Accsys Technologies PLC (AXS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Accsys Technologies PLC Half Year Results Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Robert Harris. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Accsys Interim Results Presentation, which covers the first 6 months of our 2022 financial year from the 1st April to end of September 2021. As always, we have some great pictures of Accoya and Tricoya in action throughout today's presentation. The image you see here is of Accoya in Baja, Mexico. The building is the Baja Club Hotel and Accoya has been used in the bulkhead paneling and cladding or siding as is known in North America. We have our usual disclaimers, which I know will be familiar to you. This morning, I'm going to give you a quick overview of our results. And then I'll pass to Will Rudge, our Finance Director, to run through the financials. I will then cover how our Accoya and Tricoya businesses have performed in our first half and then review with you our wider strategic development. To summarize our results this morning, there are 3 key things that will show -- that I will show you today. Firstly, our results are good. Secondly, we have made solid progress with our strategic growth options. And thirdly, we have continued with our planned investment in our organizational growth capability, building our talent pool and strengthening our business processes to deliver our ambitious growth plans. In terms of our first half results, we have had good financial performance. We are reporting 12% growth in sales volumes, 31% growth in revenue and we have seen continuing blistering demand for our products. We have delivered this growth even though we have continued to operate at capacity at our plant in Arnhem. During the period, we have increased our average sales prices, and gross profit is up 20%, and you can see the benefit from that pricing power that we have continued our momentum on profitability in the period. It is worth noting upfront that in this period, we are comparing our performance to the first half of the 2021 financial year, which was from the 1st April 2020 to the end of September 2020. As I'm sure you will recall, within this period, quarter 1 of our previous financial year was negatively impacted by COVID. My second point today is that we're good making progress on our key expansion projects. And finally, this has been a period of investment in the business as we planned. We have added people ready to manage the growth ahead of us and to be ready to operate our new expansion projects as they come online. Even after this new investment, we're reporting EBITDA growth of 5%. With that, I will now pass over to Will.

Thank you, Rob. Good morning, everyone. I'm going to move quite quickly past the fantastic image of Accoya cladding used at the Oregon State University. Move on to the next slide, which is our financial highlights. Looking at our financial highlights for the 6-month period to 30th September 2021. As Rob said, we've reported strong revenue growth of 31%, driven by a 12% increase in volumes, which, together with Accoya sales price increases and changes in our sales mix in the period. As Rob mentioned, we've been at capacity and the volume increase, therefore, reflects that last year was impacted by COVID in the first few months and that had also altered our sales mix, and I will explain this in a more detail on another slide. The increased production, sales volumes and pricing all helped drive the 20% increase in gross profit. The underlying gross manufacturing margin was 2% lower. However, this was due to the sales mix, and we continue to see an increase in profit per cubic meter of Accoya sold. During the period, again, as Rob mentioned, we have invested in our organization, in particular, our people to support our future growth. This resulted in higher operating costs leading to the 5% increase in underlying EBITDA compared to last year. The balance sheet reflects we are very well positioned to deliver our future growth. Within the net cash balance of EUR 2.4 million at the end of September, we held cash balances of EUR 61 million, enabling us to invest in the Hull Tricoya plant in Arnhem expansion in U.S. projects, which we'll come back to. So moving on to the next slide, looking at our sales mix in more detail. The left-hand chart sets out the proportion of Accoya sales by end market. The percentages in brackets reflecting the change in this proportion compared to the previous year. Here, it's important to understand what we did last year when COVID first impacted us. The first couple of months of last year, the U.K. and U.S. markets, in particular, were impacted as a result of disruption to supply chains caused by COVID. We were able to redirect some of our volumes to other markets at that time, in particular, to Mainland Europe and also for Tricoya. Some of these sales included what we call tolling, and this is where we process the wood but are not responsible for the raw wood purchase and as a result, these are priced at a lower level as are the sales of Tricoya. In the current period, where our sales were not impacted by COVID, the sales mix has been effectively been rebalanced, resulting in a higher overall proportion of our sales at a higher price point. In addition, we've continued to target the North American market ahead of the new plant planned there to be built, and reflecting that this is our largest geographical market opportunity. Here, our sales volumes grew by 75%. Moving on to the next page. This slide sets out how our group EBITDA compared to the same 6-month period last year. The 5% increase to EUR 4.5 million of underlying EBITDA reflects the increase in our Accoya profitability partially offset by our investment in organizational capability. So starting on the left-hand side, the sales volumes increased by 12%, reflecting that last year was impacted by COVID but also that this year, we've rescheduled our annual maintenance stock to the second half of the financial year to enable some key tie-ins for the fourth reactor project in Arnhem to be carried out. The EUR 2.9 million increase due to sales prices resulted from Accoya price increases implemented in November last year, with further increases in June and September this year. Average prices were also higher in the period due to the change in the product mix, as I explained on the last slide. The price increase has substantially offset the higher raw material costs in the period where our chemical raw materials increased more than previously anticipated. I'll come back to this in another slide in more detail. The decrease in fixed overheads of EUR 1 million in the period reflects that we had higher production volumes and the fact that we have efficiency gains when we see higher -- when we are operating at higher volumes. As a reminder, we've reduced our production volumes in the first 2 months of last year as an initial COVID mitigation measure. We increased our investments in our organizational capability, as previously indicated, and this has seen our operating costs increased by EUR 2.4 million in total. This largely reflects an additional -- additional 51 heads and this includes the recruitment of operation teams ahead of the commercial start-up of the fourth reactor in Arnhem, the Tricoya plant in Hull plus a further 11 staff for the Accoya Color project who joined us when we acquired Assets in Wales, allowing us to significantly increase our color production capacity, which we look forward to seeing the benefit of more in the next year. Last year also included some temporary salary decreases for some of our more senior staff as a COVID mitigation action. However, in the current period, we repaid all staff below the Board and executive level. Finally, last year also included EUR 400,000 of license revenue attributable to milestones reached in respect of the license agreement in place between Accsys and the Accoya USA joint venture. While not replicated in the current period, further license income is expected to be recognized as the project progresses. Moving on to the next slide. Here, we set out the longer-term trend for profitability. On the left-hand side showing the previous 4 periods of group underlying EBITDA. And on the right-hand side, the Accoya segment profitability, excluding license income. Group EBITDA improvements continue to be driven by growth in the Accoya business. In particular, the increase in FY '19 to FY '20 where we benefited from the third Accoya reactor coming on stream. Therefore, as we look ahead, we expect a further step up in profitability with the fourth reaction in Arnhem coming on stream enabling us to target further operating efficiencies associated with the additional capacity being added to an existing site. The graph on the right-hand side sets out that the profit from Accoya manufacturing continues to increase. Although the gross margin percentage in the period decreased by 250 basis points due to the change in the sales mix explained on the earlier slide. We've previously set out that we continue to expect a 30% gross manufacturing margin to be achievable, having increased by more than 9% since FY '18. This continues to remain the case even after allowing for some raw material cost price pressure in the period and the changes in the sales mix. So moving on to the next slide. The chart helps to explain the continuing progression of our profitability by showing that while the percentage gross margin decreased, the monetary profit we make for each cubic meters sold has continued to increase. The profit per cubic meter of Accoya has increased by 11% compared to the first half of last year. This increase has been driven by the higher sales volumes and resulting efficiency compared to last year, along with the successful implementation of the 2 price increases in the period. These price increases substantially offset increases we've seen with our raw material costs. Our key chemical raw materials, acetic anhydride have seen a much more significant increase compared to what we previously anticipated, reflecting in a large part, the significant increase in natural gas prices. However, we continue to benefit from selling acetic acid as a valuable byproduct, which continues to provide a partial natural hedge. And as a result, our net acetyls price, which represents approximately 1/4 of the production cost for a normal cubic meter of Accoya has increased by approximately 26% compared to last year. Looking ahead, we have seen some further increase in the net acetyls price in the third quarter of the financial year. However, at this point, we expect a slight softening in prices thereafter, although underlying commodity prices do remain volatile. Raw wood prices have increased at a more moderate level, largely in line with our previous expectations as we continue to benefit from long-term supply arrangements in place. After allowing for the sales price increases, we do continue to believe the 30% gross margin remains achievable in both the short and longer term. The next slide looks at our strong cash flow generation. The chart shows movement in net debt for the 6-month period, starting from a net debt position of EUR 12.2 million at the 1st of April and ending with a net cash balance of EUR 2.4 million at the 30th of September. The number of moving parts worth highlighting. The Accoya business and its improved profitability now generates significant cash inflows, EUR 10.3 million in the period. While the Tricoya, Corporate and R&D segments have partially offset this, we expect the Tricoya segment to generate positive returns following the Hull startup next year. The EUR 4.4 million increase in working capital in the period largely reflects a planned increase in inventory levels of EUR 5.8 million where we have increased inventory from a lower than optimal level at the start of the year. We expect inventory levels to continue to increase further in the second half ahead of the fourth reactor in Arnhem starting up as well as the Tricoya plant in Hull. We continue to invest EUR 12.1 million after the EUR 17.2 million of CapEx relates to progress made in respect of the Arnhem, Accoya plant expansion project with a further EUR 3.7 million for the Tricoya plant construction in Hull. In July, we purchased assets from the former LIGNIA site in Barry in South Wales. These will help us to grow production availability of Accoya Color more rapidly, accelerating the launch of the product into more geographic markets and for more production applications. This purchase also included EUR 0.5 million of raw wood inventory, which will be used by the Accoya plant in Arnhem. The Accsys equity issuance represents the net proceeds from the placing and open offer successfully completed in May. This was primarily to fund the expansion of the Accoya business into North America through the construction of the new Accoya USA plant through our joint venture with Eastman. In this regard, we've invested EUR 1.2 million into the U.S. joint venture in the period as we move closer to the final investment decision. Moving on to the next slide. a little bit more on the balance sheet and our net cash position. I would like to highlight that within that EUR 2.4 million of net cash, we held cash balances of EUR 61 million at the end of September. The majority of these are expected to be invested into our strategic growth projects, including the completion of the fourth reactor as well as new wood handling equipment in Arnhem, the completion of the construction of the Tricoya plant in Hull and the Accoya USA plant and the investment into the U.S. joint venture following the final investment decision expected in the coming months. Our financial position has also been improved by the successful refinancing of our group debt shortly after the period end. In October, we completed the refinance of our group debt facilities through a new agreement with ABN AMRO. The new EUR 60 million 3-year agreement comprises of EUR 45 million term loan and a EUR 15 million revolving credit facility. The EUR 45 million term loan has been fully utilized to repay all of the group's existing debt with the exception of the NatWest facility held by the Tricoya consortium, which remains in place. This significantly simplifies our debt structure, which previously included 5 different debt providers, including commercial partners. These new arrangements also provide us with greater liquidity and a reduction in the cost of our debt by up to half going forward. So overall, our balance sheet is in good shape to deliver our growth plans. So moving on to the next slide and the financial summary and just to summarize the key financial aspects. The Accoya business has performed well with further sales price increases. Through our cost structure and our long-term supply arrangements, we have helped manage supply chain cost pressures. And as a result, we continue to believe the 30% gross margin of the Accoya business will continue to be delivered. We also continue to target a 40% gross margin with the Tricoya plant once it reaches higher levels of capacity utilization. And finally, ahead of the expected doubling of production capacity next year, we have continued to invest in the organization and our people to help deliver our planned growth. I'd now like to hand back to Rob.

Thank you, Will. Before we turn to our segmental update, let me just quickly explain this photo. This is a new build residential project where Accoya has been used to create replica Georgian style, sliding sash windows and an entrance door. Accoya was an excellent choice because with the 50-year warranty, it will be timeless and symbiotic with a sustainable built environment. We have a number of people on today's call who know us really well and a few who are newer to Accsys. So before we get into our segments, I will quickly recap what we do and the choices we have made. I make no apologies for this. We have a great story and I need to tell it. Accsys' purpose is to change wood to change the world. We have great world-leading technology that creates high-performance sustainable wood products. We have a large market growth opportunity, and we currently have just a 2% share of our identified achievable market and we also benefit from positive long-term structural growth megatrends. Demand for our products is so strong that our customers continue to want more than we can actually produce. We have a global growth strategy to build out and increase our production capacity by 5x to 200,000 meters cubed by 2025. Actually, we are also on track to double our manufacturing capacity next year. Accsys sell 2 key products, which you can see on the right of this slide, Accoya our solid wood product, and Tricoya, our chipped wood element that is used to make wood panel products. We make our products through a unique and protected acetylation technology, which is a bit like pickling our wood with acetic anhydride, a form of industrial vinegar. Our process transforms our sustainably grown raw softwood into a high-performance product that is highly stable. It doesn't shrink. It doesn't move, and it's very durable. And actually, it lasts a very long time. On the bottom right of the slide, you can see some recent awards we are on for Accoya as a sustainable building material. For example, here in the U.K., we won the Build, Construction And Engineering award for the Best Sustainable Building Materials Manufacturer for 2021, and we are all rightly very proud. Looking into the long term, the market opportunity for our products is significant and growing, with a strong macro tailwind of sustainability and consumer priorities, Accsys is very well positioned to benefit from these 2 global trends. Firstly, sustainability and the global decarbonization agenda. You must have been hiding under a rock or even behind a plank of sustainable Accoya for the last 3 weeks to have not been reminded through COP26 of the urgency of the climate challenge the world is facing. The United Nations sustainable development goals have been in place since 2015, and all industries need to move to embrace more sustainable development as Accsys itself is doing. This global United Nations led agenda on Climate will continue to be embedded at a national level as governments regulate to drive the industrial and consumer changes needed to reach their carbon reduction objectives. The building and construction industry is a carbon emitter, where buildings are responsible for approximately 40%, yes, 40% of global energy-related carbon emissions. Importantly, our products help to reduce the embodied carbon in buildings and allow other less sustainable, more polluting building materials to be displaced. The second megatrend is consumer priorities. As technology advances, people expect smarter buildings and over time, more consumers are actually valuing the quality and performance of products and materials more highly. Things that look good that last the distance and things that support busy lifestyles. There is also a continuing growth in indoor outdoor living and consumers also demand to know more about the life cycle of products and renewability. This is indeed Accsys's sweet spot. These global megatrends are creating a shift in purchasing decisions by end users towards products like Accoya and Tricoya because they are more sustainable or because they are of a higher quality and have better performance. Indeed, actually, it's both. Moving to the next slide. Accoya and Tricoya are being used in commercial and residential building projects and in civil buildings and publicly owned spaces. Some of these images are from our new Accoya projects Digital Book Online, and you have a moment, please have a flick through from our website. On the commercial side, our products have been selected by material specifiers and architects for some leading global brands, and you can see names like Louis Vuitton and their store in Cancun, Mexico and Starbucks as well as U.K. supermarket chain, Waitrose. On the residential side, Accoya and Tricoya offer both high-functional, high-performance features for key components in homes, whether it is in a flat, a garden office, terraces and decking or some larger architecturally designed homes. You can see here homes from the Italian Alps, to the South Coast of Australia. And on the civic side, because Accoya and Tricoya are lower maintenance and have long lifetime guarantees, they've become a compelling choice in the refurbishment of old buildings and public buildings where maintenance budgets are closely managed. You can see Accoya in the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens Walkway and Accoya cladding on a hospital in Belgium or even as a canal siding in the Netherlands. Shifting gear to our progress with our strategy. On this slide, we show the 3 key values that sit under our purpose: Being ambitious; respecting all our stakeholders; and being committed to safety, quality and sustainability. We have a 4-pillar strategy, which you can see on the left of this chart. On the bottom right of this chart, this breaks down how we plan to expand our production capacity to 200,000 meters cubed by 2025. Starting from 40,000 meters cubed in 2019, this is a 5x expansion in our capacity so that we can grow our operations deliver to more product to more great projects like we've just seen on the previous slide, and to capture the large market opportunity. As I mentioned earlier, we are on track to double our current manufacturing capacity within the next year. And I'll come back to the status on each of these projects shortly and just how we are planning to get this done. Turning to the Accoya performance. Firstly, on our production output and sales volumes, we have delivered 12% growth in Accoya sales volumes against the prior year, which was negatively impacted by COVID as Will explained. If we compare this period against the same period 2 years ago, either first half of the 2020 financial year, which was pre-COVID, this would be a 6% growth. Arnhem is operating at capacity levels, and our team is doing a great job of focusing on productivity, reliability and efficiency. Production was also supported by the annual maintenance stop being in the second half of this year versus first half last year. And actually, this shift will support the planned operational tie-ins for the new fourth reactor. Now that travel restrictions have eased for the time being, I've been pleased to get out and meet with our customers. I met with one of our European distributors recently who are big fans of our products and our long-term customers that continually would like more product. We work closely with them on supporting their sales through marketing, brochures, training and other things. But what I noticed when I was there was what the team were wearing, their company jackets with their company branding. But on the sleeve, they also had an Accoya logo. It was great. They are so pleased with the product and pleased to be Accoya suppliers and Accoya ambassadors that they chose our logo to go on their own jackets, and they actually distribute quite a range of materials, by the way. But only our Accoya logo made the cut on their sleeves. Looking at the regional trading trends, Will has summarized the full sales mix picture. But I'd just like to add here that we're very, very pleased with the North American results with a 75% increase in sales volumes. We have some great foundational customer distributors in North America, and we are ramping up sales ahead of our U.S. expansion plans and future plant capacity. Moving to the next slide. Turning to our strategic expansion projects. We are adding an additional 20,000 meter cube capacity with our fourth reactor at Arnhem. This will increase capacity by 33% to 80,000 cubes. We envisage a 3-year payback on this expansion investment. The project is on track, both on time and on budget from our 2019 plans and promise. You can see the Arnhem site in the top picture, which I think was taken a week or so ago when I was over there as i stood next to that big red crane lifting circulation pumps into position. The project also includes a new wood stacker, which you can also see here on the bottom right of the slide, and that will be a fabulous addition to the Arnhem overall site, improving efficiency by quicker handling and improving employee productivity. We anticipate commissioning of the stacker next month ahead of schedule. In July, we expanded our ability to produce Accoya Color through a EUR 1.2 million acquisition in the U.K. The integration is going very well. We produced our first batch of Accoya Color, and you can see a photo here in the bottom right. Overall, we're very pleased with the acquisition and the business is performing ahead of our expectations. Strategically, the investment will let us accelerate our growth plan for Accoya Color in its current markets and into more geographies. There is a strong opportunity for Accoya Color in decking in Europe, and indeed North America. In the U.S., last year, we established our joint venture with Eastman Chemical Company. We plan to build a new Accoya plant with initial 40,000 cubic meters of capacity at Eastman's Tennessee site, and copy and paste our existing and proven Accoya technology at Arnhem into this facility. In the first half of financial year 2022, we have completed a number of work streams in the planning stage. The detailed front-end engineering design of the plant is done. The design is for 2 reactor plant with the room to expand efficiently in the future up to 8 reactors in total. The key commercial agreements between Eastman and Accsys regarding operational support, raw material supply, support services, land and utilities, et cetera, have been well advanced and they are ready to be entered into as soon as the financing work stream is complete. We are funding the project through both equity contributions from Accsys and Eastman and project debt finance. We successfully raised our share of the equity in May this year through a placing an open offer. The project debt finance work stream is continuing, and we expect to finalize terms in the coming months. We expect it would take around 2 years to build the plant from the point of the final investment decision. Once built, we've allowed for 2-year sales ramp-up to full capacity. The planning to date confirms the strong financial returns from the plant itself with the leveraged pretax IRR of over 20% targeted and to exceed a breakeven financial position in year 1 of operations. Turning now to our Hull plant, where we're building the world's first Tricoya plant. The 2 key things I'd like you to take away from this slide are: firstly, we are in control and on track for July 2022 operations as per our last update. And secondly, we've actually added some wood chips to the plant last week in some early phase commissioning and the entire team and myself are really very, very excited about that. During the period, and despite some challenges, we have further progressed the construction towards completion. We have issued a number of updates on Hull over the period and I'll quickly recap these. In April 2021, we updated that we expected a 3- to 6-month delay to the lead contractor schedule in completing the construction. Subsequently, in June 2021, the EPC contract was terminated. Once again -- sorry, once Accsys gained control of the project, we then conducted an extensive gap analysis to review and validate the remaining works, the remaining costs and the timeline and third-party expert reviews of the plant's integrity. Pleasingly, these reviews did not indicate any material issues or indeed any red flags with the plant. In line with our August update, we anticipate that plant will be commercially operational by July 2022, and work is ongoing to potentially accelerate that milestone. In addition, we reported that total project capital cost is expected to be between an additional EUR 9 million and EUR 15 million, taking the total cumulative project capital cost for the plant to be in the range of EUR 90 million to EUR 96 million. This remains our expectation today. The additional costs are overall largely due to the extended project duration, time delays, some of these due to COVID and also due to the demobilization and remobilization of the site. We entered into a settlement agreement with the former EPC contractor, which gave us a clean break and an opportunity to move forward with pace. So since the 23rd of August, we are directly project managing these works and now have over 150 contractors under our direct management on site covering the mechanical, electrical and civil work streams. As mentioned, last week, on the 17th November, we ran our first batch of wood chips through the front end of the plant. This was the first time that we have run the equipment. And to be honest with you, we were delighted. Just look at the smiles in the photograph. It's been a great milestone for us. The final piece to cover on this slide is that we have also agreed how we will fund the additional costs. In October, we agreed that Accsys will provide a commercial interest-bearing loan to TUK for the additional cost to complete the project. We have also updated the supply and offtake agreements with our Hull partners, MEDITE for the sale and purchase of the Tricoya Wood elements and with INEOS and the Acetic anhydride, reflecting their ongoing commitment to the project. Looking beyond the completion of the plant, we continue to allow for a 3-year production ramp-up to full capacity because it's actually the first plant of its type anywhere on our planet. We maintain our expectation to be breakeven at 40% capacity with a 40% target margin on Tricoya. Once Hull is operational, we currently plan to expand Tricoya production in Malaysia, where we have an ongoing feasibility study with PETRONAS Chemicals Group to build a plant. Shifting to the next slide. The first half of 2022 has been an important period for building our organizational growth platform. We have invested in people and processes to increase our capability to manage our growth ahead. Our average full-time employee headcount increased from 190 to 241 people. Key hires in place include new heads of departments who are developing platforms for supporting our growth and ensuring that the group can expand effectively into these new locations. We have created functional centers of excellence and added skills in areas like HSE, technology, engineering, IT, acetyls management, et cetera, because these are key areas that we need good leadership with a unified strategy to effectively deliver our global expansion plans. We have also increased our headcount to support our anticipated expanded plant capacities at Arnhem and Hull. We have also expanded our project management team at Hull in the period overseeing these 150 contractors. Turning slightly now. We have also made good progress in 4 key ESG material areas under our group ESG framework. These are society and communities, energy and climate change, sustainable and quality products and of course, safety. Safety is an absolute priority for Accsys. We are committed to a goal of 0 harm. In the period, we have reported 0 lost time incidents. Actually, I always say, good safety is good business. So in summary, and to finish up today. This is a good H1 financial performance with strong revenue growth despite operating at full capacity at Arnhem. We have successfully used our pricing power and been able to increase prices and withstand the challenges on supply chains and raw material costs that are facing many companies. we have maintained our Accoya margin at and above our target 30% level and demand remains strong, and we are well positioned to benefit from the long-term growth megatrends around decarbonization and sustainability and customers wanting higher-quality and greener products. Work at Arnhem and Hull is progressing, and the wood chips milestone at Hull has been a real buzz for our team. We have invested in organizational capability to manage our compelling growth plans, our strategic projects for our 2025 growth outlook are progressing. And by July next year, we're on track to double our capacity from 60,000 meters cubed today to 120,000 meters cubed as the fourth reactor and Hull are safely brought online. I'm thankful to our entire team for their unwavering commitment to our purpose of changing wood to change the world. And looking ahead, in the near term, we will continue to actively manage our supply chain to maintain a level of resilience from wider industry shocks and disruptions. We all remain excited about our future and believe we are well positioned to capitalize on the sustainable megatrends I've described. Moving forward, we remain confident in delivering our market expectations. And with that, thank you, and Will and I will now take your questions, please.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Christian Hjorth from Numis.

A couple of questions from me. The first one, just on pricing, just a reminder on how that works. Obviously, in the inflationary backdrop. Is that also headline price increases and or are there surcharges added as well? I'm just asking in the context of you potentially pointed to some softening of inputs over the next 12 months and whether that higher price point could be held on to in that environment or whether we should expect price decreases to reflect in it? And the second one is just mostly on expansion. Obviously, there's loads going on at the moment and potentially the U.S. and Malaysia as well. But once the Arnhem expansion is done and the Hull Tricoya plant, how do you think of the bandwidth in terms of future projects? Could you run just the U.S. and Malaysia expansions? Or would there be scope for a third to be added in terms of management bandwidth and the heads that you have added?

Thank you, Christian. So I'll take that one. Well, those 2 will. Firstly, on the pricing. We're delighted during the period to illustrate and deliver on our pricing power. And these have been driven by headline price increases that we've really diligently and carefully thought through to place not only to recover raw material price changes but to create a sustainable pricing level. We did not want to during this period to get involved in commoditizing the business and seeing some of the massive fluctuations we see in wood products. We are a specialty company with specialty products, and we plan to retain those prices as we move forward. So we've kept those to a very reasonable level because of the ability that we've had to offset and manage the changes in input raw materials in our supply chains. Secondly, in terms of your question around expansion, looking at the U.S., Malaysia, the fourth reactor and Hull clearly, we brought in additional headcount to operationalize the fourth reactor and expansions at Arnhem and we brought in additional operational headcount to manage the operation of Hull. What I will say is that the key piece for us here is we've built this platform of talent is we've set up the organization with centers of excellence, which are focused on engineering, global technology lean, lean operations, improving our sales capability, et cetera. And that resource there is available to us as we move forward, where Accsys was previously -- we were in a place where we probably lurched from project to project, and we couldn't sustain the resource and expertise in the company. We've taken a different approach to build that platform to redeploy that resource into the future. So when the fourth reactor in Hull are operational, that resource is available, is skilled and trained to deliver on the U.S. project and the Malaysian project. Does that answer your question, Christian your 2 questions?

Yes, that's excellent. Thank you very much.

I believe we have some questions on the webcast.

Thank you. Yes, we've got a question here from Toby Thorrington, who's analyst at Edison. Toby has asked. I'm curious to know whether pricing increases for larger customers are either indexed in any way or include surcharges?

So take that one, Will?

Thank you, Toby. We don't index our pricing generally. As I say, we are selling a specialty product. And by the way we take those products to market through the indirect channel into distributors and create this market pool. We believe those prices into the future are sustainable. Additionally, we generally don't put surcharges on or indexes around raw materials, something for us to manage, and we really focus on the end sales price rather than just building it up through surcharges, which we would see potential for getting reversed in the future.

We've got another question from Tom Rands at Investec. Please can I ask for some guidance in sales mix comments the second half '22, Accoya manufacturing margin and outlook for full year '23? And then Tom's got a second question, we'll come back to.

Tom. So I think for sales mix in the second half, it will -- there continue to be some fluctuations, but we've largely expected to follow the first half of the year. I think last year was different, but this year, we perhaps rebased and renormalized our sales mix, taking into account what we sell to Tricoya. And for gross margin, therefore, we continue to expect the low 30s to be achieved in the second half of the year. For FY '23, there will be potential further change in sales mix, the 2 key changes first of all, but the Hull plant will turn on in July, and that will free up 20-or-so percent of our capacity for higher-priced sales for normal Accoya. And secondly, we will be seeking to increase the amount of Colored Accoya that we can produce out of our new site in South Wales. Both of those will have higher price points and therefore, may alter the sales mix gain. We continue, though, to believe that 30% gross margin is achievable. Obviously, we'll be benefiting from improved efficiencies, in particular with the fourth reactor onstream as well. The group as a whole will, however, benefit from the Tricoya material. The Tricoya material will generate higher gross margins up to 40% once at reasonable capacity. So the group as a whole will start to see gross margin edge up a little bit higher as the Hull plant comes on stream. And I think your second question is around finance charges. Guidance for low interest rates given the new debt facility. Our new debt facility has an interest rate, which varies according to our net leverage and higher net leverage has a higher interest rate. And then as that decreases the interest rate comes down. So it will change a little bit over time. But at a high level, I'd guide that our interest, our cost of interest will effectively approximately half compared to what it has been. But important to note, as the Hull plant comes on stream as well, interest, as previously been capitalized, will start to be expensed. So that will partially offset our actual finance charges going forward.

The final question we've got is from Hugo Lago at ABN AMRO. I understand that there are agreements regarding the Tricoya prices with your commercial partners. But given the increasing gas prices, do you expect you'll need to increase Tricoya prices to maintain the targeted profitability in the segment, plus have you seen inflation in the raw wood chip prices?

Thank you. So I take that one Will. In terms of taking the front end of it and the back end, if I may, the Tricoya price -- the sales price of the wood chip element that we sell, as mentioned in the presentation, we've been in discussion with our main offtaker MEDITE, and we have reconfirmed and actually renegotiated pricing on the back of the future commitment that they are making to the project. So that has been adjusted as the passage of time has meant that various things have changed in the pricing structure. So we've seen some flexibility there on pricing from our offtake partners to absorb that and pass that through in the marketplace. In terms of the other end of the supply chain in terms of raw material in just taking those 2 pieces. Likewise, on the Hull plant and the Tricoya consortium, INEOS, our supplier of the pickling agent, the acetic anhydride, those prices have also been renegotiated and adjusted to reflect the current environment that we see ourselves in. And as I say, that will be passed through in the main -- on to the sales price of the chips. In terms of the actual wood chip purchasing itself, the green wood chip, if I might call it that, that you saw in the photograph that we ran through the plant last week, those wood chips are caught up in the commodity cycle of the timber products at the moment, and they are fluctuating up and down. But at the moment, the way we've adjusted our pricing mechanisms, the pressure there has been absorbed.

That's the final call -- final question, I should say. So we'll pass back to the operator to close the call now.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect. Have a nice day. Dear Speakers, please stand by.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Thank you.