Good morning to you all. Welcome to all our investors, colleagues, and then our Chairman, Theunis. We have Willy and Bridget from our board here today. As I walked in, Anthony Clark said to me he thinks he must be in the wrong place because he saw the old bugger here. Welcome, Chris. Hello to you. Chris has joined us today. Anthony called you the old bugger, not me. Let's dive into the presentation. We'll try and stick to the time. As you know, we are always quite diligent on that. We'll get into the business overview. Fortunately, all green arrows, and Chris used to have a comment for this which I'll steer away from, but absolutely a good scoreboard. Revenue up 10%.
One always likes to see that growth in revenue that ultimately is what drives the bottom line growth, especially in an inflationary cost environment. We will dig a little deep into where we generated that additional revenue from a little later. Profits up 11% to just under ZAR 1.3 billion. Headline earnings up 14% to ZAR 21.93. We closed the year with a very healthy cash balance just over ZAR 1 billion. On that, we were able to declare a final dividend of ZAR 8 per share, taking the total dividend for the year to ZAR 11. Good cash generated from operations at ZAR 1.7 billion, up 20%. We will spend a lot more time on those numbers later in the presentation. It is very pertinent to point out that this was a tale of two halves as we have phrased it.
I thought we should give just a bit of perspective on what changed or happened between the first and the second half and at our interim results in May. You will recognize some of these outlook or prospects that we put up on the slides at that time. It did point to some of the key drivers in the business coming through which at the time were supporting a better outlook for that half. We said then that we expected good prospects for the current local maize crop. I think we were the only ones. If you look at that, the first crop estimate committee number was 13.9 million tons and we ended up on 16.3. Anthony, I think perhaps we were the only ones in the trade that saw this crop coming.
Anyway, be that as it may, we had some good procurement there and that helped with softer feed prices that we spoke of at the time. We certainly had lower finished stock levels in poultry. As you know, we increased volumes from 9th of March, adding an additional 400,000 birds a week to our production. We spoke a lot during 2024, after the tumultuous years of 2023 with load shedding and bird flu, where we set sail on this transfer, you know, this transition journey or this journey to turn around the results. Project 3R was launched: Re-set, Re-start, and Re-focus. This past year was a lot about refocus. It is just to focus on the basics in the business and those key drivers, particularly in the cost of producing chicken, which is critically important to achieving the results that we see today.
This is the. You'll see the waterfall later, as we've called it before, for the year-on-year comparison. That almost clouds out some of the tailwinds that we had in the second half. I wanted to just point to the movement year-on-year and, you know, we reported a ZAR 271 million profit for the first half. That was down significantly on the first half in 2024, about 60%. Dries , I think at the time it was down. Then you can see the impact of the selling price recoveries coming through. We had significant selling price deflation through 2024 and into the first quarter of 2025. We had to go out there and look for some supporting selling prices. Broiler margins were reported that time of - 1.1% negative margins, certainly not sustainable in any business, never mind a poultry business.
We increased sales volumes. One would expect in the slide that this bar would have had more of an effect. We should remember that in the first half we sold a lot of product out of stock. If you look at the two halves together, more or less equal sales volumes. The year saw an increase, quite a good increase in sales volumes over 2024, supported by feed price. Feed prices in that half coming down nearly, nearly 8% in fact. If you look at the year, the feed prices went up marginally. Very distinct results in the second half to the full year picture. Full year picture feed prices went up ZAR 19 a ton. They came down in that half quite significantly by 8%. That resulted in the full year profit for the year at ZAR 1,247.
The salient points now looking at the year end perspective, poultry feed costs increased marginally, I've just spoken about that. There was a lot of volatility through 2025 in the local SAFEX market. We managed to procure well and we'll look at a chart to where the prices were later on. We managed to procure well through the cycle that when we priced our feed in the second half, you know, the market had traded at very high levels through 2025. Anthony will tell you that maize touched ZAR 5,700 a ton at a point. When you have good positions and we are pricing the feed into the market at replacement cost because every day you use the feed, you've got to or the maize, you've got to buy more to replenish it.
You have to manage that very well into the market so that you are not replacing your maize with much higher. Well, you are placing with higher price positions. But we try and just hold on to any procurement benefits that we might have. On-farm broiler performance has improved. Notwithstanding the slightly higher feed price, feed conversion efficiencies decreased. That, as you will remember, is the amount of feed used for every kilo live weight gain. We use less feed again this year for every kilo of live weight gain. That basically nullified the impact, sorry, of the higher feed price through the year. On-farm broiler performance is looking good. We will look at those metrics later. As I have said, we increased our broiler placements and we sold what we produced.
We did not produce it and put it in a freezer. Even through winter in the second half, we were able to sell what we produced with very manageable stock levels a t year end. P oultry selling prices improved marginally. Y ear- on- year, t he selling price movement was 2.4%, which again stands in quite stark contrast to what happened in the second half where we managed to recover selling prices to move those broiler margins back into positive territory. We also benefited, and I think you will see that in a slide later, from an improved product mix. That helped support the basket and better poultry selling prices through the year. Our feed division, as you will see, reported very strong earnings. In this integration, and something we will have to demonstrate to the Competition Commission when we talk about the poultry market inquiry, is that an integration works for you.
It works in that you are able to support that poultry value chain through the year. Now, our feed division obviously benefited from higher broiler placement numbers. They had higher internal feed production, so feed internally went up nearly 8%. They also managed to sell more feed in the external market, which you always want to try and do. You want to grow your external market and fill up that spare capacity that you have in your feed mills. Notwithstanding, you know, the impact of ongoing diesel and water supply costs, we still have an average ZAR 10 million a month bill for diesel and trucking water up and down, ZAR 120 million for this year on the dot. It's a significant cost. That is all about municipal interruption. Interruptions, supply disruptions. When you hear about national load shedding, that's gone.
That's great, you see that, you don't see your lights going off any longer. The infrastructure in the municipalities needs a lot of work. We did benefit though from the higher volumes and we can demonstrate that a bit later. Where the economies of scale have supported lower costs in the business, lower operational cost per unit, stringent focus on working capital, I mean, we've kept our focus on that line throughout the year. As we were in this rebuild phase of the balance sheet. Last year we clawed all the debt back. This year we set ourselves the task of building cash, healthy cash balance on the balance sheet. That'll stand us in good stead for any future headwinds that may come our way.
In the poultry industry they do, you know, those of you that are very familiar with the volatility and earnings, you will see that. We will see that somewhere, but at least we are well positioned to deal with it. You all know about the cybersecurity incident in March. Only thing I want to say here is that there was no impact on the integrity of the financial information. There was a very thorough investigation, forensic investigation that went into this by two companies and then the auditors, Deloitte, went through this thoroughly and there was absolutely no impact, fortunately, on the integrity of the financial information or data in the business. We can stand here and say that the results we present to you today are 100% untouched by some guy hiding in the shadows in Eastern Europe.
Okay, for the year, this is the movement and that's why I showed you the half and half earlier on, because you don't see the impact of some of those key drivers in the second half i f you look at just the year- on- year perspective, what you will see through this year though is the quality of earnings in 2025 improved. We had a ZAR 250 million insurance recovery in 2024 and that was on the back of a number of natural disasters in 2023. Bird flu, floods in Meadow Feeds, pole in the Western Cape at our feed mill and a hatchery in the Western Cape that burnt down. Recoveries in insurance there which did boost the results in 2024.
You can see through the year, we did get that assistance from selling price over the year with that recovery primarily coming in the second half. Volumes increased year- on- year as we placed more broilers, sold out of stock, and increased our sales. We got the assistance from feed in the selling price and the benefit from feed conversion efficiency with our on-farm performances and the cyber incident we've spoken about. All in all, an 11% increase in PBRT year- on- year. This is a slide that really tells a good picture together with the next one. You can see that in our first half of 2025, those margins were under severe pressure. When we stood here in May, we reported margins here of -1.1%, certainly not sustainable, increasing to 3.9% for the second half.
I think if you reflect, we go back to 2022, that was a 3.5% margin and 5% margin and returning profitability at that time of ZAR 1.5 billion. Certainly, you know, if you have the margins and you have the selling price and you have your cost base intact, there are drivers in this business that can support future earnings. You just, as you can see, and I have spoken of the volatility. I mean, you try, you know, we often get asked what's an average margin, what should we be penciling, and my guess would sometimes be as good as yours. You know, I think you, there is a lot of volatility in this and we obviously are going to try and keep it as best as we can above this line, the black line.
It depends on numerous factors, some of which are under our control, some of which are outside of our control, like this horrible year here. Broiler selling prices against food price inflation. The poultry selling prices are in this basket, the food basket. You can see the price deflation that we recorded or reported on through from December 2023 all the way through till around April this year where we were able to get a selling price adjustment into the market. I just would like to point out that our selling prices now are on average the same at the same level as they were in December 2023. With inflation and costs and everything in between, our selling prices now are not higher than they've been historically. Certainly not record highs for the selling price of chicken.
As you know, this gets harder and harder to get into the market. Always a tough discussion with the retailers. Of course, we are always very wary and mindful of the pressure on consumers. This graph, we have always said, tells the whole story. If you had one graph you wanted to put up to tell you all what happened to Astral through the year, this is it. Definitely a tale of two halves. You can see that, put a red block around that one. The disappointing result in the first half, but certainly a positive result in the second half, which returned the business to a good level of earnings and financial performance. Just to remind everyone, this is the month-on-month, year-on-year movement in the broiler selling price and then the feed price.
You can see the price deflation coming through quite strongly here in the first half. At the same time, off the back of a smaller maize crop in 2024, we had higher feed prices, we had the spike on SAFEX yellow maize at this time. We will look at that graph a little later. We were able to procure well enough that our feed prices were softer through the second half. We certainly looked to get some improvement in selling prices to cover input costs. Otherwise, those negative margins would just reflect again on the scoreboard, which is not the business we are in.
On the raw materials, I'm not going to go through this whole balance sheet except to say that that's the small crop in 2024, relatively small crop which led to higher prices for maize on SAFEX and higher feed prices that we had through the first half of 2025. We then had the market. Quite a lot of volatility in the market. The first Crop Estimate Committee report came out with a 13.9 million ton crop, the last report being the ninth report at 16.3 million tons. Through all of that uncertainty about the late planting, the late rains, the grade issues, everything that followed, there was a lot of volatility in maize prices and we eventually reported or harvested a crop of 16.3 million tons. Now the progress, planting progress for the current crop is well above the five year average.
Today we're sitting at about 44% planted. Good progress has been made on the planting of the current crop. We've had some good rains. I expect, and what we can see, we've moved into a La Niña weather pattern, which usually means good rains for southern Africa. If these rains continue and it rains at the right time through the growing season, there's no reason why the prospects for the maize crop that will be harvested in 2026 will be any worse than this year. That will support favorable maize prices into poultry feed. In fact, we believe that if we produce this crop you'll see the carryout increase. We should move closer to export parity pricing.
There is probably about ZAR 200 a ton downside in that on July 26th contracts, which are trading at the moment at about ZAR 3,500 a ton, so good levels for poultry feed. You can see the volatility through 2025 in the maize price. You had to choose your moments here where you wanted to buy. Certainly, Astral positioned ourselves well through this volatility. We did not participate in this, which is why you see those softer feed prices coming through in the second half. More recently, through the latter half of this financial year or calendar year, SAFEX has dropped quite dramatically on the back of the news of the big crop of 2025 and the prospects for 2026. All you can do in this market is just keep buying, hold a good position.
As you know, we always have to have three months of maize in the pipeline here. You keep buying, and every day you buy, you can reduce your average price in a falling market and do not always look as good as you could be. If you do not buy, you are going to be waiting for some bottom that someone must tell you where it is going to be. You are really a speculator. You can see a little bit of an increase in the SAFEX pricing just lately. That was also volatility on Chicago Board of Trade with funds taking up longer positions on corn, soy meal. This is a story to tell. I mean, we have, we rarely, you know, protein input prices are very good. We are well positioned here.
If you look where the market came off about two years ago at record highs ZAR 13,500 a ton. You could flat price meal during the year now at ZAR 6,500 a ton. Good levels to feed chicken. Of course, the rand/dollar exchange rate very stable which takes those shocks out of any movement that you will see something coming through with shocks on Chicago Board of Trade, but with a very good global coarse grain balance sheet. The world is not short of maize and soybeans right now. The U.S. has had a good crop, they've harvested a good crop. Now South America have had a good crop come off. South Africa's had a good crop come off. You can see that Chicago's trading those fundamentals.
Good global outlook, good local outlook for maize and soybeans. You have some stability in the rand/dollar exchange rate which brings that price relief for favorable pricing levels. To suffix. V ery quickly on the feed division, revenue up here 9%. That was driven by an increase in sales volumes of 6.5% and selling prices up 0.6%. That selling price movement reflecting that increase in raw material costs across both years, not reflecting the softer feed prices in the second half. Operating profit up 31%. You can see the momentum that comes through. You place more broilers on the end, they eat more feed. You get this big pull into the feed mills in Astral and you have these volumes coming through. You add external volume growth to that. This is how you cover your fixed costs even better.
You have better efficiencies in your feed mills coming through. Longer runs of all the broiler feed we make. This is the result. To the feed division and Meadow Feeds, a really good result for the year. I think this. We only saw something like this in 2023 when we had all of those feed volumes going to the feed division on the back of load shedding and the big bird era. The poultry division was suffering because of the cost. This is really a true reflection of what the integration and business can do. Margins up to 6.6% and expenses on a rand per tonne basis, very well controlled. You can imagine what these volumes do. We have seen the graphs for these too, so I am not going to cover that again. Internal volumes up 8%, external volumes up 5.6%.
That growth was largely in the external poultry and pig feed sectors. Saw some nice growth there with some of that coming through in the Western Cape. Expenses well controlled. Again we saw a net margin per tonne increase in the division. Good return from them for the group. Sales mix here remained largely unchanged. Still about 60% more or less internal feed and the balance going into the external market with a very important component in the other being dairy making up about 25% of their sales. The poultry division, we'll cover this in some detail. Revenue up 10% driven by volumes and a little bit of selling price recovery at 2.4%. If you look at the volume growth, nearly 8% in this division year- on- year, which has really supported a good performance and turnaround in this division. Reader revenue up 4.6%.
We'll unpack that a little later. Now, when you look at this graph, you'd say, well, you've had. It's been a good year but operating profit in poultry was down. That's where we come back again to that quality of earnings number. If you take out the hatchery fire and the bird flu insurance claim, which amounts to ZAR 231 million in this division, the underlying improvement in their results is just under 53% year- on- year without that one soft item in the insurance recovery. So a good result in the poultry division and certainly one that we pleased with through the year with all of that recovery coming through in the second half. You'll remember in the first half we had a negative PBRT here. We've already spoken about the margin.
The average broiler net margin over the year, 1.5%, it still remains thin and vulnerable to any headwinds. 1.5% margin, if you look at that graph that we showed you earlier on, is thin in the business. If you just have any shocks, that comes under pressure again. A lot of focus then on rebuilding cash reserves, which you'll see later there is, will go through the balance sheet in detail, which sets us up in a stronger financial position than we were two years ago, or that we were even in a year ago. Of course, with higher volumes, your variable expenses increased, but those volumes assisted your overhead production costs, your fixed costs. Our per unit per kg production cost for every chicken produced came down slightly for the year.
That is the benefit of scale, the benefit of volumes in the business. Our finished good stock levels, we have used the word substantially lower than at the end of 2024 because they are. Its factor was substantially lower than they were then, with the higher production we have now filtering into the system. It is not sitting in a freezer and we are selling current production. By the end of this month, we will surpass 6 million birds a week. This is a sales mix. We spoke earlier on about a bit of support from the product mix. I would like to just point out the IQF singles on higher volumes increasing in the year. We still sold 6% into the QSR sector, but on higher volumes. We sold 13% of the mix in fresh, but on higher volumes.
We had growth in IQF, we had growth in fresh, we had growth in QSR, we had growth in value added. Within the IQF component, we had growth in IQF single portions, which attracts a better NSV. All in all, support from the product mix with that improvement in selling price on the farming division. Farming division again had a good year. If you look at Ross Poultry Breeders, our sale of parent stock decreased slightly year on year. That is because in 2024 we saw a recovery of parent breeding flocks around the country. After bird flu in 2023, a number of our customers were restocking. There was quite a big pull on volumes from Ross Poultry Breeders in that year. Certainly once those flocks had been settled again and stabilized, the volumes in the market.
This year saw a more normalized level of parent stock sales into the market from Ross Poultry Breeders. Certainly better demand for day-old chicks this year and we were able to increase the sale of day-old chicks into the broiler market. Feed input costs increased marginally. We've spoken about how the feed conversion rate offset that increase. Broiler production efficiencies improved once again, demonstrating the good genetic potential in the Ross 308 bird. If you couple that to good feeding practices, feeding programs, and good on-farm management, you can generate again what we see as an all-time high. Reflecting in these broiler performances and bird flu. We'll speak a little bit about in the outlook. I won't cover it here. These are the broiler performances all indexed off 2015.
Weight and age average daily gains were slightly up by 1 gram per bird per day over the life cycle of the broiler. Weight for age more or less the same as it was last year. You can see the live weight there pretty flat and the age pretty flat. Where the benefit came through, though, unfortunately given the scale of the graph, it does not quite show as much as we would like to. Feed conversion rates did improve in the year and that is where we got the benefit in live cost from feeding these birds efficiently and producing every more kilos of meat for every kilo of feed produced. TEF improving at an all-time high just very quickly. Some industry matters. A couple of topical points.
Imports fell off quite a lot during the year and that just had to do with bird flu around the world and Brazil closing its borders to exports or rather South Africa closing its border to imports from Brazil with the bird flu risk that presented itself there during the year. As soon as they opened though, the borders, we've seen an increase again in imports and we do understand there's quite a bit of chicken on the water. You know, one needs to look into the numbers. I mean about 80% of that though is MDM and bone in portions. And if you break that down further, about 65% of that will be MDM and 15% bone in portions and the rest will be tertiary.
Year on year, not actually a decrease in the import volumes, but really just as a result of Brazil's bird flu, the industry is still producing around 21 million birds a week. If you add imports to that, they make up about 19% of local consumption. Bird flu, we'll talk about in the outlook. It's still a risk. There's still outbreaks in the industry, unfortunately. As early as last week, a further outbreak was reported. One point that is concerning for SAPA is the AGOA poultry import quota. That's about 72,000 tons per annum. That's free of the anti-dumping duty from the U.S. with the 30% tariff imposed by the U.S., and then the expiry of AGOA, or notwithstanding the expiry of AGOA, this quota should have already been removed, but it hasn't been.
We are taking this on a legal review with the Department of Trade and Industry and Competition. We believe they are still holding on to it to try and get a deal over the table with the U.S. We seem very far away from that. If you read what is going on in the newspapers lately, we trust they are not using chicken as a, no pun intended, a trump card. All we have asked for is a seat at the table. We want to be part of that conversation if they give up anything on behalf of chicken in this country. You all know about the poultry market inquiry and the final terms of reference that were published around that. I am going to hand over to Dries Ferreira now. He will take you through the financials in a lot more detail. Thank you. Thank you, Dries.
Something that I just need to quickly highlight here is the efficiency with which we record or convert that revenue line into an operating profit environment. It's really a very healthy operating environment with the trim in the business coming through in the quality of earnings. Operating profit margin, although it stayed flat at 5.5%, really at a much better quality of operating profit as a result of the quality of the balance sheet improving. You'll notice that the finance charges line has improved tremendously year- on- year from the ZAR 138 million cost to a ZAR 55 million cost which includes the right of use liabilities, the right of use assets with the liabilities attached to it. Overall net finance cost has come down significantly year on year.
We therefore recorded a profit before tax of ZAR 1.2 billion, 18% year- on- year, and a profit from continuing operations up 16.4% at ZAR 876 million. Our headline earnings per share on a rand value, ZAR 844 million. The main difference between the profit of ZAR 876 million and the headline earnings of ZAR 844 million being the disposal of some properties and PPE that generated a profit which we add back for headline earnings. That leaves us with earnings per share ZAR 22.76, up 16%, and headline earnings per share of ZAR 21.93, 14%. There we go. The group annual revenue all the way from where Astral listed in 2001 really tells us the story of an ever-increasing revenue line. You see we've got them split into the different divisions.
The gold bars showing the feed division revenue growth over the history of Astral, the blue bars, the poultry division, and then the red line showing the group consolidated revenue. Again, just outlining there, that hardly ever does the revenue in the group backtrack. We've got increasing profile in the revenue, which means we are always growing volumes and trying to recover price from the market as we've got the input costs coming into the business. It's a very important aspect to the business to recover the input costs, obviously to protect our net margin. Over time, there's significant evidence of that ability to recover input costs. If you look at the different divisions, we've got ZAR 10.8 billion revenue in the feed division for this year and ZAR 18.8 billion revenue for the poultry division. The group therefore coming in with a consolidated ZAR 22.6 billion.
Here we go. Annual operating profit recorded per segment or per division all the way again back to 2001 demonstrates the volatility of the group's profitability. If you look closer, you'll see that the feed division really is the, as we always refer to it, the banker in our operating performance and those are demonstrated with the gold bars. You can see this year's operating profit from the feed division at ZAR 714 million. Going back in the history, you'll see that that's a very good performance. Poultry division demonstrated on the blue bars. You can see the volatility really coming to fore in the poultry division. That really comes as a result of the fact that we've got feed cost pushes up and it always takes time to recover that from the market.
Therefore the poultry division becomes the ham in the sandwich, so to speak. Operating profit for the group demonstrated on the red line. We demonstrated here as an operating profit margin coming in at 5.5%. Again, just referring back to the quality of the 5.5% versus the prior year's 5.5%. If you look back at the history of the group again, as Gary also outlined earlier, the volatility trying to pick a number of average margin is not that easy. As he says, your guess, it could be as good as mine, but definitely a healthy margin at 5.5% and we have done better in the past, but also worse. I think the reality is that if you look at the quality improving year- on- year, it really bodes well for the foreseeable future.
If we unpack it into half year performances, it really starts to outline the quality of the second half earnings for the group. I'd like to point out that ZAR 976 million operating profit for the six months, the second six months of this financial year, is the second best half year reported profit in 50 cycles since the listing of Astral in 2001. It really was a significantly strong performance for the six months and evenly weighted or well balanced, I should say, between feed division performance and poultry division performance. If you look at the green line and the red line, we really want to point out there that the green line reflecting the feed price change year- on- year and the red line, the poultry selling price, the broiler selling prices into the market.
As you can see in the six months we have had a reduction on the feed cost input and a recovery in the selling prices. You can see how sensitive the poultry division is. Coming off a loss of ZAR 26 million in the first half to a profit of ZAR 559 million in the second half. I think one of the highlights of this year's results is the quality of our balance sheet. As Gary also outlined earlier, we were on a rebuild phase, a reset, refocus, restart for the last two years being birthed out of 2023. Dire environment that we operated in with the load shedding and the bird flu which wiped out ZAR 2.2 billion off our balance sheet.
We concluded the rebuild this year and if I can just quickly run through that, the equity line at the bottom of this table shows a 13% improvement in our NAV in the group from ZAR 4.752 billion to ZAR 5.375 billion. The main drivers beyond that. If I can jump to the top of this table, I'll run it through line by line. Our non current assets, our PPE improved by 3% showing that we are starting to spend on capital investment in the group which drives efficiencies and ultimately improves the returns in the group. Our non current assets, our right of use assets at least has increased from ZAR 178 million to ZAR 286 million. That is coupled with slightly down on this table, the lease liabilities which increased from ZAR 184 million to ZAR 294 million. That mainly relates to long term leases, mainly relating also to the transport contracts.
That we run in the group. There we've renewed a contract a year ago. You'll note. You'll recall that a year ago we had a capital commitment of ZAR 125 million that we brought in from County Fair. That one has obviously been started in November last year. That is the increase in the right of use assets. Net working capital decreased by 11%. That really demonstrates the quality of the working capital management in the group. Coupled with a strong pull in the poultry division feed for the poultry division finished inventory positions, which I'll unpack in a slide later. You'll notice the current assets is the big driver for that improvement. Coming down from ZAR 4.872 billion to ZAR 4.61 billion. With current liabilities flat year on year. Non-current liabilities mainly our deferred tax balance and borrowings that's in there, up 27%.
That really demonstrates the deferred tax position that we have in the group where we have a lot of benefit from the tax regulations because we are classified as a farming environment. Therefore the net assets down 8%. Those are the productive assets that we engage in the business of which we generate our operating profit. You can see that it is really a good story. If you take the balance, the reduction of net assets and the improvement in quality of earnings, it really positions the quality of the financial statements all the way around. The big story for the balance sheet is the fact that we restored our net cash balance. We managed to generate a net position of ZAR 1 billion in the year after everything considered. We moved from ZAR 13 million cash a year ago to ZAR 1,013,000,000 .
The end of September 2025. Capital expenditure, depreciation and amortization for the group ZAR 331 million see a slight increase year on year. Two buckets driving that: one, PPE, property, plant and equipment at ZAR 241 million, and the right of use assets, which we touched on earlier, at ZAR 90 million. The total CapEx, however, is up strongly year on year. That number is expected to be even stronger for the period lying ahead as we start to reactivate our investment programs after the reset, refocus and restart cycle that we've been through. Also, linking that ZAR 336 million total CapEx number to the total depreciation, you'll see that we are very much in line with our depreciation for the year.
If you look at the breakdown of that into replacement and expansion, you can see that the replacement CapEx or the maintenance CapEx in the group has received a lot of attention and that will improve over the period lying ahead in the foreseeable future. We expect a strong total capital expenditure number there that will drive efficiencies and productivity. Outstanding commitments at reporting date ZAR 159 million. The main items in there. There is quite a lot of items in there that makes it up. We have got a lot of capital projects undergo at the moment but the two ones that stand out is really the refrigeration upgrade at Goldie which increases our capacity. As Gary said we will by the end of this month be just north of 6.6 million broilers per week being slaughtered. That is the one activating that profile.
We are increasing our hatchery capacity. O n the working capital, r eally a good story to witness here is the current assets coming down by ZAR 262 million in total. The main drivers of that being the poultry inventory. You can see they are coming down from ZAR 1.169 billion to ZAR 682 million. An improvement of ZAR 487 million in cash. Coming into the balance sheet, the feed division inventory position has improved by ZAR 42 million. The trade debtors, although an increase of ZAR 294 million, it is a healthy increase. We really run an exceptionally clean debtors book in the group, running at a very good profile. All the debtors there are collected. We are really sitting with just about no debtors outstanding beyond due dates. Really an exceptional performance by the credit control team.
Current liabilities as I said earlier, flat year on year and net working capital therefore improving by ZAR 262 million. O n the cash flow, r eally clearly demonstrated with this waterfall graph. Coming into this financial year with ZAR 13 million cash on the balance sheet net generating ZAR 1.5 billion cash operating profit working capital changes of ZAR 276 million. You'll notice the difference from the previous slide. It's really the IFRS application in terms of what working capital changes needs to be rolled back into that cash operating profit profile. We have proceeds from the sale of assets which are touched on on the income statement being the difference in the headline earnings per share versus EPS earnings per share. There's a cash proceeds of ZAR 69 million that generated a profit profile that needs to be added back.
have tax paid ZAR 127 million, again the difference between that and the tax charge really driving that deferred tax liability on the balance sheet. We have capital expenditure paid in cash, ZAR 328 million. The resumption of dividends at the end of last year with our final dividend being declared of ZAR 5.20 and an interim dividend in the first half of the year of ZAR 2.20, translating into a cash payment of ZAR 285 million to shareholders, closing off with ZAR 1.013 billion on the balance sheet in cash. Headline earnings per share history, again you can see the full history here, some volatility in the number.
We all know where that comes from but I think the story to be identified here is the fact we're paying ZAR 11 dividend this year which is a 2x cover of our ZAR 21.93 headline earnings per share number that we generated for the year. In summary we've managed to convert our revenue into profitability on a very clean basis and that generated significant cash inflow of ZAR 1 billion net for the year which we could use to redeploy into reinvestment in the business. Our capital expenditure profile at ZAR 336 and returning ZAR 8.80 in the final dividend to shareholders. Thank you.
Thank you, Dries. Good. Thank you, Dries, for unpacking the numbers a bit further for us. As usual, we'll give investors a view of how we see the net term, net term future and balance that. There we go. Just bang it. Balance that with some slightly negative aspects that we see out there. I don't think we can stand here and be completely negative about the future; otherwise, Anthony is going to look at me and say you're playing your poker face, but certainly there are some aspects out there that still concern us. The number one risk in the group remains bird flu. I think we must be ever mindful of that. There was an outbreak in KwaZulu-Natal just a week ago, and we are starting to see more and more, and this is across the globe, that this isn't just a winter disease.
You know, you're seeing it in summer. Now on the weekend in the press they were reporting an outbreak in African penguins just off the coast here which is concerning. Certainly not a winter disease any longer and there has been slow progress on vaccination. You remember we reported that we had approval to vaccinate one farm. We received that earlier in the year which is about 5% of our breeding stock. There was a word in here on Friday that said with very slow progress and then at about 4:00 P.M. on Friday afternoon Dr. Obed Lukhele, our Head Veterinarian, dropped us a call and said guess what, we've just received another two permits for vaccination.
We took very out just to and changed it to slow progress because it has been rather slow, even though we now have approval and we'll look at the timing of that. We have the ability now, with those approvals received, to vaccinate up to 30% of our breeding stock. In the absence of compensation, still an ongoing battle with the Department of Agriculture, and in the absence of insurance, good biosecurity and vaccination as a tool in that toolkit is what we have to manage the disease. Under very controlled conditions, we've been allowed to vaccinate, certainly not supporting blanket wholesale vaccination across the industry because that comes with other risks. Under controlled conditions, we are applying a vaccination strategy to deal with bird flu. The economic growth outlook does remain subdued. I mean, notwithstanding some positive signs we've seen in the week.
They're talking about a possible interest rate cut and the Monetary Policy Committee getting together soon to look at that. That will have, does bring some relief to consumers. I think on the larger front, we need to see growth and development in the country that will create jobs. You know, without jobs, unemployment remains persistently high and that just places additional pressure on household disposable income. That hasn't gone away. It might seem a bit laborious as reporting it here, but it is a fact. We need jobs in the country so that people can buy a better food basket and which ultimately put protein in there in the form of chicken. The AGOA preferential trade access. We spoke about that earlier on.
You know, this quota is still in play and we are not sure what will happen with that with time will tell, although we keep on letting the minister know that we hear and we are available to chat to him. Certainly the tariffs at 30% and AGOA falling away will have negative consequences for the country. A small reprieve for the citrus sector on Friday was that President Trump signed an executive order exempting South African citrus from the tariffs. They are a bit short on oranges and apples all of a sudden. He has now signed that so that our fruit at least can flow into the U.S. free of those tariffs that he has imposed. That is a small positive sign for that sector in South Africa. The poultry market inquiry was launched. It is very wide in scope.
It's dealing from every point in the poultry integrated value chain, from genetics all the way through to the retail sector. It's very wide in scope and it'll take time to conclude. We're not sure what the outcomes will be. I mean, there's a number of these market inquiries that have been conducted over the years. There are recommendations that are made. Time will tell what that means for our industry. What they're looking at is barriers to entry. They want to try and establish why we have large integrated poultry producers. How does economies of scale benefit poultry production in the country? We're not unlike any other poultry market across the world in terms of how we produce chicken. Anyway, we'll engage this process positively and we'll wait for those outcomes.
We put it on the slide as a little bit of a negative because it is going to take up time and it remains something a little uncertain. I think this. Let me just move to the next slide manually, please. Thank you. On the positive side, as we've already covered, maize prices are favorable and we expect them to remain favorable. Unless it just does not rain in January and February next year and completely dries up, which we do not expect. With the outlook that we have on the weather patterns. We are in a La Niña phase right now. We have moved into that and we expect that to continue through the South African growing season. We have had a large harvest in 2025 and a large harvest is expected in 2026.
We have still got a long way to go, a lot of water under the bridge to go, as I say. We will keep a close eye on the weather and other metrics there. In our procurement strategy, we have increased and are able by the end of this month to increase Astral's production volumes. Again, this does positively benefit economies of scale as long as we can sell it. The market seems to be very well balanced in terms of supply and demand at the moment. We are moving into a festive period and, you know, we have this ability or we had this ability to bring these additional volumes to market through the large capital expenditure program we embarked on a few years ago to increase our capacity by 16%. We were always well positioned with that.
That has supported growth in the retail and quick service restaurant sectors. You know, you see quite aggressive growth there with store rollouts on a monthly basis. Fortunately, they're all looking for chicken investment in process and product innovation. Some of this is happening as we speak and there's a couple of nice projects in here or good projects in here which will enhance our manufacturing capabilities, support efficiencies in the business and will also lead to a product mix, well balanced product mix and certainly not indicating there that we're moving away from any one part of that product mix, just balancing that bucket well.
There are products outside of that that we use in the integrated value chain that are not necessarily just chicken in the bag at the end of the day, but also ingredients that we produce that support a better feeding cost. Astral stated strategy has not changed. Our board reconfirmed this in February at our strategic planning workshop. We are the best cost producer or endeavor to remain the best cost producer. We are just keeping that steadfast focus on efficiencies. All my colleagues will know that we keep on having this conversation and we do have a group wide awareness campaign around this which we will keep on talking about because it is critically important that we streamline all our objectives to support this. Without the best cost producer strategy we cannot be a supplier of affordable protein to the country.
We have a healthy balance sheet which Theresa has spoken a lot about. This does obviously lend support to key strategic capital investments which will bring cost benefits, improve efficiencies, and we must always look at how we will drive volume growth into the future. These are some positives on the outlook and certainly lend themselves to supporting the earnings in the business. If we can just go. I think this has died. Thank you. I would like to thank you for your attention today from my side. Thank you to all my colleagues in Astral and these are your results. Without all the hard work that all of you put in every day, it certainly wouldn't be possible. You know, enjoy the moment. This is your report card and scorecard and it looks good. As you know, Dries is moving on to the industrial sector.
I think after three years he didn't think he's had enough of poultry. But Dries, best wishes and thank you for your support. I've told you, sorry to see you go, but good luck. Best wishes. Thank you. Marlize, are we going to any questions?
We'll take questions from the floor first.
In terms of your second half sales increase, is there a correlation as a result of one of the competitors closing down or going into business rescue, or is it a function more that the consumer with interest rate environment started consuming more chicken?
No, there's a correlation with the industry consolidation that you see. I think everyone picked up some volumes there. We were in the fortunate position that we had capacity to do it. It has more to do with the fact that the country still needs to produce 21.1-21.3 million birds a week. We have participated in that. There has also been growth in the retail, wholesale, and quick service restaurant sectors. One thing I can say, and we believe it does support volume growth through that period as well, is that foot and mouth disease took hold in this country quite severely through the year. You will see the alien beef prices. If you go late into the slides, we have all the additional information.
Beef prices rocketed in the year on the back of foot and mouth disease and the quarantine of livestock there in the feedlots. Certainly that may have played a role as well in supporting the volumes in chicken, in poultry, people still buying protein meat to eat and those that could not afford to buy beef, the next best thing is then chicken. We do believe that played a role as well in the pull that we have seen for chicken through winter, which was traditionally your slower season. We certainly did not see that drop off on fresh a bit, yes, but not on frozen.
Thanks. My second question is then, as a result of that volume increase, because of that event, is the price increase the same as we know that that entity was selling chicken at a loss previously, which was bringing the whole market down.
I mean, I think that points to some of the recovery in selling price through the second half. I mean, as you rightly said, there was the market pricing and the market was suppressed, particularly through the latter half of 2024. Very competitive environment for frozen chicken. You know, there were prices out there that just were not recovering input costs. Our responsibility is to recover input costs. I think we've managed to achieve that through the second half, which reflects in the margins. Anything else online, Marlize?
No, there are no questions, Gary.
Ok. We've done a pretty good job of covering it all. I'd like to thank you all again for attending, especially all of those. There's a last question, a last entry
[Shaul Hoss from Vitalia Capital]. When we review the FNB Agri data report, it seems Astral's broiler price realization lacks the data published in the report. Can you comment on poultry pricing achieved and how we should review the data released by FNB? Similarly, CPI data point to more muted price increase in poultry selling. Is this the more correct number to monitor?
With all honesty, I don't know a lot about the FNB data that you're referring to. I mean, we use some of it in a later slide, but in other proteins. If I could just give you some advice. Refer to the SAPA average selling prices that are published in their production reports. They take information from the whole sector, goes through a third party, Chinese walls. It's assembled, put together, probably a very reliable source of information when it comes to selling price trends. I'm not saying the FNB data is not, I just don't know the source. It could be on shelf pricing or not. But the producer pricing that we provide I think is a reliable source and you'll see that that is included in a slide later on in the show.
The second question, the balance sheet is strong with improved cash generation expected. How do we view the potential for special dividends in the short term?
The board has, as you know, taken a decision to declare dividend final dividend at 2x cover and that was with cognizance of our CapEx program going forward. I think the first task for us as a team was to rebuild the balance sheet. We've just done that. Not walking out of that immediately thinking about special dividends, but looking at a project pipeline where we have, as you'll see, the CapEx through 2024. We had to pull the reins back a bit with the cash that we bled from the business in 2023 and 2024 was a rebuild phase. Certainly, you know, we have good places to spend the money. We will apply those funds wisely. Again, there's a lot of projects in there that will benefit the business going forward and improve earnings over the longer term.
We should look at that first and then it depends on the cash. You know, we'll make those decisions as and when necessary with the board. Certainly no shortage of projects right now that we, that we do not need the cash. Not looking to dish it out too soon.
Thank you. His third question, can you provide a poultry volume target for full year 2026 and what percentage increase do you target?
Look, I can't, you know, we, I think, don't think we can stay. Marlize will kill me if I give you a forecast like that. Or we going to produce, as we've said, 6 million broilers a week. We must sell that. You know, it's no good. We produce it and put it in a freezer. It is going to depend largely on market conditions through the year. We are only in the second month of our new financial year. We are in the festive, we are going into festive period. Good demand at that time.
Normally in January and February with all the obligations that families have towards school fees and everything else and spent all their money through Christmas, you know, you do see a softening in the market. We have always said we must balance, we must balance our supply with demand and we are not going to be reckless about that. There is always a lead time to that. It is at least eight weeks, eight week window we have to look into to balance it. Certainly we will need to. I cannot just say we are going to keep on producing and keep on selling. There needs to be that pull from the market.
Thank you. Roger Ambako from Excelsior Capital. Do you expect imports to drive pricing pressure going forward with cost dropping and the rand being strong?
It depends on what's in those imports. You know, MDM makes up a large portion of that clearly because the country doesn't produce mechanically d eboned meat. We sell the whole carcass, strip carcass so we don't produce MDM here and that continues to be the largest portion of those imports with bone-in portions making up some of it and then offal or tertiaries making up the rest. It depends what happens to the volumes around imports. I think we should remember that we now as a country have an anti-dumping duty in place against Brazil and four European countries. The AGOA quota should be removed. The U.S. are having a bad time of bird flu so hardly any chicken coming out of the U.S. to South Africa. European countries are opening and closing as bird flu hits their borders.
It's quite a disrupted, quite disrupted trade flows at the moment and most of the imports are coming out of Brazil and again a lot of that is MDM so difficult to say that there will be this flood of imports and it's going to impact pricing in the country. We have a MFN duty, Most Favored Nation duty plus anti-dumping duty against Brazil, which was implemented, you know, a couple of years ago already and that's a better position to be in than we were a few years ago.
Thank you. Shaul Hoss . Would you like to extend your feed procurement beyond three months given favorable feed input costs?
We've got a procurement committee that looks at all the inputs, the technical data, the weather recommendations from the trade and our suppliers, and we take a view. Certainly, if we need to take a longer position, we do that. We will determine what that strategy will be, and then we've got a daily procurement execution team that will go and fill that book. Our minimum coverage there is three months in the pipeline. That's really just to get physical deliveries to the mills. Certainly, we do from time to time hold a longer position than that. In the maize market like we are currently pricing, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to hold a longer position.
Thank you. We've got an audio question from Thabo Nk abinde.
Good morning. I'm not sure if I'm audible.
You are.
Yep. Good morning. We can hear you .
It's Thabo Nk abinde from the University of Johannesburg. I'm doing my PhD research specifically on feed efficiency and antimicrobial resistance which focuses on multi omics in poultry systems. My question is for the leadership and also congratulations. I've also sent my congratulations also to the team as well on the impressive turnaround and a strong cash position. My question is on research and development because I have noticed that it was also mentioned throughout your impressive presentation. Given that the feed cost represent 66% of your production cost, your single largest obviously expense at the moment, could you outline the specific research and development initiatives prioritizing to systematically reducing this cost burden and to protect your margins? I'm particularly interested in the role in advanced nutritional science. If I can just understand the priorities in terms of research development in that regard.
Thank you for the question. We should certainly, I mean, we have an ongoing research and development program. We have got a broad team of nutritionists in the group. We have got veterinarians in the group that are constantly working on feeding programs and feeding specifications to, you know, exploit or maybe a better word is, what's the word I'm looking for, Dries, yeah, is to get the best genetic potential that exists in the bird in performance out of that animal. You know, we do have in-house R& D, we do have in-house testing facilities, and we are constantly testing feeding programs and developments in nutritional science with new ingredients, feed ingredients out there, and as such to improve our performance, broiler performances, and thereby support a better feed conversion efficiency. Certainly something that, you know, you are welcome. We can always set up some engagement with our nutritionist to explore this a bit further.
Thank you.
Hello.
Yeah, I was saying that like have you also looked into maybe collaborating with, considering maybe like this, what you have already presented as Astral, maybe considered collaborating, innovate innovation models with like universities and institutions, particularly like with the feed industry, with the feed sector, AMR reduction as well as precision maybe nutrition trials even though you have your in-house. And also maybe collaborating with, with the academia?
Yeah, we do, we do collaborate with academic institutions both locally and abroad. So we draw on technical know-how abroad and research that's performed overseas as well as locally and we do have relationships with a number of local tertiary institutions.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Harold Segoolie, given the financial results, what is your view on reinvesting profits versus cost containment for the coming financial year?
Cost containment is continual, continuous focus point and that starts with managing the business. Right. We will always look at opportunities to reinvest profits. Obviously we want to as long as possible keep on rewarding shareholders as long as there's profits there to do that. If there's profits there, we need to reinvest them back in the business. It's a large business, requires a lot of repairs and maintenance and capital expenditure in maintaining upkeep of our assets. We are a custodian of these assets so we need to look after them and then certainly exploiting opportunities to improve costs and efficiencies.
Thank you. There are no further questions.
Thank you, Marlize. Thank you, everyone. Appreciate your time today and your attendance, and go well. Best wishes. Thank you.