Okay. Good morning, everyone. As usual, I have Graham Leaming assisting me with the presentation of the FY22 results. We'll get into it. I hope everyone can see the screen. We'd like to start by just taking a longer-term view of the results. We'll get into the specific FY22 results.
Just checking, Scott. Could everyone just please check that they have their microphones on mute? We've tried to mute everyone, but there's a little bit of feedback. Everyone, could you please check your microphones are on mute. As I noted in the chat, if people have got questions at the end of the presentation, they could either raise their hand or send a note via the chat, and we'll take them in sequence and unmute you at that time.
Okay. Thank you, Graham. First of all, of course, it's fantastic to have another record result. If we go to the first slide, which shows a seven-year view, and of course, many of you will know CAGR. Just in case, CAGR means compound annual growth rate. A simple rule, which I'll come back to maybe, is the rule of 72. If you have an interest rate of 12%, you divide twelve into 72, and that says six . That means how long it takes to double the thing you're measuring. For example, if you have EBIT of 12% compounding your growth rate, then in six years you'll double your EBIT. Anyway, it's just a useful method of kind of averaging your growth rates.
Again, the seven-year view, we thought carefully about this in terms of helping people understand there's not a one-off result or, you know, last year was a record result, this year was a record result. Actually a lot of hard work has gone in over the last five to seven years. It's not luck. It's probably an easy way to say it. Anyway, it's pleasing to see revenue up. The CAGR there is 6%, EBIT is 12%, and NPAT is 13%. Of course, it would help if we could get revenue up even further. When we do our business planning, we plan on a two to three year horizon. From my point of view and Graham's point of view, we work hard to ensure that we maintain that kind of growth rate.
I'll come back to specifics later. We've been very focused on our gross margin because, of course, there's input cost increases. Sorry, can everyone please mute their microphone? Thank you. We focus very much. Gross margin is very much the difference between obviously the price volume, so your revenue equation compared to your input costs. We're getting feedback. Can everyone please mute their microphone? Thank you. Okay. Obviously our indirect costs as a percentage of sales have gone down steadily and our EBIT percentage has climbed. Some of you have been around long enough to remember my view on businesses is that you need to get your EBIT up to more than 20%. A really great business is 25% in order that you can invest in the future of the business.
Anyway, I just think it's important to take that sort of seven-year view. Now, if we go to the key points of the current result, FY2022 result. A great result, NPAT at NZD 47.8 million, and compared to the last, prior comparative period, up 19%. You know that the CAGR for the NPAT was 13%, so, you know, you can see that it's more than doubled. The industrial division EBIT was NZD 39.1 million. The pleasing thing is it was broad-based sales growth, and it includes higher margin from new products. Clearly when we introduce new products, we want to, launch those products at a margin better than the average. Otherwise, you're going backwards if you're not careful. We've had very good growth in potable water, wastewater, and marine was particularly strong. Through our U-DEK product.
We focused also on consolidation of sites. We've successfully consolidated a couple of businesses or several businesses onto a site in Oamaru, and that's set up as a more highly functioning distribution business and we're getting good results from that. That's been a very good move for us. Of course, we acquired Talbot last year and that's contributed and it's performing to expectations. That's gone very well for us. The agri -division, and we'll get into more detail on this. The agri division EBIT is NZD 33.6 million. We had good growth in sales of dairy rubberware to international customers. We had good sales growth on footwear. I'm sure the rain is helping our sales today and the last couple of days and the next couple of days. Fortunately, compared to previous years, we have inventory.
That's all good. We continue to get some operational improvements at Wigram. In fact, we're getting excited about some of the other changes that we can do there. That's all good. Operating cash flow is down, and we'll come back and explain that in a bit more detail. That was a deliberate investment, mainly in inventory. There were some other things affecting it, of course, but we'll go through maybe an explanation near the end of some of the changes in inventory. Another pleasing thing for shareholders, of course, is the final dividend payout declared by the directors at NZD 0.13 per share, which brings the full-year payout to NZD 0.205, which is up 21% on the prior comparative period.
We still have a strong balance sheet, so it remains robust. Net debt has increased mainly due to the Talbot acquisition and investment and technical investment in inventory, but it still represents only 7% of total assets. We're in a strong position. Thanks, Graham. We have the financial highlights. Again, we've taken a 7-year view. You can see revenue growth, EBITDA NZD 80.6 million, EBIT NZD 10.4 million and 18% on the prior corresponding, prior comparative period. Sorry. You can read through the rest of that. Just on the operating cash flow, to dwell on that for a second. NZD 43.3 million, It's down on the prior comparative period, mainly due to investment and working capital. As I said, I'll go through that. You'll notice that the CapEx is up slightly.
We've been investing quite a bit more into Wigram. It won't continue at that rate, but we believe we've had very good results from that investment. Of course, we funded dividends. The total net debt is NZD 25.2 million, 7% of total assets, as I said a minute ago, funded by Talbot acquisition, just over NZD 10 million, and lease repayments of NZD 5.5 million. We have a waterfall. We did this last year as well just to explain the changes. The first two in particular are really around the Agri- division, the dairy and footwear. You can see good dairy sales growth and good footwear sales growth. We've had very good growth in potable and wastewater, roofing and construction. The Talbot acquisition, of course, contributed.
That's been a 10-month contribution to FY2022 result. Sports and Marine is up. There are a few other minor things going across. In essence, that explains the change in earnings growth. Let's dig into the two divisions in a bit more detail. I think, again, we haven't done the seven-year numbers there in terms of the table, but just the interesting part is the revenue is up 16% and EBIT is up 20% on the prior comparative period. It's the second consecutive record result. A lot of the growth is in potable water and wastewater. We see increased sales of gaskets, seals, and vacuum systems into potable water and wastewater applications, and most of that is in the U.S. We've had growth from high-performance foam applications, mainly the U-DEK product, but some others.
That's a fantastic product. It's going really well. We acquired Talbot Advanced Technologies, and the contribution has been good. That's been in line with expectations and just another very good aligned acquisition. We've had very good growth from DEKS roofing and sealing products, and some of the disruption caused in Ukraine has hurt our competitors, which has given us some opportunities there. That's been good. Of course, there's been some, the lower New Zealand dollar has impacted the translation of offshore earnings and, of course, an impact on inventory as well. Just on the industrial division, I'll just sort of reflect a little bit. If you go back over seven years or even more than seven years, we had an industrial business that had poor financial returns. We didn't have a focused technical capability.
I don't think we fully understood the value that we were creating for customers, and we certainly weren't extracting that value. We had a number of legacy ERP systems. You'll see in the annual report, we refer to it again, but we have been doing a tidy up of a number of older systems, and that information flow is helping us to make better decisions. That takes time, obviously, and we do it in a cost-effective way. Where we are now, we have a clearly articulated business plan about how we win business. We have a very bespoke or tailored technical sales approach to large OEM customers that is winning good business at good margins. I often think about it, that customers often say they need something.
One way to think about that is if a customer states something openly, that's actually a want. What our technical teams are doing is getting to the underlying need and solving that need. We've done a very good job at Masport, for example. In the U.S., we've done a very good job with a number of existing customers that using that same approach, we're starting to get access to new customers. That's exciting, giving us a confidence in the future, certainly over the next two or three years. I think compared to seven years ago, our leaders have developed. A number of our leaders have developed, and they're doing a really, really good job. We have a number of young leaders coming through, and they've stepped up.
Certainly over the last two years, it's been tough on all leaders, and they've stepped up and delivered. I'm really proud of what they've achieved, and I'm very pleased with their ongoing programs to continue to improve the process. One of the big things I'm a big fan of is standardization. We've been standardizing processes, we've been standardizing products and things where it makes sense. Offering a differentiated product and service to our customers and moving up the differentiated sides of the product and service to individual customers. Working really hard to make sure they understand the value of that. In other words, in many cases, putting the prices up to reflect that value. Getting acceptance from customers in that sense. That's been great.
The standardization of our information flows is giving us a better insight into the business and how we can speed that whole process up. That's really where we were with the business. What's exciting is we can see if we continue to do those things, we'll continue to improve the industrial division. If we go to the Agri- division next. Again, we have a sort of a table of the numbers and things like that. Just quickly, the revenue's up 8%, EBIT's up 10% on a previous record prior comparative period, obviously. International dairy sales, there's been good opportunities in the markets. Of course, some of that has been driven by changes in the markets. We have, for example, DeLaval acquired Avon Milkrite, one of our largest competitors for food-grade rubber products in the dairy area.
Our ability to supply to the U.S. market through difficult times and things like that has helped. We've also had significant operational gains in the last two years at the Wigram site. We've invested some capital over the last year, and we expect to see further gains going forward. That's been very good. Not ignoring the fact, and it's in the release that we had very good operational gains in China. I'm really proud of the team in China who have continued in probably very difficult times even there to deliver. I often joke, the leader there does a very good job. I won't mention him 'cause some other company will try to pinch him. There you go. We've had very good demand in footwear sales.
We had issues previously with simply getting enough footwear into New Zealand. One of the challenges in China is getting, just like everywhere, there's a labor shortage, especially doing what we do. I am proud of the progress and productivity gains that we've seen out of the China factory, which is mainly producing our Red Band and technical gumboots and also our rotary vane pumps mainly the U.S. market. Maybe reflecting a little bit on the Agri division, and I was mentioning earlier there, of course, there's a big fire on the old site, which has now been a car wrecking kind of site. That's the Woolston site, no longer associated with Skellerup, to be clear. You know, after the earthquake scene, we had our Project Viking, which was to reestablish on the new site.
We were a disparate bunch of sort of people and teams and buildings. More than 22 buildings with fork trucks going left, right, and center. We transitioned, of course, many years ago onto the new site. We're still getting some clarity around flows, material flows, allocating our people properly, and a strong focus on what we do well. We had insufficient discipline around our product development. Sharpened that up, and we've been hiring quite a few new people into that product development, process development area. I expect to see very good gains from that going forward. The ERP platform that was set up, we had some data structures that weren't helping.
We invested a lot of time and energy more than a year ago, and we're starting to see really good gains in terms of our insight into what's happening in the business there. Now we remain a world-class development site. I think just like on the industrial side, we now recognize where we can add value to our customers, and we are working more closely with them to understand their needs. In the same way, we've injected a lot of new leadership into the team, particularly in Christchurch, but also internationally. We're seeing the benefit of that investment in people. As much as worrying about attracting, I mean, I find it interesting the comments around attracting talent.
The most important thing is to review on a merit-based approach your existing people, and then focus on developing them before you worry too much about attracting new people. There is a battlefield of talent. Actually, if you have a winning team and you have a winning company in that sense, you do attract the right kind of people. I'm not saying it's easy or anything like that, but I am saying I'm pleased with the performance of the new people that have joined, particularly at Wigram, but also in other parts of our business. Really that's the Agri division. Moving on, I guess a clear focus, and some of this is driven obviously by legislation. We've focused very hard on ESG. We've always had a strong focus on the social side.
Perhaps I'll start there just to change the sequence. We've had a very strong focus on health and safety, and that relies on everyone in the organization being unafraid to put their hand up when they see something that is not acceptable. We regularly have reviews, independent reviews from other parts of the business of our sites. The consolidation of sites. I mentioned the consolidation of the site at Oamaru. Three sites effectively into one. And at the same time, that has other benefits. So that's another way we've been considering it. We're moving our DEKS business in Melbourne by the end of October onto a new site that is functionally far better site. We're always reviewing sites from a health and safety point of view. At the end of the day, it requires strong leadership and engagement from employees.
I'm really pleased with how we've gone there. Obviously, I've mentioned the leadership. The other thing I'm very pleased about is we've been investing in training and effectively paying people more. This is not just in New Zealand, this is worldwide. We are paying people at the bottom end well. I'm very confident that, you know, there are, of course, some exceptions, but in general, we've been moving hard on that, not just for one year or two years. We've been doing this for more than three years. It has nothing to do with COVID, but it is about doing the right thing for those people. I mean, if you take New Zealand, how could a family live on a single income of NZD 50,000, which is more than either the minimum wage or the living wage?
You couldn't do it, I don't think, after tax. The reality is these are the people that make our quality product. They work very hard. They have a good attitude towards the company, and they deserve to be rewarded. Anyway, I'm very proud of that. Coming back to the practical ESG. There's the environmental things which are really around decarbonization. We can come back to ESG World. That's a way where, particularly the fund managers and that can get access to information in a way that sort of enables them to assess what Skellerup's doing. It's important that as a board, a sustainability committee has been formed. We focus on Scope 1, Scope 2.
Of course, we have to assess Scope 3, and for us, very much that's around shipping. There are other things as well, supply chain issues. We understand of course there's a Mandatory Climate-Related Disclosures in FY2024. I think the thing I'd focus on is we hit our mandatory things. Something I'm also very keen in Skellerup, we focus on other areas. For example, I mean a logical one is fresh water. Water usage is a big one, which is not decarbonization. We also look at the materials we use. You can see in the second line there, we focused hard on water consumption at our two largest facilities and reducing that, and also reducing VOC, so volatile organic compounds. These are nasties in the air if you like.
We worked very hard because we do use solvents to produce some of our products. One simple example is that we have moved from a solvent-based paint for our rotary vane pumps in China to a water-based paint. That's been a good move. I think it's obvious that in many cases doing the right thing is actually good business sense, and we are very proud of doing that. I want to emphasize that for us, this environmental means more than just decarbonization. In some ways, you know, we use electricity, we want to ensure there's no waste. That's just for business sense. At the same time, we are looking at other things that harm people and ensuring that we are not contributing to that.
We spend a lot of time on that. Another thing is we tend to take big leaps. When we moved to the site at Wigram and as said in some previous annual reports, we tried very hard to get a fully recycled water process. We are very close to that. The idea that each year we can save 5% or something like that is not how we look at it. In fact, our next stage is to look at can we fully make that a closed loop cycle? In other words, we don't need any water to come in, and we don't need any water to go out, effectively. We did the same when we invest in a gas-fired boiler at our site in China years before we needed to, really. We eliminated a coal-fired boiler.
Of course, that was difficult at the time. It was difficult to get natural gas, but it's paying dividends now. Of course, the last point on ESG is G. I'm really pleased with the quality of the directors we have and their experience, their tenure, because Skellerup's not necessarily an easy business. It's an international business. It takes a while to get around it, but I don't think it's that difficult, to be honest. We do have diversity of skills and thought. We have really interesting discussions and debates, and they make an effort to get engaged in the businesses so regularly. It's been a bit difficult with COVID. We visit sites and individual directors visit sites when you're overseas on other business for other business reasons.
There is a really strong engagement from the directors. Also I can say clearly that from our staff, they enjoy meeting our directors and feeling part of the same family. The word family is used a lot in Skellerup. We've been around more than 110 years. Of course, it's not the same company, it's not the same people, but at the same time the word family is used a lot. That's another part of the glue that means that we have a loyalty and a trust with our employees, and our employees have a loyalty and a trust to the company, but also to senior management and by definition, the directors. I'm very proud of how we've progressed that. Then a couple of other slides just to finish off and then we'll welcome questions.
We've explained this before and I should say, please refer to the annual report. There are some very interesting case studies. I think the case studies give a deeper insight into areas what we are doing. Of course like the All Blacks, when it comes to game time, you play to your strengths. These are our strengths. We have a proven track record of earnings and cash flow growth. We have a track record in getting better for rapid mainly development, customer-focused development. We are beginning work on fundamental research. To do that, of course, we have to align with, for example, Lincoln University for agri or even Massey in Palmerston North. Even catching up on some of the research done in places like Ireland and that.
It's essential that we do that for the agri division in the same way it's essential that we keep up to speed on changes to standards for water. We spent a lot of time eliminating a particular compound on the Australian market for potable water. It does cause us an issue. We weren't allowed to sell our products for a period of time. We overcame that and now that's put us in a very good position going forward. I think our track record for rapid development and we're now doing some research is good. The focus on key products, key customers, the key markets and things like that continues to deliver. We don't see any real need to change our business strategy, but certainly we are working to refine it. We have a highly experienced technical team.
Our global team is now, you can see the number, 869 people across six countries. The customer relationship is strong, so we have enduring, and they pay on time, strong relationships with customers, particularly OEMs. Very interesting to see that we don't, in general, lose customers. It is hard to acquire them at times because they have existing suppliers. We have to innovate and offer something that their existing suppliers can't, and that takes time. It's not always easy. It will certainly help now that the world is opening up. We have strong relationships across global markets, so we have a good insight into what's happening, and that can help us in other markets. For example, we can see some of the changes happening in Europe, and we know ultimately that will affect Australia and New Zealand.
Overall, those are the strengths of Skellerup, and I think certainly over the last seven years, we've continued to improve. Then finally, there's a slide, this has been in the annual report, but just to remind people what we focus on and what we do, because, you know, I'm always amused, not even just in New Zealand, but, you know, Skellerup makes Red Band gumboots, and of course that's an iconic brand and a very, very important product to us. In the scheme of things, people just do not seem to understand the depth and breadth of what we do. We group it together and explain this not only externally, but even internally to our staff. I'll leave you to dwell on that and read the annual report.
There's the segmental results, the reconciliation of EBIT and our standard disclaimer. Without further ado, welcome questions.
Okay, first question from Joshua Dale. Josh, go ahead.
Thanks, David and Graham. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, we can.
Brilliant. Just a few questions from me. First one, you've had a very good year. Congratulations on that. You know, you're obviously growing very strongly. To continue to do that, the demand obviously needs to be there from your customers. What are you actually seeing out there? Is demand pent up, you know, beyond your ability to supply, or is it about even, or what's your sense in that respect?
I'd love to be able to answer that accurately, Josh. Look, the bottom line is with central banks almost worldwide, other than Japan maybe, putting interest rates up, they're trying to get on top of inflation, as you all know, by putting interest rates up and killing off that excessive demand that seemed to roll through the COVID period. What we are doing practically is we're working to understand our customers' inventory. Because the first thing to be careful about is where customers have been over ordering or potentially over ordering. We weren't in general in that position because we simply couldn't supply. In that sense, I don't think we have as many issues as maybe some other companies do. Inevitably, there'll be areas where we will have issues.
Probably the way to say it is I've always been careful to ensure that we are constantly working to understand our customers' real demand. Not just our demand, but our customers' demand, and often their customers' demand. We've made a lot of progress in understanding that, but we desperately need to move forward more. Other than that, we can look at the back wins. I mentioned agri earlier. To pick on something else, we know that in these situations, normally governments will spend on infrastructure. Again, I've said this before, we're still waiting on the money to flow into the fixing of potable water distribution in the U.S. market. We have had strong sales of gaskets for the infrastructure pipe rigs, and we are struggling to keep up there.
I'm just picking on a couple of examples to show you. It really depends on the customer and the kind of industry that they're in. One good thing, if you have trust with customers, they're more willing to share the fundamental information. You need their inventory on hand and their sales, and you can work out what your demand should be. You have to be careful just looking at the orders they place on you. I know that's a sort of a roundabout way of answering specifically your question. My take is, of course, I've always said this, as leaders, we should be almost, we should have a competitive strategy, so when the market slows down or demand slows down, we should gain market share because we're
It's not entirely left to the market swings and roundabouts, if that makes sense. There are a couple of areas. One area in particular is roof flashings. Now, if you look at Australia, and I was in Melbourne just the other week and having a chat to the senior team in Melbourne, so really the roof flashing products. The stats would say we're gonna have a real problem in Australia for the next two years. Yet the leader there, and why would I question it? He's delivered very good results for three years. Now, some of that's a combination of price, some of that's a combination of better delivery and service and those kind of things. Some of it is about launching new products at better margins.
He believes he can go counter to the actual market demand. You know, I'm not brave enough to bet against him doing that. As I said, that's kind of anecdotal. I understand that. It's hard because we are in so many areas of business. Fundamentally, I think what we need to focus on is the US market. It has the biggest opportunity to give us the kind of step change in growth, maybe another vertical in an area that we are not so heavily involved in now. No, I don't wanna get any more into automotive or airplanes or things like that. Seriously, there are some opportunities that are opening up and we need to think hard about how we service that. I think aligned to that is the need to manufacture in market.
I don't think we can continue to do everything currently where we do. I mean, we manufacture a lot of product at Wigram. That's our biggest site. China and Vietnam. That's where a lot of our, not all, but a lot of our manufacturing happens. If you just look at geopolitically what's happening, I don't think that's just gonna carry on for the next 10 years. I think there's gonna be. We actively need to review and decide what we're gonna do. So it's a long-winded answer, but that. Specifically, I don't see why we can't improve the business going forward. Year to date, it's only six weeks in, we're in line with the expectations.
Save time, we will give an update, as we usually do, at the shareholders meeting because we'll have had several months, the first quarter of results, and we'll be in a far better position to have a stab at how we'll go on the 13th of June next year. Thank you.
That's helpful, David. Thank you. Second question. Your guidance for FY2022, given at your interim result, baked in a bit of caution in the second half around the ability to get product to customers.
Yes.
It looked, you know, with the result you've just provided, it would suggest you've been able to mitigate that pretty well. Do you have any comment on that?
We managed to mitigate it well.
Yeah.
Yes.
I think there's two things, isn't there? As you know, there is some seasonality in our business, and so sometimes that can fall either side of the line. In general, we were able to overcome the worst of those impacts. In part, that's the explanation you see with inventory. We put more product in the supply chain, so we're able to maintain delivery to customers. We did see a little bit of easing, particularly into the U.S., on some of the constraints and the time it was taking to get product to the U.S. border. There was a bit of a slowdown getting it through the domestic network in the U.S.
Yes. Yes.
If we think of it as our largest market. Also, getting product into New Zealand. You know, for example, it's a peak season, as we're in the winter months for first year. Again, we were able to get product through.
Yeah. Just an example that can, you know, because of revenue recognition, depends on your Incoterms. In particular, we ship a lot of product through Philadelphia in the U.S. Shipping freed up and the price of containers has gone down. Guess what? They haven't got enough truck drivers, so it's all clogging up again in Philadelphia. If that happens in June, it affects our result dramatically. Partly because of the agri seasonality, June, July, I've often said I'm not really in control of that. Fortunately, three days before the end of June, I didn't know how we were doing in detail. The reality is we have a great team. They do what's needed and I rely on them.
When I look at the half year result, you know, going back to the half year and looking forward, I could just see more noise. It didn't look like the U.S. was solving the issues around truck drivers, and particularly on the L.A. side or the West Coast side. In reality, markets clear. You just don't have a feeling for how fast they clear. I'm reasonably confident in places like the U.S. that get solved. Maybe it's better in a totalitarian society like China, they tend to solve things very quickly. You know, again, the Chinese, our Chinese team did a fantastic job. If you put all that together, I mean, you know, you people want certainty about or, you know, a better view of what's happening in the future.
I look back over the last three years and we've managed somehow to overcome a lot of the supply chain issues, and I think we're getting better at it. Not necessarily better at getting the right price for a container, but understanding the true demand of our customers, as I explained earlier, and then meeting that need and where we can't, having that honest conversation with customers so together we can satisfy their customers, the ultimate customer in that sense. I'm really pleased with the result. It was better than I personally expected. Just before I went to Japan, sort of the 3rd week of June, the end result was better than I was expecting.
Great. Thanks. Just two more questions, mostly centering around agri. Of your agri revenue generated in New Zealand specifically, how much of that occurs during, say, June, July, when farmers are stocking up for the coming season? How much occurs during the rest of the year? I guess, how weighted is your New Zealand agri revenue to that winter period ahead of spring?
Probably a slightly longer period of time.
Oh.
than just June, July.
I was gonna say that.
There's a bit of May and a bit of August in there, too. I think if you took that four-month period, slightly more than half-
Yes.
happens in that four-month period.
Yeah, I'd say six months. So Graham's right. Sometimes it depends, like it used to be, we got a good read on how the season would go with field days, which of course has been a bit difficult recently. That was always a bellwether for how the season would go. Of course, that season is bigger than the sort of the mini season which happens sort of December, January, whatever. Yeah, my rough rule of thumb is there's four months of sales, but you don't know when it's gonna fall.
Within that four-month period.
Yeah, within that 4-month period, you get 6 months of sales volume.
At least. Yeah.
I don't know if that helps. That's kinda how I-
No. That is helpful. Thanks. Just last question on the same topic. You know, the milk price is falling close to 20%. The farm gate milk price is potentially gonna be walked down on the back of that and squeezing farmers a little bit. Is there any concern your end that FY2022 might have been perhaps a peak year for New Zealand agri revenue specifically? Not talking about the entire agri division, but just the New Zealand segment.
Remember that, you know, I appreciate the price and actually discretionary spending does impact on demand. Actually, if the cows are there, they're gonna milk them. Can farmers delay that expenditure? Well, for things like liners, no. For tubing a little bit more. We've talked about that in the past. The simple answer I've got is I think we'll have another good year. It will be more challenging for farmers and things like that, but it's not only the sales side, it's also on the operational side. I think we can get more gains, but specifically, it's volume. If milk volumes drop for some reason, then it will affect us negatively, not just the price of the milk powder. If that makes sense.
Sure. That's helpful. That's all from me. Thanks very much, guys.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you. Christian Bell.
Yeah. Hi, guys. Can you hear me?
Yes. Yes, we can. Thank you.
Great. Cool. Thank you. Yeah, again, well done on a great result as well. If I could just kick off with a question around Talbot. At the half, I mean, obviously, we sort of got 12 months under the belt now. There would've been a bit of time required for Talbot to sort of integrate into the business. So just trying to get a sense of, like, what's the sort of contribution uplift that's sort of within your expectations going into next year? Like, is it? Do you sort of see Talbot, I don't know, like doubling what it did this year? Or just are you able to sort of give a little bit of color on that?
I think we acquired the business. Correct me if I'm wrong, Graham.
Yeah, beginning of September.
Yeah.
It's 10 months.
End of August.
Yeah.
Beginning of September. Unfortunately, we couldn't visit for a period of time. I'm sure you remember we were in lockdown and that. The reality is there's still quite a bit of tidy up inside. It's not an issue, but you know, we need to get control on inventory. We've aligned some of the processes to customers and things like that. Of course, a key customer is Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, so some of our outcomes for Talbot depends on Fisher & Paykel Healthcare volumes and those kind of things. We're working hard on developing new customers and things like that. I don't expect a big. It certainly won't be double, you know.
Yeah.
Do we expect Talbot to grow? Of course. We're putting a lot more resource in there. We have a very good team. We're very excited about the development side of Talbot, and that can help with other parts of our business. It's not just Talbot in isolation. We acquired Talbot not just to grow that business as an individual business. It fits extremely well with our development done in Auckland, mainly for the U.S. market, for our core U.S. business, in particular, the Moen, Delta, those kind of key customers. I believe that we may be able to do some of that work in the right place, maybe at Talbot. It de-risks Auckland. We have a lot of plastics machines on one side in Auckland and a lot of development being done there.
Now we have the opportunity to get the synergy of two sites and two teams. We've already been doing that, to be fair, but it's not gonna give, like, a doubling of EBITDA or anything like that in the next 12 months. It just hasn't had the attention. It's quite a small business, but it's a very exciting business in terms of its capability.
Again, we're dealing with OEM customers.
That's right.
The development cycle is.
Yes.
You know, takes some time, so.
They have some very good customers, though. You know, not sure if we talk about customers so much, but Windcave, which is a payment system, they're a very important customer to Talbot, but they are great. I didn't know them, to be honest, until we started talking to Steve Wilson from Talbot. What a fantastic business here in Auckland. You know, I love visiting. To be honest, I haven't visited Windcave. It's on my list to do now. I visited a couple of other Talbot customers in Christchurch. They're very good customers. Yeah, really excited about what we can do there. It's a young team. They're very focused on the business. It's a great acquisition and just another acquisition that is aligned to what we believe we need to do with Skellerup.
It fits into our three-year plan is probably the way to say it.
Great. Thank you. Next thing was one of the reasons for conservatism at the half was availability of, like, associated materials for the OEM, such as semiconductors.
Yes.
Some other sort of building materials. I guess focusing on the semiconductor sort of stuff. There is commentary out there, you know, that this is sort of freeing up quite a bit now, more supply and I guess less demand from electrical appliances and stuff like that. Is that kind of consistent with what you're saying in that, in those sort of materials freeing up, which should be quite beneficial for you into next year?
There are not a lot of products that rely on computer chips, but there is one key customer we're working with, where the supply of chips has been a delay in terms of the launch of their new round of products. The good news there is we have a visit early in October from the head of their development to make sure that things are on track. They're coming to tick the boxes here in New Zealand, and then we're going to Vietnam together and separately, but we'll meet again in Vietnam to sign off because the product is gonna be manufactured. Our understanding is there are a couple of delays related not to what we do, but to the computer chips. There aren't a lot of products that heavily rely on computer chips through the Skellerup Group.
Having said that, it can only be a good thing if these computer chips are freed up, I mean, in general for demand, if you just think about that. That was one specific thing. I'm more concerned about the availability of key raw materials like silicone, so elastomer, the silicone raw material, because there was a big fire in Europe for a key company. There aren't that many companies that produce silicone. So if you're not careful, the suppliers have a lot of power, and of course, they use that power to put their prices up then. You know, when there's a shortage and they can pick and choose, then they work very quickly on price, because these are large companies. So I'm as focused on that as I am with chips and things like that.
Just really the key ingredients, if you like, into our manufacturing processes. Again, overall, we've done a very good job, and we do have that option because of our chemists and that to change, effectively change materials and often through that process, change suppliers. Again, I think we're managing that process really, really well. I'm not doing that, which is great. We have people that are experts in that area. I don't see those constraints as limiting our ability to grow at kind of the rate we have. It's always hard to predict six months or 12 months, but I think if you take a two- or three-year view, we can, we should be able to deliver at least the same kind of level of growth.
Just to add to that, Christian, you know, I'm sure you're also reflecting on the fact that there was shortages of building materials.
Yes.
in some markets, which was impacting demand for our roofing products. That was a factor in the second half.
Yeah.
We were cautious about it. Also the escalation and inflation and costs has reduced some of that construction type activity as well. That was a factor. Then I think we also probably talked about vacuum systems in the U.S. and the restricted availability of truck chassis. I think some of those constraints are still present.
Yeah.
As David says, by and large, we've been able to obviously overcome those, with the results that we have.
Just an anecdote on that. We supply industrial, so industrial foam products that are necessary for a number of things, for insulation, various things. It's very hard to get that foam now. We talk about, you know, obviously it's a much bigger thing with GIB board and things like that, but there are other things. There are seven prisons that are being redeveloped, and there's just a shortage of this kind of foam. We are one of the key suppliers into that kind of business. Those rebuilds have been delayed for long periods of time. They're now coming on stream very, very quickly. Just specifically, we are finding it hard to get that foam. But again, we used to get it out of Sydney. It's a Sekisui product, which is Japanese originally.
Sekisui also have factories in Thailand and other places. Of course, our team are canvassing those other places, where can we get this from? We probably have a stronger position than some of the larger suppliers out of the U.S. of the same kind of product. Look, you know, we're getting into quite a bit of detail there. Overall, I'm confident we can overcome the hurdles that get thrown at us. I mean, we've done that for the last three years and done it well. To me, and certainly for Graham, our focus very much is ensuring that it is true capital allocation. We want the best people working on the best product, projects, and we want to invest our money in those areas where we know we can get the results.
I mean, I know that's really high level, but that's really what Graham and I are focusing on. What's exciting is, you know, I think we've chatted about it, Christian, we have four or five relatively large projects that would change the game. Of course, we'd update the market at an appropriate time when we get the purchase orders and those kind of things. It's not like we are bereft, and it's just trying to improve what we have. We actually have some really exciting opportunities and. It's very, very hard to realize that sitting in New Zealand. For some of us, and that includes Graham, we have to get out into the market, meet these customers, and make it happen. Business won't happen sitting here and getting Zoom calls, Teams calls. No, no offense.
No, that's really useful context. Sorry, just one final clean up sort of question, I guess.
Yeah.
Just on your EBIT bridge, you've got a positive contribution from construction and roofing. I'm just a little bit confused 'cause when you sort of back out what the revenue numbers were from FY2021 to FY2022, it looks like revenue's gone from NZD 50 million - NZD 40 million. Is that correct or?
Yeah. I think, Christian, if you recall, when we presented the chart, initially last year on revenue, there was a classification issue with plumbing that had been pushed into roofing rather in the potable and wastewater.
Okay.
Yeah. There hasn't been a reduction in roofing revenue.
Okay, cool. What was the sort of like-for-like construction and roofing revenue for last year then?
I think we're looking at a couple of million NZD up, but I'll double-check that and come back to you.
Cool. Thank you. That's all. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Okay. Next question from Matt.
Hi, gents. Just two questions from me. Would you be able to talk through, I guess, a bit of the mechanism of how you raise prices? I've talked to some manufacturers, OEM manufacturers, that kind of need to wait for the end product price to increase before OEM kind of allows price increases through. Just keen to hear at a high level, and I'm sure it varies across the business, how you're able to pass through or raise prices?
There may well be customers listening in, so I'll be careful how I say it. Look, when I talk about increasing prices, we're talking about the value discussion. I think Warren Buffett said it first, "Price is what you pay, value is what you get." You have to believe in the value and help customers understand the value. The value can be simply you can supply when others can't, or the value could be your ability to completely innovate and remove unnecessary parts or whatever. To me, I'm just giving a very generic answer. Happy to have a chat that's not so open about mechanisms for doing pricing. You really have to. I mean, it would take too long. How do most New Zealand companies do their price?
They look at their costs and add a margin, and the cost is probably wrong. Why do they do cost plus? Most people know that's not a smart way to price. It's easy and fast. There's a real science to pricing. I guess the thing I'm pleased about is I see that as my responsibility to ensure that our leaders are really focused on price at a time when one of the biggest risks facing us over the next two years, inflation is staying high. I'm sure central banks will get on. We could have high inflation, high input costs, lower GDP growth sort of worldwide, and that will affect our customers and we get the margin squeeze. How do we deal with that? We must make sure we have the value equation right. It doesn't always mean put prices up. It means price appropriately.
It may actually mean we did this a couple of years ago. You put the price up to the point where the customer actually leaves. The only true test of your value, if you sell product to a number of customers, is to put your price up to the point where you lose a customer. Most people are so afraid of doing that, they never not. I got asked yesterday, without going through the detail, are we maximizing price? That's a really hard question to answer, to think about. The only way to test that is to lose a customer. Yeah. Look, there's a real science on pricing. I'm very passionate about that, so if there's right time we can get together and have a chat, but I'd prefer to leave it there.
I think the point is a lot of people talk themselves out of it. If we go back six years ago, it's easy to talk about. We had a business where I was insisting on the price increase. We spent more time arguing internally than actually going out, and it was all about we'll lose these customers. Actually, we lost one customer that I can recall, and after two months, they came back and paid the higher price because they realized that actually the price was fair given what we did. You've gotta be careful that you don't let your teams talk. It's hard work. The joke I've said in Christchurch is put your crash helmet on, go out there and do it. People just, you know, it's cool reluctance, if you like. There's no magic bullet.
You have to have a pricing strategy, and you need to have a pricing structure which is really in your system that makes sense. If there's an inconsistency, you give price away. As much as anything, you need to stop the erosion of price at the front end. The other way around, a number of companies, not necessarily Skellerup, but in general, a price increase comes through, they just put it in the system. The first thing you should do when someone tries to put the price up is say, "No, you haven't given us sufficient time," or whatever excuse you use. You must be able to justify a price increase. In other words, you must be able to explain the value.
Yeah. That's helpful. Thank you. Just the second one. Europe seems to be facing an energy crisis at the moment with gas and electricity prices up, you know, five or ten fold.
Yes.
It's leading to some industrial shutdowns, and energy intensive industries where they're having to shut down production.
Yeah.
Are you seeing much impact from customers yet? Or, yeah, just to get an idea of how exposed you think that might be for Skellerup in terms of just literally your customers can't produce this if they're in energy-intensive industries, perhaps.
Yeah. Specifically, I haven't seen anything that will directly affect Skellerup other than we do a very small amount of automotive product. I've said previously, that's tricky. Some of the key parts are metal made in Germany and, you know, if you look at the impact of the Russian gas going into Germany, the industry that's gonna get hit there is steel.
Yeah.
That affects Sweden as well, and Norway's not gonna share its electricity, all that. I mean, at the end of the day, a lot of it's related to metal and energy intensive industry. We're not really in that, but it could actually help us. I mean, if that impacted on our competitors making rubber liners or tubing or whatever, we may have an op. There's always two sides to these things. But you're asking, have I got any specific information affecting Skellerup? At this stage in Europe, no.
Yeah. No, that's helpful. Thanks very much. Okay. Rohan.
Oops. Morning, guys. Sorry, I've come to this call late because I have unfortunately had two results today. If I ask a question that's already been answered, apologies for that and making you repeat yourself. Just a couple of quick ones, hopefully. Talbot, you said FPH was a key customer. Can you just give me an idea of the products you're making? Is it more like tubing and consumables, or are we talking about more like kind of you know, chambers, for the kinda hardware?
It's a bit of both. Yeah, it's a bit of both. Also we're not a sole supplier, I don't believe, although we may be on one or two items. I mean, that's some of the detail we're working through. I think to be fair to FPH, one, they do some of their own manufacturing, but they've outsourced to the obvious suppliers in Auckland. They see that as, you know, you always want a supplier you can put your hands around as things get difficult. Talbot in Christchurch is a little bit removed from that. Their technical capability means they're kind of in the game there.
I know that we're working closer with FPH, but also what's become clear to us. I mean, if you were to pick a large OEM you'd like to do more business with and you're a New Zealand business, you'd be silly not to spend a lot of time on, you know, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare. Indirectly, we also supply some critical foam components to them. In Skellerup Rubber Services, we make a little silicone product that is also supplied to FPH. We're realigning how we deal with Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, and I think there's good opportunities, mutual opportunities for growth there. I don't see it as just that. That's one key customer for Talbot, although to be fair, that's how I framed it. You know, there are other very important key customers at Talbot.
I think the key thing is if it's consumables, and maybe that's the point of your question, you tend to get orders every month. I framed it earlier on that. Maybe I didn't make it clear. If you go back seven years ago or even 10 years ago, Skellerup relied heavily on two areas. Flexiflow into the iron ore and the Pilbara, and pumps for oil and gas and fracking in the U.S. It was very boom-bust, is probably the way to say it. It wasn't as bad as that, but it was very hard to predict what would happen. We've worked very hard to turn things into essential consumables, which means you continue to get every month some level of orders. I think that process has been very beneficial to us.
Just to come back, one other thought that might get you thinking about things. It's quite often that a key OEM makes less margin than their tier one suppliers if that supplier is of something key. That's one reason I've always been interested in OEM business, where you kind of the power sits a bit more with you.
That is interesting. Thanks. Very thoughtful answer. The second question was just at the end of our last update we got, you know, you were talking about shipping issues and I guess the timing of those. I might have missed comments on that. Has that kind of resolved? Is there less stock on the water and yet to be booked? Or we still have quite a bit kind of in transit and therefore a decent amount of forward revenue kind of locked? Then the second one, I'll just give you them all at once. There was also talk of the large healthcare contract and there was sort of imminent signing or imminent first orders. Are you able to provide any color on the timing or potential update that may go along with that?
You may have missed it earlier, but we have a visit from that key customer. Sorry, someone else is talking.
There's a thing is in the background of Rohan. I'll mute myself.
Sorry. Sorry, Rohan. It's just distracting. Look, I'll do it the other way around. The key customer is visiting New Zealand in early October, and then they're going to Vietnam, and that's the official sign-off. What's interesting is, the person coming down is the head of their technical team, and he's an ex-Moen engineer that took over working. Very excited to meet him and have a good chat about how to do more OEM business in the U.S. I'll also be in Vietnam when they arrive in Vietnam for their final sign-off there. Really looking forward to that. That's where that sits.
There has been a delay on their side, but this is well signaled last year, if you like, where they were waiting on computer chips and things like that. That's not something we control in that sense. There's no hold up from our point of view. We want to see purchase orders and sales and crank that up. That would really help. We expect that to happen in the second half of next year. I mean, coming back to our investment in inventory and in transit and things like that, the goods and transit was up NZD 4 million. I said I might talk a little bit about inventory. Overall, our inventory was up almost NZD 20 million. There was about three...
round figures, NZD 3 million of foreign exchange translation impact, NZD 4 million of goods in transit. Of course, we acquired Talbot, so there was just less than NZD 2 million there Sekisui. The products we're on consignment in New Zealand, we've had to own but for good reasons, we now own that inventory. The rest of it was really strategic inventory, you know, acquiring often raw materials in anticipation of demand. I think we've done a very good job. The proof, as I said earlier, is that it should sell through this next year, or a large part of that will sell through. Again, if there's a shortage, as I mentioned earlier, if there's a shortage of silicone, I'm quite happy to carry a higher level of silicone than we normally would.
Yes, goods in transit is up and I believe will stay up. I did mention again that although the shipping is being solved, the truck drivers in the U.S., so particularly for us, Philadelphia is an important port. The port has become clogged, not because of the shipping, but the inability to move the containers away from the port both by truck and by rail. That will get solved, but I have no insight to when that will happen. Yet many people are telling me the U.S. is now solved. Well, actually, specifically for us, it isn't. In fact, it got worse over the last four weeks, but I'm sure it'll. On balance, those things I believe are getting solved. You know, I don't, you know. Will it affect the half year result? I don't know.
Thanks for the color.
Okay, well, we don't have any more questions, so we're banging on 11 o'clock. Thank you very much everyone.
Thanks, everyone. You know, from my point of view and Graham's point of view, it's pleasing to have a great result, an excellent result. Thank you for your interest. If you have anything specific, please reach out to Graham or me. Thanks, everyone.
Cheers.
Bye.