Libstar Holdings Limited (LBR.JO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this pre-close investor call. I'm joined this afternoon by my Co-Executive Directors, Terri Ladbrooke and Cornel Lodewyks, and my name is Charl de Villiers, the CEO of Libstar. This afternoon's call is intended to provide a bit of color on the SENS announcement that was published earlier this morning and then also to allow those of you on the call to ask questions. You can do so in 2 ways. You can either type your question into the chat, and we'll deal with that at the end or you can raise your hand when we give you the opportunity to do so, and you may ask the question verbally. First things first, we announced this morning that the group has disposed of its fresh mushroom operations. That transaction was effective on the 1st of December. And as a Board and management team, we believe this represents a further decisive step in simplifying the group's portfolio and sharpening our focus on our food and value-added categories. It was important that we note the parts of the business that are included and excluded from that transaction. So included being firstly, the business itself as a going concern, but then 2 properties included being the Gauteng Deodar site and the KwaZulu-Natal Shongweni site. Importantly, 2 elements not included in the disposal being the Western Cape Phesantekraal site. That site remains subject to closure as previously communicated and that site will also then be divested in due course as was communicated previously. Lastly, the Denny brand is retained by the group. It is used by the acquirer under license exclusively in the fresh mushroom category. And the group will therefore continue to produce and market value-added products under the Denny brand, including the wet condiments category that we produce. We provided some information around our expected financial impact of that transaction, noting a pretax loss on sale of between ZAR 45 million and ZAR 55 million. Some color to that, the book value of assets transferred being around ZAR 80 million. That is a pretax number. So importantly, we are looking to mitigate that or reduce that loss or wipe out that loss if we can through 2 mechanisms. The first one being a tax benefit on the scrapping of assets, which has not yet been factored into this, which will not mitigate the entire loss, but there will be a tax benefit. And then secondly, obviously, the recoupment through the disposal of the Phesantekraal property, which will only take place in the new year. We then also notified the market that aligned to our strategy to exit the HPC category, we are currently in a position where we are evaluating nonbinding expressions of interest in respect of the Contactim business. We are currently in an information sharing stage of that discussion, but looking to close out on that, if possible, as soon as we can. Moving on to the trading update itself. The period being covered is a 47-week to 21 November. That compares to one additional day in the prior year. So the part that would not be included is the last week of November as well as obviously the December trading period. We provide a bit of an overview to what we see happening in the market, and we spoke about this in our interim results as well, around a decelerating value growth trend in the retail channel and a resilient wholesale channel performance. We substantiate those comments with some data, the 12-month moving sales value growth of the basket that we measure, which is the food ex staples basket. That 12-month moving sales value growth reduced to about 1.6% in November. That data was released this morning, down from the 3.1% that we showed in our interim results presentation. So substantiating that decelerating retail sales growth, of course, limited to our basket and to those retailers that share the data. In contrast, the wholesale channel sales growth has remained strong at around 7.9%. Out-of-home sales in totality declined by 0.4% with total eat out, which is a subcategory of the out-of-home subset of data, showing growth of 8.8%, which is an acceleration from what we showed in June. All of those numbers being November numbers, 12-month moving. Against that background, it's very clear that the consumer remains under pressure, notwithstanding moderating inflation and interest rates. And that is why we also believe that this set of results clearly demonstrates a sustained momentum in our trading momentum of H1. To substantiate that, the group delivered a retail channel sales value growth of 4.4% year-to-date. That plays the 1.6% of the market that I mentioned earlier. And then also in the foodservice channel growing by 11.2%, which plays -- depending on how you look at it, either the 0.4% decline in total out-of-home or the 8.8% in total eat out. So with that then, the revenue growth of the group increased by 6.7%, with 3.1% of that driven by volume and 3.6% by price/mix contribution. We've again reiterated the extraordinary items that was noted -- that were noted in our interim results presentation being the on sale of raw unprocessed milk to industrial customers, the decrease due to the closure of our Chamonix Spring Water plant in the prior year and then also the lower industrial bulk vinegar numbers in Q1. It's important for me to just add color around the raw milk. We still continue to on sale unprocessed milk in H2, but that arrangement will come to an end at the end of this financial year. These efforts will also see us close off the year in terms of our dairy inventories at optimal stock levels. Moving on to the individual categories. The ambient products category, revenue increased by 5.6% and driven by volume increase of 4.5%, excluding the extraordinary items mentioned earlier. We mentioned that the performance was driven by the continued trend in strong performance from the wet condiment subcategory as well as principal brands. So just as a reminder, the group entered into a distribution agreement with General Mills to distribute the brands of Haagen-Dazs, Pillsbury, Old El Paso, and Nature Valley brands in South Africa, and that onboarding was around mid-July. The onboarding is now complete, and that portfolio has and will contribute close to ZAR 30 million in gross turnover this year as we continue to roll out the distribution. We've also mentioned the strong performance in the foodservice channel substantiated by my earlier comments around the market. We made reference to export volumes and the trend that we saw in the first half has continued into the second half, where we have reduced our private label sales to discount retailers in the Australian, U.K. and Japanese regions, but also more than compensated for that in terms of our growth in our own brand. Just a bit of an update on the tariff situation. We continue to monitor this very closely, and we will mitigate the adverse impact to below ZAR 10 million. It will be closer to ZAR 8.5 million at a bottom line level this year. It was recently reported that spices would be exempted together with other basket of products. That exemption applies to unblended spices such as the pepper grinders that we sell into those markets. We are currently engaging our logistical partners to confirm how this gets implemented on the ground so that we can quantify the impact in FY '26, but an encouraging development in terms of mitigating the impact of tariffs. A few comments just on a few notable other subcategories. Firstly, starting with the Meal Ingredients, Snacks and Spreads. The integration of those 3 businesses is progressing well. In the snack subcategory, we have seen a pleasing top line performance as well as an operational level performance by the business, which has now stabilized. In the second half, though our margins have been impacted by certain once-off balance sheet cleanup at a margin level, raw material inventory. But we are confident that this sets us in good -- or places us in a good position to deliver a much stronger financial performance from snacks in the new year. Similarly, the baking subcategory has delivered double-digit top line growth driven by the food service as well as retail channels, although we have continued to experience some margin pressure owing to the cost to serve in the parbaked frozen category, which has a higher selling and distribution or warehousing expense attached to that as well as some production inefficiencies, which we are addressing and have addressed through targeted capital investment. Overall, a pleasing outcome and result for the ambient product category. Moving on to the perishable product category, revenue increased by 8.1% with volumes up 1.4% after taking into account the extraordinary items. Volume growth in that category driven both by the 2 largest contributing subcategories being our value-added meats in the retail and foodservice channels as well as in the dairy category where we've noted the core category growth of 4.7%, reflecting Lancewood's continued brand market leadership. The dairy category has steadily advanced in growing its core subcategories, improving its margins as well as reducing its inventory levels. Inventory is now optimally positioned and that will support Lancewood during the peak seasonal period. The Lancewood retail brand also continues to outpace the market in the cheese and yogurt categories. Just a few words on the convenience meal category. It contributed to volume growth in the overall perishables category both within the fresh as well as the frozen segments. And our own brand dine-in remains a key focus, continuing to grow pleasingly in the frozen segment. We made a very balanced statement around the group's gross margins having tracked ahead of the prior year. And in this regard, both the ambient products and perishable products categories when excluding the impact of the raw milk sales are showing an improvement in margin relative to the prior year. Contributors in the ambient products category include the increased capacity utilization from contract manufacturing in the wet condiments category as well as the strong retail performance there as well as the higher export margins owing to a shift in mix towards our own branded products. In the perishables category, dairy conversion costs have remained well managed. I'll hand over to Terri to make a few comments around net debt and working capital.

Thanks, Charl. The group has continued steady progress in degearing the business since mid-2023. Additionally, all term debt facilities have been extended for an additional year with a full refinance anticipated in 2026. CapEx is expected ahead of the previous years, however, still aligned to the lower end of the group's guided target range of between 2% and 3% of revenue. Progress made in normalizing our inventory levels also assists in reducing the elevated net working capital levels in the prior years. That's the net debt.

Good. Thank you. We also reiterated the renewal of the cautionary announcement that was published initially with our interim results. Unfortunately, I can't say much more than what's already included in that renewal of the cautionary other than to reiterate that we seek to provide clarity to the market by no later than our next reporting date, which is around mid of March when we report on the financial results of this year. So short and sweet, but before we open the floor to questions, just to summarize that the second half trading momentum has been -- has continued from the first half, particularly in a strong October and November trading period with margins being protected and cash generation remaining robust. The portfolio and operating model simplification is delivering real benefits, providing a solid platform for the ongoing improvement in our earnings quality and returns. With that, I'll open the floor to any questions.

Feel free to put your hand up if you have a question. There are currently no questions in the chat, but we'll give it a few minutes.

We'll give it another few seconds. I'm not seeing any hands or any questions in the chat. Okay. That seems to be it. There is one.

Thank you. Dean, thanks for hosting this call. With regards to fresh mushrooms, could you please give us an indication of how much you sold this for? Can you remind us of year-end debt target?

Dean, I'll take the first one. I've tried to make it as implicitly explicit as I can by saying that we have a profit of -- a loss on sale of between ZAR 45 million and ZAR 55 million, and we have a book value of assets of about ZAR 80 million.

Our year-end debt target, I'm assuming it's gearing. So we reported 1.3x at half year. We do anticipate being below this, so closer to the lower end of our internal target of between 1 and 2x.

Okay. That seems to be it. Thanks, everyone, for joining the call. We appreciate it, and we look forward to seeing you in mid-March. Thank you, and good day.