Comvita New Zealand Ltd

Good morning and thank you all for joining us today. I'm Carl Graydon, Chief Executive Officer of Convita. I would like to warmly welcome you to this online meeting. We will provide an update on Convita's full year results for the year ended 30 June 2026. Today's presentation will be led by myself and our Chief Financial Officer, Mandy Tom Constancy. We represent a new team and before all else, I want to thank the entire global Convita team for their efforts during this milestone year. I would also like to acknowledge our directors and attendants, Bridget Coates, Convita's board chair, Mike Fang, chair of the Audit and Risk Committee, Bob Major, chair of the Safety and Performance Committee, Greg Barclay, Michael Chai, Julia Zhu, and Peter Nathan, making up the rest of the director's suite. I will start by with a high-level performance review for 2026 and talk through our strategic and commercial performance. I will then hand over to Mandy to provide more detail on our financial performance. I will, at the end of the presentation, provide our 2027 outlook before we move to a question-and-answer session. The simple message for 2026 is that Convita delivered the priorities we set at the start of the year, returning to profitability with an impact of $7.7 million and finishing the year in a materially stronger position than we started. Return to profitability, materially reduced debt, normalised inventory and restored positive cash generation. This helped enable us to complete the recapitalisation and financing process, which gives the business a much stronger financial platform to move forward from. As part of the capital raise, Fraser and Neves joined our register as a strategic investor. Several strategic initiatives are now underway that have the potential to accelerate growth across Southeast Asia and support long-term value creation. During the year, we also completed a significant refresh of the leadership team, ensuring the business has the capability, experience and accountability required for the next phase of Convita's growth and development. The outcomes this year were a hard one. They reflect stronger discipline across the business and the benefit of decisions taken throughout the reset process. At the same time, I want to be clear that this is not the end of the work FY26 stabilised the business, strengthened the foundations and restored our financial flexibility. FY27 is about converting that stronger platform into consistent commercial performance and long-term value creation. From our turn to the financial highlights for FY26. The year reflects a significant improvement in Convisa's financial position. Revenue increased to $213 million. and the business returned to profitability with a reported impact of $7.7 million. Operating cash flow strengthened materially and free cash flow was positive, supported by improved earnings, inventory normalisation and disciplined working capital management. The balance sheet also improved substantially. Net debt reduced from $62.4 million to a net cash position of half a million. reflecting stronger operating cash flows, inventory normalisation and a successful recapitalisation. Inventory reduced to around $80 million, which is within a more sustainable operating range for our business. Importantly, these outcomes were delivered while completing the recapitalisation and refinancing. The financial base of the business is now materially stronger than it was a year ago. This slide sets out the priorities we gave the market and the progress delivered against each of them. We returned the business to profitability ahead of guidance, strengthened the balance sheet and brought inventory back into the more normal operating range. We maintained our premium grant positioning, sharpened our innovation pipeline and delivered significant volume growth through strategic channel partnerships, particularly in North America. We also substantially strengthened the leadership team during FY26. This team is now fully established, bringing the strategic commercial capability, experience and accountability needed for the next phase of growth, operational improvements and value creation. The key point is that FY26 was a year of delivery against the reset priorities. We now have a more stable platform, but we still have work to do in our systems, our cost base, supply optimisation, brand investment and channel execution. Before moving into our market performance, it's worth stepping back and looking at what is happening in the broader Manuka honey category. Global demand is becoming more diversified. North America is now the largest Manuka honey market globally and category demand continues to broaden beyond greater China. We are leading this growth. At the same time, category growth is increasingly volume led, which reinforces the need for brand differentiation, premiumisation and disciplined value creation. Supply dynamics are also changing. Industry inventories have reduced, raw honey pricing has stabilised and quality supply is becoming more important. For Convita, our vertically integrated model is a great advantage. in this environment. The 2026 Mardukia season was a great example of that. While some in the industry were cautious ahead of the season, our own supply position was very well managed by the team, supported by our forests, apiaries and procurement discipline. Ending the year with our inventory and balance was a significant achievement, and both our operations and apiary teams should be rightly proud of their strong performance. The implication is clear. Market and channel diversification Innovation, brain strength and supply security matter more than ever. Our overall market performance in 2026 was mixed, but the direction of travel has improved. Intentional diversification of channels and geographies is a key part of our strategy. Growth in North America and the rest of Asia helped offset continued headwinds in China and softer trading conditions in ANZ. We saw strong club retail performance in North America, continued leadership in China, expanded distribution in selected markets and encouraging momentum from innovation and premiumisation. At the same time, we are not underplaying the challenges. China consumer demand remains softer, parallel imports and lower price competition continue to place pressure on the entire category and some markets remain uneven. What has changed is the business is now better positioned to manage through those conditions. We have a broader market base, clearer channel priorities and stronger execution discipline. Greater China remains our toughest market but it also remains a market where Convita has significant brand strength. In FY26 we maintained our number one brand position with more than 50% market share and retained leadership in online sales. Locally-led innovation helps strengthen our consumer engagement and create new consumption occasions, which is important in a category facing more value-conscious consumers. The challenges are clear. Consumer demand is still softer. The category continues to see commoditisation and the pricing pressure from parallel imports and lower price competition remains a headwind. However, our focus is therefore disciplined and targeted. We will continue to capture volume growth in large-scale retail and online channels, expand our premium VMS footprint, our new innovation and formats, and optimise our store retail network. The objective is to protect leadership and rebuild quality growth rather than chase volume at any price. Under new leadership, North America was a key driver of our FY26 performance and is now our most significant growth market. Strong club retail performance supported volume growth, sell-through and inventory normalisation, while also introducing manuka honey to US consumers at scale. We also maintained our leadership position in natural retail and extended our distribution across priority channels. Importantly, North America is no longer simply a volume growth story. It is creating broader consumer awareness of the Manuka honey category, increasing category participation, and is helping establish a platform for growth across multiple markets. We are grateful for the scale and momentum our club retail partner provided, but we are also managing concentration risk and profitability carefully. The focus is on building a durable and diversified North American business across retail partners, natural grocery, e-commerce and emerging digital platforms. The opportunity is significant, but the market is competitive. Our priorities are to grow brand awareness, increase household penetration, expand distribution in the right channels and formats and continue to build digital commerce capability. Across our other markets, the focus has been on improving profitability, sharpening channel execution and expanding reach in priority areas. The rest of Asia continues to build momentum with strong performance in markets such as Singapore and South Korea, supported by retail optimisation, digital growth and key distribution partnerships. In Japan, the focus has been more on resetting the platform for improved profitability. We are particularly encouraged by the engagement of our new strategic shareholder F&N. As mentioned earlier, several strategic initiatives are now underway across channels, innovation and supply chain that have the potential to create and accelerate growth across Southeast Asia for long-term value creation. ANZ does remain challenging, particularly given weaker consumer conditions and ongoing pressure in the Asian health channel. margins improved in parts of the portfolio and we continue to see opportunities through pharmacy, tourism and owned brand experiences. In Europe and the Middle East the move to a distributor led model is improving efficiency and profitability with new growth opportunities emerging through strategic partnerships. The common theme across these markets is disciplined channel focus and growth where we can get an appropriate return. Innovation is not about launching new products, not only about launching new products and leveraging our proprietary science. It is about strengthening our brand relevance, premium positioning and future growth opportunities. In FY26 we continue to build innovation platforms around products and formats that expand how Convita is used. This included new Manuka honey lozenge variants, locally led eye health innovation in Asia, focused on the growing need to address eye problems that come as a result of prolonged screen time. And the elevation of our super premium UMF29 Manawai Mai first harvest product, which tells a stronger single source story from our own Manuka forest. Our science program is also central to differentiation. In a category where many competitors can make similar broad claims, proprietary science and clinical evidence are what allow Comvita to stand apart. Our lethargy work and upcoming gut health clinical trials are important examples of how we are building a science-based platform that can support future premium innovation. The focus is disciplined innovation. Fewer, better opportunities that strengthen the brand, create new usage occasions and support long-term category leadership. A more efficient operating model was also a major contributor to our FY26 success. We reduced inventory, strengthened procurement discipline and forecasting tools, improved manufacturing utilisation, and continued to sharpen our sales and operations planning. These actions supported margin recovery, working capital improvements and stronger cash generation. The reset has also reinforced the importance of making better use of our existing assets and infrastructure. Insourcing selected production, improving planning tools and reducing avoidable waste all help to improve returns from the operating base we already have. There is still more to do. We will continue to optimise our cost base, our operating model and capability to support a more globally integrated and scalable business. I will now hand over to Mandy to provide additional detail around our financial performance. Thanks Mandy.

Kia ora koutou, good afternoon everyone. I'll now take you through the financial performance in more detail, including key earnings drivers, cash generation, balance sheet position, and our approach to capital allocation. As Carl has outlined, FY26 was a year of significant financial reset and commercial rigour. The focus from a financial perspective was to restore profitability, improve cash conversion, reduce debt, complete the refinancing, and ensure the business entered FY27 with materially stronger financial foundations. Importantly, as we look at the quality of earnings improvement, this results in a combination of underlying operational improvement and some legacy issues that affected FY25. I'll talk specifically this underlying performance improvement, including the gross margin shift and contribution from North America. FY26 marked a return to operating profitability with operating profit before financing costs improving by $43 million compared with FY25. Revenue increased to $213 million supported by strong North American growth and improved market diversification. Importantly, revenue growth translated into improved profitability through stronger manufacturing utilisation, improved overhead absorption and continued cost assistance. Growth margin recovered materially during the year. Part of this year-on-year movement reflects the impact of significant inventory-related provisions recorded in FY25. Normalising for those provisions, FY25 growth margin would have been 50.8% compared to 53.9% in FY26. This demonstrates a genuine underlying improvement driven by manufacturer efficiencies, improved internal utilisation and digital procurement outcomes. Our medium term expectation is that growth margin will stabilise in line with honey cost stabilisation. The significance of this result is not simply that profitability is returned. It demonstrates that the business is now generating earnings from its core operations. supported by a disciplined execution and a stronger operating model. This slide shows how profitability was restored during FY26. There were three important drivers. These were revenue growth, particularly in North America, stronger margins through manufacturing and supply chain efficiencies, and ongoing cost management across the business. The increase in volume improved our factory utilisation and overhead recovery, while inventory optimisation initiatives disciplined procurement, stronger apiary performance and improved raw honey utilisation all contributed to margin improvement. The year-on-year comparison also benefited from lower depreciation of around $3 million following asset write-offs in FY25 and from the use of lower-cost honey procured in the prior year, even allowing for these benefits. And despite higher fleet costs and broader macroeconomic pressure, the result demonstrates that the business has made real progress in improving the quality and resilience of our gross margin. Importantly, profitability was not driven by a single action. It reflects multiple improvements across the business working together, including commercial performance, operational execution, and a more efficient operating cost base. Operating expenses reduced by $8 million year-on-year, reflecting the cost-out actions that were taken. We will continue to assess business performance to ensure our cost base is appropriately sized and focused on initiatives that add value. While market conditions remain challenging in several regions, the business demonstrated that it can improve earnings through disciplined execution and strong operational performance. Earnings were above guidance with normalised EBIT of $16.4 million versus guidance of $15.5 million. Normalisations were also in line with guidance. One of the most important strategic shifts during FY26 was the continued diversification of Convita's revenue base. While Greater China remains a key market, stronger growth in North America, South East Asia and EMEA have reduced our reliance on any single geography and created a more balanced business. The diversification is deliberate. It improves resilience, broadens our growth opportunities, and reduces our exposure to economic or competitive challenges in any one market, creating a stronger and more sustainable platform for long-term growth and shareholder value creation. Our focus now is on converting that momentum to broad, diversified channel and customer base while maintaining our commercial rigour around margin and working capital. One of the most significant achievements of FY26 was restoring cash generation through disciplined inventory management and improved operating performance. Our inventory reduced from 89 million to 79.9 million and is now back within our target operating range. This reflects increased sell-through, better inventory utilisation and stronger planning processes across the business. Our operating cash flow increased to $40.3 million and our earnings to cash conversion improved materially. Our cash generation was not simply the result of selling down inventory. Inventory normalisation was a significant contributor, but we also saw benefit of improved earnings and better alignment between production, inventory and customer demand. The working capital reset is now substantially complete. Going forward our focus is maintaining this discipline while continuing to support growth opportunities and supply resilience to increasingly drive cash generation. This represents a significant change in the company's financial position in a relatively short period. Refinancing was completed during the year, providing appropriate liquidity. The government headroom had flexibility through to September 2028. This gives the business the capacity to execute against its strategy. Focus now is to preserve that flexibility while selectively investing in growth opportunities that support long-term value creation. With the balance sheet reset the discussion shifts from repairing the business to how capital will be allocated going forward. Our first priority remains financial discipline. Maintaining appropriate liquidity and preserving flexibility remain important particularly given the volatility that can exist within agricultural supply chains and global consumer markets. Our second priority is targeted investment in the areas that strengthen competitive advantage, including honey supply, brand, science, innovation and digital capability. Finally, we remain focused on improving returns from existing assets and driving greater operating efficiency throughout the business. Over time, as earnings, cash generation and balance sheet metrics continue to strengthen, we remain committed to returning capital to shareholders I'll now hand back to Carl to provide comments on our FY27 outlook. Thanks, Mandy.

As we look to FY27, our stance remains confident but pragmatic. The business is materially stronger than it was a year ago, but disciplined execution remains the priority. We have made good progress. The business has been stabilised, the balance sheet has been repaired and the leadership team is in place. We are clear about the issues, clear about our priorities and better positioned to execute. But there is still significant work ahead. FY27 will be another demanding year with its own challenges across consumer demand, competitive intensity and geopolitical uncertainty. The honey harvest variability will continue and we will need to keep improving our operating model. The opportunity remains significant but our focus is on continuing to improve operational performance and returns while pursuing targeted growth opportunities with discipline. FY27 presents both opportunities and challenges. The opportunities are clear. Further expansion in strategic markets and channels, a stronger innovation pipeline and the ability to invest more deliberately in brand, science, digital and supply capability are important. This must happen at the same time as we tightly control our controllables, which are primarily our costs. The risks are also clear. geopolitical disruption could affect freight, fuel and supply chains. Consumer sentiment remains uncertain, particularly in China. The honey harvest outcomes can vary and competitive intensity remains high across the category. Our approach is to manage these risks closely while continuing to move the business forward. We are not assuming that the environment will get easier. We are building a business that can perform with more resilience and discipline through that environment we will focus on the US and other strategic markets and channels where we see the strongest opportunity for growth our priorities are clear and deliberately few and focused we will strengthen the brand because brand relevance and differentiation are critical in a more competitive category We will drive category growth through product innovation and science with a focus on fewer, higher quality opportunities. As the category supply and demand continues to rebalance, we believe trusted brands, which we are, with strong supply access, which we have, and genuine differentiation and disciplined execution will be the best position to succeed. We will remain disciplined Disciplined in our approach to capital allocation, sharpening and optimisation of our footprint while continuing to improve our operating model capability and cost base. Some of that focus will take investment and the benefits will take time to flow through. Our focus is now disciplined execution and creating long-term shareholder value. Convita has a trusted global brand. deep-sized capability, high-quality supply and increasingly diversified market footprint with a strengthened leadership team. We're the industry leader. With the foundations now substantially rebuilt, our focus turns to discipline growth, targeted investment and creating sustainable long-term shareholder value. We will now pause and take any questions which can be submitted through the portal provided. Please click ask a question to send in your questions. As we wait for these to be received, I'd like to again thank our board members, the leadership team, and the wider Convita global team for their ongoing efforts in helping position Convita for a far more successful future. If we do run out of time, we'll provide a response to you after the presentation. Thank you.