Genus plc

Thank you for joining us this morning. My name is Juergen Kopi and I am the Genus CEO. First, I am delighted to introduce Andy Russell, our new CFO, who has succeeded Alison Hendrickson on the 1st of August.

And a bit more about Andy will follow later.

I'm also very pleased to report that we've made a significant announcement this morning related to the acceleration of our Porcine joint venture formation in China. and he and I will take you through geniuses results for the year which will be followed by a presentation on our China JV in summary we have achieved strong financial results and made significant strategic progress I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all genius employees for their contributions in achieving these results after the disclaimer let me start with an overview of our strategic performance as well as our key financial headlines our three strategic priorities remain unchanged our first priority is continued growth in porcine i am pleased to report that pic excluding china achieved an 11 increase in operating profit for the full year as for pic china i'm delighted to announce this morning that we're accelerating our joint venture formation with bca under the terms of the agreement genus will receive an accelerated 7.5 million dollar milestone payment and upon completion of the transaction a gross cash payment of 160 million dollars with bca taking a 51 stake in pic china this provides the best possible route to obtaining PRP approval in China. I'll take you through more detail on this later in the presentation. Our second priority is the successful commercialization of PRP, which is the biggest opportunity from our R&D program. In April, we achieved a critical milestone as the US FDA approved our PRP gene edits. This important accomplishment is testament to the hard work and dedication of numerous genus teams over many years. We are continuing to seek approvals from other regulators around the world, and we are encouraged by the progress that we're making. Our third priority is driving greater value from bovine. As a reminder, we initiated a comprehensive value acceleration program in FY24. which will return the ABS business to growth while improving margins, return on capital and cash generation. I'm pleased to say that VAP actions are bearing fruit with phases one and two delivering over 21 million pounds of annualized benefits. We are now implementing phase three which targets an additional 9 million of annualized benefits. ABS is a strong business and we remain focused on accelerating profitable growth. Turning then to our headline financial performance in the year. You can see the strong numbers on the slide and note that this was achieved despite a significant 8.5 million FX headwind. This was driven by strong growth in PIC and VAP actions benefiting ABS. Let me then look at our markets. and let me pick out a few highlights on each of the species. In the Americas, pork producers operated at positive margins throughout the year. European pork producers also made healthy margins, but our European business was negatively impacted by ongoing health challenges in customer herds. In China, the market environment for pork producers was relatively stable throughout the year. Outside of China, the Asian industry continued to face disease challenges. Looking ahead, the outlook for the first half of FY26 is stable, albeit there are the normal risks around disease. Moving to bovine, in North America and Europe, dairy and beef producers were profitable in the period. In LATAM, demand for beef genetics in Brazil continued to be weak despite signs that the beef cycle is stabilizing. In Asia, the environment for Chinese dairy producers continued to be very challenging. In addition, in February, the Chinese government restricted bovine genetic imports from the US due to blue tongue virus being found in several US herds. This actually led to a stronger H2 performance from ABS China as customers look to secure their supply of ABS's elite genetics. However, this is only a short-term boost to sales in China, as there is currently no ability to replenish in-country inventories. In terms of the H1 outlook for FY26, we believe the market environment in Europe and Americas is reasonably stable, whereas China dairy continues to be weak, with restrictions on U.S. bovine genetics posing an additional challenge for ABS China. Overall, therefore, aside from ABS China, market conditions appear relatively stable across both of our businesses for the first half. And Andy and I will discuss a full year outlook for Genus later on. Let me now update you on our sustainability progress. At Genus, our vision is pioneering animal genetic improvement to sustainably nourish the world. we know we have a significant positive impact on industry sustainability our genetics and services enable farmers to raise healthier animals that produce more high quality protein per unit of input in FY25 through the use of our genetics and services protein producers were able to avoid over 8 million tons of CO2 equivalent emissions these so-called scope 4 reductions that are underpinned by rigorous lifecycle assessments showed a powerful impact genus advanced genetic has on improving industry sustainability. Let me now hand over to Andy Russell to take you through our FY25 financial performance. On behalf of the entire board, we're delighted we've been able to secure an executive of Andy's caliber. Andy joined us on the 1st of August and before Gina spent nearly 12 years at Smith and Nephew in operational and strategic finance roles. Prior to that, Andy spent 17 years with KPMG. I'm looking forward to working closely with Andy as we continue to advance our strategic agenda. With that, let me turn it over to Andy.