I think I can start 15 seconds early. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for those attending at the JSE here today. I see that we forgot that it's Monday, which means that everybody is working at home. So welcome to all of those of you who are on, I guess, the online version. This is our results for the six months ending December, and we have a pretty normal agenda. I will take you through some of the highlights. Justin will take you through the group financial results. I'll give you some feedback on the performance, a little bit on prospects, and then we'll get to questions. I'm gonna be fast, so that we've got more time for questions, and, hopefully there will be some. So we think it was a reasonable performance in a tough environment.
Certainly, a very challenging operational environment, with many issues affecting our businesses: load shedding, port efficiency issues, infrastructure issues affecting some of our municipalities. So from a supply chain point of view, a very challenging operational environment. Of course, the direct costs of load shedding continue to show up in our business. It is a tough consumer environment. I think it's easy to forget we must be in the ninth year of declining real GDP per capita, which for a consumer business acts as a handbrake on demand, and so group revenue increased by 7.1%. In AVI's life, we're brand owners. We believe we own, you know, brands that people love, and the importance for us is the preservation of gross margins. We deal with a lot of implicit inflation.
It has continued, and we cover that detail in, obviously, each of the sections. We think we did a good job of protecting gross margins, notwithstanding the demand constraints. I&J had an especially difficult six months. I can seldom remember a semester that was as impacted as I&J's semester, and we cover some of those things, and that acted as a handbrake on the overall performance. Group operating profit, good operating leverage for us, which was pleasing, with, I guess operating profit growing just over 17%, slightly better at the headline earnings number and through to the dividend, up 17%. A fair amount of capital expenditure in the semester. We talk a little bit about that in detail, and I think a sustained return on capital employed of just under 31% for the 12 months on an annualized basis. That's the history.
Nice to see, you know, some of the progress from COVID. I think we're building a little bit of momentum, notwithstanding the operating constraints and, of course, the challenges in the I&J performance, I guess, specifically dragging down the group's performance. Touched on the capital employed, which I think is pleasing, given that we have sustained a reasonable amount of investment into the businesses, mostly for efficiency, in some instances, some capacity expansion, but we touch on that a little later. Very strong cash conversion, very pleasing and important for us. We try and make sure that we sustain the strong cash generative capability of the business, and that came through in the semester. Dividend yield, I guess, more interesting to look like that.
I'm sure that some of you will be fixated on the red line, as the balance sheet moves back into a under-geared position, but we'll talk about that a little bit, in Justin's section. 17% TSR, I think, since 2005, which, under the circumstances, considering macro and COVID, not a bad performance, from the business. I'll give you to Justin. He'll take you through the group's overall financial result.
Thank you, Simon, and good afternoon, everybody. I think overall, a sound performance in what has been a very challenging environment. Revenue growth, as already highlighted, up 7.1%. This was primarily driven by selling price increases with volumes down in aggregate across the business. I will go through a little bit of that, just now. Gross profit growing slightly ahead of revenue, with strong protection of our gross profit margins, which have grown from 39.8%- 41.5% for the semester. Selling and administrative expenses, well managed, growing 6.3%, largely with inflation and a non-cash cost of ZAR 14.9 million, recognized in respect of I&J's BE structure that we implemented in July last year.
In addition, there were some costs that we incurred as a result of restructuring initiatives in certain parts of our business. This was partly offset by lower fuel prices, as well as savings from lower levels of activity as a result of the loss of the Coty business from July last year. We have provided a slide in the information section of the deck, which provides some context to the reduction, as a result of the loss of that Coty business. Net operating profit, growing from ZAR 1.5 billion-ZAR 1.8 billion through the semester at 17.1%, in line with the gross profit margin growth. Operating profit margin expanding from 19.7%-21.5%, which is a pleasing result in the context of this environment.
Net finance costs grew 17.3% to ZAR 106 million for the semester, and this is primarily a function of higher interest rates, with net borrowing levels lower on average through the semester. There were no capital items of any significance, and our effective tax rate has remained largely in line with the South African corporate tax rate of 27%. Headline earnings and headline earnings per share grew 17.4%. There was very little dilution as a result of additional issues, shares and issue during the semester, so not much to, to write home about there. From a business unit performance, as we've highlighted, operating profit growth of 17.1%, growth across all parts of our business, with the exception being I&J.
Excluding the impact of I&J, operating profit grew 20.7%. From an operating profit margin perspective, our food and beverage brands improved from 18.5%- 20.6%, despite the reduction in I&J's performance. This is largely underpinned by an improvement in our Snackworks business, with well-protected margins in our entire beverage business, where there was some substantial pressures from input costs. Fashion brands improved from 24.4%- 25.6% margin. This was entirely a function of personal care.
Our personal care business benefited from some growth in some of our core ranges, some effective cost management, which was required as a result of the loss of the Coty business, as well as the loss of that lower margin Coty business, which did allow, I guess, a greater, a favorable mix from a margin perspective. Footwear and apparel margin slightly down on last year, but still remain healthy. This graph really contextualizes the movement in revenue year-on-year and provides, I guess, the quantum impact of price and volume on that movement. Price increases were taken across all parts of our business during the course of the previous financial year, as well as during parts of our business in this, in the first semester.
In addition, I&J's export revenues did benefit from a weaker rand. Our sales volume performances were mixed. We, we did benefit from some improved performances in our snacks business, as well as better volumes in beverages, but this was offset by lower fishing volumes and also the impact of the loss of the Coty business. As Simon alluded to, protecting gross profit margins and our overall margins is, is very important to us. It underpins our long-term profitability, and gets a lot of focus from a business perspective. As you can see, margins recovered back to levels that we last saw in the first semester of F20. This is largely supported by a combination of selling price increases, as well as strong cost control through all parts of the business.
As mentioned earlier, the loss of the lower margin Coty business also had an impact here. Operating profits, I think the bullets really encapsulate the key drivers of the underlying performances. I'm not gonna go through those in detail. Simon will cover a lot of that in the business unit performances. I think what is important to recognize is that in the context of the current environment, managing volume and value, and that relationship has been very, very important and has been a key driver to delivering our overall result. From a balance sheet perspective and cash flow, our cash generated by operations has improved significantly on the previous year. I think you will recall that last year included a temporary increase in working capital, which resulted in a lower level of cash generation from operations.
We unlocked a lot of that working capital through the second semester last year, and in line with the earnings growth that we've seen in the first semester, we've been able to maintain a strong conversion of that into cash. In absolute terms, working capital levels are lower than they were last year. That's really a function of the non-repeat of that temporary increase that we saw last year, the unlocking of some working capital in respect of the Coty business, which I've mentioned. And then that was partly offset by some inflationary increases, as well as the higher biological asset valuations that we have coming through. I think what is important, perhaps to recognize, particularly going into the second semester, is that our supply chains continue to be challenged.
Port inefficiencies, load shedding, global supply chain disruptions, these are all factors, among other things, that we are having to manage. Within this context, we will manage our working capital levels to protect service levels. I think we've mentioned this before. It is important for us to manage our service levels to customers. It costs us far more to do sales than it does to carrying the working capital. From a capital expenditure perspective, capital expenditure marginally lower than it was last year, but still at acceptable levels. We do have a more detailed slide in the information section of the deck, which will give you some more context to the areas of spend.
But some of the larger areas of spend include the investment in our Blue Label Marie oven, which came online at the back end of the semester. Some investment in capacity and efficiency for our creamer facility. Some payments in terms of a potato chip fryer that is going to be coming online in the early part of the second half, as well as continued investment in our retail store environment. From a net debt perspective, the strong cash generation that I've spoken about has played out here. A material reduction in our net debt from ZAR 2.4 billion - ZAR 1.8 billion.
I think the higher working capital that we carried last year inflated the prior year numbers somewhat, but overall, net debt to capital employed in the mid-range of our target levels between 20% and 30%, and finishing the semester at 25.2%. Our return on capital employed, something we're very proud of and something that we focus a lot on, has improved to 30.8%, largely underpinned by the strong earnings growth that we've seen through the first semester. In line with the earnings growth, our normal dividend, from an interim perspective, has been increased to ZAR 2.02. I'll hand you back to Simon, who will take you through the business unit performances. Thank you.
Thanks, Justin. In Entyce Beverages, tea, coffee, and creamer, strong performance, which was pleasing. Strong performance from both our premium brands and our affordable brands, especially in black tea. We had quite a lot of cost pressure here, which you can see in the slides ahead. Black tea volumes did improve off a low base, albeit in the prior year, and we had to lift selling prices again in Rooibos. But, and again, as Justin said, you know, managing margin effectively in a thin demand environment, I think overall, you know, was good. It comes through in the volume and value slides by category. We don't break out, obviously, the profitability, so the numbers don't change above, just for competitor reasons.
Coffee was the most challenging category here, where we continue to see some aggressive pricing, particularly in mixed instant. This has been something we've talked about for a long time. It's stabilized, albeit at a lower base than we would like. But overall, the performance of coffee was bolstered by the improvement in our out-of-home Ciro coffee business, particularly the corporate channel, recovering. You wouldn't say that by the number of people here today. But, we're seeing, I guess, slow improvement, post-COVID in that business unit, and, we're not far away from profitability, you know, pre-COVID. We are and need to continue looking at structure in all of our businesses.
Some of the operating leverage you see in the P&L, you know, is only made possible by continuous thrifting in our cost base and benefiting from the operating leverage that you see. Creamer, very pleasing profit growth, pleasing volume growth. Selling prices obviously lifted to deal with rising cost pressures, which we were pleased to be able to achieve and hold our market shares. The market share slide will show you that not only did we manage to lift prices, but we also gained share, which was pleasing. We have a new line, an upgraded line with robotics at the end of it, which will help us improve our efficiency and our volumes available to sell. This slide gives you a sense of the progress.
While it's not true that we saw volumes increasing in aggregate, some of that was substantially in I&J. There were some really strong pockets in the semester with tea being one, and creamer, where, you know, you've got 13% and 8.6% volume growth, plus obviously the price growth to deal with the cost pressures. So that was pleasing. In Entyce market shares, we don't obsess about market shares, but they are long-term, important measures. This is obviously only retail shares. We do a lot of business in the independent system that's not as well read, but certainly from a market share perspective, generally pleasing growth. There's the creamer growth that I touched on. Very good performance from our affordable tea brand, Trinco. A sound performance from Five Roses, and we lost a little bit of share in Freshpak.
But, you know, that, as Justin said, is how we try and manage volume and value, and I think overall effective for tea. Lots of raw material cost pressures in this business. Now, you need to keep in mind, this is net of hedging, both currency and commodity, and that's a very much, well, I guess, run part of our business. We do try and protect our margins through ongoing hedging, and we certainly benefited by doing that in the Entyce category. Very strong performance from Snackworks. A combination of two, both the biscuit business and the snacking business had improving mix, some volume growth in some of the snacking categories, and then a slightly better mix in biscuits, although volumes overall were down in biscuits, which I'll show you soon. Very good operating leverage in this business.
Improving margins, good cost control in the factories. Strong Christmas season in December was a benefit. We put quite a lot of money into marketing and innovation, although some of that innovation will only come through in the second half. The snacks portfolio, the extruded part, traded well. We had some good innovation there, flavor extensions. We're still being held back by aggressive pricing in the potato chip category, but nonetheless, we're making some progress there as well. Improved profitability, and the costs were well managed in that facility as well. So this breaks out the volume and value. Here is an example of the volume constraints that we saw. Very important that we manage price and volume effectively in our portfolio.
You need to remember, we make over a hundred different kinds of biscuits, so there's a lot of portfolio effect in that number. We had some very strong volume growths in some part of the biscuit portfolio, and the same is true, as I've said, for snacks. You can see the shares here, small share declines, but on balance, we think overall well managed in the context of the financial performance. Strong demand in wholesale channels, and, you know, that's not obviously showing up in this read because that's retail only. Cost of raw materials, a mixed bag, albeit some of them coming off a very high base.
So as palm prices came back off a very high base in the prior year, still plenty of inflation overall in the ingredients portfolio for the biscuit business and for snacks, hence some of the pricing. I&J, as I said, a very, very tough six months. I mean, very little went well for us. Most of it was out of our control. We, we lost around ZAR 50.8 million worth of revenue in December alone, simply because we couldn't actually ship out of Cape Town's harbor. We saw probably the worst catch rates in 20 years, and that slide comes up soon, and you'll see the impact of that. From an operational point of view, the vessels were efficient.
I mean, our fuel usage strategies are paying off, albeit, certainly not in any way enough to ameliorate the deleveraging effect of the poor catch rates. It's easy to forget, you know, the Cape Town taxi strike was pretty difficult for Cape Town-based businesses, and that showed up, deleveraged us as well on top of obviously low catch rates. There's a lot of work going on in I&J. From a restructuring point of view, we've decided to outsource our cold storage facilities, and some of those costs have gone through the income statement. We're looking at, I guess, as many ways as we can run this business to be more effective and more efficient. Justin talked about the insurance claim and obviously the cost of the BE structure in the semester. Abalone also had a difficult six months.
Certainly from an Asian demand perspective, both Hong Kong and China continue to show weakness in demand, and that's been sustained for, I guess, at least 18 months now. And then, of course, we ended up with a supplier selling us cans that failed, that affected our ability to export in the semester. This wasn't just the I&J business, this was an industry-wide issue, which certainly added woe, I guess, to a very difficult I&J semester. You can see the breakout in the waterfall chart, substantial issue around catch rate here, materially driving the profitability year-on-year for the semester. And, you know, we really are, you know, struggling in I&J in this semester versus, I guess, the prior period.
That gives you a sense of, you know, how tough the catch rates were, and the catch rates were tough, but so was the mix. You know, we didn't actually have a very good mix, despite a low catch rate, too, which, you know, obviously adds to the financial deleveraging in the semester. And you can see the volume impact of just simply not having enough fish to both export and to sell domestically on that slide. Indigo, I think, a very pleasing performance. After the termination of the Coty license arrangement, we've worked extremely hard in this business to, I guess, give it a long-term focus of its own. And I think the financial performance, having lost probably just under a third of revenue, is pretty significant. We've been able to improve the operating profit margin.
I guess that gives you some sense of the paucity of margin that we had in the Coty portfolio. But it was pleasing to see our own brand performance and some of the operating leverage coming through in this first semester from all of that work. Volumes down substantially, selling prices up, you know, that's, you know, partially a mix issue as much as it is obviously a volume issue. A tough semester from a competition point of view, but again, this is retail only, and we sell quite a lot of product in Indigo over, over the border and into independent wholesale. But overall, a good performance from our own brands in a very competitive environment, which was pleasing. Footwear and apparel. Semester was very interesting. First quarter was strong, and then the second quarter, very weak for two months, and then a strong December.
It was quite difficult to read. Lots of complexity in the competitive environment. This is an area where we needed to invest quite a lot of money in supply chain to ensure that we had stock, because we were terribly worried, and we were affected partially by the late deliveries into December because of the port issues, particularly in Durban. The category that struggled the most in the footwear and apparel was clothing brands, where we can see overall there's lots of oversupply. A lot of major retailers went into discounts halfway through December, you know, which was an interesting thing, and that's continued, frankly, into the second semester. Well-managed costs, ongoing focus on trying to extract the best performance we can from our, you know, retail portfolio. So on balance, not a bad performance.
A very, very financially strong business with high returns on capital employed and strong operating margins, but certainly not an easy environment to grow. I'll give you one anecdote. When we bought this business, I think one of our main items that we still sell today, selling price was below ZAR 700, and if I look now, we're pretty much close to ZAR 2,800. And that gives you some perspective on the amount of inflation that exists in SA, and the price pressure because of a declining exchange rate. Volume, a little bit of volume gains for our core brands, Carvela and Lacoste, which was pleasing. Pricing, obviously, to deal with exchange rate, which I've touched on, and then, as I mentioned, the decline in volumes in Kurt Geiger International.
Not an easy environment regionally, but pleasing to sustain the momentum in this business. We, you know, distribute our own products produced in SA, you know, and grow our brands regionally. I think overall, a pretty pleasing performance, and strong margin gains. Slightly less as a percentage of the overall portfolio, but that's numerator, denominator because of the strength of the performance in the domestic business in the semester. Turning to prospects. Well, it's not an easy environment. I mean, I think Justin said it well. It really is, in the operating sense, challenging. You know, we run big factories. They're complicated environments. We make a lot of different things in AVI. We depend on a sophisticated supply chain. Many of our suppliers, you know, have the same challenge as we do with water, electricity issues.
Now, these aren't just to do with load shedding. They are, unfortunately, a function of the ongoing decline in malaise and municipalities. It's difficult to know, whether your water, you know, will be at the right pressure from day to day. We end up with major failures in transformer and switchgear, which forces us to run generators. The quality of our electricity is deteriorating, which is very challenging when you have robot lines that depend on PLC control. We continue to invest to ameliorate all of these things, but we're putting more and more money simply into assets that protect us, don't necessarily, you know, give us capital return. But without them, it would be very difficult. So we know that we're in a tough environment. We know that the macro environment is challenging for consumers.
That means that we continue to have to bring the same level of discipline to price and volume that we've had in the last decade, and certainly in the semester. We're working very hard on innovation. Some of the top-line growth that you see in the semester is a function of innovation. We've got a nice pipeline for the second semester. Hopefully, we'll make some impact. It comes in the last quarter, mostly. And we think some of those will hopefully drive the performance of the business, not only in the balance of this financial year, but in the years ahead. We have a pretty well-covered hedge book, both in commodity and currency, you know, which should secure the profitability in the second semester. But we know that the environment is likely to remain volatile.
That slide will give you some sense of, you know, the spot prices against the hedge prices, and on, on balance, I think it shows you we're in a pretty healthy position. We continue to look for, cost-effective, high-return ways of improving our facilities and managing our costs, and improving yields. We know that in this environment, we continue to have to deal with cost pressures, and wherever we need to, we will look at selling prices. It's not something we like to do, but as Justin said earlier, managing, you know, your gross margins for the long term is a critical part of sustaining the value of, you know, this business. We keep looking everywhere for cost savings. Surprising how you can...
When you reframe how you do things, where you might find a different way of doing what you thought you needed to do. There's a lot of this work going on across the group, and we hope that, you know, we will still be able to eke out cost efficiency over time. We continue to try and extract value from our export markets. This is an area that we are focusing a little harder on at the moment, given that we think the Rand is oversold, and that might give us some operating capability in other markets. But, you know, these things take time to build. Indigo, obviously, still has to absorb quite a lot of embedded fixed cost, having lost the Coty revenue that continues to gain momentum.
This business, again, like the grocery portfolio, has to manage price and volume effectively with lots of multinational competition and some domestic competition, but we have a lot of initiatives here to improve our rate of sale in our own brands. We've just invested in roll-on capacity, which we think will give us an ability to compete in that category where our market shares are materially lower than they are in body sprays. I&J will depend on the improvements in the things that affected us in the first semester. There's no fundamental change in catch rates, although in the last week, perhaps I shouldn't say it, because it might be the curse, we are seeing catch rates improving, albeit not necessarily to levels that, you know, we had hoped for, but it's an early sign that things might be turning around.
We have good hedges at better exchange rates than in H1, which will give us some leverage. There has been an increase in the TAC of 5%, but the extent that we can access that will depend on the improvements in catch rates that we're seeing in the short term being sustained. Load shedding here is a big cost for this business. We both freeze and cook things. We need a lot of energy, and of course, when we have load shedding, the cost of it is significant, and that includes, obviously, the abalone business as well. The abalone performance will depend on the exchange rate and demand in Asia. Slightly better in the short term, so let's hold thumbs that, you know, that plays out through the whole of the second semester.
Footwear and apparel business, as I said, you know, we're selling expensive, imported garments and footwear to, consumers who face plenty of, I guess, personal headwinds, both in inflation, interest rates, and employment. This is a tough environment. This is a great business with very strong brands. We continue to focus, you know, on this business wherever we can to extract the value of our trademarks. We're looking at improving retail densities. We're managing staff costs in line with lower volumes, because that's an opportunity. We are looking at new locations.
Every now and again, we get to see a location that makes sense, but as I said, if you go into the trade in the last two and a half months, you will have seen an enormous amount of aggressive discounting, which is certainly a challenge in the short term. We continue to spend money. The second half, you know, has a fairly full suite of investments, some of them Justin touched on, so, you know, I won't go over them. I think the thing that is worth talking about is that we know we need to have more water independence at our sites, so we're putting in quite a lot of CapEx to deal with that. We're also having to invest in upgrading security at our sites.
Some of them are in complicated nodes, where the inner-city environments are deteriorating, and these things all need to be managed in the context of site security, safety, and operational continuity. It's a pity to have to invest that money in these things, but, you know, that's the reality of trying to run a successful business in a changing environment. We continue to try and run this business as simply as we can. We are a very flat structure in AVI. We continue to ensure that we can make the quickest, the fastest, and the most meaningful decisions so that we get competitive advantage against everybody we compete against, and we will continue to do that as South Africa's operating environment changes. We're working hard at innovation. We think there's some gaps.
For us, it's about being a winner and taking your capability and your competency and eking out all parts of the pie where you think you can bring competitive advantage. Some of that, you know, is the long-term underpin to AVI's profitability, its gross margins, and ultimately, its operating margins. We have a unique portfolio. We still believe that consumers reward us because we take considerable care in producing the products that we produce. We still use the best ingredients. We don't thrift on how we make things, and we think that's important. We will sustain our dividend yield. It does depend on our ability to sustain our cash generation.
We have a lot of capital to deploy, albeit that we're thoughtful, careful, and as Justin said, we do believe that in the long term, you know, husbanding your capital return is a very important metric in any business. Capital allocation is a very important part of what we do at the center of AVI, and we will continue to do that. We keep trying to find ways of competing regionally. Mining, obviously, is a driver of many of the economies that we sell to. Some's up, and some is down, but, you know, it remains a long-term opportunity. Acquisitions, we still keep looking. As we've often said, it's very difficult to acquire high-quality brands. Many of our competitors are, in fact, multinationals, and that constrains the opportunity to some extent. So thank you very much.
I appreciate those of you who came today, and nice to see you, and do we have any questions and answers for myself or my colleagues? Sorry, it's a bit bright here, and I can't see.
... Thank you. Thank you, Simon. Very good set of results. Shaun Chauke from Nedbank. Two questions on my side: If you look at the operating margin on Snackworks, and maybe you'll also touch on other segments as well, but how sustainable is that? And then if you look at the work you've done within the other segment, I'm assuming it's kind of like taking permanent costs out of the business, where we've reset the base to be a little bit lower in terms of your cost base, going forward. So that's the first question.
The second question, I mean, with this kind of performance and operating margin, it certainly feels it's gonna be very hard to find businesses that are operating at this type of margins, certainly within the food space, in terms of acquisitions. I kinda get a sense where the focus now shifts in terms of utilizing your manufacturing capabilities on your cost side, and rather increasing distribution more into the export markets. Is that the case, in terms of compensating for a weak macro environment? Thank you for that.
Okay. Well, I can't, you know, comment on, you know, what's sustainable or not, 'cause I'm in the JSE, so I don't want to be sanctioned for giving them a profit forecast. You know, business, you know, a semester is merely one data point in a long time series. Some semesters you have the opportunity to benefit from operating leverage, a mix shift, they're deliberate. And so some of the businesses, as you saw, you know, got that benefit. I mean, we run the business with a long-term mindset. And we obviously are always focusing on extracting sustainable profitability, you know, from the business. These are good margins. They are margins that, you know, require a lot of hard work and commitment, and, you know, we'll be doing our very best to sustain them.
You know, obviously, finding markets or niches in markets that we can, will help do that. It's all about volume leverage. You know, these businesses have lots of operating leverage, and we think that that, you know, basically will persist. I don't know, Mike, do you want to add anything? He doesn't want to add anything, 'cause otherwise he's going to have to promise to sustain them. Insofar as acquisitions are concerned, I mean, the, as I've just said, you know, there are two things you can do when you acquire a business. Obviously, you can operate it more effectively. If you can integrate it, you might get operating leverage, you know, that lifts its performance. This is a complicated subject. The important thing is, will consumers pay a premium? You know, will they believe in... Is there enough emotional value?
Is the product intrinsically strong? You know, people tend to forget that great brands, you know, basically are about great products. So we're always looking for great products, and then if we could find great products, we think we know how to manage reasonably effectively. So, you know, we remain ambitious. It wouldn't worry us if the margins were lower than the aggregate margin. I don't think that's, you know... I guess it also then depends, what do you pay? You know, price is a very strong palliative, you know, to a weaker margin, so it's a complicated subject. So we, it's not that we have no ambition to buy anything that trades at lower margins than, you know, the margins we trade at. But you're right, it's, there is a, a certain amount, and I don't think AVI is unique.
We're all working hard every day to find places to grow in a, in a country where real incomes are declining, and obviously regional markets are an opportunity. You know, we would look even further than that if we felt we had competitive advantage. There is a lot of thinking going on about how we sustain our top line and how we can bring operating leverage to the income statement, and we still feel that there are opportunities for us to do that. We're not suggesting that it's easy, that's for sure.
Hi, Simon.
You're on.
I'm on. Thanks. I just have two questions. I think just to follow up the delta in your operating profit from Snackworks, can you give us an indication? It looks as if snacks did particularly well, or, you know, how... Was it from both divisions, from your biscuits and from snacks, or more skewed towards snacks?
I think if you read the SENS commentary, you know, we, you know, touch on the fact that we made, you know, progress, you know, in the snacking portfolio, and certainly, but it's not true that the biscuit portfolio didn't contribute to that number. So it was a combination of two. Good performance from both, good operating leverage from both. So, you know, it came through in the P&L.
I think just lastly on I&J, you know, is there a specific, is it weather related, or you know, what's driving these lower catch rates? The biomass, I think, still remains quite strong. But yeah, any insight into what's probably driving those lower catch rates?
Well, you know, I guess you've got a biomass, and biomasses are, you know, unknowable things. You know, you can talk to marine biologists and marine scientists, you can talk to your colleagues in the industry, and we've got lots of data over many, many years, and we're quite data-centric in AVI. And I guess, you know, we're dealing with a binomial distribution, and it might be that this semester, you know, is the five percentile outcome, and, you know, it's difficult to explain. Certainly, the objective view of the people who are marine scientists is there's nothing wrong with the biomass, otherwise we wouldn't have had a 5% increase in the TAC.
And we saw this, you know, in, I guess, 20 years ago, and it did recover, and it actually, you know, recovers, and it, it is somewhat, you know, basically of a nonlinear outcome. You know, as I've said, more recently, the catch rates have improved quite considerably. How sustained they will be is too early for me to say, but, you know, I think in the end, you know, in all of these things, like weather events, you know, you're likely to have a, you know, three standard deviation event at some point in time, and, you know, that might have played out in the semester.
Thanks, Simon.
Nothing else from the floor? Ah, one more.
Can you maybe please speak a little bit on creamer? Because I know there were issues with the competitors in terms of capacity, and there were some benefits at some point as a result of that. And you can kinda see their response on pricing, where it's pretty much in line with your products. So that's the one aspect. And then the second aspect on that topic, obviously, there's a new player on the shelves. I think Clover are trying to make some entry on the creamer side. If you could also speak about those dynamics as well. Thanks.
Was that a question or a statement? Yeah, there's always gonna be competition in these categories. And, you know, you go through different seasons. I think on balance, you know, the semester represents, you know, a good season for us. Competitive intensity, you know, doesn't diminish. You know, and, I guess in the end, it's difficult to predict, you know, what competitors will do. But certainly, the dynamic, you know, at least in this semester, you know, was, as you've described it, reasonable for us. Will it be reasonable for us in the next semester? I don't know. You know, but we are here to compete for the long term. And, you know, I think that's, you know, what you'll continue to see in these numbers.
We've invested to support, and strengthen our position in the creamer category, and, you know, that's something that we still believe. We think it's a great category for us to be in. We think we've got a strong brand and a great product. And, you know, we don't mind competing.