Elders Limited

Thank you very much and welcome to all for the Elders' full year results presentation for the FY25 financial year. Thank you for joining Paul and myself for the session today. As an overview, the full year results today are solid on a year-to-year basis with EBIT up 12%, transformational projects on track, positive progress on leverage and strong cash generation. Throughout the year, Elders demonstrated solid operational and financial resilience in the face of mixed seasonal conditions. Our diversified portfolio through its national geographic footprint and multi-product and service offering played a key role in mitigating the dry conditions across key agricultural regions and the increased competitive activity in our retail business. Stronger activity in livestock and real estate and high financial discipline also supported the solid result. On the transformational project front, we've also made good progress on wave two of our SISMOD project with all states rolled out and bedded down by the end of this calendar year. We are also well-progressed in the final components of this project with wave three and the completion phase, wave four, advancing in full on time. Focusing now on the areas out of our control, the FY25 season has been a problematic year from a seasonal viewpoint. With a drier than average and late start to the winter crop across southern Australia, with credit to our highly diversified business model, this is offset by our agency business, our real estate services business, our financial services, and our feed and processing services businesses. Rural products have seen some limitation with very dry conditions in Southern Australia and Western Australia. In this context, the performance of Elders with its clear and consistent strategy, multiple diversifications, high financial discipline, hard-working and committed team, and enduring customer anchor as the most trusted brand in Australian agriculture on an unprompted basis has remained resilient. This is Elders strong in safety, sustainability and cash flow with a full year outcome approaching the midpoint of the EBIT guidance range provided earlier this year. Moving now to the Delta Agribusiness Acquisition, which completed on November 3rd. This acquisition is fully aligned with the Elders Acquisition Rationale that delivered Titan Ag, Air, and many other Bolton acquisitions to Elders. With pre-synergies, EPS accretion, enhancement of our technical and ag tech expertise and offerings, strengthening of our geographical diversification, particularly in New South Wales and Northwest Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, building on our crop protection and animal health regulatory package portfolio to drive our backward integration strategy, providing an additional platform for retail segmentation, allowing greater customer centricity and providing further coverage for our real estate and financial service offerings. Moving on to the FY26 outlook, we are very optimistic on the broad outlook for Australian agriculture at a seasonal and commodity level with the return to average conditions. In addition, we welcome Delta Agribusiness to our portfolio as a platform for significant growth. The outlook and fundamentals for livestock remain sound with prices for sheep and cattle forecast to be supported by strong international demand against the backdrop of tightening supply. The combination of a positive seasonal and commodity outlook also provides a great backdrop for continued growth in our real estate and financial services businesses. It's worth noting at this point that our first six weeks of trading for FY26 is tracking some 30% up on last year for the same time on an apples-to-apples basis, so this is without the inclusion of Delta that's come in on November 3rd. Our approach for today is that I'll provide an overview of the results, Paul will go to the detail of their financial performance, and I'll then provide an update of their outlook and growth and transformational initiatives as we deliver the final year of our eight point plan, fourth eight point plan. With the same view, we'll now commence with the FY25 full results presentation.

So if we can move along to the next slide.

The approach as you see here with the five, it's worth noting in the appendix that there's further detail and transparency on sensitivities, business model. That's always worth looking at. So kicking off on the executive overview on the slide committed to improving our safety performance. So from a safety viewpoint, at the core backward-looking metric of lost time injuries, there have been six lost time injuries this year, which is an increase from last year. Quite a disappointing result, predominantly in the livestock area. And so we have been able to significantly reduce injuries across our manual handling our raw products area, but a disappointing result. We continue to aim for zero injuries to anyone. I think it is worth noting that the start of the 8.1 plan process, there were 34 lost time injuries. So we've made significant progress over the four 8.1 plans and the lost time injury frequency and the total recordable injury frequency, and you can see the trend of the second slide, are significantly below equivalent industry benchmarks. Moving to the next slide, just a quick snapshot of the financial performance. You can see the underlying EBIT, some 12% up on last year, a return on capital 11.3, holding stable, and maintained strong cash conversion and the dividend per share payout. Moving to the next slide, so Paul will clearly go into the detail on the financials. Moving to the next slide, and this is over the eight-point plan And you can see significant return as committed in April Plan 1, 2, and 3. At the beginning of, or just prior to April Plan, the fourth April Plan, we took the decision to invest heavily in our transformational projects. And there's some $100 million of cost and capital being spent through this period in order to drive our systems modernization project. our automated wool project and also our crop protection formulation project. So we knew that that would drag on our cost capital and resources and focus through that period, but critical transformational projects that were at the process of completing with the formulation process complete, the automated wool project complete, and with SISMOD running into wave three and four, which are the final two waves through next year. Moving to the next slide and some of the work we're doing across with our people and communities. It's worth noting again 186 years of elders in Australian regional rural Australia and agriculture. Unprompted remain the most trusted brand throughout all of these areas and with significant activity across with multiple activities across the business from a safety viewpoint. A very clear focus on safety from an engagement, enablement viewpoint. As you can see, quite high engagement enablement, as has been for many years, and also a very high focus on safety throughout our people. Moving to the next slide, and just a quick look at the work we do from a sustainable, responsible future viewpoint. Many of you are aware of our alignment across many environments. people and community projects and the work we've done with our sustainability report. And you'll note the very strong and aligned partnership with the Royal Flying Doctors. So from our viewpoint, this is who we are. This is core to our DNA and we'll continue to invest and be highly engaged with our communities around Australia. Moving to sustainability and our progress against the emissions targets for the next slide. And you can see the trend towards the emission targets we've set. We'll continue to work through these. As many of you will also be aware, there's been a reviewed methodology on emissions calculations from livestock. So we're working through that. But I think the point to note is that we're well on track. And if you take the time to read the sustainability report, I think you'll be very impressed with the progress we've made right across the board in this area. Moving to the next slide, and this is really to emphasise one of the changes that we've made this year. Historically, we've been diversified by product and service, and we've talked about that in our business model, and it's in the business model that appears in the appendix of this pack. But you'll see right through the supply chain, from crop protection, through to wholesale, we're there, Elders Rural Service, Delta Agribusiness, and then real estate and feed and processing, there's a very solid diversification component that comes out of their business. And if you look through all the key investment drivers, and I think Paul will comment to many of these, very strong EPS growth, diversification, the industry fundamentals are looking very good. And I think it's one of the points that you'll hear us make a few times that, We're at the stage now where we've moved through our transformational projects and the big cost of capital resource investment, and we've got an outlook of positive commodity conditions and also seasonal conditions. So we feel very, very optimistic about the next three to five years as we run through all of these. And finally, just as a quick recap before we jump into the deep dive into the financials, the next slide, just to recap on... Delta Agribusiness that joined the group on the 3rd of November. Great business, well-run, very complimentary from a geographical viewpoint, and fills many gaps that we did have. Very strong in its technical expertise, which also compliments Elda significantly. We're looking at $12 million of synergies at EBIT level over a three-year period in the original business case. Now, given that the ACCC have put on a 12-month delay, we're discussing around the Delta board on how we can fast-track this with regard to backward integration, given their strong foundation of four seasons. brands or products at the moment. So that's a very positive opportunity to fast track those synergies. Targeting greater than 15% post synergies from an ROC viewpoint and very much aligned to elders across our approach to the business. And as we've said a number of times, as divisions, all the divisions are standalone. So with that, I'll pass over to Paul to go through the financials, and then I'll come back towards the end on strategy and outlook.