Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Origin Enterprises Plc 2023 Preliminary Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star one and one on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to a speaker today, Sean Coyle. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Nadia. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining the Origin Preliminary Results Presentation for FY 2023. I'm joined here this morning by my colleagues, TJ Kelly, our CFO, and Brendan Corcoran, our Head of Investor Relations. We're delighted to be bringing you a good set of results this morning, with operating profit and EPS at the upper end of guidance, and a strong cash performance, resulting in another year-end net cash position. 2023 included some pockets of weather challenges in the northern hemisphere at both key application time and at harvest time. The market also saw volatile commodity pricing, with both grain and fertilizer raw materials moving from high levels midway through the year to significantly lower levels before stabilizing just prior to year-end.
Despite that, the business delivered a solid operating performance and with a particularly strong cash performance, assisted somewhat by these falling prices and lower stock levels due to the business going risk-off with falling prices and only replenishing where we saw firm demand. For the last two years, we have returned over EUR 90 million to shareholders via dividends and buybacks, and we have a commitment to increasing dividends and doing a minimum of a further EUR 20 million in buybacks over the next three years. We spent EUR 30 million on acquisition activity in the last 12 months to drive a new growth area for the business in nature-based solutions for the amenity environment and ecology segment, which will help us diversify away from the dependence on Irish and U.K. agriculture, which we saw in FY 2020 can leave the business vulnerable in a bad weather year.
This segment has grown from 7% of profit to 12% of profit in the current year, and even in the absence of new acquisitions, is capable of being 14%-15% of group profit in FY 2024. We're delivering on all of the metrics set out at our Capital Markets Day presentation, and thanks to all of our people, I'm confident that we will continue to deliver on the ambition set out at our 2022 Capital Markets Day. So I'll open with the forward-looking safe harbor statement as normal and walk you through the results presentation.
The business delivered from a financial, operational and strategic perspective in a strong way, with EUR 90 million of operating profit, down from last year's unusually large figure, but ahead from an operating profit perspective of any group operating profit for fully owned entities at any time in the company's past. We also saw our EPS exceed the upper end of guidance. Free cash flow was strong at EUR 104 million, delivering a very strong free cash flow conversion, and we've been the beneficiary of continuing to hold on to sanctioned payments through the current financial year as we were at last year's financial year-end. Return on capital employed is 12.6%, inside our target range of 12%-15%.
We're announcing today an uplift in dividend for the year of 5%, bringing total dividends for the year to 16.8%. From an operational perspective, the business did extremely well in managing its way through very challenging operating trading conditions, as I outlined in the opening statement. We did have recovery in volumes in the northern hemisphere, following a challenging Q3 weather period, where the application period was severely hampered in the U.K. in particular. We had strong organic growth in our Latin American business, aided, of course, by favorable currency, which contributed about 13% of the 60% uplift in profit. Post year-end, our Ukrainian business will wind down at the end of September.
Unfortunately, trading conditions there have not improved, but as most listeners to this call will know, the business has been at break-even level or loss-making at an operating profit level, and we have lost significant money after interest and tax in that market for a number of years. So we've made the decision that we will close the business because we don't see operating conditions improving in that jurisdiction for the foreseeable future. From a strategic perspective, the amenity environment and ecology business is expanding, driven principally by acquisition in the period, with the acquisition of Keystone, Agrigem, British Hardwood Trees, and Neo Environmental. Post year-end, we added another business, Suregreen, to the overall constituents of that segment of the business. Brendan and the team continue to do fantastic work on progressing our ESG strategy.
We have delivered a carbon transition plan to 2032, which is the, the foundation of the Science Based Targets, which are being submitted to SBTi for approval, and we hope to get back in the coming weeks. And we're also continuing to work on developing our nurturing growth, sustainability strategy, and, environmental policy. And the business continues to invest in organic growth as well. So we have invested in production expansion for our FoliQ business in Poland. We have a number of, expansion, projects underway to expand the Brazilian operation, and, we're working on expanding some of the production capabilities of our Romanian business as well, with coated fertilizer projects and a micro pack, project underway there.
We're in the middle of an ERP rollout among our Ireland and U.K. businesses, and our Goulding's business is the most recent to have gone live, and we expect to put our agri business live before the end of this calendar year, and a number of our remaining businesses over the course of 2024, calendar 2024. We are fast tracking our biosolutions business with the introduction of the new F1rst Agbiotech business, alongside our Fortgreen business in Brazil. So to dive into some of the individual segments in a little bit more detail, the Ireland and U.K. business had a reduction in profit from EUR 94.5 million last year to just under EUR 58 million this year.
But the business coped well with the challenging weather conditions and a more normalized year of trading, particularly the raw material price volatility, which we experienced over the major part of the year. We continue to see innovations coming into our pipeline from a nutrition perspective, from a biosolutions perspective, where we're working on a green list of products, and our digital portfolio as well. The business was recently awarded the Enterprise Ireland Innovation Award for our Grass Max tool here in the Irish marketplace. We delivered strong growth within our amenity, environment, and ecology division, and we've broadened our service and product capability through acquisition in the period. So we're happy with the performance of the Ireland and U.K. business.
Within that particular segment of amenity, environment, and ecology, you can see there that revenue growth from the time that we essentially commenced expansion into this space in 2022 and beyond has accelerated from a historical level of EUR 50-60 million. The business continues to see growth, both in the nature-based solutions and landscaping area, as well as into the more advice and services-led area from the acquisition of Keystone and Neo Environmental. So we're happy that that business can continue to grow. It is delivering an operating margin in excess of our agri businesses and is typically a capital-light business, so a low level of working capital and a low level of assets dedicated to that particular business. So return on capital employed should be very strong in this particular area.
In terms of our continental European business, we did see a jump in profitability and, in particular, excluded from the EUR 15.8 million number, which you can see in orange on this page. We also had a strong performance in our grain trading business, which contributed a further EUR 1.5 million of profitability in FY 2023. The business continues to see higher return on capital employed metrics over the course of the last five and six years, as we have reduced working capital dedicated to this business over time and continued to maintain growth and profitability. You will remember that some of the earlier years in this period contained a profitable Ukraine business in 2018, and also our Pillaert business, our Belgian fertilizer business, which was disposed of in 2021.
So the business continues to see growth. We're happy with the performance of the business, but unfortunately, we have had to close our Ukrainian business and that will close in the coming days. We think that that will have minimal impact on the overall regional operating profit reported in FY 2024. Our Latin American business saw continued growth, and again, from the time of acquisition in 2019, profits were suppressed somewhat with unfavorable currency movements over the course of 2020 and 2021, which saw the reduction in the reported euro number, even though our Brazilian real number had been showing increases at that time. But since then, the improvement in currency has allowed us to see improvement in euro reported number to EUR 9.7 million last year, and a EUR 15.7 million figure in 2023.
So we're extremely happy with the performance of this business. We continue to dedicate capital to building out capacity, and we have expanded our distribution facilities there and are in the course of expanding our production capacity and capability, which should allow us meet growing demand over the next two to four years. We've also launched the F1rst Agbiotech brand at the tail end of FY 2023. Sales are negligible in this period, but we are seeing strong early sales performance in FY 2024. A nd we expect to see and have completed the 35% put call option, which buys out the remaining 35% from the founders of the Fortgreen business, and that was executed post year-end.
You will remember that we have been, because that put/ call option was always going to be exercised, reporting the Fortgreen profitability on a fully consolidated basis since we acquired the entity. So there's no uplift in profit from the acquisition of that 35%. We've always reported that profitability on a fully consolidated basis. So I'll hand over to TJ, who will talk you through the financial performance.
Thanks, Sean. So just to touch off on some of the highlights on, on financial performance. Revenue growth overall at 5.5% on an underlying basis, breaks out into pricing growth of just under 12% and volumes decline of about 6%. And that's very much a story of the first and second half, whereby in the first half, we had very strong pricing inflation of circa 40%. And then as markets started to retreat, we saw a pricing deflation impact in the second half of about 5% or so. So, that revenue performance in a full year, as I say, very much a story of inflation being a key feature of the first half and then deflation impacting in the second half.
Adjusted EPS then, as Sean said, we're ahead of guidance, which was EUR 0.50-EUR 0.53. We're very pleased with the EPS performance and driven by what was a good close out to the year-end, despite some challenging weather conditions. While our operating profit is behind FY 2022, it does represent an historically high EBIT delivery for the group. Looking then at free cash flow. Free cash flow was positively impacted again by a strong working capital inflow in the year. That working capital performance was impacted by those lower, primarily fert and feed, raw material pricing feeding through. So the unwind of those inflated levels of working capital really benefiting us in the second half.
and we also had the favorable timing impact and of purchases and sales offtakes during that second half, as we tightly managed our stock positions, only buying where demand existed. And the delay really of buying behavior in the second half, fed through to that working capital benefit as well, as we bought later on the back of later demand, and that had a positive impact in terms of collecting cash, but not paying suppliers until typically post the year-end. We also had the benefit, continued benefit of withheld payments to sanctioned parties.
And for FY 2024, we do expect some working capital outflow, as volumes we'd anticipate would return to more normalized levels during FY 2024, and we're also likely to see the impact, at least of some of the sanctioned payments being made through FY 2024. And that free cash flow then in turn translated again into a very strong net cash position at the year-end, where we were positive in terms of net cash of just over EUR 53 million. Again, consistent with last year, where we ended in a cash positive position of just over EUR 43 million. In terms of capital deployment then, in addition to the dividends and buyback that we completed, we invested, again, as Sean mentioned, across the M&A space in the businesses outlined.
We had EUR 28 million in strategic CapEx, which I will come back to a little bit later. Just to give an overview then of our progress against the capital markets day target ambition for the five-year period, FY 2022 to FY 2026. As you'd see there, against the operating profit target of EUR 415 million over that five-year period, two years in, we are just over 50% delivered from an operating profit perspective. And from a free cash flow perspective, again, we had targeted cumulative free cash flow of EUR 325 million for that five-year period, and two years into the plan, we are 66% delivered.
You will recall, of course, that in that five-year plan, we did anticipate and cater for a bad weather year event. Looking then at, again, at free cash flow, you know, very strong metrics in terms of overall absolute free cash flow and free cash flow percentage, and balance sheet in terms of financing metrics, again, very strong, primarily as a result of the net cash position that we finished the year-end in. From a facilities perspective, again, I'd say well, well-financed, our facilities, the bulk of our facilities run out through to 2026. Looking then at capital allocation, in just a little more detail. Our M&A spend of EUR 30 million is across Agrigem, Neo Environmental, Keystone, British Hardwood Tree Nursery, and we also spent EUR 28 million on strategic CapEx.
The key drivers of that strategic CapEx investment were continued investment in D365 or ERP rollout across the Ireland and U.K. businesses of approximately EUR 11 million. Other digital investments of about EUR 3 million, and then we continued to progress the development of the FoliQ plant in Poland, CRF and physiological nutrition capacity in Brazil, and enhancing our investments across our feed businesses are the other key part of that investment. From a shareholder return perspective then, we're proposing a final dividend of EUR 0.1365, which will bring the full FY 2023 dividend to EUR 0.168, an increase of 5%, and that represents a payout ratio of 36%, which is broadly in line with the target payout ratio that we set at the capital markets day of 35%.
Again, our goal and target is to be a progressive, dividend player, payer. I'm pleased to be able to do that in the current year. Re the share buybacks, and we've completed 60 million overall of our targeted EUR 80 million to complete by FY 2026. So that would imply a EUR 20 million buyback to be done over the course of the next, the next three years or so. So with that, I'll hand it back to Sean.
Thanks, TJ. In terms of our strategic progression, you can see there that the macro growth drivers for the business, from our perspective, are sustainable agronomy, the responsiveness of the food supply chain, globally, and also the emerging nature economy in terms of driving the sustainable land use theme, which is at the heart of our strategic thinking. And how we win in that is transitioning our own product and services portfolio towards a better set of products, which are more geared towards the environmental transitions that Europe, in particular, is going to have to take. Continuing to develop and build market-leading business models across our portfolio of businesses, and also accelerating our participation in the environmental and ecological markets in the provision of nature-based solutions.
So we think we've done reasonably well in this regard over the course of FY 2023, and some of the highlights that we'd want to call out here are: continued investment in digital agronomy, including the grass measurement capability and nutrient management planning as part of that. The development of the F1rst Agbiotech business as part of our product portfolio in Brazil. We're continuing to work on enhancing the nitrogen use efficiency of our fertilizers through continued refinement of product and product development. We're expanding our full-year fertilizer capability in Poland, and we're continuing to develop the landscaping and forestry product offering within our amenity businesses. For 2024, we are working on additional research, which will allow the nitrogen use efficiency of crops improved by 20% over the course of the year.
Agrii have an existing Maximising Arable Performance benchmarking project across part of its portfolio, and what we're looking to do is try and digitize that and get it into our digital tool. The product and services portfolio will also see improvement in our micro pack production facilities in Timișoara, in Romania, and the rollout of fertilizer coating facilities in our Romanian business. We're also investing in Latin American production capacity to continue to drive the growth there and allow growth for another three or four years, and developing natural inhibitors for our products to allow for slow release of product on field. Our M&A pipeline is, is reasonably active. There's certainly no transactions close to completion at this point in time, but we've got very active dialogue with a wide range of businesses across U.K., Ireland, North America, and also in Western Europe.
We continue to see ourselves expanding the number of distribution outlets, particularly in our environment and ecology market, and we also see ourselves enhancing our online capabilities. So as part of the go live of some of our businesses on D365, we'll also be rolling out online portals as part of that particular rollout. At our Capital Markets Day in 2022, we set out objectives for the business in this slide. Exactly, and I'm pleased to say we are ticking the box in that regard in terms of delivering on both strengthening the foundations of the business but also investing for growth. So we continue to invest in our people and try and attract the best talent to the organization. We're continuing to improve our use of technology through our digital tools and online capability.
The business has definitely maintained that working capital discipline that we've introduced over the last few years, and we continue to see product innovation and change in product mix to enhance margin in our existing businesses to deliver organic growth. In terms of growth of the businesses from, I suppose, an inorganic perspective, we have seen an ecology services acquisition. We've seen bolt-ons in our landscaping business. We've broadened our amenity service offering by continuing to invest in adjacent businesses, and we're seeing growth in our biologicals business through the investment in F1rst Agbiotech, but also development of new biological products across the agri products and our OAS brands. Brendan, you might just walk us through the sustainability slide.
Thank you, Sean. At the core of our group, I suppose we're very cognizant of the fact that we have a key role to play in supporting our customers in navigating the evolving regulatory environment, and also helping them and supporting them in their transition towards a net zero environment. So we've always placed, I suppose, near market research at the center of our offering to customers, and this has enabled us to develop novel products and novel solutions to help our customers on the ground.
So over the past decade, we have come out with new products, such as our prescription fertilizer offering, as well as using productivity as the center and core of what we're doing to deliver for our customers. Within the last two years, we have started to shift our product offering to focus more on soil health, so we brought out our soil resilience strategy, as well as developing carbon calculators for our fertilizer products. To guide us over the coming years and to support our, our carbon transition plan, we have introduced a number of KPIs for the group. One of those at the center is improving nitrogen use efficiency by 20%.
That will encompass a all-encompassing product offering between the services such as digital and looking at nutrient management plans, as well as the product offering that we deliver in the fertilizer business. As Sean has alluded to earlier, we're also looking at the biologicals area, and we have a KPI to fast-track biologicals across the group, and this will be supported with the launch of the F1rst Agbiotech business in Brazil. Notwithstanding what we're doing for our customers, we're also looking internally at our own business operations, and over the past 12 months, we have had a very strong focus on what Origin can do within its own operations to reduce its emissions and footprint.
We have created a carbon transition plan and also developed a KPI that we have submitted to the Science-Based Targets to reduce our emissions across Scope One, Scope Two, and the full supply chain emissions in the group. This has been recognized, and our efforts have been recognized to our ratings, and you have seen rating improvements across CDP, MSCI, and Sustainalytics over the past 12 months as well. TJ, I'll hand over to you. Just-
Thanks, Brendan. So, in summary then, I think overall, you know, we say we're very pleased with the performance in FY 2023, in the context of what were volatile markets, particularly as we got into the second half. We continued to deliver on our M&A strategy, very much focused on building out our second core in the area of amenity, environmental, and ecology sub-segment. And I'm pleased with the M&A activity that has been delivered through FY 2023. As Brendan outlined, sustainability is very much at the core of our customer offering, and that's equally supported by commitment to best practice within our own operations within the organization.
Cash generation, again, has been a highlight and a feature of FY 2023 and indeed the previous year also, and that's very much a continued focus for us in the business, is to drive that EBIT to free cash flow conversion as we look out over 2024. Looking then at capital allocation, we continue to pursue a disciplined approach to capital allocation to drive shareholder returns. You know, and indeed, as say our, you know, our, our ultimate objective is to drive those shareholder returns through a combination of, you know, margin accretive acquisitions and continuing to mine and improve the margin profile across the business. And doing that within the hurdle rates of returning capital employed of 12%-15%.
So pleased that we're delivering that on a, on an overall portfolio basis, through FY 2023. Dividends and return to shareholders continue to be important part of our, our focus, and, and again, pleased with the, with the increase in dividend of 5% for FY 2023, and also, our ability to be able to, complete a share buyback through FY 2023, again, in the, in, in the order of EUR 20 million. So our focus, very much for 2024, is on, on driving that sustainable growth, and, pleased with the fact that we're on track to deliver our ambitions that we set out in our overall capital markets day, in May of 2022. So, with that, we'll, we'll hand it over, for Q&A, please. Thanks, Nadia.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by. We will compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Just give us a moment. Now we're going to take our first question. The question comes from the line of Jason Molins from Goodbody. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for the questions. If you don't mind, I've just got three that I want to touch on. Firstly, on the amenity business, it's very helpful with the additional detail that you've given us there, but can you give us a sense for the organic growth that you're seeing in that business at the moment? And, with some of the acquisitions that you've done over the past while, have you seen any revenue synergies across some of your platforms? Second question, just looking ahead to the planting season, given where some crop prices are, but also some of the input costs as well, any color on farm sentiment at the moment, and how do you see that impacting the planting season in the coming months, particularly in the U.K.?
Then final question, really on LatAm. In terms of the F1rst Agbiotech business that you mentioned, how does that product range differentiate between some of the existing businesses, and offerings that you have? How do you see that opportunity going forward, in Agb iotech? Thank you.
Hi, Jason. I'll take the amenity question first. So, across the amenity businesses, we had a little bit of a tale of two halves. So, within our amenity portfolio, we obviously have some fertilizer businesses, including our own manufacturing facility within the PB Kent business, which is reliant on natural gas as the principal source of production for the specialty fertilizer that we're making there. And that business saw a pretty significant dip in profitability in 2023. So it was well back because of natural gas prices through the year. So overall, our amenity businesses, apart from that, saw kind of mid-single digit growth.
We're not really seeing revenue synergies yet from the acquisitions that we've bolted on, but that, that's an ongoing piece of work to try and pull together commercial opportunities. And we do see opportunity across the various businesses we've acquired. You'll have to remember that really, they've only been coming in piecemeal over the last kind of six to nine months and are not all fully consolidated yet and fully kind of up and running yet in terms of commercial interaction with other businesses. So there is opportunity there. There's a piece of work ongoing to try and drive some revenue synergies, procurement synergies, I think, because we have some common suppliers across these businesses.
There will be opportunity as well in terms of broadening of product range in certain businesses that doesn't currently exist, but where we provide alternative products in another part of the group. So, for example, our British Hardwood Tree Nursery range could certainly be seen in our Green-tech business or be seen in the Suregreen business, and we could supply those through those two distribution outlets. Similarly, our Suregreen business has a reasonably restricted product range when you compare it to the Green-tech business. But equally, we would see ourselves being able to expand more of the Green-tech range of product, including soils and substrates for roof gardens, into the south of the country, where currently we don't have distribution locations.
So there will be opportunities, and they will come to fruition over the coming 6-12 months in that space. Maybe, TJ, I'll let you answer the next one.
Yeah. So, good morning, Jason. In terms of planting generally and farm sentiment, I suppose maybe take that Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere. Northern Hemisphere-wise, I suppose harvests generally have been a later, driven by, by weather, but, but harvests are largely complete at this stage. And yields are, are probably so-so, probably back slightly. But planting conditions generally are, are good. U.K. was anticipating, you know, a need for, for, for some warmer weather. But, but generally, the expectation is that, you know, winter wheat, for example, will, will be back up around the, the, the 1.8 billion hectares or so for 2024. But we'll, we'll update on that in our, in, in our Q1 announcement. Farm sentiment is, I mean, we'd say generally cautious.
So, you know, again, as you'd be aware, soft commodities, both dairy, the grains and oils on the global markets have, you know, generally, been soft. We'd look at, for example, you know, feed wheat in the U.K. at kind of GBP 200 per tonne has been a key benchmark, you know, below which farmer sentiment tends to get a little bit softer. It's been in around the 180-190 GBP per tonne over the last number of weeks. Input costs, you know, I suppose to counterbalance, have been softening, albeit in the recent number of weeks, fertilizer has been firming again, nowhere near as significantly as last year. But I suppose that's creating an overall sense of cautiousness.
Buying decisions across the trades, right down to farm level, I suppose, have been characterized by being later generally. So, a lack of commitment to going long on stock, both in the trade and at farm level, I suppose, has been a feature. So, caution is probably the probably key word I would say in terms of across our CE, U.K., and Irish businesses in terms of buying behaviors. From a LatAm Fortgreen perspective, it's obviously that's the... Our busy season right now, and generally, farm sentiment is good. While the soy price in particular has been a little bit softer, it's still high relative to history.
Yields have generally been good, so generally, say, farm sentiment in our Brazil business is in pretty good shape. So yeah, I would say overall, Northern Hemisphere cautious, Brazil generally positive. But planting conditions, obviously, which are important for us from a Northern Hemisphere perspective, are generally good. And that's obviously a critical piece for us in terms of a base for full year performance in FY 2024.
I think your third question was biological products, is that right, Jason?
Yeah, the F1rst Agbiotech, just a bit more color on that and what the opportunity-
Yeah. So I mean, we've launched there with, I suppose, eight products initially across kind of four sub-brands within the Brazilian operation. We're not expecting, you know, a very significant sales result there over the course of the next 12 months. You know, it will be a slow burn. I would imagine that at most, we'd be looking at about $10 million worth of sales over a 12-month period. Maybe a little bit more than that. But the business is up and running. It needs to be in a separate physical location because the regulatory environment for biological products is different to the core fertilizer product range and the physiological nutrition range that we have within the Fortgreen business.
So we've got a separate premises and a very strong academic team there of kind of postdoctoral researchers involved in the development of products. But we're also taking in products from other sources of IP and marketing them on behalf of other companies as well. So it's a combination of using our existing sales infrastructure and our broader sales infrastructure to market other people's innovation, as well as developing our own product range.
That's helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Now, we're going to take our next question. Just give us a moment. The next question comes the line of Cathal Kenny from Davy. Giovanni is open, please ask your question.
Good morning, all, and thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, to TJ, just on working capital. Can you talk us through the moving parts as you see it for FY 2024, and maybe build out that into your net debt assumptions as well for the year ahead? The second question just relates to your greenest of products, Sean. Obviously, you're making good progress on transitioning the portfolio. Would it be possible to comment on what you're seeing from the supply base, the key chem manufacturers, in terms of crop protection and seed, in terms of just the progress they're making as well around these key green initiatives? My final question then is on M&A as you look into the years ahead.
Should we expect a similar type of profile in terms of the assets you've acquired and companies you've acquired more recently within the ecology horticultural segment, or could there be something more meaningful? Thank you.
Thanks. Good morning. Thanks, Cathal. I'll maybe deal with the first question on working capital first. Yeah, so as you know, as I said, we you know, with very strong inflow in working capital in FY 2023, pricing and timing were the two key dynamics of that. It the somewhat challenging to kind of parse out between what's pricing and and timing specifically, just given the nature of working capital. But maybe if I pitch it forward to FY 2024, what I would say is that underlying we're we will see a working capital outflow. We'd anticipate a working capital outflow excluding the impact of sanctions, with the sanctions payments, which I'll come back to, which is a natural really rebuild of inventory.
And it's a correction of the timing benefit that we had in FY 2023, just past that I mentioned. You know, rough order of magnitude, that the nature of that timing reversal could be in the order of EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million. The other impact that we will see in is sanctions, where we are, there is a potential or likelihood that some of the sanction monies that we are withholding will outflow in FY 2024. That's work in progress, as we have mentioned before, and we're working very closely with the relevant central banks across the European jurisdictions where this is impacting. But for forecasting purposes, we're anticipating an outflow related to those sanction withheld payments.
The other key outflow that we, that has already been incurred in FY 2024 is the put call, exercising of the put call option in, in Fortgreen, which was EUR 32 million. That, that liability we held in the balance sheet at the end of July, that has subsequently been paid. So, you know, if you take, you know, the round sums of an underlying working capital outflow, in that order of EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million, the impact of the Fortgreen deferred consideration payment. And then we have the usual interest tax, you know, capital expenditure, and this is pre any M&A or other capital allocation.
You know, I think it's reasonable to assume at this point, and it is obviously very early in the year, Cathal, but it's reasonable to assume that net debt to EBITDA would likely be in excess of 1x EBITDA, possibly up to 1.5x EBITDA, at the end of FY 2024. Just to give you kind of a rough order of magnitude at this point. I mean, we'll obviously calibrate that further as we get into the year, but just the broad buckets of likely movement in working capital in particular, that's how we would see it.
Okay. In terms of green list of products, there's a number of areas I suppose active there, Cathal. I mean, as you know, a lot of the crop protection R&D manufacturers, the larger ones, are buying up biologicals businesses globally and trying to consolidate them into their businesses in order to develop a more biological range or a range further away from synthetic chemistry. So there's that piece of work ongoing as part of our supplier base. In addition to that, we've got lots and lots of small operators who are developing bioproducts, and we would've seen about 220, 240 of those over the course of the last 12 months. And some of those will go through the R&D process.
We are currently investing in a new temperature-controlled environment, which will sit in Throws Farm, which will allow us to control temperature, humidity, light, heat, et cetera, and run accelerated tests on the viability of biological products and products which are making claims in relation to their efficacy. That will allow us to narrow down what we bring through to the sale process and stand over some of the claims that some of these smaller companies who don't have as big an R&D arm are making claims in relation to. So, you know, we've got to do our own testing in relation to that efficacy. Separate to that, then on the fertilizer side of the house, there's a couple of areas where we're examining change.
You know, most of those involve pragmatic coating of products to delay emission into the soil to allow the nitrates go into the soil on a slower basis and not, I suppose, escape into the atmosphere. That's the principal area. There's the addition of micronutrients and different blends of products which we've been doing over the last few years, which essentially derive the same yield from a lower nitrogen content product. And then in addition to that, newer areas are the development of things like green ammonia, which is available in the European market now, but probably at price levels which are not competitive with standard fertilizers.
So we can get our hands on Green Ammonia, but they're not really competitive in terms of price point relative to other technologies, and therefore farmers are not really interested in the product at this point. And we're also dealing with other players who are producing digestate from anaerobic digesters or food production systems, which essentially produces a low energy additive, which could be added into a fertilizer blend, but certainly doesn't have the right component of nitrogen to promote significant growth. So we may look at that being part of a fertilizer blend, but not a significant part of a fertilizer blend. It can be a dusty product and difficult to handle as part of the overall fertilizer mix.
But these things are continuing to improve over time, so we're kind of adding those types of products, including green ammonia, to our, I suppose, horizon scanning in terms of what's available out there for future product use. And then just to come back to the question around profile of assets that we might acquire. Yeah, I would say that it's typically an unconsolidated market, Cathal. So there are, I would say, a handful of private equity-owned bigger players in the consulting space that, you know, may become available over the course of the next while.
But whether we're competitive in that space, given our own EV/EBITDA multiple, you know, and we've got to give consideration to, are we better off buying our own share or are we better off paying over the odds in terms of EV/EBITDA multiple for other players that come to market? Certainly, the smaller players that are available at reasonable multiples, as you'll have seen from the acquisitions that we've made in the last 12 months. So we can continue to bolt on businesses at reasonable EV/EBITDA multiples. There are bigger players out there that we could accelerate a transition into this segment should we so wish, but they may just be available at multiples which are not in keeping with what we'd be prepared to pay or look out of line with our own EV/EBITDA multiples.
Great! Let's go, caller. Thank you.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. Now we're going to take our next question. The question comes to the line of Kevin Fogarty from Numis Securities. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi. Morning, all. Thanks for the presentation and the opportunity. If I could have three questions, please. So the first one is just really on CapEx. Kelly, you talked about strategic CapEx going forward, LatAm, obviously, and Poland in particular. I just wondered if you could sort of quantify what we should be thinking about in terms of the sort of quantum of strategic CapEx over the next couple of years, and just particularly. What does that do to LatAm's capacity or capability from here? So that's sort of question number one. Number two, on Amenity. So thanks for the additional color you've provided today. Obviously, the kind of stand out here is sort of the margin structure looks very different compared to the rest of the group.
I just sort of wondered, you know, given the comments you've made about the performance of that business being a bit compressed, does 2023 sort of understate the sort of margin potential of that business? And perhaps, you know, just help us understand the kind of nature of the relationships and contracts you've got there, just compared to other parts of the group. And just, just finally, in terms of the new product development, I just wondered, is there any element of sort of customer pull here that's driving that new product development? Or, or is it, you know, you're identifying needs that are, are unfulfilled by others at the moment, or just a little bit more color on that one would be great.
Maybe I'll let TJ handle the CapEx question, and I'll come back to the amenity question.
Sure.
Great.
Morning, Kevin. Yeah, so in terms of CapEx for next year, we have, yeah, a few, I suppose reasonably scaled projects that will be happening. In the rough order of magnitude, we're looking at CapEx next year of somewhere between EUR 30 million to around EUR 30 million or so. Again, what we will see is another relatively large spend on our ERP rollout. So in the order of EUR 10 million or so of investment in our D365 rollout across the businesses next year. And then we've got pots of, you know, EUR 3.5 million-EUR 5 million each, across investment in remaining investment in our FoliQ plants.
That would be closer to about EUR 3 million or so, given that we've invested some in that FoliQ plant already this year. That will increase capacity in FoliQ and centralize the manufacture of FoliQ in our Aleksandrów facility in Poland. We are also investing about EUR 4 million in a new bottling facility in Timișoara, in our Romanian business. And then across the CRF and physiological nutrition business in Brazil, we'll be investing to grow effectively our CRF capacity from about 45,000 tons today, up to between 65,000-70,000 tons capacity. Which we'd see would give us, you know, growth for the next, you know, couple or three years or so in the CRF business.
Again, rough order of magnitude of spend and investment there would be between CRF and the physiology and nutrition capacity investments in the order of, you know, again, EUR 4-5 million, we would say, we would say next year. So they're the big-ticket items that that are in train for CapEx spend for 2024.
Great. That's helpful. Thank you.
Kevin, just on the Amenity businesses, the PB Kent profitability and fall in profit was roughly EUR 1 million, maybe slightly, maybe slightly more than EUR 1 million. So the absolute number is probably understated compared to a normal year because of-
Mm-hmm
T he higher gas prices, and slightly lower volume in PB Kent, as a result.
Mm-hmm.
So yes, both the absolute margin and the percentage margin are understated as a result. I think, you know, some of the businesses that we've acquired are more seasonal and more profitable in the winter. Certainly, British Hardwood Trees, since we've acquired it, has been loss-making in this period, because it doesn't make money in the summer. It makes money in the winter period when all of that tree planting activity happens, and it's carrying an overhead, obviously, through the summer period, but it's only in there for a few months. So, what I would expect to see is growth in sales, growth in absolute level of profitability from the newly acquired businesses when they are all in there on a full twelve-month basis.
We'd expect to see both an uplift in percentage margin in this division and also the absolute level of profitability in this business over the course of the next 12 months, as the businesses are all included on a full 12-month basis.
Great. That's helpful. Thanks a lot. Thank you.
Did we miss one of your three questions or?
Just, I guess, yeah, this is the final one. Just in terms of product development, you know, you've obviously you've talked a lot about that today, and I just wondered, you know, is there an element of sort of customer pull here? You know, clearly, you know, that there's a sort of transition in terms of the space and where it's going to, you know, kind of more biologicals, et cetera. I just wondered, you know, are you seeing a sort of customer pull here, or is it you sort of identifying, you know, an unmet need, for example, that isn't being fulfilled by others? Just what the thinking is around that.
Yeah, I think, I think there is greater interest in the possibilities of bioproducts and biocontrols than there has been in the past. It does vary by market. It's certainly, you know, we've got a lot of different areas where biological products will work alongside synthetic chemistry to increase the efficacy of the synthetic crop protection products that are being used by farmers. You know, so they will encourage the roots to grow deeper or go deeper. They will, you know, add to the efficacy of a standard product and perhaps allow a lower level of CP product to be applied.
So, you know, we're getting things like wetters or things like adjuvants and foliar fertilizers, which can be made from natural products, but which assist the application of synthetic chemistry and allow a lower dose rate to be applied. So there's a combination of factors. The world of biological products or bioproducts is very complex. In some cases, it's not regulated, and in other cases, it's very heavily regulated, depending on the product claims. So, it's still overall, though, Kevin, represents a very small proportion of farmer spend. You know, it is, you know, at an overall level, it still represents a low proportion of our sales and a low value in terms of farmer spend.
Yep. Sure. Okay, understood. That's, that's useful color. Thanks a lot. Thank you.
Thank you. Dear speakers, there are no further questions at this time. I would now like to hand the conference over to our speaker, Sean Coyle, for any closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. Hopefully, we will see some of you on the road shows. We're in London, certainly, and in the U.S. over the course of the next week and a half. So hopefully we'll see you then and catch you either in person or virtually over the course of the next week. So thank you for joining the call this morning. Bye-bye.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.