soil moisture on the East Coast particularly is likely to set up a pretty large planting program for the winter crop. In Europe, you know, weather conditions, although they've been a bit mixed for the last sort of three months, we've certainly seen weather conditions improve and a lot more favorable now for the winter cereal planting. All in all, you know, we think we're in a reasonably good position, Belinda. I think just on half, I think probably the best way to look at that is.
It does vary by geography, of course, but I think at an aggregate level, if you looked at the sort of the split that we had in 2021, you know, it's probably a better indicator of where we'll see 2023. It'll certainly be less weighted to the first half, as I said, in 2023 than it was in 2022. Probably more in line with what we saw in 2021.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question will come from Grant Saligari from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks. Actually, just the first one on Omega-3. Brent, I sort of gathered by your comments, and I might have misinterpreted them, the comments around expanding margin, that Omega-3 might have been breakeven or even slightly positive profit in the current year. I was wondering whether you could just clarify that. Also, just what volume of Omega-3 do you actually produce in the FY 2022 year, please?
Yeah. Thanks, Grant. Thanks for the question. In terms of Omega-3, what I can say is that, you know, we're pleased that our margins are expanding in the program year-over-year. I think that's, you know, a reflection of both the marketplace and the appreciation of fish oil pricing and, you know, still the market getting stronger post-COVID. You know, our margins, gross margins from that technology continue to increase and are fully on track. Hopefully that answers your question. In terms of volumes produced, we're really looking, and you can tell by my commentary that, you know, we've gone through a period now over the last two or three years where we've produced volume and now sold in that 16,500 tons.
Really what we're now focused on in our activity in going into FY 2023 is. The, I guess, another way of saying what we're trying to do is produce enough volume in 2023 to meet as much demand and to generate as much demand on an annual basis as what we've seen all cumulative from what we've done so far. Hopefully that helps. Thanks, Grant.
Yeah, that helps. Second question, Greg, if I could on North America. Could you put some building blocks by way of bridge around the second half? Because the second half EBITDA was lower than even the pro forma 2020. There could have been some pull forward, I would guess, into the first half. I was just wondering whether you could put some building blocks around that. Into 2023, your expectations as to whether you can continue to grow volume in the North American marketplace.
Certainly. Thanks for the question. Certainly the you know the strong early season demand, as we pointed out in the notes, was followed by you know drier conditions in the second half. We certainly saw some demand fall. We you know we were not able to have or supply all of the product that we that we wanted you know and we've taken the decision to move earlier, so we're carrying the higher levels of inventory in North America at the moment because channel stocks in 2022 were low. They're still fairly tight, but higher than what we saw last year. We're seeing very strong demand in October and November in North America. You know, we would expect to see, you know, probably a similar split in 2023 that we saw in 2022. Very strong demand at the moment. Thank you.
The next question will be from Richard Johnson from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. Greg, I was just interested to hear your views on crop protection selling prices in very general terms around the world and really more specifically around what, you know, what's been behind, in your opinion, the positive trends? Given your commentary on some of the ingredient pricing coming off, how we should think about that going forward? Then extrapolating all of that into, you know, what assumption you've made on price in your 2026 assumptions.
Yeah. Well, let me take that part first. I mean, gross margins have certainly returned to, as we go into 2023, to more normal levels. You know, really post, to some extent, the one-off gains that we experienced in 2022. But that was mainly in Australia, and it was mainly glyphosate. You know, it's been the most volatile. It's the most volatile active ingredient. But we've moved most or all of that higher priced glyphosate in Australia. And I think, as I said, we will probably see a revision to more normal margins. So margins that we would've seen, you know, through 2020 and 2021 as we go into 2023. In terms of the overall demand, you know, as I said, when you look at the forecast for planted acres, hectares, depending on which geography, demand is very, very strong. With continued high prices for, or attractive prices for soft commodities, we would expect that demand to continue.
Great. Thanks. Just finally on, just to clarify on Europe, I just wanna make sure I understand your message is that in 2023 you expect it very roughly to do the same again. I'm kind of interested to get a sense of what the margins are like between the business that drops off and the replacement revenues.
We talked last year, I think about 30-odd million revenue impact, EUR 33 million. We're saying in 2023, that impact is likely to be about EUR 21 million of revenue. I would expect that would be somewhere between a range of EUR 10-12 million in gross margin. As I said, as we did this year, in 2022, we would expect to offset that through both organic growth, new product, and new product introductions.
Fab. That's super helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question will be from Ben Wedd from Macquarie Capital. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Greg and team. Thanks very much for taking my question, and congratulations on the result. Just a quick one, just around the guide you put out for the top growth, on a constant currency basis. Can you speak to any assumptions you've made, when hedging you have in place around currency given, you know, first half FY 2023 looks like it could be quite a bit lower than FY 2022? Thanks.
In the appendix of the constant currency assumptions we've made, so you can. That's why we don't know what currency is gonna do, obviously, FY 2023. That's why we had to temper our statement to make it very clear that we expect modest but strong growth on a constant currency basis. Those rates are actually in the appendices.
Great. Thank you.
Sorry, I was just gonna say, just in relation to the split, which was the second part of your question. I think as I said earlier, if you look at the split in 2021, it was 65/35 at a group level. That does change by geography. I think that's probably the way that you should think about the split in 2023. In 2022, of course, it was, I think about 75/25, so much more heavily weighted to the first half. I don't believe we will see that same split in 2023, so closer to the 65/35.
Great. Thanks for that. Maybe just a broader question just on Carinata around the carbon credit piece. Just see if you could talk a little bit to your sort of assumptions around that and expectations for carbon pricing going forward into 2023, 2024, and beyond.
Yeah. Thanks, Ben. Brent here. Yeah, so I think the important aspect everyone to understand is that with Carinata, because of the way that we can certify it and build the data package around it, we're actually able to have it qualified to be sold into the high value regulated markets. Today, as I think I might have mentioned, we're selling into the European regulated market under the Renewable Energy Directive. That's a very high value market, as is the U.S. market, particularly in California, and that's an expansion market for us to go to next. You know, the challenge of course is that the European regulated markets aren't that transparent in terms of being able to
Just look at the values. If you were to look at the California Air Resources Board dashboard, that's an online reporting system, you know, they do report the carbon values for that type of regulated renewable fuel program. They've traded in this last year between $100-$200 US dollars per ton for actual carbon. I would just say that the European markets, the most valuable European markets certainly trade higher than that, if that's helpful.
Yeah, great. Thank you.
Sorry, I think just to add to your second part of your question is, with the demand that we're seeing on energy transition and the amount of HVO facilities, the hydrotreated vegetable oil facilities coming online around the globe, you know, our expectation that over time, that will continue to increase in the most valuable regulated markets.
Thank you. The next question will be from Steve Byrne from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. In your next fiscal year, do you have an estimate of how much deflation you might realize in your raw material costs?
Is there any sort of pricing impacts? We either pass through to the customers or we take it as a selling price reduction. So it's netted out so that we're in effect not impacted by deflation, but we certainly have got some estimates with where we see AI prices coming off, and we reflect that in our forward forecasts. I think Greg spoke about the underlying assumptions about favorable conditions supporting pricing, means that we believe that it's a robust position we've taken in our forward view.
Do I understand you correctly that you know, your per unit profit is likely to stay flat, but that the deflation in your raw material costs will not result in a margin expansion? Your pricing will drop, commensurate with the raw material cost deflation?
Yeah. That's right. The margins, yeah, the relative margins are maintained.
Okay. No opportunity to hold on to that price, without giving it back, huh?
Well, I think there's always the opportunity when you're in commercial discussions, but I guess we need to be a bit prudent in how we approach our forward outlook.
Just one quick one on Carinata. This is a winter crop, I understand. Can you comment on whether the existing crush infrastructure is suitable to crush Carinata, or do those crush plants have to be modified to get the oil out of the Carinata? Can you comment on how much oil per acre you can get out of this crop?
Yeah. Thanks, Steve. It is grown as a cover crop, which is typically in the winter season. That's how we're growing it currently in Latin America, as well as the new plantings that we're putting into the Southeast and South Texas area of the U.S. We have had three years of commercial crush with it now. We've been working with commercial crushers, in particular, Saipol is a European crusher, and we can move it straight into most facilities that already crush either canola or, in a lot of cases, sunflowers. It is a drop-in to those commercial type of crush facilities with some specific operating procedures that we help them with.
Yeah, it is readily able to move into those. The second part of your question is, how much oil are we seeing? You know, as I think I may have mentioned, we launched this year a full launch of now moving Carinata to hybrid technology. We're just in the middle of our harvest in Latin America of that first hybrid crop, and we're seeing fantastic yield results. Certainly genetic potential to push beyond two metric tons per hectare of grain. The oil yield out of it is almost 50%. You're very, very close to 1 ton of oil per hectare when the environment conditions are right.
Very good. Thank you.
Thanks, Steve.
The next question will be from Jonathan Snape with Bell Potter. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hey, guys. Can you hear me okay?
Very well. Thanks, Jonathan.
All right. Can I just ask one question around the inventories and particularly note 16? There's quite a material jump in the provisioning for obsolescent stock. I think it went up from like AUD 19 million up towards AUD 58 million in this year. Can I check, A, was that taken against this year's profit number? I guess, B, is that bringing down the carrying value of stock to where the market is on actives? The kind that you plan on selling for next year.
Yeah. Okay. Couple things in that. The first part of your question is that, with the higher priced inventory, when you back out the material item, which is the write down of the inventory for Russia and Ukraine, which was AUD 16 million, plus we also have a residual amount for the glyphosate provision that we took up at write down at 31 March. That's about 7 million or 8 million. Let's call it AUD 25 million. Take that off your 54 and you end up with about a 2%. Provision, which is a normal. When you look at last year's, it's a very normal provision that we have for obsolescence. It's the growth, if you like, is really related to the increased pricing and inventory. If you normalize it for the glyphosate provision and material item, it's pretty standard.
All right. Great. Thanks. Look, can I just ask around seeds, just to make sure the numbers still hold. On the Carinata, 80,000 hectares, I think you guys said it was AUD 100 a hectare on the seed sale back at the strategy day. Is that still the way we should be thinking about that in terms of revenue?
Yeah. Thanks, Jonathan. There are two revenue streams from our Carinata business model. The first one is seed sales, and that's right. It's about AUD 100 per hectare, roughly speaking, of the amount of revenue that we'd expect from the seed sale to farmers at the front end of the contract. Then secondly, the piece that relates to the carbon value of the crop as we certify through a third party. We use RSB, the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials to audit us, and we provide a sustainability certificate downstream that's attached right from every field all the way to the fuel consumption of the oil that's generated out of that.
D emonstrating that we can get to greater than 100% greenhouse gas reduction. With that comes another significant amount of value stream from the downstream side for Carinata. That's the other element that we continue to grow into with this business, which probably from you know what I could say from a value and earnings perspective is much more valuable than the seed sale to us.
Did you say that acreage is doubling year-on-year?
That's right. Yeah. We planted about 40,000 hectares in total this last year, and we're gearing towards aiming towards greater than 80,000 hectares to be planted in FY 2023.
Okay. Look, while we're on oil seeds, 16,500 tons. Like if I look at the price of, I guess, soybean oil, it's what? $2,000 a ton. If I looked at fish oil, omega-3 oil, it's anywhere from $4,000- $4,500. How should we be thinking around the pricing of the omega-3? Obviously, you're trying to get into the market, so I'm assuming it's not gonna be the price points that, you know, you see fish oil trade at, or even the omega-3 stuff. Is it somewhere in the middle? Is it down closer to soy and canola, or is it up closer to fish oil?
Yeah. Maybe I can add some comments to that, Jonathan. If you look at the one that's most easy to benchmark to or to look at is the Peruvian fish oil market. This last year it posted trades between $3,200 US per metric ton and $4,000 US per metric ton. But the thing you need to recognize with that market is that quite often what you see posted is usually for smaller volumes in the human health. We know that, you know, for large bulk volumes going to aquaculture, it trades slightly lower than that. Then there's also several other sources of fish oil that have lower content and trades well below Peru.
You know, on average, we estimate in 2022, the weighted average of all global fish oil, if you took the whole market into aquaculture, probably traded at a range closer to $2,400-$3,000 a ton. That really the competitive market that we play in. With Aquaterra, we've built a premium value position because of the sustainability of fish oil benefits relative to that market. You know, we trade. We typically are trying to price at a slight premium to the incumbent being fish oil, you know, to that $2,400-$3,000 range. Then there's some adjustments for overall omega-3 content, but that probably gives you more of a ballpark in terms of the relative value of our product.
I guess if you looked at that business, the oil you're selling this year is from last year's acreage, which I can't remember the number, but I seem to think it was like 20,000 acres or something like that to put in. What's the intention or the discovery around acres going in this year that would probably then support the 2024 oil sales program?
As I mentioned, we're significantly scaling. We've also launched hybrids or are launching hybrids to go into 2023 planting. We actually planted more than what you just referenced in 2022. The way I'd encourage everyone to think about it is it's far less in this case about how many acres we plant. What we're most focused on is the rate of market adoption with our customers, and then we plant to match that. What's different with Omega-3 than Carinata is growers know how to grow canola, and we can go access those acres.
You know, hence why we've indicated more about the types of volumes as a minimum that we want to gear towards, which is different than Carinata in the fact that you are convincing and helping growers to adopt a brand-new technology. Of course, we have the very large offtake agreement with BP. In Carinata, it's all about how many hectares we can plant and market adoption at the farm gate. In Omega-3, it's much more about, you know, how many metric tons of demand we can generate at the in the downstream and growing with the market adoption in aquaculture. If that's helpful.
All right. Great. Thanks, Brent.
Thank you. The next question will be from Evan Karatzas with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, all. Obviously, you know, so solid result. Just, Paul, can you just expand a little on the comments you made in regards to the capital management in your prepared remarks? I may have misheard, but just what you're potentially exploring there.
Yeah. I guess what we're saying, Evan, is that obviously with the leverage we've got, you know, we're gonna start looking at, you know, what our options are. But you know, growth is a focus, and there are some growth initiatives that we're looking at as well. That's something that we're weighing up as to, you know, whether we do something in terms of capital management. It's I guess the point we're saying is we're very alive to it in terms of that it is an opportunity. But however, there are some growth opportunities that we're looking at as well, and that trumps any capital management per those principles. You'll hear more from us, you know, over the course of the next half.
Okay, great. Just quickly on the product deregistration headwind in 2023, obviously, thanks for that disclosure. Can you just remind us, broadly speaking, on does that amount start to fall away in FY 2024? I just can't remember the exact sequencing there. Any sort of color you can provide on the post-FY 2023 amounts?
Yeah. Thanks, Evan. There will be some more in 2024 and 2025, but significantly less. You know, we'd probably be talking, you know, probably an impact of EUR 3-4 million in 2024. Talking margin now. And maybe something similar in 2025. You know, we're really largely through it all by the end of FY 2025.
Yeah, I thought that was the case. Just wanted to confirm that there. Okay, great. Thanks for your time.
Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude our question and answer session and thus concludes today's call. We thank you so much for joining. At this time, you may now disconnect your lines.