Good morning. Looking forward to presenting the half year 2022 results to everyone today. Just before we get started, we'll give an explanation of how you can ask questions. We'd prefer if you did questions at the end. I'll just hand over to Graham. Graham Leaming, CFO, obviously, is here helping me present today. Graham, how are we gonna deal with questions?
Yes. I think what we'll do, I've got everyone muted at the moment. If you can just put a note in the chat that you'd like to ask a question. You don't need to detail your question in the chat. We'll just unmute you in sequence. You can ask your question. Hopefully we'll give you a good response.
I'll wait. It's 9:59. I'll give another 30 seconds, and then we'll get started. I appreciate your interest in the company as always. I was just saying to Graham, it's always easier when the numbers are good to give a presentation. That's great. But overall, I think Skellerup has done a really, really good job.
The team have done a fantastic job over the last, not just year, but over the last five years. I'll obviously refer to that in the presentation. Okay. I assume that you can all see the screen, and I'll refer to the PowerPoint. Let me get going. It's really pleasing to announce another record earnings result for the first half of 2022.
This consistent earnings growth is a result of a long period of time focusing on our key strategy, our key reason for being. I've explained that a number of times in both the annual reports and things. Just as a reminder, the change in the business has been moving much more towards an OEM model, where we rely heavily on our deep material knowledge.
We combine that with our tooling and manufacturing scalability to essentially create a component that is a critical part of a larger system. For example, we could argue that a milking liner is actually our product, but of course, it fits into a milking system. It's a critical part because it must meet food safety standards and things like that.
In the same way that an infrastructure pipe seal is a critical part of the infrastructure providing potable water ultimately to consumers. It's just a much better business model, I believe, especially in tough times. One of the things that's come through is the strength of our customers. You know, they pay on time. They actually understand supply chain issues because they're quite large and things like that.
We've seen that the strength of our customers has helped us to be strong. Anyway, let's go through the PowerPoint as it is. You know, what I'm pleased about this time is the revenue growth is broad-based. We've managed to achieve revenue growth while maintaining margins, controlling indirect costs. Of course, we've had the issues for more than two years now, really dealing with COVID-19.
I'm so proud of the way our team have dealt with that. I'm not saying everything's gone our way but we've dealt with a lot of supply chain issues and disruption and things like that. Overall, I think the team's delivered a fantastic job, which ultimately ends up being a fantastic result in the numbers.
I'm very proud of what they've achieved, and we're relying on them to continue doing that. I'm really pleased. Right, into the numbers. It's a record net profit after tax of NZD 23.2 million. It's up 19% from the prior corresponding period. We've had the strongest growth in the key markets, particularly the U.S. We've had a focus on the U.S. as I've said, over the last couple of years, but we've had very good growth in Asia and New Zealand.
In the two divisions, we have the Industrial division, obviously, and the Agri division. If we start with the Industrial division. We have a record EBIT of NZD 18.7 million. As I said earlier, broad-based sales growth across potable and wastewater applications and marine has been particularly strong. We'll get into some more detail as usual later.
We acquired Talbot Advanced Technologies and the results are in line with plan. It's been difficult because obviously that's in Christchurch and travel has been limited in that sense. It's a great acquisition that aligns with what we're trying to do, and we believe it's strengthening our capability. The record Agri division result of NZD 16.7 million. Dairy, Rubberware sales, we've had good growth to international customers. We've had very good footwear sales growth, particularly in the New Zealand hardware channel.
In fact, I was on Radio New Zealand earlier today, and I was asked specifically, have we run out of Red Bands again? We've worked hard to get inventory in place and things like that. The footwear sales growth has been very, very good. As it says, particularly in the New Zealand hardware channel, which is a relatively new channel for us.
Of course, we've been benefiting from operational gains at Wigram and some of our other facilities. Overall, very pleased with the result in both divisions and as I said, a record result for both. The operating cash flow is NZD 19.7 million, and it's down for a couple of reasons. One is we have planned an investment in inventory.
Obviously, there's the addition of the working capital for Talbot, but the majority of it is really investing in inventory. The inventory is in two parts. It's raw material coming into the business and making sure that we don't run out of raw material. At the same time, we have more containers on the water.
I'll come back to that in terms of our guidance later. Just that's the main reason. It's not of concern. In fact, we've taken some tactical decisions in some cases to buy inventory that gives us a competitive advantage. We can dwell on that later if of interest.
Overall, that's the reason why the operating cash flow is down. Pleasing that the directors have recommended a dividend or approved a dividend of an increase of one cent per share, which reflects the strong earnings and the low levels of net debt, and also our confidence in the future of the business. We have a very strong balance sheet. As you know, net debt very low at NZD 25.6 million.
There was a slight mistake in the release slide. Sorry, that's my fault. Around figures 8% of total assets, despite the Talbot acquisition and the planned investment in inventory. The directors agreed yesterday at our board meeting, guidance, NPAT guidance of NZD 44 million-NZD 47 million for the full year 2022. Okay. Next slide. Thanks, Graham.
I often get asked what changed in the last year or what changed in the last 18 months. I think if you look at the five-year figures, of course, there's one minor blip if that makes sense. At the same time, I think it shows strong growth over 5 years. As I said at the start of the presentation, I believe this is a consistency about how we're applying our business strategy and very good execution among the team.
I think we're getting better at what we do. I think our customers are recognizing that. One of the good things is when we look forward, this is the 5 years history, of course, but when we look forward, we see very strong growth opportunities. It just simply comes down to our team delivering those opportunities.
Just to go through a few highlights. Revenue's up NZD 13.9 million and 10% on the prior comparative period. EBIT's up NZD 4.8 million and 18%. Really, really good numbers. NPAT up NZD 3.7 million and 90% as I said earlier. The dividend's up. It's now NZD 0.075 per share. Operating cash flow, I've explained in a little bit more detail.
One pleasing thing from my point of view, we're starting to invest in some really interesting opportunities in terms of equipment and things like that. I can deal with that in the questions if you want. But it it's to increase capacity. It's to provide for new products. But not just CapEx. We've been investing in new people in the company.
We are strengthening the sales force, particularly in the U.S., for example, and other areas. This is a great time to invest in the business. The acquisition of Talbot, as I said, the results are in line. The nominal amount was NZD 10.2 million. Of course, there's working capital and things to think about, but we see that as improving over time, so that's great.
The net debt increased to fund the investment in Talbot and the planned working capital. I guess I just dwell on this is not a one-year or two-year kind of result now. We're showing, in my view, we are growing, and we will continue to grow strongly. We have the waterfall, we call it, the bridge between half year 2021 and our result.
I won't really dwell on this too much. I mean, obviously, there's the Talbot thing. There's an offset for the government grants that we received in, you know, the U.S. and Australia. That's explained clearly there. As you would know, we keep a strong control of corporate costs. If we have any questions about foreign exchange, I'll defer to Graham later on.
We've managed the foreign exchange well. I think we have, you know, obviously, where possible, we deal with a natural hedge and things like that. At the same time, Graham in particular is in charge of recommending hedging programs. We don't expect to do anything other than protect our position with that. If you have any questions on that, we can come back to that later. Thanks, Graham.
Just getting into the industrial division in a bit more detail. Again, if you look at the five-year numbers, I think they're strong. Disappointing in one way because I have said previously, I think the initial target for EBIT is 20% as a percentage of sales. The numbers, given the situation we've been in, I think the numbers are good and there's good growth there and certainly a strong pipeline of new opportunities.
Some of which have slipped because of delays in, funnily enough, computer chips and a few other things in the ultimate product. Still very good opportunities to grow the industrial division. We're starting to see good signs of revenue growth, particularly from infrastructure work. We've had some market share gains, particularly in the U.S. and Australia with some new products. That's really good.
Paul Goddard and his team have done a fantastic job with this U-DEK marine foam sales. Our sales would be higher if we could just get the product. We are investing in capacity, but we're short in every market. We're short in the U.S., we're short in Australia, we're short in New Zealand, and we could sell additional foam into Europe. So we're picking and choosing who gets it.
That's a good position to be in in some ways. But at the same time, we don't want it to last too long, otherwise someone will fill the gap, and that's the end. But our foam is recognized, particularly the U-DEK marine foam is the best in the world. Vacuum system sales, I've mentioned in the past, we had two key products. They've been launched and there's a big show next week.
Once a year, there's a big show in the U.S. that's related to mainly oil and gas, but also wastewater products. It's called the WWETT Show, W-W-E-T-T. Please don't ask me what it stands for. They keep changing it. You can look it up. It's a really important show for our products that go through the Masport business. It's interesting, of course, with the Permian Basin.
I don't think it's heeding that the oil price is likely to hit $100. I don't think it's an issue that, for example, our new applications are targeted particularly at the Permian Basin. We believe the launch of the new blower system. We're having very, very good feedback, but the official sort of hands-on launch is actually next week.
We already have good sales, and the really pleasing thing from a low base, we actually have enough inventory on hand now at a time when our competitors are struggling. Without dwelling on that too much, but just in the same way, it's great to have some tailwinds where, you know, the oil and gas prices will stay high, and that doesn't hurt us, particularly in the U.S. market. It helps us.
We've also had good growth in other applications, so roofing in Asia, health in New Zealand and Australia, and of course, Talbot's part of that and contributes, as I said, in line with our expectations. A very good result from the industrial division and more to come. Then moving on to the Agri Division.
Again, I was asked about the milk price and, you know, what impact that will have in New Zealand. Of course, our Agri division is not only about New Zealand, and it is related to milk volumes. It doesn't hurt that we've got a very, very good milk price in New Zealand. Dairy rubberware sales growth is, you know, we've had good growth in both New Zealand and particularly in the U.S.
Margins are down slightly. We do face increasing raw materials, and it's not always possible to either reformulate or deal with that and pass costs on, particularly in New Zealand. Freight costs, that's been tricky. We've done a very good job, I think, in managing that. In reality, in some cases, we've had to create a freight surcharge for a period of time.
In other cases, we've simply moved on price. In some cases, we've had to absorb some part of those freight cost increases. In general, we've done a very good job of managing that, I think. Timing is getting more difficult because we have more inventory on the water, and that means that depending on our terms, where we have terms that mean that we can recognize the revenue when it's received or delivered on a delivered basis.
That can make it tricky in terms of predicting how things are going. The good news is we're not letting our customers down. In fact, our key customer on the agri side, back in August, they had serious stockouts, a bit like our Red Bands in Christchurch. We have actually achieved a position for 95% of their products. They're not in stockout now.
That didn't happen by luck. That was a lot of hard work by the team in Christchurch. Really pleased with how we've managed to maintain and improve our supply chain to our key customers. We are investing. I mentioned earlier about investing. We're investing in both production volume increase, and there are ways of reducing lead time through that. We've been working hard on that.
We're also investing, of course, in people, as I said. In the Agri division, we have invested in both technical resource and also in manufacturing resource, and so expect to see good results from that. Of course, Agri includes footwear and we've had good growth in all markets, and particularly in the New Zealand rural and hardware markets. There's been some range standardization and rationalization.
That's always difficult because people love not only their Red Bands, but their four-by-four or all these other variants of rubber gum boots that we make, high-quality boots. In reality, you know, the supply issues have partially been solved by very good work in China from Martin and his team, very good work in Christchurch from our team, and really good communication with the customers.
I'm not saying we don't cause issues at times. I'm saying that we communicate well, and we're overcoming that. The next slide is really, copied from the annual report, and it just really reminds us that when we look out the window, we see a lot of our products used even here in New Zealand.
It gives a good overview of what we do and a reminder of some of those areas that you might not think about. We see good growth right across the board. It is really pleasing if you think about over the next two or three years, governments will inevitably spend more on infrastructure.
Below the road, you can see the infrastructure pipes and wastewater things that we are involved in. Then above the road, and even on the road in that sense, we are dependent on the housing market in Australia and the U.S. and things like that, of course, New Zealand as well. We've refined our products, and we have far more certainty about the kind of products that our customers want.
In fact, during this period of time, I believe we've got closer to our customers, and we're starting to understand their true underlying needs. Overall, it's been going very well. Then we have, as always, the reconciliation of EBIT to group NPAT. Segment EBIT to group NPAT. The numbers are there. I don't think there's much other than I just, again, emphasize that this is not a one-year story or a two-year story.
It's now a five-year story, and I hope it's a ten-year story. There's the usual disclaimer at the end. A couple of thoughts I wrote down. First of all, the milk price is driven really by demand for protein ultimately, and the outlook is strong. A couple of thoughts for you.
We do tend to focus on New Zealand because we're based in New Zealand, but in reality, a lot of what we do is overseas. Just a reminder that overseas, the cost of milk effectively or the cost of protein depends a lot on food, the food source for cows, and so the feed, I guess, is a better way of saying it.
A lot of it's grain feed and the cost of grain has gone up like most other things. New Zealand has some advantages being grass-fed. I mean, there are other countries that are grass-fed as well, but not in the same way. The demand for protein is strong. If you take a five-year view, it looks like it's strong even if you add in non-bovine or non-animal milk products.
If you take in soybeans and all those kind of things, the demand is strong. On the industrial side, for the first time, we're starting to see that spend on infrastructure that I've talked about for five years, but we hadn't seen. It's starting to get stronger, and there's a lot more interest in doing that.
Some of that's been caused by supply chain issues out of China, to be honest, and also inevitably, the breaking down of the infrastructure in a number of cities. When we look at the outlook, I'll preempt another question. It's obvious that, if you look at NZD 23.2 and double it, most people can get to NZD 46.4. If you look at our guidance of NZD 44-NZD 47. What does the guidance mean?
As you know, our full year is thirtieth of June, and I guess there's more uncertainty around what will be delivered at that time. At a time when, particularly in New Zealand, who knows what's gonna happen? We're assuming we will lose maybe two weeks production at Wigram. We've sort of put that in our forecast and things like that. We're being maybe more conservative than we might otherwise have been.
If you take a longer view, the outlook is very strong. On those other larger projects I've mentioned in the past, there has been some slippage, but we still expect to be in production round about the thirtieth of June for some of the health products that we talked about in the past. There's no issue with it. They still want it. They've paid for everything. We're not...
It's just, we need a purchase order, and once we do that, it may be of a size that is material that we would need to update the market. If you take a twelve-month view, we're working on the right things. Our team are executing well, and I'm just very proud of the effort that the team, the broader team has made. That's it from me. I welcome questions. We have some questions, so I'll let Graham.
Yes. I'll just stop sharing the screen for a minute, and hopefully, I can manage us through this. The first question we have is from Christian. Christian Bell from Jarden. I'm just going to unmute you, Christian, I hope.
I think you can ask him. He can unmute.
Christian, are you able to chat now? I can see you're unmuted. Please go ahead.
Can you guys hear me?
Yes, we can.
Cool. Firstly, well done on the good result. Just to kick things off, Dave, I mean, you already kind of just addressed it, but obviously the strong outlook doesn't quite marry up to the guidance that you've set. You have given a couple of reasons, but just trying to tease that out a little bit more. Is the reasoning there more of a [audio distortion] s o far, January numbers? Has there been a slight slowdown in the second half, so far?
No. January has been strong. February looks strong. There's just a concern about what might happen in terms of deliveries. That's the main thing. It's not that things are deteriorating from our point of view. I think you can understand the directors, of course, are New Zealanders.
You tend to get affected very much by the New Zealand view. Whereas actually in the rest of the world, it's opening up faster. And in some ways, you know, we may see a better result than we're indicating here. I mean, the reality is that there's quite a big swing. It all comes down to timing on the thirtieth of June. There's no indications the business is any worse in that we wouldn't follow a normal path, if that makes sense.
I think just for a number of reasons, that's why we had a very good discussion about that yesterday, as you would expect. People are naturally. I don't know, maybe it's just living in New Zealand at the moment. From a business point of view, you know, it really comes down to, we have a lot more inventory on the water that may or may not be recognized. That's not the raw material, that's the deliveries to our customers in many cases directly. We don't see any signs of things slowing down, but who knows? I think it's just natural to be a bit more cautious at this time.
I think maybe there's one or two other things to add as well. For example, in Australia, where we have some pretty significant business in the roofing construction area. Our ability to sell our product is impacted by the availability of other associated material.
Yes. Yes.
Again, in the U.S., our vacuum systems business, the ability for customers to deploy our product depends on them being able to get truck chassis and what have you. That's a bit of a constraint at the moment too. Just be mindful that there's things outside of our control that could impact, hence where we are.
Great. No, that's cool. Thank you for that. The second thing, just, there was no sort of mention of the scaling of the major healthcare customer. Just wondering, is that not included in the current guidance or it is, and it's just taking a bit longer to have an impact?
We were expecting to start production in the last quarter of this financial year. That slipped out a quarter effectively. We may actually be manufacturing in May, June, but ultimately to sell, we have to sell it to the customer. Of course, we haven't. It's very hard to predict exactly when that will happen.
We've already shipped the first round of assembly equipment to Vietnam, and that's being set up now. It's not back to what Graham was saying, it's not us being held up in any way. It is us being held up, but it's, we're being held up by the customer ultimately who, they're short of several things. For that product, for example, they're actually short of chips.
Circuit boards.
Computer chips and circuit boards. It's not like a one-year delay or something like that. It's very, very close. I was hoping. Just to answer your question specifically, there is no allowance for that in the forecast right now.
Cool. Thank you. The investment in inventory in the first half, I suspect that kind of remains elevated across the second half. There's no unwind there?
Yes, yes, and no. In some cases, like with raw materials, I think we'll maintain that at a higher level. Like, there's known shortages in things like silicone, which is used by a number of our businesses. I think that will stay high. When it comes to customers and things like that actually depends on how the supply chain unwinds.
We see, for example, it's really hard to predict. We actually see in the U.S. that containers that were taking 90 days are now taking 60 days. But could that go back to 90 days? Don't know. The reality is we have sort of 90 days worth of inventory on the water at the moment.
If it stayed at 60 days, that one month's inventory would wash through, and that would be great from a results point of view. We can't get an insight into that. Of course, Mainfreight comes out today and says you can expect 20-30 days delay for anything arriving in Auckland.
I try to focus internationally. Remember, 80% of our revenue is outside New Zealand effectively, and a large chunk of that is manufactured outside New Zealand. I was just trying to remind people that it's not that New Zealand isn't important. Of course it is. The point I'm making is our exposure. This is the beauty of a holding company in a variety of markets with a variety of products made in many different locations.
You know, one of the exciting things from my point of view is we are starting to see how we can de-risk that by manufacturing in market. Now, we're not gonna have that by the 30 of June, but we're actually practically doing things now that will have an effect on the next financial year.
The hard thing right now is, of course, can we rely on that reduction of inventory between now and June? Normally, that would wash through for the DEKS systems as an example. What about there into Europe? I mean, you know, we'd be silly not to take a conservative view. You know, just that's just that. I'm sorry, I can't be any more specific than that because basically I don't know.
It depends.
Yeah, it depends. Shouldn't say I know. It depends.
Well, no, that's helpful. Thank you. Just last one from me. Obviously you're looking to expand in the U.S. Are you able to give an update there? Obviously you haven't been able to travel. I mean, what conditions need to be present for you to travel to the U.S.? Like
The ability to come back quickly is probably the easy answer. Look, the reality is, even without the ability to go, I mean, that's our balance sheet acquisition stuff. We're still scanning and looking at opportunities in that sense. The reality is we have a lot of organic growth and, you know, everyone knows that organic growth is safer and faster than, well, maybe not faster, but acquisitional growth. If we could find a good aligned business of, I don't know, NZD 50 million, NZD 100 million or something like that'd be great. Please bring any opportunities to us that you see that fit. Seriously, I do need to get into market.
I'm getting nervous that we've been away from markets for a long period of time, particularly me, but, you know, Graham and others as well. It's really important that there's a tendency in a crisis to narrow. Your world view narrows down. You sort of go into the cave a bit. It's really important to get out and communicate. I am pleased that in general, we're communicating well with our customers.
I think through the crisis, we've done very well. The customers have recognized that, and if anything, it's strengthened the relationship. Specifically acquisitions, the U.S. is still a target market. Of course, you don't wanna acquire an old manufacturing business in the States. The liability side is hard. You know, maybe there's a way of doing it with a bit of capital ourselves on our existing sites. That's the kind of thing we're working through now, and hopefully we'll have an update at the full year.
Cool. Just under the current rules, is it sort of like a July thing when you've actually got to get over there yourself?
Well, I think practically that's right. Look, my concern is if I jump on a plane and leave, I'd love to go to Australia as well because, you know, our colleagues in Melbourne in particular, but also in Sydney, it's time to look at some opportunities even in the Australian market, but also visit some of the customers there.
I mean, it's been two years since I've been to Australia. Sounds silly. In reality, I'm quite happy to go there. I am concerned about coming back. I don't wanna spend even in self-isolation or whatever the rule. I mean, the rules are changing so quickly. I'm nervous they might change again.
Look, I know that obviously we have John Strowger on our board, so there's a lot of deals happening virtually, if that makes sense. I think for Skellerup, we would want to sort of touch and feel the business and get to know the people. I still believe that good business is done through relationships. It's not so much that I wanna get on a plane and do a deal. It'd be great if there's a deal, but I want to make sure that we're strengthening the relationships with key customers.
Cool.
Short answer, I intend to be on a plane internationally before June.
Cool. That's great. Thank you very much, Ross.
Okay.
Thanks.
Joshua Dale, we'll come to you. I'll just unmute you and, you should be good to ask your question now.
Great. Thank you. Can you hear me okay?
Yep.
We can.
Excellent. Well done on a very solid half. I've just got three questions, actually. First one, you mentioned last result that Agri performance was constrained on the footwear side. Has that benefit all been recognized in this half? I noticed performance here was quite strong, or is there still a bit to come in the second half as farmers gear up for the season?
Certainly on the footwear side, I think we've solved our supply chain issue for now. Of course, if it rains for the next month, we might have an issue again.
That is an element of the increase in inventory too. 'Cause we were basically running at nil inventory in footwear.
That's right.
At year-end. Whereas now we do have some stock in the warehouse.
Yes. There were constraints on the production side, but we have invested in that, as I said earlier. I don't see any constraints that will hold us up delivering a good Agri result by thirteenth of June. Domestically, that is. Internationally, it comes back to the delivery of those containers, as I mentioned, in terms of revenue recognition. Of course we're heading into the New Zealand season, so we don't see any constraints there.
Great. Thank you. Just while on the topic of Agri, you mentioned last result there might be opportunities for the division created by DeLaval buying Milkrite. Is there any update there?
Yeah, there's several things. We know that DeLaval have not only acquired Milkrite, they've also acquired the dairy assets of Trelleborg, which is another thing. We know they're setting up a super factory or whatever in Poland. There are a number of steps that they're taking. I mean, DeLaval's arguably the largest company doing first-fit dairy sheds in the world.
They have a large presence in the U.S. and of course, Conewango and our other key customer, GEA, compete with them. Excuse me. I expect the competition level to increase, but we've been expecting this for well, since the acquisition. I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing. We see GEA as a very important customer for us. Also we do have our own products.
As I mentioned, through Conewango, we sell aftermarket into the U.S. market, and we're seeing good opportunities there. It's an interesting time. Probably they didn't understand what was happening, but they've chosen an interesting time to do what they're trying to do. Opportunities will open up. I don't have any more specifics than that.
Oh, that's fine. That's helpful. Perhaps one for Graham. Can you give us a sense of how aligned your revenue and costs are from an FX perspective? Just, you know, how naturally hedged are you?
Well, I think we've talked about this a little bit before, and I'm happy to give you some specifics following the call if you'd like. On the euro and the pound, we're near enough to being perfectly naturally hedged. We have a small residual exposure that we hedge. Our two largest exposures are the Australian dollar, which we're long on, and the US dollar.
We hedge both of those net positions. They've been not significant positions. As of now, we have about 80% of our USD exposure hedged for the next 12 months, slightly above current spot rates, probably wouldn't surprise you given the recent reduction. We do have cover in place beyond that 12-month period as well.
We typically will go out as far as 24 months. For the Australian dollar, we're roughly 50% hedged, for the next 12 months at rates about where we are trading today, so just below sort of 93 cents. Those are our two biggest exposures, the Aussie dollar and the US dollar.
Great. Thanks. That's helpful. That's all from me. Thank you very much, guys.
Thank you.
All right, next question's from David Oxley. David, I'll find you on the list here and unmute you. Oh, here we go. Sorry. You lead with the Oxley, so-
Here we go.
Here we go. David, fire away. You should be able to.
Unmute
to speak. There's that.
Great. Thank you. Graham, can you hear me okay?
We can. Thank you.
Perfect. I just had a couple of questions, if I may. Firstly, just on the Agri division and the dairy or the milking liner business, could you give an update on how their shift from rubber to silicone is progressing? Is it progressing or is that still something into the future?
It's still into the future. We understood that it was a strategy of GEA, but in reality, the sales of black rubber liners to GEA have increased quite dramatically. In fact, it's growing at about the same rate, so the ratio is staying about the same. I think the natural growth in the market, the organic growth in the market, means they've lost sort of interest in trying to drive that.
Of course, silicone liners are more expensive than black rubber liners, but they last longer. There's a trade-off in terms of the labor cost and everything like that. Without worrying about that too much, I can tell you that the proportions over the last 12 months have stayed the same. Looking forward in terms of our investment and capacity, we're investing in capacity on both sides, but the ratio is about the same.
Interestingly enough, and I think that's a good thing, and maybe it's affected by the shortage and the much significantly higher price of silicone, and also the ability to obtain silicone. That's been an issue. You know, as I mentioned earlier, I think our team has done a particularly good job at obtaining silicone, particularly for Silclear that makes silicone tubing and our dairy team and clusters.
There are other places we use it, but they're the predominantly larger users of silicone. It's actually been quite hard to get, so maybe that's having an impact as well. The other thing we have learned is that black rubber liners milk more softly, whatever that means. The cows seem to like it better. I mean, ultimately, that would have to turn into a yield gain or something like that.
That's the anecdotal evidence. The other interesting thing is the area we're focused on non-bovine, which is sheep and goat milking. They predominantly use silicone. Back to the earlier question, where DeLaval acquired Avon Milkrite, and as part of that, they acquired InterPuls. It's a company in Italy. InterPuls specializes in non-bovine silicone liners. That's a real problem for GEA.
We've been investing time and effort in silicone liners for goat milking initially, and we're considering sheep milking. We've been doing on-farm trials. It's been difficult, but we've been doing that in the U.K. because that's a market that has relatively large farms, but it's applicable to Australia and New Zealand as well.
I guess I still see a growth in silicone, but as much from the adjunct to our existing bovine milking, if that makes sense. If we were to grow the total agri business with non-bovine milking, then the proportion of silicone will go up by definition.
Right. Okay. That's helpful. There's effectively been no sort of bump in this period as a result of higher value replacement silicone product relative to rubber.
No. We don't foresee that in the next 12 months either. With our customers, there's strong growth. You know, they're just trying to keep up, to be honest.
Right. Okay. Thank you. The final question I had was, is there any update on the class action, the legal issue you've got ongoing?
No, there isn't really, David. It's a very, very slow process. The nature of the claim and the nature of the first defendant is that the product's manufactured in Germany. There's a fair bit of wrangling going over jurisdiction issues and things like that at the moment. You know, there's very little progress. We've had our fire engineers submit expert opinions and what have you. We're doing all the right things. I don't expect there'll be any material progress before the end of this financial year.
Okay. Thank you. Any incremental addition to the provision that you put through last time in this period?
No. We're not spending a great deal of money at the moment. Obviously, there's some legal fees being incurred in relation to us filing various documents in relation to it. There's no change in the provision. You will remember or recall at the half year period last year, we took a NZD 1 million provision, and we added NZD half a million to that at the end of the year. We've spent less than NZD 200,000 of that provision, so there's been no further change to that number.
Right. Great. Hey, thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
There's no other questions at the moment. If anyone else would like to ask a question, can you just send me a message on the chat? We'll give it a couple of minutes, and then we'll deal with that if you have any other questions. Otherwise-
Yeah.
We'll wrap up.
I guess the other interesting question people ask me is, are our customers stocking up? If there's a slowdown in the markets, does that mean we'll hit the wall or something like that? Well, in most cases, we've worked hard to start to see their sell-through, particularly some of the larger customers.
For example, some of our customers in the U.S., and even though they've stated they would like to stock up, in reality, we can't make for their increased volume and allow them to stock up. We are keeping up with their growth. In some cases, that is double-digit growth. I think we've done a fantastic job to do that. We know they're not building inventory because we can see their inventory. We get their inventory numbers weekly. We're doing more and more of that.
This is a specific example of how we're getting closer to customers because the sell-through is really important. I think through doing that, we become a better partner to these large customers. It's just an example. For me right now, I can't think of anywhere where we've stocked up other than specifically the business, you know, where I explained about the blower and the Cobra as the other product for Masport, where we have deliberately put in more inventory because those products could take off.
As Graham said, it's constrained at the moment by the availability of chassis, truck chassis, and that's been the case for a long time. I'm a big believer in markets. Markets will solve that. Anyway, look, I just thought I'd fill in some time.
We don't seem to have any other questions. Look, you know, as always, we welcome feedback directly. If you have any other questions and you're shy or whatever, please reach out to Graham and me. I am on a plane at 2:00 P.M. today, so if you keep that in mind. Other than that, I really appreciate your interest in the company. I'm very proud to lead a strong team and I think they've done a fantastic job. Thanks.
Okay. Thanks, everyone.