Croda International Plc

Good morning everyone. Many thanks for joining the call. I'm here with Stephen and David and once we've run through the formal presentation we will be very happy to take your questions. So, the usual agenda today. I will start with some overarching comments on performance and Stephen will go through the numbers in detail and I will then come back to show how we are executing our plan to grow earnings and returns. Then it's very much over to you for Q&A. Okay, so making a start and coming first to performance. The headline message is that the business has done what we expected it to do with results very much in line with our expectations for the first half. And our growth is classic Crota. Profits growing ahead of sales and sales growing ahead of volume. Exactly what we want to see for an innovation-led business. We are driving our transformation programme at pace and that is delivering results today as well as building an even stronger business for tomorrow. Growth increased in the second quarter, driven by consumer care and led by a standout performance in beauty actors. We've said for several quarters now that demand for innovation, particularly amongst the large multinationals, has been steadily increasing. and we have strengthened our portfolio and repositioned our approach to R&D to anticipate and take full advantage of that trend and we're now starting to see the benefits with NTP growing faster than total sales in the first half. Alongside this improved performance we've continued to deliver on our transformation plan to enhance growth and efficiency across all areas of the business. Kroda is becoming a stronger business not just to deliver in the short term but to drive long-term sustainable and consistent growth for many years to come. This progress underpins our conviction for the full year with our outlook unchanged and just as importantly we're on track to deliver on our financial framework through to 2028. Building on that point The initiatives that we are talking about, both to drive growth and transform the business, are delivering an improved performance, meeting our ambition to grow earnings and enhance returns. Our programme is focused on a clear set of objectives, set out across this slide, which we presented in detail back in February. We're driving stronger returns from prior year investments while sharpening CRODA by optimising and simplifying our structure as well as transforming the way we do things and critically much of this is within our control. We're not relying on a big recovery in our end markets. So I'm very pleased with how the whole business has responded and our people are driving this change and we're now starting to see that in our performance. This overall momentum means that we are firmly on track to deliver on our three year plan and the targets set out on this slide. As you can see along the bottom, we are making progress in all areas and we expect that to continue underpinned by a strong market positions across consumer care, farmer and crop. So plenty to be encouraged about, but also much more to do, which I'll come on to in a moment. But first, let me hand over to Stephen for a detailed run through of the numbers. Stephen.

Thank you Steve and good morning everyone. I'm going to start with the financial headlines. It's great to report a good performance overall in line with expectations despite ongoing geopolitical and economic uncertainty. In constant currency, sales were up 5% at £881 million with 7% growth in new and protected products. Adjusted operating profit was up 7% at £156 million and EPS grew 9% to 78 pence. Free cash flow was 38 million up from 28 million last year and we have today announced an interim dividend of 48 pence. Net debt was 578 million and leverage remained conservative at 1.4 times EBITDA. Turning to sales where again my comparisons are in constant currency. Sales growth of 5% was driven by an increase of 8% in consumer care and 7% in pharma ingredients. Volumes increased 1% with an improvement in every business unit in consumer care as well as pharma ingredients. Price mix was up 4% supported by increased customer demand for innovation in particular in beauty actives. Looking at sales by region, EMEA was up 3% on a strong prior year, Asia performed well with growth of 10%, North America was down 1% due to phasing in pharma solutions and a strong prior year in crop protection, while Latin America increased 11%. Looking at sales by quarter, back in February we guided to first quarter sales being broadly flat against a strong comparator and as expected, we delivered growth of 1%. In the second quarter, growth accelerated to 9% against a softer comparator. Within consumer care, Beauty Actions grew 27% as it benefited from customer innovation and product launches. Most business units in consumer care and life sciences contributed to a sequential improvement in the second quarter with three exceptions. First, fragrances and flavours experienced some disruption related to the conflict with Iran. Second, crop protection sales were down as farm incomes were impacted by higher input costs. And third, farmer solutions was below expectations. Here, our order book means that we expect project revenues to improve in the second half. The overall impact of the conflict in the Middle East was limited as we increased prices to recover input cost inflation and as some customers brought early to avoid disruption. This was broadly offset by lower F&F sales in the region. Turning now to margin, which increased from 17.2 to 17.7%. 50 basis points of expansion was driven by growth, with higher volumes, positive price and mix, all contributing to the improvement. Transformation delivered additional cost savings of 18 million, which equates to almost 2 percentage points of margin expansion, in line with expectations, bringing cumulative benefits to 46 million. OPEX inflation includes an increase in the charge for variable remuneration. And the last of our major investments mainly relates to new sites in China and India. We expect operating margins to increase sequentially in the second half, driven by growth and further transformation benefits. The first half exit rate gives us confidence in delivering the full year margin expansion. Turning now to cash. Free cash flow strengthened from 28 to 38 million pounds Looking at the component parts EBITDA increased to 208 million A working capital outflow of 68 million is broadly similar to the first half last year Our Working Capital Improvement Programme is designed to deliver structural savings of around $50 million by 2020-H, which we expect to offset the typical annual working capital outflow to fund growth of $20-30 million. CAPEX reduced to $43 million following a period of heightened investment. There was a net cash outflow of $50 million after paying last year's final dividend. A net debt of $578 million is broadly in line with last year, with slightly lower leverage. Finally, I want to reiterate our full year guidance. We've provided our usual foreign exchange sensitivities in the materials to help you with currency translation. Now, despite ongoing geopolitical and economic uncertainty, there is no change to our outlook for 2026. At a group level, we continue to expect organic sales growth of 3-6% and a further increase in adjusted operating margin. Our expectations for adjusted operating profit also remain unchanged. And with that, I'll hand back to Steve.

Great, many thanks Stephen. I want to spend the next 10 minutes or so talking about the execution of the 3 year plan we set out back in February in a bit more detail. It's all about driving consistent growth across our markets. The priority areas to achieve that are set out in this box and we've successfully refocused our approach to innovation by reallocating R&D resources and implementing a framework that ensures greater emphasis on the balance of three things. Customer co-creation, creating new markets for existing ingredients and accelerating the development of new ingredients which is where the majority of our focus has been historically. We've also significantly improved the way we do things with customers. prioritising our resources to deliver more tailored service packages for different segments, encompassing global brands, regional giants and local customers. And we're maximising returns from acquisitions that we've made in recent years. And the CAPEX is invested to expand manufacturing in Asia. Two final sites opened during the half. a multi-purpose site in Darhaj, India and a combined fragrances and beauty actives facility in Guangzhou in China. This deliberately gets us closer to customers in our fastest growth region. Closely aligned to these priorities, we're successfully reinvigorating beauty and making strong progress to rebalance pharma, which I'll come on to next. Starting with beauty. The increased demand for customer innovation is being led by global brands responding to intense competition from smaller challenger brands which have been innovating at a faster rate over the last few years. Recent comments from L'Oreal's CEO are testament to this. And although low-income households continue to be under financial pressure, particularly in the US, premium categories are doing especially well. driven by higher income consumers. On the bottom left of this slide, two good examples of how we have been refocusing innovation to start capturing this increased demand. First, we are scaling up and commercialising our biotech pipeline. We recently commissioned a new group-wide biotechnology centre in the UK with specialist expertise in biocatalysis and synthetic biology. Hair care has been a particular focus area in beauty care as we start commercialising our capabilities in recombinant proteins and as a hair care category growth accelerates. We've begun capturing this growth with the launch of Currabio, a bond builder for hair that has already secured orders with prestige brands and professional salon specialists. Second, we're developing more tailor-made solutions for customers. And we're now positioning beauty care as delivery systems for actives, leveraging our formulation expertise to create solutions comprising multiple ingredients that deliver particular efficacy or sensory benefits. Moving to the right, the other big step change is what we're doing to internationalise beauty actives. We have transferred technology and extended claims substantiation capabilities to new sites in India, China and Korea Ceramides which we acquired through Solus a few years ago has seen particularly strong growth up 44% during the first half as we globalize sales We're also successfully expanding into more affordable beauty categories with higher penetration in masquerade brands and our global beauty partners. This is a really attractive opportunity given the margin profile is similar to the margins that we make when we sell our ingredients for customers' premium brands. Turning to the next slide, Bollywood for Lime is a fantastic example of an existing product development Finding new applications for existing ingredients gets you to the market much quicker than developing a new ingredient. Volufiline is a skin plumping ingredient extracted from a plant root traditionally used in eastern medicine and previously applied to parts of the body other than the face. So supported by new data we have repositioned it as a facial filler in a bottle and to address consumer concerns about facial hollowing, often associated with GLP-1 use. Desiem, one of our beauty customers and now part of Estée Lauder, has adopted Volufuline as its trade name for a product from the ordinary brand, formulating our ingredient at up to 92% inclusion levels. And this trend for customers using the names of our beauty ingredients in their marketing is on the increase. with customer requests to use our trademarks increasing threefold over the last year. And Bollier for Line is now a TikTok sensation. Videos have been viewed more than 200 million times on the US TikTok shop from a standing start just over a year ago. So it's selling fantastically well for our customers that as well as Deciem include Korean beauty brands such as MediCube, which has included it as the hero ingredient in its volume and wrinkle care sticks. Volume for Line is a great illustration of how all types of innovation, not just launching new ingredients, can help deliver incremental sales growth and it shows the early impact that our refocus strategy is having. Turning next to Pharma. As you know, this part of our business is split into two areas which both draw on common capabilities but sell into market segments with different characteristics. The biggest part is farmer ingredients, which accounts for over 70% of sales and leverages our long-standing customer relationships and regional model. We saw good growth during the first half, up 7%, and expect this progress to continue through the rest of the year. Our major initiative to relaunch our core flagship ingredients for topical applications and in markets such as animal health, is getting really good traction, with more to come. Customer co-creation projects for topical applications have doubled in the last year, a number of which draw on our skincare expertise in beauty. And alongside this, we have scaled innovation for advanced ingredients, particularly for injectables and bioprocessing applications. A good example of this is Viradex, Our first ingredient range for bioprocessing initially commercialised through joint projects with multiple multinational pharma companies and one of which has already led to a more significant order. Our pharma solutions business is a much smaller specialised business accounting for well under 30% of pharma sales which works closely with customers principally on new drugs in development. It is more project driven with larger amounts of revenue attached to certain orders and it's more lumpy by its nature. So whilst half 1 sales were affected by phasing, our order book means we expect project revenues to improve in half 2. Here we are targeting new applications for lipids in generics and expanding our range of more than 2,000 lipids for drug research. with new lipids that have the potential for oral delivery of complex therapeutics that normally require injection. We're also partnering to accelerate sustainable adjuvant development. An interesting example is biotech-derived squalene adjuvants, as shark-derived alternatives face tighter trade controls. And finally, across pharma, We are targeting originator and generics markets in Asia, an increasingly important region where we are well placed. Coming next to transformation where we have made good progress across all priority areas set out within this box. We have continued to simplify and optimize our product portfolio to sharpen our commercial focus. and for example we've introduced minimum order values and 18% of our customers now use Croderon our online portal for lower value orders up from 10% at the beginning of the year. Furthermore we are targeting a significant reduction in SKUs in 2026 with 30% of our global product portfolio optimised so far. And to enhance efficiency we are optimising procurement production and distribution and we're generating savings from packaging freight and key raw materials payment terms are being successfully renegotiated headcount is lower across all regions and we continue to rebalance our manufacturing footprint to higher growth countries we've also made significant progress simplifying Crota by reducing central overheads introducing shared service centres for finance and making a greater use of outsourcing. So again, good progress in all areas and this will support our margin progression over the next couple of years. Our transformation workstreams are underpinned by actions to enhance our high performance culture and to leverage AI, data and digitalisation to support decision making and across the group we're embedding AI and digitalization guided by a coordinated roadmap. We are already generating incremental revenue by incorporating AI. And a great example of this is in our seed business where we've used AI to optimize and control all steps of tomato seed enhancement, leveraging more than 20 years of historic data. And this has resulted in a five-fold reduction in treatment times enhancing efficiency, improving customer satisfaction and generating additional revenue. Our focus going forward is on using AI to enhance our leadership position in innovation and combining it with our R&D data to speed up these innovation cycles. This combination of proprietary information and AI technology will significantly improve our competitive position over the next few years. and as I said at the outset growth plus transformation is helping to drive our improved performance and we are very focused on delivering the targets set out in our three-year plan again the work we're doing is not just driving a better performance today it is strengthening our platform for longer-term sustainable and consistent growth for years to come so bringing this all together Our performance in the first half was very much in line with our expectations. We liked the shape of our results, with profits growing ahead of sales, and sales ahead of volume. That's classic Kroda, and it highlights the renewed strength of innovation in the business. The programme we set out at the start of this year is delivering, and we are reinvigorating beauty with a significant step up in consumer care, led by Actives. And we're also starting to see the benefits of rebalancing pharma with good growth across our flagship ingredients portfolio. And our transformation plan is on track, enhancing our platform for growth and making us a faster, more efficient business. So much of what we're doing is within our control. and that reinforces our confidence for the full year and keeps us firmly on track to meet our targets for 2028. So there's lots more to do but the progress is clear and we will continue to drive that momentum in the second half and beyond. So let me stop there and take your questions. David, over to you.

Thanks, Steve. Welcome, everyone, to our H1 results call. For those of you on the webcast, please type your questions into the Q&A window, and I'll ask them on your behalf. But first, we'll take questions from our covering analysts over the telephone lines. So, George, over to you.

Thank you very much, David. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask an audio question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. and just make sure that your line is not used to allow you to reach our equipment. Our very first question this morning is coming from Lisa Deneuve calling from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. My first one is a little bit on the second half. You delivered quite a solid first half result. I mean, how do we expect the second half growth to evolve across consumer care and outside of your highlighted step up in pharma solutions How do you expect the other Lifetime segments to trend, especially in the light of fairly comparable volume, comparables year on year? That's my first question. And the second one is on the Fugaslo outlook. I mean, the first half has a networking capital outflow, which is very understanding, given your second quarter sales acceleration. But how should we think about Fugaslo for the full year? Thank you.

Thanks, Lisa. Morning to you as well. Let me do the first question. I'll pass to Stephen for the second one. I mean, in terms of growth, we're very pleased with the majority of the growth coming through the business. I think as you look for the second half, we expect continued strong growth in consumer care. Life science should improve, particularly with some modest improvement in crop and also in pharma solutions. And obviously the transformation is building as well through the year that you can see in the pack. And also from a margin point of view, the exit margins in quarter two are giving us confidence of full year delivery as well.

So let me pass to Stephen on cash flow. Morning Lisa, thanks for the question. Just on free cash flow for the half, we were bang on where we expected. We're not really seeing yet the structural benefits of transformation of working capital. What you did see was the benefit of lower capex and we had higher inventory and receivables with the benefits of growth. We also had a bit of build on inventory ahead of the new factory openings in Asia. So what you can expect to see as we progress is working capital relatively reducing in the second half. So we've talked about a 20 to 30 benefit. And then particularly as we get into 27, 28, the benefits of working capital transformation coming through.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question is from Katie Richards, calling from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. I've got a question on the organic sales growth developments in consumer care, please, in Q2. How much of this was pricing-driven rather than the mixed effects, I guess, from the beauty-active side? And I would just be interested as well to hear how you're thinking about the pricing strategy, particularly from the shared manufacturing assets. I'm sort of noting... palm oil costs are higher year-on-year. They've not really come off. Ethylene is sort of bouncing back slightly, but it's still below the levels we saw earlier in the year. So I'm just struggling to balance these two effects. How should we expect pricing to develop in Q2? And are you seeking to retain any of the raw materials inflation within the margin? And then my second question is on your transformation program. It was good to see a significant proportion of the margin growth coming from this program now. But you did disclose that the rate is, that you're realizing the savings is continuing to build. So what led to the decision to hold the target at 100 million this morning?

Okay, Pastor Stephen, a bit on price mix and transformation then.

Yeah, let me start on that, Katie. So Q2 margin progression, It's predominantly mixed, to be honest, the benefit in consumer in Q2. The impact of price is relatively limited. So that's really good. That's the quality of the business coming through, just as we expect. Steve, you want to pick up the pricing strategy point?

Yeah, I mean, just on pricing, look, I mean, you know, we're pretty straightforward, as everybody knows. You know, the price increases into quarter two were largely limited to petrochemicals. EOPO represents about 10% of our basket. and the impact was mainly in Asia and to a degree in Europe. So it wasn't widespread everywhere. So that was targeted and we put our prices up there and as we monitor the situation in the Middle East, we'll continue to review pricing as and when we need to.

The KT on transformation, look, it's still relatively early days. We're pleased with progress and you can see the benefit of that coming through in the first half. That will clearly continue into the second and along with growth will contribute to further margin expansion. Look, let's deliver what we said we will do, so we're not in a position to upgrade the 100 million.

Katie, just answer your question now, please.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you very much, Katie. Our next question is coming from Matthew Yates, Franklin Bank of America. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, everyone.

I'd like to focus on, I think it's slide 12 that has the margin waterfall. Maybe starting off with a group level question, and essentially the cost saving zero out, given there's some underlying inflation there. Can you talk about, as we go into the second half, Why does the margin improve? I don't think from your guidance the rate of transformation accelerates. So is it rather that some of those inflationary or investment costs either moderate or annualize or something like that? And then specifically similar exercise really on the consumer division, obviously top line strong arguably I would say the drop through our margins was maybe a little bit disappointing, particularly given the good mix that you've been calling out. So is there anything we should really bear in mind that perhaps is holding that margin back still below 18%, be it the cost allocation, the remuneration, et cetera, et cetera? Thanks very much.

Thanks Matthew. Morning Matt. Let me pick that up. So look I think when we got to a margin it was exactly where we expected it to be and it's the exit rate that really gives us confidence into the second half. Why does that improve? It's really two reasons. One is the improved business mix in the second half and that's particularly driven by higher life sciences sales. and then as you said we then get the further transformation benefits coming through. When you look at the slide I think there's two important offsets for you to have in mind. One is the impact of the new plants coming online and we've very much said that that's a one off and actually it's more first half weighted because we get the benefits of the scale up in those plants in the second half and certainly into 27 and beyond. and then secondly the increase in variable remuneration again you should see that as a one-off this year so that gives you then confidence in the progression after this year just on consumer I mean consumer did benefit first half margin and obviously that very very strong performance in in actives we do have against that the two drags that I mentioned very importantly. And then it's the benefit of crop, the benefit of farmer solutions that really contribute to the second half. And it's the exit rate that I'd really point to.

Matthew? Thanks very much.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much, sir. Our next question will be coming from Sebastian Ray, college from Barenburg. Please go ahead.

Hello, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. I would have two, please. The first is on the relative growth in the U.S. compared to other regions. Is Frodo winning back all of the share that it lost in the previous two or three years in the U.S.? Because I know Q2 was stronger, but it looks like Asia is really taking up the slack. So can you give me an idea of where we are in terms of market share recapture, particularly in consumer care within the U.S. market? My second question is on long-term margins. Has anything changed about what you think is achievable for life sciences versus consumer care? And in particular, is life sciences a mid-20s EBIT margin business longer term? Thank you.

Yeah, let me take those, Sebastian. I mean, on US, I mean, what we're seeing in consumer is actually a classic. You would probably call it a K-shape. So what we're seeing is very good growth in premiums. driven by our Actives business and we can see that. It's had a very strong performance consistently now for the last couple of quarters. And it's still relatively tough in the Mastige market. So overall we're pleased with the progress. We are winning some business back but actually the main growth in America is coming from innovation in the Actives portfolio and our innovation framework. doing what we wanted to do, which is to get products to market quicker. And that's existing products as well. So we're pleased with that. In terms of life sciences, I think the way to look at life sciences, we have no change to the margin profile. You know, at the group level you can see we've got 20% returns planned for the next two years, 28, and it's linear. You should see that as a linear direction to that. So no change in life sciences there. And as we see in the component businesses, we don't see any change there neither.

Thank you.

Thank you for your question, Sebastian. Our next question is coming from Reynolds or calling from the city. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Two from me, please. The first, I just wanted to ask about the increase you're seeing in customers using your active ingredient brand names. I think for years you sort of debated the Intel, Insight type idea, but brands not typically wanting to acknowledge contributions from ingredient companies on the labels. I guess the question is, why is this coming now? Is this sort of intentional strategy from you? If you are, kind of what channels are you making your brands known to sort of consumers? And if that all is sort of true, what does it mean for pricing power going forward? And then just the second question is on the recovery in the solutions business in pharma. Q1, I think you pointed to a relatively benign sort of soft performance pointing to comps and timings. That didn't really recover Q2 clearly, so why should we have confidence that that now comes in the second half? Thanks very much.

Yeah, great. Well, let's do the Actors one first and then Farm Solutions. I mean, look, more broadly in Actors, we're really pleased with the performance. You can see the growth. It's all innovation. There isn't any pre-buying from Middle East in that. We've got growth across all categories, peptides, ceramides, botanicals and biotech active, so strong growth everywhere. And it's two things in innovation. It's the innovation that's increasing with our multinationals leading that. We're in a lot of multiple brands going forward, particularly in premium categories. And it's Crota's work as well, adopting a slightly different innovation framework where we're getting more products to market quicker, particularly by looking at the existing libraries and repositioning them. So the one in the pack, Audio4Line, is a great example of that, as you call out. And to your point there, I mean, that's great. It's great for Crota. If we can get more of our names on the front of the pack, I mean, it's brilliant. And what you see with that as an example is the influencers then get involved. and if you tap Volume4Line into your search engines you'll see a lot of hits and a lot of exposure positively about the ingredient and what it's doing in the brand and that's great for Koda but it's obviously great for our customers as well so that brings a trust with your customer where you can innovate more with them so we're in a very good position there And the growth that we're seeing is as a consequence of that combination of our customers and ourselves innovating more. So we expect that to continue. I would say don't pencil in 27% growth for the second half, by the way. But we're delighted with the growth rates and we expect healthy growth to continue, driven by innovation. I mean, on the pharma solution side, look, it's a small business. It's a young business. It represents about 30% of our total business in pharma. And it's about 60 million quid. And the nature of the business is slightly different to the rest of pharma. It's project driven, the individual contracts are significantly larger than what we see in the other parts of Crudder. So by its definition it's naturally more lumpy. And we're not judging that performance on quarter by quarter. I mean this is terrific medicine for the future. But the order book that we see, we expect project revenues to improve in half too. So it genuinely is phasing in that business.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you, sir. Next question is coming from Nicola Tang . Please go ahead. Hi, everyone.

Thanks for taking the questions. To start with, I was wondering if you could extend some of those order book comments to the rest of all the other end markets as well. Could you talk a little bit about what you're seeing across the different end markets? And you mentioned there could have been a bit of pre-buying going on in Q2 so I was wondering if you expect that to fade in Q3 and then secondly just around input inflation within the group 3.4% price mix impact in H1 could you talk about how much of that was pricing just related to input versus underlying price mix and within that price dynamic were you able to fully recoup the absolute input inflation that we saw in the first half and you mentioned that some role maps have started to moderate. So I was wondering if you could give us a view on your implementation for the full year. Thank you.

Steve, you go first, then I'll add to that.

Morning, Nicola. So let me just deal with, I think your questions are really touching on the Middle East, so let me deal with that, the impact overall on sales. So as you've seen from the release, there's pluses and minuses there. So the benefit on the top line, if you like, are those targeted sales. price increases to cover the input inflation and that's the petrochem impact. We did see some limited pre-buy early on and that's mainly in beauty care and home care but that's largely out of the wash by the time we get to the end of the half and then going in the other direction

we've got the loss of sales directly by F&F into the Middle East so if you put all of that together actually we're looking at a very small very small net impact on first half sales and it's mainly in consumer yeah I mean just your order book I mean the order booking farm solutions is slightly different to us because it's project based it's R&D budgets and R&D planning so you know they're in a bit more in the longer term in the order book than the rest of the sort of order intake for what I would say is the normal Crota business. So the order book's around four to six weeks and there's nothing to suggest that we're dropping off with July as a good order book for Crota. So we're very pleased with that. We're obviously naturally remaining cautious for the rest of the year just given the macro environment but nothing in the order book is yet to say we're going to see significant softening. So we're pleased with that.

Thanks, and then maybe the question around pricing and inputs, sort of you for the second half?

Yes, I mean, at the moment, I mean, you know, had we not seen any change in the Middle East, and who knows where that's going, we would have expected some modest raw material savings in the basket, you know, very low single digits, so pretty benign, but obviously we're watching if it goes the other way as well, so... So we're not intending to price any differently, but we will if we have to. And that's the point we make. And we did the same in quarter two and we'll do it again in quarter three if we have to.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much, Nicola. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you have any questions or follow-up questions, please do press star one at this time. We'll now go to Sean. Udeshi of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. The first question was just looking, I mean, the comment you made was the exit rate gives you more confidence on the second half improvement. I'm just curious if you can quantify the exit rate because you did 17.7% for H1 as a whole, so should we expect that Q2 was about 18% or anything that you can help to just quantify what the exit rate was coming out of Q2? The second question I had was just on this pharma solution piece, I appreciate the small business, but I suppose it's also more profitable than your pharma ingredients. I'm not trying to be critical, but I think it's fair to say that the first half in Pharma was probably below, I think, my expectations and probably also below your expectations. So the point I'm trying to say is, is there a risk that this order book doesn't translate into revenues or at least as much revenue as expected in H2 as was the case in H1? And if I can squeeze in one last quick question, I'm just curious on your product own platform. Can you give us a bit more detail on how are you monetizing it in terms of is the margin level for the sales to that platform actually higher than the traditional sales model given you probably don't need the same sort of sales approach in terms of big costs. Just curious how you think about that in terms of margin.

Yeah, thanks, Jim. Lots of questions there. We'll answer each one. But let's do the margin point first. So, Stephen. Great, great. Thank you for the question.

So, a couple of points. So, I talked about the one-offs. But really importantly, as I think about the quarter-on-quarter approach, progression and the exit rate. The Q2 exit rate is exactly where we need it to be to deliver the second half margin expansion. So we have the one offs that the first quarter was also depressed by the weather events, the extreme weather events in the US and we've talked about that previously at the Q1 results. So that dragged down the Q1 margin, very strong margin progression in quarter two and that's what then translates into further progression in three and four.

I think on the farmer, I think it's best to look at farmer in the round. People forget what farmer ingredients, which is the nuts and bolts of Crota, represents about 70% of our business. Thousands of products, thousands of customers. That's made encouraging progress through the first half, and we're really pleased with that. So this project flagship, focusing on innovation, dialing up product focus more broadly, is delivering good growth. And in there, it's the high purity excipients that are driving the growth. So we're pleased with Farmer Ingredients, which is two-thirds of the business. I think Farmer Solutions is, because of its nature of project-based, we can map projects much better there. So that gives us confidence that the revenues will start to come through in the second half. And then the third point was Croderon, which is a good point. Yeah, we want more of our small product-customer combinations on Croderon. And What you should see there, Chetan, is it's the cost to serve should ultimately reduce as we start to load up more onto that platform.

Got it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Odeshi. As we have no further questions this time, Mr. Foote, I'll turn the call back over to you for any additional or closing remarks.

Thanks, everybody, for the questions. I think four key points for me, just to pull it together. You see innovation increasing, not just at our customers, but with ourselves as well, which is really driving the encouraging results. Transformation benefits are building. You can see that coming through, and we're really pleased with how Crota's responding to that. We're reiterating our full-year guidance, and, of course, we're on track for our full-year 28 framework as well. So, yeah, we're working hard and doing the right things. So we'll stop there, and we'll see you next time.