Good morning, and welcome to the 2021 results call for Select Harvests. My name is Paul Thompson. I'm the Managing Director of Select Harvests. Joining me today is Brad Crump, our CFO and Company Secretary, and Andrew Angus from Overland Advisory. Brad and I will present the 2021 results and an outlook. At the end of the presentation, Andrew will moderate the webinar for questions. If you feel uncomfortable using the webinar format, Andrew's email address is on the next slide, and you'll be able to pick that up. Andrew's email address is andrewangus@overlandadvisors.com.au. Please note the disclaimer and the basis of preparation of these results. It was definitely a very challenging year.
The U.S., where 80% of the world's almonds are grown, had a record crop 21.6% up on last year. Market demand was erratic as cities went in and out, and countries went in and out of lockdown during the COVID-19. Global freight has become increasingly challenging as the world has exited the pandemic. Market pricing dropped to its lowest point in the last five years. Operating orchards along the three borders with different state COVID restrictions, operational and cultural issues. Inside, we acquired the Piangil Almond Orchard, adding 20% to our volume. The Carina West processing facility operated at record production rates. Our investment in the new in-shell sorters resulted in 50% more in-shell product to supply the important Indian and Chinese markets. We continue to exceed our industry average yields across all age cohorts in our orchards.
a result, we sold our consumer brands business. Our safety performance improved across the board. We published our second comprehensive sustainability report. Our value-added facility Parboil continued to improve its cost position, its capacity and capability position. 30,000 metric tons of compost was recycled back into our orchards, and we were able to keep our Thomastown facility operating, located in the northern suburb. Water was at elevated levels and the international operations. In summary, what we could control, we managed well, what we could mitigate was mitigated, and the impact of the uncontrollables was minimized. If we turn to some of the key points of the result, as you can see, the impact of discontinuing operations has weighed heavily on our results. Our NPAT, including that, was $15 million. Continuing operations $5 million. Our EBIT was $ 18.2 million.
If you exclude the discontinued operations, it was $ 32.3 million. EBITDA was $ 40.4 million, and including the discontinued operations, it was $ 57.3 million. Our earnings per share was $ 0.127. Recognizing the performance and the underlying performance, the directors have approved a fully franked dividend of $ 0.12. This also recognizes and reflects the earnings. We've been able to manage a strong balance sheet, and net debt to equity was 18.6%. You may recall last year, cash flows were delayed as a result of COVID, where some buyers canceled or renegotiated contracts. You can see from our position sold and shipped, which is exactly the same level, around 80% this year with a 20% larger crop. Our cash flows have returned to their normal cycle, and we anticipate this to continue.
Let's just walk through the discontinued operations. After an extensive review by the board and management, a decision was made to exit the consumer brands business, private label packing business, and the non-almond industrial business. These business segments generated $ 5.5 million in EBIT. As a result of the sale of the Lucky and Sunsol brands to Prolife Foods New Zealand, we had a $ 2.2 million write-off against the fair value of the brands. The impact was $ 6.3 million, which is closure costs of Thomastown. The total impact was $ 10.2 million. There is working capital that will be released, and this, we'll reinvest in our almond division, including the capacity and the capability of our value-added Parboil asset at Carina West. If you look at the operational review, our crop was up 5,000 tonnes.
The vast majority of that was at the Piangil acquisition, and Brad will share more with you on that in the future. Market conditions, the price here, and due to market conditions, apologies. The price flow is down $0.70 or 9.4%. If you go to slide 38 of the pack, you'll see the pricing history in US dollars and see how low these prices have gone to. Water pricing has been relatively flat, but we are expecting significant benefits in the year as the temporary water price sits at around $ 100 a day this year. Our cost was, the flow was up 2.9%. Brad will explain this in detail.
Pleasingly, our lost time frequency rate has dropped 24%, which means we're operating a far safer business for our employees. If you look at this result in context, as you'll see, the scale and tight cost control is critical in our business. Backing out the discontinued operations give you the true picture of the potential of our prices, the almond price historical averages all bodes well for the future facility harvest. It again, let's reflect on the importance of maintaining strong cost control and delivering high yields. I'd now like to hand over to Brad.
Thanks, Paul. I'll cover off on the financial performance of the group and also touch on our work health and safety performance and the yields our year performance for the year. Firstly on our mentioned, Select Harvests delivered FY 2021 recorded NPAT of $ 15.1 million, made up of $ 25.3 million from continuing operations and an NPAT loss of $ 10.2 million from discontinued operations. This result's made up of continuing operations revenue recognized for $ 228.6 million. That's up 22.2% from last year. This is due to an increase in physical sales compared to the lower volumes shipped. The higher recognized revenue through to EBITDA, we unwind the fair value of the respective year's crops, as EBITDA is reflective of the crop year's earnings.
I'll talk through the drivers of our EBITDA shortly on the next slide. Depreciation charges were up 14.7%, and that's mainly due to the acquisition of Piangil and the assets coming onto the balance sheet. A modest interest expense of $ 2.2 million was up 14.7%. Again, that's due to the debt funding portion. Continuing operations tax rate, 16.8% was low due to an adjustment of $ 3.7 million that was made in the prior year tax accounting, and that's in respect to a conservative 2020 position that was taken on AASB 16 impacts for the growing crop that year. Just touching on the discontinued operations, an EBIT loss was in line with last year, with increased volumes offset by lower margins, which were impacted by resale of private label compositions.
Have been recognized in 2021, with most of this being through the loss on the sale of the brands, redundancies, and an impairment of plant and equipment that we currently hold at Thomastown. Moving to slide 11, which is EBIT movement. This slide reflects the key impacts to Select's continuing 2021 results. The major impact was a $0.70 per kilo downward movement in the almond price. This was partially offset by a 5%. Production cost per kilo increased by 4.5%. The main reason for this is the increased cost recognition of our immature orchards. They had exceptional yielding years in the prior two years, and as this flattens out, the cost recognition catches up. A modest lower water cost per kilo was achieved.
Higher price 2020 water was carried over into the 2021 crop, so the full benefit of savings from lower water prices could be across $ 6 million-$8 million or equate to about $ 0.23 per kilo saving. Increased volumes of value-added material added $ 1.2 million and increased external processing and wholesale volumes added a further $ 1 million. Just breaking down the cost a little further, the overall almond cost of production increased by 2.9% to $ 5.63 per kilo. As mentioned previously. On top of this, depreciation also increased due to the tree depreciation related to the Piangil Orchard acquisition. Moving on to the balance sheet, on slide 13, the balance sheet remains in a very healthy position.
The major movements all relate to the acquisition of the Piangil orchards, such as increases in our current assets due to higher growing costs, which relate to the 2022 crop, inventory on hand, which relates to the 2021 crops, the value of the acquisition onto the balance sheet. Similarly, our borrowing costs have gone up, being the debt-funded portion of the acquisition. It's worth noting that the company's orchards and water assets are recorded at the cost of purchase. A valuation of the orchards was not undertaken this year, but given market movements, they are still considered to be valued at least $80 million higher than their book value. A market assessment was conducted on the company's water assets as at 30, valued at $ 106.9 million. This is $ 1.8 million higher than the book value.
In total, between the orchards and the water values, there's an additional $ 130 million-$ 140 million of value not recognized on the balance sheet. On slide 14, capital management is a key focus of the company. As shown, we've scaled back and deferred some CapEx in FY 2021, and this is due to almond prices hitting historic low. Working capital were well maintained. As a consequence, our bank debt gearing levels remain below 20%. Given the company's financial position and confidence in earnings going forward, a fully franked dividend of $ 0.08 per share was declared. Our cash flows on slide 15. Two things to note. They are reflected on the 2021 cash flow. Operational cash flows improved. This was due to increased levels of shipping on those.
The company is managing a constant flow of product out through lengthening forecasts and corresponding space commitments. Secondly, investing cash flows jumped significantly due to the acquisition of the Piangil orchard. This is reflected in the water rights and bearer plants and plantation land. As shown, this was funded through a capital raising and an increase in debt levels. Moving now to our health, safety, and well-being. Focus on workplace is the company's number one priority, and we continue to aim towards achieving zero harm. There was a slight rise in our recordable injury frequency rate, with a number of incidents being reported increasing through the implementation of an automated technology-based system. This is also shown by a 152% increase in the number of hazards identified.
This is a positive result as the more hazards that are identified, the more actions that can be taken to prevent. Identification remains a key proactive strategy for the. We continue to take actions to embed a strong safety culture in the business. FY 2021 was another challenging COVID impacted year. The company, through measures put in place and flexible employees, operated throughout the year in all areas with minimal disruption. Our year performance on slide 18. Select delivered another strong year-on-year in FY 2021. This industry standard of 1.4. All regions would have achieved this if it weren't for a major power outage impacting one of our largest orchards in the central region. Pine Grove performed above our business case expectations, and South Australia again delivered exceptional yields.
The immature orchards again produced positive results, with the fourth and sixth leaf orchards performing very strongly. The lower growth rate of the fifth leaf orchards, while still well above industry, was what impacted some of the cost rise last year. Importantly, a consistently high-yielding results, with implementation of frost fans and first-class horticultural program ensuring consistent performance. I'll now hand back to Paul.
Thank you. Thank you, Brad. The first point I'd like to make, before we go into the pricing and the market conditions, is that the demand and the consumption of almonds has continued on throughout the COVID period, which channels then consume through as much of the business is very. The second point I'd like to make, at this time of year, it's always the most difficult time to forecast prices as the U.S. growers are yet to understand the full size of their crop, and they are unsure about the potential bloom of next year's crop. As I said earlier, last year's crop was huge at 3.2 billion lbs. The marketing program to clear this was disrupted with the COVID issues. Simply, at the end of the season, the pipeline was full.
Adding to these difficulties is 100% of the U.S. crop has to pass through some of the most congested ports in the world, L.A. and Long Beach. If you look to the future, you have to really consider the following. Prices for last year for many U.S. growers were at or below their cash costs, so there is upward price pressure from growers. The 2020 and the 2021. Any rain will not create additional nuts. The budding points for this crop were set back in May. Labor, like in Australia, is in short supply and more expensive. Costs of fertilizer, transport, and fuel are increasing as with global commodities.
Some of the growers we've seen accepting these lower prices because they just can't afford to wait for pricing to recover as they need the cash to invest in their 2022 crop. Innovation and future demand for these almonds is being naturally stimulated by these lower prices. Fortunately, in Australia, we don't have many of the challenges that they have, particularly water shortages and drought. We anticipate prices will recover as a consequence. We are delaying our 2022 marketing program versus previous years. As we had good pollination, particularly in Victoria and South Australia. We have been impacted by the recent storms in South Australia, but the impact was not material.
We'd like to see the rain stop, which is a little ironic for an agricultural company, but that's so we can actually deliver our horticultural programs as we'd like to do that in a much less challenging environment. We've just completed an upgrade of our Parboil facility, and it's back up and operational, which will give us more capacity. We are planning an upgrade in our packing area, which will allow us to improve the quality of the crop, but put us in a position to take more advantage of market movements. We'll be able to process our crop quicker and either warehouse it or meet market demand immediately, and in many ways avoid some of the dynamic movement in the U.S. as a result of the U.S. crop.
Our business has a triple bottom line. Our aim is to make sure we have a passionate, engaged workforce, plus recognizing our role in regional Australia. From a planet perspective, we recognize the fragile state of our planet, where we are ensuring that we are both efficient and responsible when using critical resources such as land and water. Our objective from a profit perspective is to continue to provide shareholders with a positive and competitive returns. From a water perspective, 100% are managed using the most advanced soil and water management and tree monitoring systems. As Brad said earlier, at current prices, we're looking to save around $ 6 million-$ 8 million. On sustainability, we're concentrating on developing a more comprehensive strategy.
Naturally, as a grower of almonds, we have some natural advantages in this space. Securing and retaining labor has been challenging, continuing to invest in our workforce, meeting their expectation and flexibility in development. Seasonal labor has definitely been challenging, but the recent opening up of the state borders has made it a little less challenging for us. In profit, we continue to see further opportunities to increase our profit through cost control, innovation, and commercializing everything we grow. Co-waste represents about 70% of this resource is a huge opportunity. Our biomass plant has become more efficient, pumping out more energy, but we see big opportunities to recycle its co-waste potash back into our orchards, even further closing the loop.
Another exciting progress is through a digestion process, recovering the nutrients from the fruit mass of the hull and again, closing the loop by returning it to our orchards. Some of the pros. If you look at our strategy, it remains unchanged to be a leader in the supply of better for you plant-based foods. Our values have remained unchanged and our operational focus remains on customer supply chain, people and capital. What we're looking to do is deliver sustainable shareholder value creation. As you saw on the previous slide, our strategic priorities remain optimizing our brands and expanding strategically. Optimizing our almond base means remaining a top quartile grower by delivering consistent high yields and controlling costs.
Growing our brands, we are recognized through our Allinga Farms and Renshaw brands as a tier one ingredient supplier for food manufacturers throughout Australia and Southeast Asia and New Zealand. Expanding strategically, you've seen this year the impact of scale. If we can acquire or develop orchards at sensible prices, we will do. Volume growth, you've seen internal benchmarks. Our crop will be just under 30,000 metric tons, but this does assume normal growing conditions. As I said earlier, we've got a good start on that. It's worth reflecting on where we've expanded in the last three, five years, which is a value-adding component of our business. You can see that the almond industry is moving more and more towards about being an ingredient as opposed to just a straight snack. We are set up to participate.
We'll continue to look to ways to invest and innovate, increase our exposure to this because we can only see it expand. From our priorities, the food business restructure is important. It's about executing our exit from Thomastown efficiently and respectfully for those employees involved. The Carina West development is the upgrade of the sorting and packing facility, which we talked about. Strategic growth, I've touched on. Safety and wellbeing is making sure that we have a safe logical perspective. Again, our horticultural program, executing our programs to maintain our yield and cost position is a clear priority. Our marketing program, to put simply, is about price realization, which is about understanding the dynamics in the market and getting the timing of our sales program right. Managing debt and cash.
Management recognizes the importance of managing debt in such a volatile market. We can steer our way through that successfully. Value-adding, as I said, we've adopted strategy five years ago. We continue to see research opportunities to continue in that space. I'd like to thank the board and the employees for their contribution in a particularly challenging year. I'd also like to thank you, our shareholders, for your support. Andrew, I'd now like to open the floor to questions if you'd like to let people in or how would you do that?
Well, we've got a question from James Ferrier of Wilsons Advisory. I'll put him through. Go on.
Hi, Paul and Brad. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah. Thanks, James. That's good.
Thanks for your time this morning. Maybe Brad, just one for you, firstly. This is sort of two years in a row where the cash flows have been a bit disjointed, for various reasons. What's your estimate of the value of inventory that's sort of sitting on the balance sheet now that maybe in a normal year would otherwise have already been turned into cash?
Sorry, I missed that, James.
You dropped out.
I think it's dropped out.
Can you give us an estimate of, the value of the inventory that's sitting on the balance sheet currently that in a normal year would have already been shipped to customers and turned into cash?
Well, as Paul mentioned, we're at the same percentage that we've sold last year of around 80%. However, 5,000 more tons this year, an additional sort of 2,000-3,000 tons of inventory. That would equate to, you know, $ 7 million-$8 million of extra inventory on the balance sheet.
Yeah. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. And Paul, the ultimate price you achieved for the year, the almond price at $6.80, just comparing that back to where your sort of earlier guidance was going back a couple of months, and in the context of the remaining portion of the crop that was yet to be sold is generally lower quality grades. That $6.80 looked like a pretty good outcome. Was that just the sort of vagaries of how the market ended up within the ranges of prices you quoted, or was there something more structural that you achieved on a sort of go-forward basis within that price?
I think that we protected this from a lot of what's going on. We had a favorable mix to the rest of the marketplace as well, 'cause the Californian crop was biased to smaller sizes, and we didn't have that bias in our group. Just to give people comfort around that, we've basically marked to market the pricing, you know, in the last two weeks. I'm pretty confident of achieving.
That's great. Thanks for your time, guys.
Paul, we've got Alex Paton from Citi. Pardon me. Paul's gone through. Yep. Yep, from UBS.
Good day. Good day, Paul and Brad. Can you hear me, actually? Is it better?
You took a-
Sorry. You're just cutting out for me.
Give it a go. Try your question, if we can't hear, we'll ask you to repeat it.
Okay. It's a question on market conditions. Your view is that logistical issues sort of won't be resolved until the new year. Are you hoping for like a January type resolution, or do you think it could take several months longer for those logistical issues to resolve? Then I guess from a pricing point of view in that context, do you think we sort of fall a bit further until the new year? Or just what's the downside risk to current pricing, do you think?
That's the million-dollar question, isn't it? Look, I don't think this freight issue is gonna unwind itself particularly quickly, particularly out of the two ports, Long Beach and L.A. What I do know is that the destination ports are going to run out of stock. Some of those destination ports, we have a natural China, New Zealand, Thailand, Southeast Asia is effectively where we go to Indonesia, we go to the U.S., generally goes through a consolidator, two congested ports, L.A. and Singapore to get to many of those destinations.
From a market pricing perspective, I think there is a group of buyers and growers at the moment who are accepting prices because they have to from a cash flow perspective, and then there's a group of buyers who don't need to accept that pricing. I think there's a conference in two weeks' time in America when most of the growers and buyers get together and they'll either come out of that more optimistic or more pessimistic. Then it is about blossom in February. You know, it'll have to be something phenomenal for them to get terribly much more confidence. I think what you'll see at the moment is the control of the market from the buyers to the growers is gonna transfer around that February period.
Cool. One more sort of separate question. It's a question on your kernel yields. Historically, you've quoted like 1.35 tons per acre excluding Piangil and 1.4 including Piangil. What was that for FY 2021 in the end and your expectations on your kernel yields in FY 2022, please?
Oh, we couldn't hear that, Art, so you'll need to repeat that.
Paul, we're still not getting you.
Can you hear us now?
Yep.
Sorry. There's a whole lot of technology things going on here, including the fact that my power bank's running down. Sorry. Look, we've put in 1.35, which accommodates all of the various age cohorts we've got in the maturity because we do have some which are over, you know, at from that perspective. You know, that's a baseline that we use. We've exceeded it in the last three or four years, but you know, there is the biennial nature of the tree, so it's too early for us to tell now at what point whether we will, you know, exceed that. I mean, I have every confidence we'll exceed it, by how much I don't know.
Thank you.
Apologies about the technical glitches.
No problem.
Thanks, Paul. All right, Paul, we should have Alex now.
Yeah, I can see Alex.
Hi, guys. Can you hear me?
Yep. Clear as a bell, Alex.
Perfect. Morning, Paul and Brad. Just a couple from me. Now that you're reporting on a consolidated basis, how should we think about the remaining industrial value-add side of the business? I think you said you're approaching net sales of $60 million in FY 2021, but just keen to understand what the EBITDA contribution was from a continuing operations perspective.
I mean, we're looking at reasonable margins on the 60. I might talk to you offline about that in terms of the margin that we're expecting on the revenue and the growth. You know, you can work on from an EBITDA point of view, you can certainly work on, you know, 20%-22% margins on that revenue number.
Okay, great. Then on the market pricing, the $ 675-$ 725 a kilo, you touched on, I guess, more favorable pricing mix before, Paul, but just keen to understand what variety and quality mix assumption sits behind that, given, you know, you're still seeing a bigger divergence between pricing for, you know, large nonpareil kernels and some of the smaller size or industrial nuts coming out of the U.S.
Yeah. That's a good observation, Alex. One of the things that you're seeing is that the pollinator price has eroded much faster than the nonpareil price, and that's really because of the quality of the U.S. crop. It's not a great quality crop from our understanding. There's a little bit of insect damage, which is pretty reflective of a smaller crop because generally the insects win and you have more insects in a smaller crop, so more of it's impacted by the damage. That means that product has to be used like a pollinator in, you know, manufacturing grades and things like that.
You know, our estimation is that this is a pretty stock standard crop, normal sizing, normal in-shell, you know, in-shell yields close to what we reported this year. There's no bias to it yet, and we have no reason to have any bias about it yet because if you know, if you visited one of our orchards now, the trees are just. We know the physical length and width of the size of the nut, but at the moment it's the weight accumulation stage which is going on, and that really doesn't end till the end of December.
Okay. You've just assumed, I guess business as usual.
Business as usual. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay, great. Sorry, one more from me. The marketing year typically begins in March for Australia, and you said you might delay marketing activities. Might be a bit too soon, but when do you expect to begin them next year at this stage?
Yeah. Our marketing year, we would potentially at this point of the time, in November, we would probably start marketing our crop. We've got some, you know, if forward pricing was more attractive, we'd be doing that. But at the moment, we don't see the pricing being reflective of where we think the market's gonna end up, so we've delayed it. We'll start, you know, at the appropriate time, which, you know, we could theoretically wait all the way till February. We don't start harvest till February, so we could wait till then. You know, practically, we'll have to start before that.
Right. I'd just say forward sales are being deferred.
Yeah. I mean, if you know, it takes. You know, we've got to put the product through the hulling and shelling sheds, then we've got to sort the product, and then we've got to pack it all and grade it and test it. So, you know, it's not unlike. It's not sitting in the warehouse, so there's a bit of a timeframe that we have to work in advance of that. The other important thing at the moment is booking truck, booking freight.
Righto. Thanks, guys. That's all from me.
Thanks, Alex. Paul, we get a question from Jonathan Snape at Bell Potter.
You're on mute, Jonathan.
No. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah, like a bell.
Great. Look, Brad, this is maybe more for you. Can I just ask around the depreciation charges? I think the number you've put in the presentation deck is about $ 21 million. In the segment notes, it's much closer to kind of 28, which I'm assuming is $7 million capitalized into the inventory positions. If I'm looking into next year at your cost base, if you're kind of 80% sold at balance date on a crop that's kind of about this size, should your D&A charge that you expense be up $7 million year-on-year?
In terms of gross costs, you mean?
I'm trying to figure out the difference between the 28 in the segment notes.
Yeah.
the 21 that's taken into account as an expense, which I'm assuming is the difference that's being capitalized.
Yeah, that's right. Well, the difference is in the inventory. Yeah, it sits in the growing crop, yeah.
When I'm looking into 2022-
Mm-hmm.
My depreciation, is that gonna be closer to the 28 than the 21, I guess is what I'm trying to figure out?
Well, it's gonna be. If we had a similar profile next year, it shouldn't alter dramatically, right? Because we're gonna have similar inventory levels.
Okay.
No, it's not capitalized. It's put into the growing process.
All right.
Released as we sell it. Yeah, so if the growing crop is of similar size and our marketing profile is the same, it shouldn't really change too much next year.
Okay. It stays around the 21 and never kind of if it starts to close up, like if the supply chains get normal, is that when it starts to correct back up? 'Cause historically, it's only been about a $1 million difference, whereas-
Yeah.
This year it's quite a material difference.
Yeah. Yeah. That's because I think, you know, that's just because of the additional tons that we produced and we're holding.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, if it were further sold, you'd see it closing up.
Okay. Around the lease costs, you know, a lot of those orchards now look like they're getting into year six, year seven, and I think they're still capitalizing around about $ 4.7 million. How should I think about that additional moving from the capitalized to the expense line?
Yeah, we'll start fully recognizing those capitalized leases in 2024.
Okay.
You'll see an uplift in costs then when those capitalized leases start getting released.
Okay. Your cost per kilo then next year obviously waters down.
Mm-hmm.
You wouldn't expect much in terms of additional D&A and much in terms of additional lease costs next year. It's all pushing out.
Yeah.
to 2023, 2024?
We'll see, it depends on the volume, right? If the volume stays fairly stable, you'll see a further uplift in cost because, you know, we'll be releasing more growing costs because the age of the trees, the young trees. If that is reflected in increased tonnages, then it should stay, well, excluding water, it should stay reasonably flat. If you include the water savings, we'd expect it to come down.
Yeah. All right. Great. Thank you.
John, Paul, we've got Mark Tobin. Hello? Mark, are you on?
How you going? Yep. Can you hear me okay?
Yep.
Yeah.
Paul, just to go back to the buyers and demand. I'm just wondering, I suppose the missing kind of thing at the moment is understanding what markets like China and India just how strong they are, robust. You sort of talk about China being delayed by you. Can you give us a bit more of a sense on how those markets are looking, and you know, is COVID rolling off there? Is there any impact there? Just from a sort of fundamental demand point of view.
I think the slide there that shows when you combine the Australian and the U.S. crop, definitely the shrinkage is not as great. There's still strong shipments going into them. We're seeing both the China and the Indian market are still pretty robust. We're hearing of closures of cities and things like that, but we're not seeing that from a demand perspective out of those two markets. They're markets where there is normally less products stored in the channel, unlike, say, the European markets, where there's been a reasonable amount of investing in inventory in that market.
Yeah. Just trying to think through that dynamic. You know, is there a possibility that demand could come home in a rush, you know, in the next few months and, you know, with the Indian festival?
Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it's getting the product there in time. I mean, basically, Diwali was two weeks ago. Chinese New Year is late January, I think, this year. Really, those markets have sort of set themselves already. Ramadan is early to late April, I think. That's gonna be another demand point which, you know, we'll get some access to, but not a great deal of access to. Yeah, I think those markets are pretty well still available. You know, demand is good and certainly the China market seems to be having far less disruption than anywhere else, 'cause the reality is that's where a lot of the containers are coming out of, and they have to get home.
Okay. Just in terms of this current season, obviously a wetter season, can you maybe talk through, you know, additional costs in terms of whether it's crop protection or weed protection. Also I think, going back in time, you put some new drying gear in place, you know, if we do get into next year, just how are you placed to manage this season?
I'll go backwards on that question. From a harvest perspective, yes, we've got our dryer. You know, now we talked previously about conditioners. We've now got a full coverage of conditioners on all our farm where, you know, the last couple of seasons like that, which was like the 2010, 2020, 2014 seasons, where there was a lot of rain. We didn't have as much on-farm wet harvest capability, which we do today. You know, I still will be hoping for a long, hot summer. You know, we're in a better position. You know, it's never ideal to have all wet harvest.
The other thing about, you know, what has happened with the rain is, you know, it has delayed some programs, and some of them we will miss 'cause we don't need to execute them. It has certainly delayed things like hygiene where, you know, we're getting out there and cleaning the orchard floor, and then it rains, and then suddenly weeds come up. You know, you see them sitting there going, "Right, I'm sure." So that is probably some of the biggest challenges, and it's also getting the labor to align with that's a bit of a challenge. You know, we certainly, as I said, would like to see rain stop, sort of.
Certainly we'd like to see the rain stop by Christmas time because that's when pulse fruit starts to get a bit hot, a bit hotter, and there's a bit more humidity in the trees, and that does cause some additional challenges and additional sprays that we have to do. One of the issues with the rain is we can't get on the orchard to deliver some of these sprays. We haven't missed any critical ones.
Just on the U.S. side, there's a lot of commentary about just the extent of maybe orchards being taken out. Can you give us any sense on perhaps how you see the sort of supply going forward now and?
Look, there's a couple things here. I mean, California is arguably one of the greenest governments in the world. There was a lot of negativity going towards Governor Newsom, and he got reelected, and they had a special vote about him. You know, they're not gonna get any less passionate about the environment. We've seen you know, the SGMA water legislation. They've got their first reconciliation point in 2025, and I can see that if anyone is lagging, that they, you know, they're gonna be much more aggressive to deliver that. In the presentation, you'll see there's like 100, 800 extra acres of permanent crops sitting in the valley, which will consume per annum 3.2 million acre-feet a year, and in storage today it is 6.4.
I mean, there's a lot of, you know, that bucket's got no bigger, and there's a lot more pressure coming out. I'm hearing about orchards taking out. I'm hearing about people using only watering 50%, applying water to 50% of their orchards. People like hang on for a lot longer than you anticipate. I've spoken to a large grower who's gonna take about 2,000 acres out, but he's got a lot of alternatives to do with his land. Look, Mark, I think it'll be the attrition will be higher. Ultimately, all of the universities say that 25% of agriculture's gotta come out of California. Does that mean 25% of almonds? I doubt it, 'cause we're one of the more profitable crops.
It's certainly, you know, a little like Australia. There's just not the water to continue the expansion that's gone on in the last few years. That water, the amount of water is contracting, and that has to mean that some crops have to contract as well.
Yeah, guys. Just lastly on pushing out the forward contracts, I suppose. I was just looking at the currency where it is at the moment. Brad, I'm just wondering in terms of FX management, is there any scope to maybe take positions or how would you approach that in terms of the crop going forward now as well?
Yeah, we're well into our hedging program for our crop next year. More advanced than we normally would be on prior years, and that's purely because of that reason. We've been, you know, building up our hedge position as, you know, as there's been dips in the market, you know, even as recently as this week.
We've got policies that we have to adhere to and report to the board. It's a topical conversation that we, you know, and the board, you know, we're given the opportunity if we think it's the appropriate to go back to them and say, we need to, you know, take a little bit more, which we can.
You can't give us a sense at this point in time how it's covered or?
Well, roughly half the crop's covered.
At prices around sort of level, current sort of levels in terms of FX?
In terms of FX, well, we have to publish that.
Yeah.
Yeah. We're smiling.
Very good. Okay. Terrific. Okay.
Yeah.
Thanks for that.
Thanks, Mark. We'll get a question from Richard Barwick at CLSA.
Thanks, guys. I think the first question I've got would be to you, Brad. Just going back, you talked about the revenue from the value added. Actually, you make the distinction here, it's net revenue approaching $60 million. In the accounts you've broken it out, the revenue is more like $89 million. Also consider that's a new disclosure. I've got a couple of questions. What's the difference there? How do we think about that when you've got sort of two numbers, a 90 and approaching 60? Will you be disclosing those numbers ongoing? Because it seems like we do have a different, you know, EBIT margin profile on that revenue, for instance. Captured within that is the value-added revenue.
Has that always been within your revenue, or has there been a shift from associated with the food restructure and so on?
Okay. I'll start answering some of those questions. Mightn't be in order, but we'll give an answer to all of them.
Yeah. Thank you.
In summary, the value-added portion of the business has ended up in the food results. Now that occurs through internal transfer pricing of almonds to the food division. In the end, it ended up in the food division results.
From an earnings or a revenue, Brad?
The revenue would have. The endpoint revenue, this is where
Okay.
It gets a bit of a difference, you know, in when we're talking about net revenue and what you're the differential you're talking about. Because there is, you know, there's an internal margin generated from the sale of the almond through to the food division and then the value-added component. So going forward, all that, you know, all that will stop really because we'll have the almond, you know, obviously the cost of the almond coming into the value add business, the value-added cost to it, and then we'll be selling it for whatever the margin may be. So it'll be a lot clearer going forward, and it'll be one, you know, one revenue value because there won't be the sort of internal transfer that occurs between divisions. So that's. Yeah.
I haven't concluded yet as to how we'll actually report this to the market, you know, at the half year. Having said that, I'm, you know, I'm confident that we'll be showing fairly clearly how this business, this area of the business is performing.
Okay. Yeah, I think that'll be helpful 'cause it's like it's a material component of the revenue, and if it's on different margin then it's from a forecasting perspective-
Yeah.
To split them out I think is valuable. I think you've answered my next question is, which is around the in your cost performance slide 12, you look at the total almond production cost.
Yes.
There's been a restatement on last year. For instance, I think you've disclosed last year's cost as $ 5.47 a kilo, whereas you disclosed it last year as being $ 5.36. Does that differ? Is this what we're talking about here, the value-added being shifted in?
No. The difference there is, you know, even though we've finished sort of the cost, most of the cost component of the crop at this stage, it still moves around a little bit based on processing, based on the final tonnage, you know, based on some other activities that are still occurring. For example, at the moment, you know, we've still got a few thousand tons of crop left to go. Now, most of those, all the growing costs have been incurred, but we still have processing costs and those tonnages may move around a little bit. For example, you know, if there was an issue with 200 tons of product and we had to write it off, all of a sudden the metric changes.
There is, you know, while it's not sort of. It does still move around a little bit, but it shouldn't really traditionally vary very much at all at this time of the year.
Paul, perhaps a bigger picture question. It was interesting, you had the slide in today's presentation with the history of all the acquisitions and your greenfield developments since 2010, which, I mean, it's an extraordinary slide when you look at the, you know, the level of activities and what you've actually done over that timeframe. How, you know, how are you thinking, how should we be thinking about further acquisition opportunities from here? I mean, at least at a total level, the industry's actually still very, very fragmented, but a lot of small players probably that you wouldn't be interested in. Are there any or how many, you know, sizable or sizable enough players are there that would make sense for you guys to still bolt on?
Our model doesn't work with small orchards.
Right.
We just can't invest sufficient horticultural infrastructure to get the return on it, and mitigate some of the risks that we have out there. Look, we've always got sort of three or four orchards which we, you know, are aware of because it is a small industry. If they come onto the market or we get close to them to make sure that if they're looking to do something, we're there. I'd say in the history, you know, if I reflect on the history, one of the biggest changes is that it's about water security, and where it's located. I think we've made it pretty.
you know, the last point to that is we've made it pretty clear we're not really interested in, you know, some of the stuff in the up top of the Riverina because of the challenges of the growing costs up there.
Yep.
Whereas, you know, in South Australia, Victoria, and lower New South Wales, we're more interested. It's also making sure that we have access to sufficient water, which is now probably the limiting factor of anybody's acquisitions and developments in the Murray-Darling Basin.
Okay. That's all from me. Thank you.
Thank you, Richie.
Paul, we look like we don't have any more questions.
Okay. Well, as I said, you've got Andrew's email address, you've got my contact details are available on the website and Brad. If anybody has any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us and thank you for your support from the 2021 season. Thank you.
Thank you.