Fonterra Shareholders Fund (FSF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Welcome to our 2022 interim results. I'm Marc Rivers. I'm the CFO of Fonterra, and I'm going to take you through the performance of the first half year. Also an outlook of the rest of this year. and then give you an update on where we stand at the beginning of our journey on the 2030 targets. So our results for the first half show that we're performing really well. We've got a strong forecast Farmgate Milk Price. We're paying an interim dividend of $0.05 per share, and our earnings have been achieved at a time when the cost of milk has been significantly higher, up about 30% or $2 per kgMS relative to last year. The current forecast milk price has a midpoint of $9.60, and we'd see more than $14 billion injected into the New Zealand economy. That's about $2.5 billion more than last year. Now we're also very aware that farmers are facing increasing costs on farm. So the strong milk price is very welcome news for them. COVID-19 continues to be a challenge in our markets, and here at home. We're seeing more of our employees having to isolate and continued disruptions in our supply chain. However, by caring for our people and good management and planning, our manufacturing plants have continued to operate, and we're getting products to our customers. It's also been 6 months since we announced our new strategy. Now while it's early days, the shift from reset to growth is well underway, and I'm pleased with our progress. This would not have been possible without the hard work of our farmer owners and employees, and I want to thank them for their commitment and support. So looking at the next slide. The increase in dairy prices reflects strong global demand for dairy at a time of constrained supply. And the graph on the left shows the strength of the reference product basket, which informs the Farmgate Milk Price and cost of goods. And you can see the increase compared to last year is around $1,000 per metric [ ton ]. What's been good to see is our nonreference products also benefiting from the strong demand for dairy. And this is illustrated in the graph on the right side of the slide, which uses cheddar on GDT as a measure for nonreference product prices. So you can see that the price relativities between the reference and nonreference products are less favorable than the same period last year. However, towards the end of this half, we've seen them improve. Our New Zealand operations are performing well. We're already seeing the benefits of [ On-Farm Milk Fat ] monitoring technology rolled out last year, come through in our key milk collection transport metrics. The efficiency improvements have essentially offset the significant increases in costs such as diesel. However, our milk collection cost metric of [ cents ] per liter has increased as our lower milk collections lifted the fixed cost recoveries per liter. COVID-19 continues to test global supply chains, and this will continue in the second half. Pre-COVID, on average, 80% of ships would arrive at New Zealand ports on time. This is now down to 38%. However, our delivery out, and in full on time, [ difa measure ] is above 50%. And which just highlights the strength of the supply chain teams and the great work that they're doing. The next slide, disruptions from COVID-19 continue to impact our Co-op. But by caring for our people and through good management and planning, our manufacturing plants continue to operate, and we're getting products to market. Our teams are also looking out for our communities, and helping where we can. We do this best through partnerships. Each week, approximately 180,000 breakfast are served to [ Kiwi kids ] through our [ Kickstart breakfast partnership ]. And since 2020, more than 3 million servers of dairy have been donated to families in need through our partnership with the New Zealand Food Network. From a performance perspective, there are a couple of numbers I'd like to call out. The first is revenue. It's up $900 million, and reflects the higher product prices but partially offset by lower sales volumes, which have been impacted by lower milk collections. The second is gross margin. It's down to 14.9%, and reflects the higher milk price, which increased our input costs. Third is profit after tax. It's down $27 million to $364 million. And the context of continued COVID-19 disruptions and the current high milk price environment, I believe this shows that we're performing well. And finally, net debt. It's down $500 million to $5.6 billion as a result of our continued focus on financial discipline. And so now I just want to go a little bit deeper into some of the drivers behind the numbers. So at a total group level, our performance for the 6 months reflects consistent and strong demand across multiple markets and products at a time of constrained milk supply and a significantly higher cost of milk for our businesses. Overall, we achieved an improved performance in our Ingredients channel and our businesses in Chile and Australia, but this was offset by tighter margins in Foodservice and Consumer channels. The impact of our lower EBIT on our profit after tax was partially offset by a lower interest expense due to our reduced debt levels and the benefit from fixed interest rate hedges as interest rates have risen. The next slide, and this is one of my favorite slides. It really shows the strength of the diversification of our business. So as I mentioned before, we've had a good improvement in our Ingredients performance, and you can see that's across all 3 regions. Dairy prices are strong across the board, but in particular, we've had favorable margins in our protein portfolio with increased demand for our caseinate and [ way protein ] concentrate WPC products. However, the strong demand for dairy and rate of product price increases has placed pressure on our Foodservice and Consumer margins as our end market prices have not increased at the same rate. This can be seen across the 3 regions, Foodservice channels, and even though there continue to be steady demand and volumes sold. It was also the case for consumer channels of APAC and Greater China. However, AMENA's consumer channel has benefited from the growth in our consumer business in Chile, and has benefited from government stimulus packages and the economy there, and continue to strive to shift its product mix to higher-margin products. Financial discipline continues to be a key focus for us, and it's pleasing to see this reflected in the continued strengthening of the balance sheet with lower leverage in the management of our operating expenses, especially the inflationary pressures across the business. Our net debt is down $0.5 billion from a year ago, and it's currently at $5.6 billion, and reflects the seasoned funding peak at the half year. You'll note that our working capital days has increased, and this is due to the increased value of inventory as a result of increased dairy prices. So as we look out to the remainder of the year, we've reaffirmed the forecast Farmgate Milk Price range of $9.30 to $9.90 per kgMS. Current contract prices for reference products put us in a good position to achieve the record high midpoint of $9.60 per GMS. However, there are a number of risks, of course, that we're continuing to watch closely. The conflict in Ukraine has added to an already complex COVID-19 operating environment, impacting global supply chains, oil prices and the global supply of grain. So while the milk price is at a record high, driven by the increase in reference product prices, pricing for nonreference products in our ingredients channel has also been strong, and that's supporting our forecast earnings range. And we expect that to continue in the second half. Pressure will remain on our Foodservice and Consumer channel gross margins due to the higher input costs. And we'll continue to monitor the potential impact of high dairy prices on demand and economic disruption due to the rapid spread of Omicron. Let's look to our long-term strategy now as an update. So at the end of last year, we shared our long-term aspirations for the Co-op, and the value we're aiming to create through to 2030. And this slide is a recap of what those aspirations were. Our aspirations and our strategy are underpinned by 3 strategic choices: focus on New Zealand milk, be a leader in sustainability and be a leader in dairy innovation and science. It's early days, but we've made good progress in putting in place the necessary building blocks to achieve those 2030 targets. I want to touch on just a couple of these to close the presentation. So through our focus on [ New Zealand Milk ], we're continuing to make progress on the divestment of our Chilean business and the ownership review of our Australian business. Our priority is to maximize the value of both businesses to the Co-op. We're taking our time to ensure the best outcomes from these processes, and as we remain confident on delivering on our intention to return around $1 billion of capital to our shareholders and unitholders by FY '24. We're also continuing to work with the government on a regulatory framework to support our new capital structure. Discussions are progressing well, and we expect to be able to provide a time line on the regulatory changes to farmers and unitholders in the next couple of months. Our focus on dairy innovation and science has seen us partner with [ Vita Key ] to further unlock the benefits of our probiotic strains. The project is ahead of schedule, and we've expanded the scope to include several nutrients such as Vitamin D. In sustainability, we're continuing to invest in initiatives to ensure our Co-ops's milk is backed by the sustainability credentials that customers want. Finding a solution to the methane challenge will be a game changer on this front. And the next phase of our [ Cobucha ] trials continue to show promise. After moving from lab to farm, initial trials have shown a methane reduction of up to 20% when fed to [ caves ]. And this is just one of a number of initiatives we're exploring in this area. As I said, it's early days, but because of the commitment from our farmers and employees, we're making good progress in putting in place the necessary building blocks for our 2030 targets. Thank you for listening. Simon and I are now happy to take your questions.