Clover Corporation Limited

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Global Corporation Limited 1H 2025 results call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Peter Davey, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you, Harmony. Welcome to the Clover Corporation first half FY25 results presentation. My name is Peter Davey, the CEO of the company, and with me is Andrew Allibon, the CFO and Company Secretary. Andrew will take you through the financial components. If we go to the next slide. This is an addition for people that haven't known much about us in the past, a bit about the corporation. We develop and produce encapsulated bioactive ingredients specialising in high-value nutritional oils for infant formula, for medical foods and for functional foods. Effectively, what we have is encapsulation technology. We take highly valued bioactives and we turn them into powders, emulsions and oils that And then those products enable our customers to turn them into a finished product. So we really support our customers in creating a finished product and developing a solution for them. And I think as I walk through this presentation, you'll see that that's what stood us in very good stead in the marketplace over the last six months. In the first half of 2025, We had 60 employees in the company. We have seven offices around the world. We have 21 products that we sold in that first half. So different products. We have four manufacturing sites. We sold to 165 different customers across 40 different countries. That may vary in the second half, and you might sell more products to more customers in different countries. It's just a bit of a snapshot to give you an overview of Really it's pretty tight in terms of cost base and employees, but we have a really broad marketplace of different products and different markets and customers that we sell to. It helps us weather the storms at times. If I move through onto the half-year financial highlights of the business, it's been a very good first half, certainly a turnaround for the business on what was previous. 37.6 million, effectively up 10 million on the same period last year. Revenue was in line with guidance, overall up 38% against the 27.3 and 200 basis points improvement in our gross margins overall. Our EBITDA position up 4 million, 4.3 overall. EBITDA was growth driven by just improvement in sales, improvement in margin. We've got a better customer mix and product mix into those customers. And the drive of that, the performance has helped in our manufacturing. So more volume helps our manufacturing base, and that's really improved. In terms of our working capital position, it's been reduced by a further $4.9 million. We've been driving our inventory down another 12.9%, 13% on the quarter before 2020. And so that leaves us with a really strong balance sheet. We've converted debtors and inventory into more cash in the business, and that's sitting at the moment at $15.4 million. NPAT was up $3 million on a very poor first quarter last year to $2.4 million, so a real turnaround and improvement in terms of delivering some profitability there. For the business, and that allows our directors to declare a dividend of three-quarters of a cent, so an incrementally frank dividend per share of three-quarters of a cent that will be paid to shareholders. It's nice to be able to deliver back to the people that own the company, and that's what we exist for. I'll move on to the half-year operational highlights. We've seen a recovery in both the infant formula sales in our business and our other business as well, so overall our markets. has improved whilst the market still is in a bit of decline. Europe and ANZ has really been the highlights of that. The new product sales, which I'll talk to a bit more, has continued to diversify and allowed us to help customers with solutions and grow the business. And we've really focused on engaging with our customers to diversify the business. So we're selling still into infant formula and the infant formula base is quite strong. But we've certainly seen growth in other segments of the business, into the food and other parts of the market. And our operational performance is aligned to that, and I'll talk to some of those areas in a bit more detail. Across the quarter, I think we talked last year about adding to our distribution network. We've traditionally gone to marketplace in our own right. Over the quarter, over the half, we've added a number of distributors across North America, Asia and Europe. Some of them are in their infancy, but some of them have actually delivered in terms of sales already, and I'll discuss that a bit further. Ecuador has been a good improvement. So we launched Ecuador last year, and we received our first crude delivery in November 2024, and we're continuing that on a monthly basis. And we've seen a real good turnaround in the malady dairies business, which was a bit of a drain on us previously, but it's certainly turned around and improved, and we'll talk to that I think the next slide will tell a fairly good story for you, and we started doing this last year to give you an indication of what's happened with the business. It certainly shows, if you look at that graph, a return to the business of growth, and that's why we exist. If you go back to FY23 at the start, there was an enormous stock build, especially by the infant formula customers in the world that didn't understand what was going to happen with the new Chinese product. GV licensing situation, so they built inventory into that. That build was too high at the start and therefore we then saw a significant decline and into FY24, the first half, we had very poor birth rates globally. It wasn't just China, it was across the entire world, low birth rates. In China, our Chinese customers moved away from us because fears around tuna oil, which I've gone through in the past. But then it started to improve in the second half of 24. We saw customers exiting a lot of the inventory build and we started to see the market return for us. And then that's gone into FY25. So the first half of FY25 is a good story. We've divided this graph into two parts. One is our base infant formula business. We've traditionally sold two major products into that business and that shows that that's continued and achieved growth and when you consider that the entire infant formula market in the world is absolutely in decline, we've been able to hold and grow our position and a big part of that is the secondary part. The other products that we've introduced and I've talked to many of you about over the last four to five years, we're starting to see some real traction with those products And that's going both into infant formula, but also into the other markets. So food, nutraceuticals, sports, drinks, a whole range of different products that we are now servicing. And that's that whole range of customers we've been supplying. So now 50% of our business is in other products. Those products are very unique to our business. They're unique in that we have patents around them. No one else has got them. They provide solutions to customers that no one else can do. So we allow customers, we solve their problems with unique products that have allowed us to get now 50% of our business. And that's a lot of the margin story as well. They're differentiated products that allow us to earn a bit more. So that's a good slide and it shows a positive continued growth and that's an expectation that we have for the future as well. I'm going to hand it over to Andrew now to take you through the financial results. Thank you, Andrew.

Thank you, Peter. Peter certainly commented on the top line and the improvement in revenue. I'll probably make a couple of call-outs in relation to second half FY24, which was 34.9. So we continued that momentum as previously stated. So a really good first half on the top line, which Peter's indicated has flown through the business into gross margin and then through to MPAT. A couple of items to gross margin. We've certainly talked about the basis point improvements there. Yes, it's underpinned by a change in customer and product mix throughout the course of the period. good operational performance where we've been running our refining facility in Eltona and also through Melody Dairies. So those two manufacturing sites have contributed. Peter did mention Ecuador and oil. We really haven't seen the benefits of that in the first half of FY25. We will see those benefits flow through in the second half of this financial year once we've got that oil into powder products and sold to our customers. A couple of items again that's not on this sheet that I thought might be worth mentioning and for those who have had an opportunity to look at the actual accounts, a couple of normalised items that is worth identifying. So currency movements certainly over the six months have benefited the business partly in gross margin but also in relation to our Euro and USD cash positions where we've seen a reported FX gain of 0.7 million. and you'll pick that up in the notes to the accounts. Offsetting that is good performance, which is resulting in a requirement to make sure we're appropriately provisioned for possible bonuses for staff as we go through the rest of the year, and that's about 0.4 variance from the same time last year. So those two items are worth recognising. So an overall net profit result of 2.4, fantastic position. No doubt questions will be answered at the end of the presentation. Moving to the cash flow statement, really good position in terms of our operating activities, which, as highlighted, has come through good practice around our management of inventory, which we've driven down. A couple of call-outs there. around Ecuador. The 445 as reported is fundamentally the residual capex spend in getting the plant operational in first half 2025. And as noted, Ecuador was originally debt-funded, where we took down that loan-drawn facility. And over the course of the period, we have been paying that back, which is reflected in the lower interest costs as shown on the statement. One other point that's probably worth noting there is the income tax paid, quite a large differential on a low result last year with high income tax expenditure. That was a result of the business pre-paying its taxes in 2024, which was rebalanced in the second half of 2024. So we're more aligned to where we should be in first half 2025, but last year we had embarked on a payment program and the results that were flowing through resulted in a correction in the second half of the year. And finally, turning to the balance sheet, again, as mentioned, really strong position, cash, which Peter mentioned, inventory down, receivables. We've had good collections throughout the course of the year, a lot more focus and follow-up with our customers. ensuring they're adhering to terms and over the course of the year we've continued to pay down debt. So a strong balance sheet which puts us in good stead as we roll forward into the second half of the financial year. Just in terms of inventory positions and management of stocks there, that's really around our management of both algal and our tuna stocks of oils. We've got good positions, but it's also making sure that we're timing deliveries aligned to customer forecasts so that we've got product not... Probably just a...

expand on what Andrew was saying. Melody helps us with velocity of inventory through the business. Being an owned site, we can manufacture much more hand-to-mouth. We have a significant amount of business that's in New Zealand itself, so we can effectively manufacture in a week and then send it to a customer the following week, which has certainly improved the inventory position and allowed it to move through the business quicker. But really, the story about Melody is a real turnaround in its performance. You would be aware, if you've listened to me previously, that we put a new management team in last year. We took an increased share in the business, brought out one of the other shareholders, and with the new management team, we're getting much better quality and high utilization of the facility. Of course, that's very helped by our demand that's going through the business and also the other major shareholder in Springsheet that's putting through significant volumes through the company and allowing us to meet the table pay obligations that are in the factory to make sure it operates. The cost of production continues to decrease as we improve our volumes through the site and the site and we understand how to manufacture at the site. And we did recognise a loss in the first quarter, which was we closed the factory for a month around maintenance activities. The rest of it's been a break even and that's where we're targeting that facility. We run the facility for the lowest of cost and that's the way it's been established. I'll move on to Ecuador. Many of you may recall that last year we announced that we were putting in a facility. We built a facility in Ecuador. which is the third largest tuna fishing port in the world. There are many tuna canning operations and filleting operations. There was nobody taking the excess parts of the fish and extracting oil from them. That facility was built. We are now extracting tuna oil from the heads of the fish, so we buy the heads off the fielding operations and the tuna canners. We take them through a crushing operation. We then send the crude oil to Australia. So we're achieving about a container a month into Australia. And we then sell the dried meal into the feed protein industry. We're getting excellent yields. We've completed the resourcing of the facility with staff and operations. and it's being a really cost-effective business that will show in our results in the second half of the year. So it hasn't hit the cost of goods at the moment. We've been bringing product in and refining it, and it will then go into our products in the second half of the year. But excellent quality product, really high levels of Omega-3. The two elements that we look for in Omega-3 are DHA and EPA. and we are getting higher levels in those products that allow us to supply the market.

The Ecuador facility has the capacity to supply you to buy off other partners and we will always do that.

In fact, with the current level of demand, we have quite dramatically increased our level of purchasing from our traditional suppliers. It just gives us a lower cost base. It gives us the ability to buy oils out of a different marketplace. It gives us control over quality and obviously some control over price as well and availability. So it's certainly helping the business and we'll see it in the financial results come through in the second half. A bit to move on to some of our product categories. So DHA growth. So DHA is an element of Omega-3 products. And that's one of the elements that a lot of our customers require to fortify their products with. We have diversified our product formulations into non-allergenic products or higher fortified powders and plant-based solutions, which many of them are on trend, you might say. And those products have allowed us to deliver solutions to customers in the marketplace. the entire infant formula market has been subdued because of the low birth rates. We have seen a really good rebound with our customers. So the customers that we service have shown some good growth, especially across Europe and Australia and New Zealand. So we're starting to get more sales. Most people would be aware that around 65% of all production in the world ends up in mainland China. So whilst China did have a small increase in the birth rate last year, quite small, because of the Year of the Dragon, we've seen our customers winning more share and therefore we grow with them. And that's been very good. A lot of those customers also now are supplying into the seniors market and teenage market. So a lot of the sales that we are currently doing, especially for these newer products, aren't going into infant formula products. they're going into these new products that they're targeting into the seniors market. And certainly if you go into mainland China and into a supermarket, about 50% of the shelf space is now seniors and the other 50% is infant formula. So it's been a real change in the blend of products that goes in the marketplace. And we're doing these sort of products across the world where people are recognising, as we all age and the marketplace is ageing, that they need to change and evolve their product offering, and we've done that with them. So we've been able to diversify our product base. Now, interestingly, we've seen real growth in pet food. I think that's a hangover from COVID. So we're seeing customers buying our product going to pet food, into nutraceuticals, in sports nutrition, and as I've just spoken about, adult nutrition has been a major growth path for us and will continue to be in the future. As I mentioned to other products, we've got these really high fortified levels of omega-3 going into our powders and our emulsions. It's allowed us to get into the pet food, nutraceutical, and food for special medical purposes. And I just thought I'd give you one example. One of those products we've introduced in the marketplace is a high, it's called EPA product, EPA or eicosapentaionic acid. is well-known to reduce inflammation. We're providing that product into a Chinese pharmaceutical company that's producing food for special medical purposes, and they're giving it to cancer patients for recovery after chemotherapy. That gel form product, which is a double emulsion, so it's not a powder, it's an emulsion product, a liquid product, It allows Omega-3s to be incorporated into QHT products, which really shouldn't be possible. We've created this so you can have a drink with Omega-3s in it with no taste or smell issues in 12-month shelf life. We have been in a major brand in the US, and that has expanded considerably in the US. It's grown really well, and they've expanded the range, and they are now incorporating it across their entire range of products, so we'll see that grow more. We've still got the product on trial with other customers in the US, in Asia and in Europe. Going into QHT takes a long time. Products have to be formulated and then the shelf life testing of QHT has to be done in real time. So sometimes that's 24 months before the shelf life occurs. I think we'll see a good future for this product and it'll continue to grow. I've just come back from a travel through Asia and we've got a lot of trials going on at the moment. Asia does like UHT, especially in that it can be distributed in a non-refrigerated way. And we've also now just developed a more concentrated version of the product, which customers were really happy with. It gives them a solution where they can fortify AQHT by using less product to get a higher fortification level. So it offers them a solution that they were looking for as we introduced this product to even move it further. I'll move on to a bit of stories about some of the products we've talked about in the past and still in the pipeline. We introduced last year Choline XL. Choline, by its nature, is a product that is legislated to be incorporated into infant formula, both in Europe and in China. It has inherent manufacturing problems. So it is hydroscopic, so it attracts water, so it's very difficult to manufacture with. We developed a flowable powder and we've registered it for intellectual property globally. We did production trials in December. and produce quantities to show customers. We will do further production trials with it to get it up to scale. We're going to present it at a major food show in Europe in May, where we'll show a lot of customers. And we will do some selective introduction to customers so they can see it and use it and trial it, which we would expect starting the first quarter of FY26. We're still working on getting it up to scale in terms of production. And then the packaging of the product. So just to give you an understanding, this product is used in equal quantities or greater to the level of DHA in every can of infant formula. And at the moment, every infant formula manufacturer has a problem with it. So we have a unique solution for it. Probiotics is a project we've had running in the business for quite a while, effectively probiotic as a live organism traditionally it is delivered in a frozen format to a customer so it's sort of a dry powder icy powder once it starts to defrost those organisms start to die and so we have had a long term project really requested by customers so how can we turn that into a powder that's not frozen much easier to deal with you could imagine trying to take a frozen powder and put it into a dry blending operation doesn't really work very well. One, it starts to melt really quickly and sticks to everything, so it's very difficult to deal with. We've had some success with this. We are trying to work out how we can make it broader across a variety of different organisms. You may know that probiotics come in millions of different formats. So we've had some success with it and we're continuing to work on how we can increase the shelf life of a whole range of different organisms. And once we do that, we will start to deal with customers. We've spoken to some of the large probiotics businesses. They're very keen on it because no one effectively has ever been able to achieve this. A lot of people say they have, but no one's really been able to get a result. So we'll look to that for the future of growth of the business. I'll move on to Primneo. Most of you would be aware that we have developed a unique DHA emulsion. It's a concentrated emulsion that was fed into a clinical trial with preterm infants. And the outcome of that was that it proved we could improve the IQ of preterm infants by 30%. Significant result. We went out and spoke to many pharmaceutical companies We were effectively said that good luck getting it approved and we've learnt that it's quite difficult to get regulatory approval. Effectively this product is fed to a preterm infant less than 32 weeks in a neonatal unit through a nasal gastric tube and therefore no one's questioned the efficacy that the product will actually achieve the result. The question has always been around the safety of it. Can you prove that it's absolutely safe? We presented results, but we've had to wait for an independent review by scientists that aren't associated with our company so they can prove that it is safe. Those results are just in. Then to get regulatory approval, a panel of experts have to review all that data, and that's now in process. We're confident that we will get there. It's a challenging process to get regulatory approval. So the expectation is that we will get is really the first part of the world looks at for scientific or pharmaceutical approvals and once that's approved then most other marketplaces will follow. We have had discussions with potential partners in this product and we have them ongoing and we have had discussions with manufacturers. This product will be a pharmaceutical so it has to be manufactured under pharmaceutical GMP standards and packaged that way. And really cost-effectively, India is the only marketplace where you can do this. Most pharmaceutical companies in the world manufacture and package their products in India. They're very impressive facilities. So Cremnio's still got some way to go, but again, it's an exciting product once it actually gets into the marketplace. One, it'll generate some profitability for the business, but really it's going to be a fantastic solution for babies, which is a wonderful outcome ethically. Yeah. As I turn to the strategy and outlook for the business, I'm sure many of you will be interested in this part. The strategic focus for the business operation in supply chain is very much around Ecuador and Melody. Getting Ecuador's supply chain aligned into our business, increasing the volume of oil through that will help the gross margin of the business. And then Melody, getting it up to speed. It's running really quite well at the moment. And if we can continue to build on that volume and have more product come through there, it allows us to manufacture a lot of these sort of more unique products that we're selling into the marketplace. It now represents 50% of the business. It gives us a lower cost base that, again, will allow us to support customers in terms of pricing position and also improve our margin position as well. And then into the innovation and growth of the business, We've just appointed distributors. They'll take time to come on board, partly at the moment they're learning and understanding the market. That will really help the reach of our sales. We've been very good with large accounts. These distributors have access to hundreds of smaller accounts that we traditionally just cannot service with our team of 10 salespeople. So this allows us to access hundreds of salespeople that are selling multiple products and are really committed genuinely quite knowledgeable in the entire marketplace of bioactives, and that'll help us get some more growth in the market. The choline product will move into further trial work and production work to build the scale of the product, and then we will allow customers to take the product for trials. We'll be quite selective in the way we do that, and that should lead to commercial sales after those trials take place. generally 12 to 24 months. Getting regulatory approval for Prim Neo, we would expect ANZ and Europe to come fairly quickly once this comes through, and I'll be heading up to India again to talk to the distributors and the packaging businesses in the next couple of months to try and move that along. And diversification remains the key. We've shown that diversification of product allows us to improve sales and maintain sales and margin. in the infant formula market, but also in the food and nutraceuticals and other markets as well. So that will allow us to grow along with products like Gelform and Premneo. It gives us exposure outside of the infant formula market. We will never ignore the infant formula market. It's a great market for our products. It supplies volume and we get a lot of revenue and profitability from that market. And then Colleen. The Colleen Excel is a is a unique product that no one else has a solution. It solves our customers' problems. We've been talking to them about it. Many of them are quite excited about it, as we are. So once we've got that up to scale, that should help us in future years. So there is an outlook for growth for the business. We've shown that we're back in line to growth at our more traditional products and the products we've released over the last four to five years. And these will just continue to add on to that. So as I move to the outlook for FY25, so for the remainder of the year, the Board expects the momentum in the first half of FY25 to continue with a stronger second half, assuming current forecast demand and the global conditions prevail. So it looks like it's going to be a good second half. Happy to report. And I'm happy to take your questions. So thank you very much for listening. Thank you, Andrew. And I'm looking forward to hearing your questions today. Thanks.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. And if you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Apul Sikal from UBS. Please go ahead.

Hey, morning, Peter and Andrew. A few questions from me, please. First one, based on what you're seeing through February and March so far, can we talk about what kind of second half skew you're expecting? I mean, I guess if we go back to FY24, it was a 56% sales skew in the second half. It seems like momentum's pretty good so far. Is that kind of skew roughly what you might expect to land in this year?

We're not going to – AP, thanks for the question. We're not going to provide you with guidance other than what the board has approved us to give. What we can say is that it's going to be an improvement on the first half. Traditionally, the business generally does have a second better half than the first, but we're continuing at the moment to see strong forecasts in the business, which gives us a really good view of the entire half, and that's looking really promising. assuming customers place orders to that and take the product and we can manufacture it, which is another problem, then it's going to be a good second half.

Okay. And just sticking with the top line, if I look at Europe specifically, it was very strong. From memory, there was a customer you lost there last year and then they started reordering again. Is that kind of the driver behind that big sort of rebound in the sales? And I'm just wondering, is there anything kind of one-off or abnormal in nature in that $10.5 million that we should be thinking about in the second half, or do you think that $10.5 is kind of the normal run rate?

I don't recall the customer that we lost. Other than China, we lost some customers.

Is there one you can answer? So just for clarification, AP, Europe is Europe and Middle East. So... I think we had reported previously the Middle East had stopped ordering. So we've seen some of those orders come back in in the second, in that first half of this year.

Yeah, I think we had a Middle Eastern customer that ordered way too much inventory and it's taken them a long time to wash that inventory through. But they have returned and we're seeing it. A short answer to the question is we would expect that to be a normal run rate. And we're certainly seeing... broadly our customers, the big ones and the small ones, all starting to recover their positions. I think some of them just lost their way relative to the changes in their licensing and positions supplying into China, and a lot of them have now been able to navigate their way through the marketplace and find their positions again.

Okay, that's encouraging. Let's move to gross margins then. That was a pretty... good result, 29.6% good recovery there. Can we talk about your expectations for the second half, particularly given your comments on Ecuador? It sounds like that hasn't really given you a gross margin benefit just yet and that should be coming in the second half. So just how should we think of second half gross margins versus first half?

So you are correct there AP in terms of Ecuador and as we talked in the presentation, whilst That oil hasn't actually been sold in finished product in the first half. So as we bring that through the system, it is cheaper than our current source products from other suppliers, which is what we're looking for. The customer mix we also see as being consistent moving into the second half, which has helped us. So when you're asking for... Guidance on what the second half gross margin is. I can't really see it going backwards. So holding or slight improvement. Got it. Sorry, can I just add on top of that without wanting to say too much? The benefit of a weaker AUD has helped the business. We source in USD, but we also sell in USD and EUR. So those currency positions have assisted some of the GM percentage point improvement. What happens in the second half, I don't have that crystal ball view.

Got it. Okay. So if we just assume FX sort of holds where it is and the equitable facility is giving you a bit of a tailwind, custom mix is normal, realistically gross margins should tick up slightly in the second half.

Yes.

Yeah, okay, that's cool. I'll ask one more question and then I'll kind of maybe go back in the queue. On operating costs, so first half OpEx, pretty well controlled, $7.5 million. How should we think about the second half, please?

So second half, in line with where we're trying to take the business, we have increased heads late in the first half, so we will see some employment costs tick up in second half. and also within our R&D cost base, we test every product. So the more product that we're selling, we've got to test more products. So some of those costs will come through as well. And then the other point that I mentioned earlier was provisioning for short-term incentive bonuses. If we continue in line with how we're performing, there'll be an uptick in the provisioning for what we call merit or STI. So it won't go backwards in the second half. It'll go up a couple of percent.

So the OPEX will be a couple percent higher in the second half versus first half?

Correct.

Okay, so not too much change. That new market development cost line Normally it's a little bit higher, but this time it is like 100 grand. Is there meant to be an uptick coming there or is that just you're sort of done with that stuff?

No, so what I had tried to do and communicate with yourselves and the rest of the market is the new market development costs were related to our development in the likes of Premneo in Ecuador when we were establishing the facility. Ecuador is now part of the base business, so it's no longer hitting that that disclosure line. So what you're seeing there is ongoing regulatory costs associated with Premneo and we'll expect to see some costs related to coal as we move into that phase of spending money but getting no return.

Sorry, can I just double check with you? You said before OPEX in the second half were only maybe a couple of percent higher versus the first half. Based on some of the comments, it sounds like maybe it should be a bit more higher because I'm just wondering if I've interpreted that correctly.

Yeah, so each of those three major departmental cost lines for OPEX will go up 4% or 5%.

Okay, so 4% or 5% should be the total OPEX growth in the second half of the first half, really. Correct. Okay. Okay, that's clear. Great. Thanks, guys. Thanks. Sorry, that was a lot of questions. Thanks. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question comes from Mark Southwell-Keeley from Select Equities. Please go ahead.

Hi guys. Thank you very much for taking my call. Just firstly, in terms of the US, the overall revenue in the first half, despite some continued great progress, is still relatively small. During the presentation, you mentioned that the customer is expanding.

I know the number. We've certainly seen significant uptake in that product. I know they've just bought more product over the last week, so they're continuing to grow. Their brand's doing well in the marketplace. We'll expect them to grow, but I don't know. I don't have a number for you. But overall, the US has been a real disappointment in terms of our our traction to get sales and we need to do more to make it be better in the marketplace. We have just appointed a major distributor for the entire US market which we would hope can bring more sales in that marketplace and better access to the market.

Thanks Peter. In terms of the commentary around the application of the product in relation to different, I guess, milk powder products, say, for seniors. Can you give us a sense for what you think the growth rates for those underlying products are?

I think they're going to grow a fair bit. We've been successful in putting our powders into a range of seniors' products, and your business especially would be aware that A lot of the Chinese manufacturers are now moving towards the seniors marketplace with their capacity reduced from infant formula. They're now trying to focus on other markets. We're seeing it throughout all the Western manufacturers as well. So it may be a bit of a transition of volume. We could see a 10% uplift in the business because of China. businesses going through new inventions or products, they all recognise that they need to be in this segment. Some have moved quickly and some are very slow. So, yeah, it could be a 5% to 10% improvement in the business overall over the next couple of years.

Just finally, in terms of Melody Dairies, the maintenance of the facility, which you quantify as one month, Can you maybe just translate that in terms of what the costs were for that period where there was no revenue? And also, is this an annual maintenance commitment or how often does this occur?

So, Mark, Andrew, yes, it's an annual program that we go through. So, it's happened over the last four or five years that we've been associated with the facility for three to five Three-week period generally is what it is. Fundamentally what it does is it probably takes out close to 80% of our production days available. So the facility charges a rate per production day for that revenue. It loses 80% of its expected monthly revenue. but then it's got to cover its operating costs, et cetera, wages, et cetera, et cetera.

Because we run the business at breakeven, it's effectively not covering its costs during that period of time. So that's why it represents a loss to the business.

What's the dollar amount?

So we said the business has been targeted and running close to breakeven. Post that period... So in terms of what we've recognised to date, sort of indicates a little bit about what that operating cost was in that first month.

Thanks very much, guys. Thanks, Mark.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Stella Wang from CTHD Investment. Please go ahead.

Hi, Gabby. Thanks for taking questions. Can you hear me all right?

Yeah, if so, we can hear.

Great. One question regarding U.S. Firstly, do you see if they do impose tariffs on agriculture and pharmaceutical product? Do you guys fall into that category? And also, from memory, you previously, around year 2020, do have products going into U.S. UHD milk product. If I remember right, with Enfamil was under Meat Johnson, but that line has fell off as well. So I wonder if this round with a currently looking good UHT milk product in place and growing, is there any risk that they are like infant milk product previously, they go well for a while and then fell through again?

There's a lot of questions in this, so I'll try and answer them. Our customer base in the US, I would call quite depressed relative to the rest of the marketplace. We've seen good recoveries through Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and really there's been movement of product into New Zealand out of Asia, but that's been good growth, whereas the US has actually been in decline. The... As for what Mr Trump's going to do with tariffs, I don't know. At the moment, we have a free trade agreement with the US and we enjoy that in being able to supply the product. It's the emulsion product that we supply into them. He may apply a tariff to it. I don't know. The one thing with the products that we supply in there, the tariff codes that we supply under are fairly protected because they're going into production. They're not a finished product, if I can put it that way. So if I was supplying a finished product, I might be subjected to a tariff. We might be protected, and might is the word, in that we are supplying ingredient to an American manufacturer that then is producing a finished product. And there is no alternative. The product we supply to the UHT manufacturer, there's no equivalent in the world, so they don't have a choice. They can't go to somebody else. I don't know if that answers your question well, but as I said to Mark, America's been very disappointing because, yes, we have a major infant formula customer there, but they've been terrible, to put it basically, terrible.

That does answer. Thanks a lot. Can I have... Two more questions, if it's okay, just very quickly.

Go ahead, Sean.

The first one, yeah, the first one is in terms of co-laying. Sounds like the first time we see any commercial sales at the earliest will be H1 FY27, considering 12 to 24-month shelf-life testing. Is that about right?

Yes, I'd say that's the conservative approach. We may see customers... We'll see customers doing trials in the first half of 26, which really isn't that far off. And some of them will – I think it will give them such a good experience that some of them may accelerate it. They have a significant problem, and we can solve it for them. So we may get it in the second half of 26. But, yes, conservatively, I'd say FY27 first half is where we'll see the volume come through.

Great. And then lastly, from me, Melody, there is Covenant Bridge. It's been in there for a while. Now it's breakeven. When can we see that kind of hammer hanging there lifted?

Yeah, we keep communicating with the bank. They're very happy. Well, they're happy because we're paying them money. We haven't missed a payment effectively, so they're just not going to withdraw it. I think it's maybe more of a reflection of the New Zealand market than just ourselves. It's BNZ, the bank. We talk to them quite regularly, and I think the New Zealand market in general is going through some problems economically. There's been a lot of defaults within the New Zealand marketplace and customers have been going to liquidation for them. They have not acted upon that note at all in the last three years, but it stays in place. They just leave it in place. They're not willing to remove it until we've moved through the loan. I think we have about – the business loan is about $19 million New Zealand dollars. So it's a fairly large sum, but that's a melody. So we own – in Australian terms, about $8 million of that loan.

Great. Thanks for that. That's all for me.

Thank you, Stella.

Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1. Your next question is a follow-up from Rupal Sehgal from UBS. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking a couple of follow-up questions. I thought slide 7 was interesting, where you showed that... the base of the formula versus the new products contribution of sales. Just to clarify, that 50% for the new products, can you divide that between what's infant formula-related new products versus non-infant formula? I'm just trying to get a sense of how much of your total group sales are now outside of infant formula.

Look, the short answer is no, we can't. And why is because we sell... these products to infant formula company X, Y, and Z, without giving you the company's names, and they then put them into teenage milk drinks, they put them into sports nutrition drinks, and they're putting them into, as I've alluded to, seniors' drinks. So it's certainly broadened the application of these products into a whole range of new products, but they don't tell us. They just buy... We do... We do applications work with them to show them how to do it, but then once it gets down to the tin tacks of what they're ordering of us, they're very secretive about what they do with it. And, you know, we supply to 60% of the world's infant formula manufacturers, and they are very secretive. So that's why we can only depict it this way. 50% of our products are now not the traditional base infant formula products. They are more... unique products that we have created and patented over the last eight years, and it shows diversification of the business. We've always said that our target is to try and get 50-50-50 infant formula and non-infant formula. I'd suggest today that is more at about an 80-20, so 80% of the business is infant formula and about 20% is other products, but it's really hard to give you a definitive number. And you know what? We would love to know. Out of everybody, we would absolutely love to know, but they are too secretive to tell us.

Okay, I know that 80-20 is helpful enough. A question for Andrew. Just on the inventory, the $24 million at the first half, could you give us a sense of what you're expecting come 31 July?

Yeah, Peter... I made a reference there that around our ability to supply. So we've got pretty tight at this level. And it'll all come down to timing AP around when deliveries are made. But I'd expect it at this point to tick up a couple of million. I would too. I originally targeted to get it down to 30 when it was at 36, if you might remember back then. The fact that it's continued to track down has been pleasant, but it's probably a couple of million that would give us a little more comfort around our ability to respond to unforecasted demand.

Okay, and one last one from me. This is a follow-up question on the tax. The tax rate was 30% in the first half. Historically, it's obviously been a bit lower than that, and you kind of explained earlier why it was a bit higher. Just going forward, Andrew, what kind of tax rate should we assume in the second half and sort of beyond that as well?

Well, conservatively, I'd be sort of at 29% is where we'd expect it to finish, which is in that range.

Oh, 29% for the full year? Yes. And that's kind of the go forward? Because I just thought with the Middle East and all that, maybe it would actually drag the tax rate. maybe closer to 26, 27, like longer term?

Yeah, look, in terms of the jurisdictions that we sell into and in accordance with the way in which we manage our transfer pricing across all of those regions, yeah, it can be influenced by just the volume of sales in regions, but I'd expect it to come back a little bit, there it is, at the half.

Okay. Okay, sounds good. Thanks, guys, and a good result. Well done. Thanks, Sophie.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr Davies for closing remarks.

Thanks very much for your attention. I'm sure I'll see most of you over the next few days and happy to take any further questions outside of this forum. So thanks very much. Nice to be delivering a better result and showing that we're back on growth and that's the expectations of what we bring into this business every day. I look forward to delivering a better result again for the end of the year. Thank you, Andrew. I appreciate your time as well. Thank you.

Peter?

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.