Libstar Holdings Limited ($LBR)

Good morning, everybody. hearty welcome to all of you. This is your day. If you're a shareholder, the company belongs to you. If you're an analyst, the company is your responsibility. And if you are interested, welcome. It's nice to have you all here. And as I say your day, you must please ask all the questions you want to ask, raise all the issues you want to raise and service the fees that you think are important. Management is sitting here at the first 3 tables here. Give them hello all time. So let me -- we want to talk about the future, not the past, but let me just briefly deal with the biggest single issue that we've had in the last year, and that is the value unlocked project, of which you all know the details which have been published in since. This started 16 months ago in November '24, when the Board decided to embark on this process. And the next 16 months were very, very tough. As you know, those of you who have been through it, the value unlock process is a highly specialized, highly labor-intensive, but on a specialist level process. We went through that, we were superbly supported by our advisers by the sponsors and also by our legal counsel. And I want to give thanks to them all this morning for the very diligent and professional support that they gave us. But I also want to get thanks to the Libstar management for dealing with this process while running the company. And as you saw from the results of 2025, they were good results. They've done a good job on that front, but they've also done a very good job on the front of dealing with the value unlock exercise. In the end after thorough investigation, thorough consideration, as I said, the whole process took about 16 months. The independent Board as well as the Board of Libstar came to the conclusion that the expression of interest that we received did not reflect the value of the company and frankly, left very little for the shareholders that are selling or would be selling to share in, they wanted too much upfront for themselves. And therefore, we turned it down. That is now behind us, and we can now focus on what really matters and that is to grow the company and improve the financial performance further. Now I want to share with you 2 anecdotes to give you a feeling for how the Board is looking at Libstar at this stage. The first anecdote comes from November 2022. The new management team, Charl, Terri and Cornel took over on the 1 of January '23, but they were already appointed in November 2022 when we had our last Board meeting for the year. And Charl brought to that meeting, a chap, a gentleman called David Holland. Now some of you in the room may remember him, he did fantastic work about 10, 12 years ago, on capital consumption by the SOEs in South Africa. Long before words like bailout and state capture and so on became part of our National Lexicon. David Holland did superb work on that. And that's the context from which I knew him. [Audio Gap] David Holland into that meeting. And you would see that emphasis on capital allocation and ROIC, And ROIC being much, much more important than WACC which has come through in the organization. And I'll take it back to that moment of Genesis. The second experience I want to share or anecdote happened 7 months later in July -- June, July 2023. The new management team has now been in charge for 6 months, found a feet. The Board had its regular meeting, but we had it in George, not to be in George, my old hometown. I love it, but that's not why we were there. We went to visit Lancewood, which is, as you know, situated in George. And the new management team presented their strategy for the company as they saw it. And that's where simplify, grow and sustain or SGS as I like to call it, that's when it was presented to the Board when it was normalized, and that has been the guiding light, the North Star for the group since then. And those 2 anecdotes, the 1 about capital allocation and best practice around that. The second one, the strategy of SGS is take what you've got, make it better, make it more productive and run of it. That is the second anecdote. And that's really what I think we saw in the 2025 results. But let me just say this. It's a hell of a painful 2, 3 years that are behind us. In [Audio Gap] on both those, we have -- we've come through it. We've come through it, and we're very glad from where we are now. Looking forward, what can you expect from the company over the next while. The emphasis is on taking what we've got. We've got 15 business units in the company, making them as efficient and as profitable as is humanly possible. We're not looking at acquisitions. If something comes by, sure, then it's our duty to look at it. But we're not looking at that -- the focus is on taking what we have and making it better. Jacques from Lancewood was telling me just before we started, he comes from sales. And it's terrible for him to see a plan where he sells less as a salesman that goes against your DNA. But when you look at the bottom line, when you look at the bottom line, and you see how much more money you make and how your financial metrics improve, then even as a salesman, he agrees that is the way we have to go. So that's number one. We're going to focus absolutely on SGS, Simplify, grow and sustain. And that's going to be the focus. We are looking at some -- we are doing some very comprehensive and intensive work around some very interesting projects. When the time is right, we will share that with you. We will report back to you and tell you what it is, what we've done and what we plan to do. But those are projects that will involve CapEx spending inside the business on the things that we know and that we understand and which -- from which we think we can make more money. Let me make 1 last comment about people. In the management transition that we had -- and I want to pay tribute this morning to the man who started Libstar Andries van Rensburg, who started the company 20 years ago. He was joined a short while later by Robin Smith and the 2 of them built up what we are looking at today. And Andries, in particular, had a very strong emphasis always on people. And he planted the trees from which we are currently appointing people on the principle of growing your own timber. I think growing own timber is extremely important for continuity for culture, for values and that sort of thing. And the 3 people that we appointed in January '23, Charl, Terri, Cornel come from inside the company. The only senior person we've appointed lately from outside of [ Stephen ] and that's because he can speak [indiscernible] comes from KZN. But Stephen, welcome. But for the rest, we grow our own timber. And we put a lot of emphasis on that. This leadership development program, there's edge program, we really take a lot of effort to make sure that we grow and develop the right people to take the company over and take it into the future. We're very proud -- we're very proud after 20 years behind us, and we really relaxed and certain about where we're going in the next 20 years. This is your day. Ask whatever you want to and enjoy yourself. Thank you. Charl?

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Capital Markets Day of Libstar. It's a day that we've been looking forward to share what we believe is a story of looking at what we have achieved over the past couple of years, but also most importantly, where we are going and how we are going to get there. A special word of welcome to analysts, both known and new to the company, the media. We have some of our non-execs joining us as well [indiscernible] and senior management and to all joining us on the webcast as well this morning. Welcome. Just to introduce the order of events this morning. I will start today just by giving some context to where we've come from. And then I will hand over to Wendy Van Zyl, who is our first formal speaker of the day. And Wendy, our customer executive will give you some great insight into the dynamics that drive the business that we see today, both in terms of our internal as well as the market, and we'll link those to for you in order to create context to the strategy that we will be adopting going forward. I'll then -- she will then hand over to [ Kunal ]. Kunal will give each 1 of the senior executives an opportunity to give you an insight into their businesses. And you'll get a feel for how they think about the business, what they are focusing on, what they have been focusing on and what's going to drive performance moving forward. I will then spend quite a decent amount of time looking at the investment case and focusing on the the projects that JP was referring to in terms of the key projects, a select number of projects, but high-quality projects that will drive our ambitions moving forward. Terry will then close off for us looking at the financial performance of 2025, but then also translating what we've spoken about today into rands and cents in terms of our ambitions. Lastly, we'll then close off with a Q&A session. It will just be the 3, 4 executives on this stage, but we will gladly dish out some questions to the senior execs as well if we believe they can answer more comprehensively. All right. So just to those of you who might be unfamiliar with Libstar. Libstar was founded in 2005 by Andries van Rensburg, as JP mentioned. The first acquisition was [indiscernible] Foods that was early in 2006. And between 2005 and 2017, the business was essentially an aggregator of food companies that were mainly owner managed and founded. That was a core part of the DNA, the entrepreneurial part of the DNA. And the model was -- ran uniformly over those years, 70% acquisition initially with a 30% retention by the owner founders. Many -- the legend goes that many of those founders made more money putting the 30% than they did the 70% initially, which is what you want to see in a partnership like that. But prior to the listing in 2017, those puts and calls were fully affected and all of those businesses became wholly owned subsidiaries of Libstar and eventually divisions of Libstar. Over that period, it was an acquisitive strategy and the business went through multiple rounds of private equity ownership during that point in time. Fast forward then to 2018. The business got to a size and a scale where not 1 single trade or financial buyer could write a check or wanted to write a check for that size. And the shareholders decided that we would IPO the business on the JSE. Now the first thing I want to do this morning is to recognize that -- in our strategy map, we depict the listing as a rocky road. And it certainly was a very rocky road for us. At the back end of 2017, we had made numerous acquisitions. Those were still being integrated. We were transitioning from being a decentralized entrepreneurial business into a more regulatory environment. We were under intense scrutiny. I was there on the day that we published our first trading statement saying that our HEPS was down by 56% because of an unrealized ForEx loss because at that point in time, our hedging had not delivered the requisite results. So it's important that I recognize the fact that it's been a rocky road and it started off as a rocky road in 2018. And when the perception around Libstar is that, that is the same Libstar that still exists today. So if there's 1 key message that I want to leave with you today is to demonstrate to you that the Libstar of 2018 is not the Libstar of 2026, and that is 1 of our key objectives today. Fast forward then to 2023, that was -- as JP mentioned, the date of appointment of Terri, Cornel and myself. And we immediately decided that we would bring the senior management teams along with us and constituted a senior executive leadership team. We then took quite a bit of introspection in terms of where the business was, why it was where it was and what got us there. And the consensus around the table was that Libstar always had a strategy, right? And it was the right strategy. We focused on the right areas. However, our operating model, the completely decentralized, and we depict them as islands on our strategy map, those islands couldn't operationally execute the strategy to its fullest extent. And because of that, we launched this 1 Libstar strategy, the simplify, grow sustain that I'll touch on later. That came with investment in people, in processes, as we matured into the listing and the regulatory requirements related to that. A foundational part of Libstar that we'll mention very often today is the fact that even prior to 2023, we constituted or we started to really invest in category management expertise. And Wendy was a core part of that, to ensure that we understand the categories in which we play, that we can be the insight leader or the thought leader in terms of how we manage categories and how we grow categories. And today, we see the success of that investment prior to 2023. The strategy also turned much more organic. We were focusing on what was in front of us, 1 acquisition Cape Foods made after after IPO, but much more focused on innovation and organic growth and to JP's earlier comment, that will continue moving forward. That also went hand-in-hand with the transition from owner founder managers that were reaching retirement age, maybe not seeing the vision that we had for Libstar and that transition to the senior management team that's here today. Many of them from the business itself as mentioned earlier. So just to touch on what JP mentioned as well to address the elephant in the room from management's perspective. The corporate process was undertaken with 1 objective. And that's the objective we always come back to in our board deliberations. And that is this going to deliver value for stakeholders. We have a plan, we have a strategy. We've quantified that. It was scrutinized internally and externally. Let's compare that plan to what the nonbinding offers will deliver in terms of an unlock for shareholders. And the answer to that was that there was really a material differential between what this plan can deliver versus what the nonbinding offers we're willing to put on the table. So just a reminder for those who are unfamiliar in terms of what our strategy, what simplify growth sustain really means -- we're just going to touch on the 3 elements of that this morning as well. So simplify really has 2 elements to it. The first 1 being the portfolio itself prior to 2023 there were 4 food categories, 1 nonfood category, some subscale businesses, some businesses that were detracting from a cash flow perspective as well as from a returns perspective. we needed to take a look at where we wanted to play from a portfolio perspective. But then also, even if we retain those businesses within the portfolio, how would they operate together in order to deliver the outcomes that we were seeking. So there was an operating model simplification part to that as well. Growth is a pretty obvious important theme, but we wanted to grow the categories that we believe would deliver the necessary return profiles and invest in those categories whilst also exiting the underperforming categories. but also invest in under-indexed channels. We are a mainly retail-facing business but we operate across 4 channels. And the question was how could we deliver accelerated growth from our non-retail channels whilst retaining the growth momentum in retail. And then to JP's point as well, how could we ensure that we built the necessary management talent, middle management talent, supervisor level talent in order to support this moving forward. The sustained pillar was an extremely important third pillar. When you think of sustain, you think of an ESG component. And as champions for good, that's important. We need to look after the planet. We need to look after those aspects. But at that point in time, and as Terri will allude to later, by mid-2023, our gearing levels were at 2.1x. And that was an uncomfortable position for us to be in. So we needed to focus on improving cash generation, reducing gearing whilst continuing to invest in projects that we believe would deliver our ambitions. So the Libstar today, what does it look like? Previously, we had 5 categories. As I mentioned, 4 food categories, 1 HPC categories. 20 business units. So each business unit would have someone who call themselves a general manager or a CEO or whatever the title may have been the titles differed. They would have their own infrastructure, their own CFO, their own head of people the own Head of Technical, so 20 completely independent decentralized business units ran by 18 managing executives, and you ask why does '18 run 20, there was some double hatting between some of the divisions at that point in time. And then as I mentioned earlier, the portfolio comprised either subscale or detracting businesses, some of them noted on the slide, Chet chemicals, Denny being a perpetual headache, if I could refer to it so [indiscernible] beverages as well, which is a category which was under a lot of pressure at that point in time. So the Libstar today has been simplified into 2 super categories, ambient products and perishable products. Those 20 business units, we don't view them as business units. We view them as 7 coherent subcategories, and we'll demonstrate to you today how we operate those 7 coherent subcategories and 18 managing executives turned into 9 managing executives. And that not only comprised the parting of ways, but it also comprised in certain instances, the reallocation of senior people into strategic roles. With that also, and this was work that Terri diligently executed over a number of years, and that is the closure or sale of those noncore or underperforming or subscale businesses. So the sale of Chet Chemicals, the sale of Denny operations, the sale of [ Amati ] back to the founding members the closure of Chamonix Spring water. So a lot of work going into that simplification theme. So completely different business framework to what existed in 2022. Let's stay on a page. So Libstar on a page, there's 1 element missing here. The first column should say 1 Libstar because that's what drives our culture. Two core categories. Three brand solutions, 4 channels. We didn't -- there was no marketing team involved in that setup. But -- on the 2 core subcategories, we operate in ambient as well as perishables. Ambient, longer shelf life, perishables, shorter shelf life refrigerated or gold. In our ambient category, there was a lot of integration that took place. There's a logo missing in the dry condiments subcategory on the left-hand side, and that's that, of course, [indiscernible]. which was a bulk tea export business that was integrated into Cape Herb & Spice, and Paul will tell us a bit more about that later. Select products, that's a new category for us. We used to refer to it as meal ingredients, snacks and spreads miss. That's not a great acronym to have as your business name. So we refer to it today as select products, and that comprised the integration of the retail-facing businesses of Cape Coastal Honey, Rialto Foods as well as Ambassador Foods. Wet condiments has been a star performer for us over the past 2 years and that was driven by the integration of those businesses, and we'll tell you more about that a bit later. In terms of our brand solutions, 3 brand solutions, about 81%, that column comprises about 81% of our revenue. The elements not included would be contract manufacturing and some of our QSR unbranded business. That comprises 3 elements: private label and dealer-owned brands, Libstar brands or licensed brands as well as principal brands. And we're very proud to represent multinational brands and to be given that opportunity to distribute these multinational brands, and we'll tell you a bit more about General Mills and the success we had a bit later. In terms of the 4 sales channels at this point in time, retail and wholesale is 55%, just over 55% of the business. Food service, just over 20%; exports 11% and then industrial and contract manufacturing 12.5%. If you looked at this 2 to 3 years ago, you would have seen retail and wholesale at 60%. You would have seen food service at about 18%, and you would have seen exports at about 10%. So we're already starting to see that mix change in terms of our channel exposure towards especially food service and exports. So when we started our strategic journey in 2023, we didn't start from a position of strength. I'm not going to go through each and every financial metric on the slide Safe to say that it clearly shows that at that point in time, the business had shown multiple years of declining financial trends, both in terms of EBIT and EBITDA the bottom line headline earnings as well as the return on invested capital. And 2023 and 2024 were not too much different in terms of the financial performance. And that was the time period during which we were making some really difficult calls in terms of exiting the portfolios, the underperforming businesses. We were investing in people, we were integrating businesses. And there was a lot of investment ahead of that. However, in 2025, there was a clear turning point in the performance of the business. We had arrested a multiyear decline in EBIT and EBITDA. HEPS. And HEPS was above 2022 levels. and return on invested capital at 10.9% was very close to our calculated 11% weighted average cost of capital. And there's so much more to do in terms of what we will drive moving forward to achieve our ambitions. Before I hand over to Wendy I -- you will see this slide quite a few times today, and it's really important because it links the market dynamics, key market dynamics to the opportunities within our portfolio. So we will spend quite a bit of time on that. So without going into too much detail at this point in time, -- it's very clear to us that consumers remain value-seeking and there's a lot of down trading, and we'll talk about how we address that. We've seen multiyear rapid growth in private label. Tiering of private label between value, mid-tier premium has increased. We will talk about private label also having its own dynamics over the past year and how we respond to that. The premium segments in which we participate continue to to deliver resilient results. And that's something we want to protect. And that's something we will also talk to a bit later. Pressure on consumers means lower volume and deflation, lower volume growth. and that requires an agile response in terms of diversification of our channel exposure. And then there's been a resilient growth in food service, out-of-home consumption driven by tourism, driven by various factors that has been a core theme that we will also speak to this morning. So with that, I will hand over to Wendy to take us through the first section. She is our category executive responsible for really ensuring that we remain relevant in terms of the categories in which we participate. And as I said, we'll show you some of the positive outcomes from that in the remainder of the day. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Charl. If I can just have 1 second to power up my system here. Good morning, everybody. It's nice to see a full room. Just 1 second. Taking slightly longer. Unfortunately, not an MC so I can't do the whole entertainment part. There we go. Right. Thank you, Charl, for taking us through that introduction and the journey of reframing our strategy for the future. Good morning, everyone. My name is Wendy Van Zyl I'm the category and customer executive at Libstar. Over the next 20 minutes or so, I'll take you through our market realities, how they're affecting us -- and more importantly, how we are responding to them. The market environment is not only changing at a rapid pace. It is increasingly dynamic. This makes it far more unpredictable and as a result, the need for agility and the ability to adapt has taken on an entirely new meaning. Let's start by stepping back, looking at the external forces that are changing the shape of our world. And as a result, influencing trading and consumer environments that we operate in. Why external factors matter for the South African FMCG environment? We operate in a highly constrained consumer environment that is characterized by low GDP growth, high unemployment, persistent inflationary pressure and high inequality and price sensitivity. These external forces, therefore, directly shape affordability, availability, value perception, innovation and shopping behavior. Geopolitics, the economy, climate change and technology are increasing costs and uncertainty in FMCG. South African shoppers are responding by prioritizing value promotions and essential purchases, while technology and AI improve convenience and relevance, affordability remains the dominant driver, with consumers trading down rather than exiting a category. Across both retailers and manufacturers these external forces are structurally reshaping the FMCG profit model in South Africa. Near-term growth will remain pressured, while value creation is anchored in execution discipline, margin management, resilience and cash generation rather than top line expansion. Let's take a closer look. AI is changing the whole world around us, including how grocery shopping is being done. In the previous world, the retailers, brands had the power. In the new AI world, the algorithm has the power. Going forward, all AI will make commerce better and more personalized for consumers, but radically more confusing for brands. Gambling is an economic siphon, it drains shopper wallets. The impact of online gambling in South Africa is staggering and makes up more than half of all spend classified related to recreation, sport and culture. What is worth is that the money for online gambling is coming from household budgets, household grocery budgets. It shows up as a second in top how to searches on Google with 39% of gamblers saying they are gambling more often than a year ago. This, however, is not a local problem with countries like the U.K., Italy and Spain and the U.S. also reporting increased online gambling activity. Moving closer to home. A key question remains with who does the buck stop? There seems to be a blurring of lines in terms of responsibility between the public versus the private sector. Last year, the President reached out to the big 5 retail companies to play an even bigger role and a stronger role to make food more affordable for South African households. Historically, retailers have always been able to assist during tough times, but are now under increased pressure and struggling to do so. Then don't forget the generational shifts. Locally, Gen Z makes up to 20% of the South African household grocery shopper. They are transforming grocery shopping from a core into a social destination. Demanding tech immersive trend-led innovation in the shopping experience that blend digital discovery with authentic community connection, a spice definitely to be watched. So what is shifting our goal posts? The South African FMCG trading landscape is fragmented as consumers spend shifts from a new dominant from a few dominant retailers toward a broader mix of formal, informal and value-driven chains. The power is no longer concentrated in big brands. FMCG retail used to be much simpler, fewer retailers, fewer brands, but the landscape is fragmented and will continue to do so. The lines in South African FMCG market are blurring because consumers are more mission-driven, retailers are more brand like -- and context. So what is changing? Brand versus private label. Private label now competes head on with brands on quality, innovation and trust, not just price. Channels are emerging. Consumers fluidly switch between supermarkets, discounters, e-commerce and spot shops based on their specific shopping mission and the occasion that they need to purchase for. Price tiers are collapsing. Value, mainstream and premium coexist in the same basket, depending on the category and the occasion, formal versus informal trade. The informal trade is integrated into FMCG strategies and this, they do through tailored packs, pricing and distribution, retailers' brands. Retailers are increasingly own product innovation, shopper data and customer relationships. All the while, [indiscernible] are still being bought. With the grocery margins and increasing pressure, retailers are scrambling for revenue and margin outside of their core business. For example, through retail media networks, reward programs, private brand portfolios and by growing their e-commerce strategies. Retail Media networks aren't new. Retailers have been selling advertising space in these stores since forever. The growth has come from the digital side of things, however, trending more towards brand investment with higher expectations from suppliers. Globally, 65% of marketers expect retail media networks to play an even bigger role in the media mix done before. Loyalty programs go hand-in-hand with retail media networks in terms of sales attribution. In the context of the broader shopper preferences and their behavior, general trends are towards more personalized, increasing partnerships, integrated payment and the incentivizing of niche benefits. Local retailers are still bullish on private brands as it gives them greater control on their shelves and higher margins. Digital commerce, while currently a very small share of total grocery sales is still the fastest-growing channel. The competitive landscape will, however, mature and intensify, e-commerce will become a core source of market share gain and not only incremental sales. From a discounter and independent trade perspective, the discount stores, the store numbers are driving footprint growth, contributing to the rise of the discounters valued at approximately ZAR 54 billion annually. Discounters are performing very strongly in South Africa's FMCG environment because the operational model is exceptionally well aligned to the country's current economic consumer and retail dynamics. The outperformance is structural rather than short term. They are performing so well because they sit at the intersection of 4 key drivers, namely value, proximity, simplicity and trust. They are also in line to the sustained consumer pressure that currently exists with structurally lower cost and better price execution. The footprint expansion is significantly faster in underserved areas with strong private label economics that captures volume while others defend margins. From a strategic perspective, discounters are not benefiting from a cycle, they are benefiting from a structural rewiring of how South African shop for food. The other channel that has shown very strong growth is the independent retail and wholesale environment. Although wholesalers have grown steadily for the last 3 years, the independent retailers have seen very strong growth outpacing that of wholesale and gaining share. Our growth story is still unfolding by intentionally moving into overlooked areas such as the independent trade, we believe we can selectively unlock a new phase of sustainable and profitable expansion. Traditional trade outperforms modern trade. The bulk of FMCG retail sales for the year of ZAR 513 billion went through the modern trade channels. Those are such as supermarket chains, franchise grocery stores and e-commerce platforms. Traditional trade channels, which include the independent super reds, spaza shops, [ Devens ] racked up around ZAR 170 billion in sales. Convenience is 1 reason for traditional trades outperformance during 2025, with more than 140,000 outlets versus the mere 11,000 outlets in modern trade. Traditional trade outlets offer unmatched accessibility to meet shoppers where they are. Not only that, but traditional trade is also benefiting from a trend of households going to shops more often, buying smaller packs and purchasing less per trip. All the while formal retail is impacted by shopping trips that are shifting, not spend disappearing and baskets that are shrinking. The informal trade and discounters are structurally more advantaged with private label and buying down compressing value, legacy store formats are misaligned to new shopper missions this boils down to a share and mix problem and not a demand collapse. Taking a look at the informal trade. Within this channel, the foodservice trade best known as street vendors, takeaway trader, home-based cooks, [indiscernible] cook sellers, [indiscernible] , selling meals is outpacing most of other informal FMCG channels due to a convergence of economic pressure, structural demand and behavioral shifts. The informal food service sits at the intersection of economic stress, urban lifestyle realities, daily hunger needs and low capital entrepreneurship. It is not growing despite the pressure. It is growing because of it. The private label landscape within South Africa as FMCG sector is entering a period of significant transition. This flux presents both risk and opportunity as winning propositions will increasingly depend on scale efficiency, brand architecture, innovation capability and alignment with retailer-led growth strategies. All of which Libstar not only already participates in, but plays a leading role with key customers and will continue to do so. Private label share dwindles as the traditional trade expands, subdued growth in the modern trade sector contributed to a slight decline in private label share of retail -- of total retail sales. Excluding the tobacco and liquor sectors, private label accounted for around 17.7% of FMCG sales value in 2025, slightly down from 18.3% in 2024. Private label sales grew at 4.1% in 2025 to nearly ZAR 106 billion compared to sales growth of 8.1% the previous year. Private label in South Africa is not in a decline. Its growth has normalized as inflation eases and competition intensifies. The value now lies less in share gains and more in execution. Tiering, margin resilience and brand differentiation will be the new determine -- will determine which retailers outperform the other. In the South African FMCG environment, small changes in price pack or promotion can create a disproportionately large or negligible shift in demand. Value does not move in straight lines. And in SA FMCG, value is created at the right moments in the right places, not through blend across the broad price actions. 2025 saw increasing pressure on price and promotions as retailers and manufacturers scramble for volume and market share. South Africa has a high and increasing reliance on special offer discounts and promotions with different attitudes towards promotional intensity levels, while some retailers are embracing their high levels of promotional intensity, others are very concerned about the erosion of margins. While the FMCG sector in South Africa continues to face significant headwinds, we remain committed to finding opportunity within challenges. By staying close to our shopper partnering closely with our customers and executing with excellence, we continue to drive and grow our brands and deliver results that prove growth is still possible in this market environment. We're experiencing a fundamental shift in retail. Grocery stores are moving away from being mere sellers of products to becoming orchestrators of data and services. The sustained value-seeking and down-trading by consumers is structural, not cyclical, a fundamental shift in our South Africa spend on food and not is not a temporary blip. The rapid growth in private label offerings that are increasingly tiered into entry-level core and premium ranges will provide consumer choice and while protecting retailer margins. The relative resilience of premium retail segments that are supported by a growing middle-class consumer base and continued demand for quality and convenience will remain. Pressure on domestic retail volumes are still a key factor, requiring supplier to diversify into under-indexed channels, export, wholesale, and the independent try to stabilize volumes and to utilize capacity. There will be a continuous focus in food service, driven by tourism recovery and the increased out-of-home home consumption, as mentioned by Charl. For the South African shopper, this means the value you receive will no longer just be a cheaper price on the shelf, but a highly personalized ecosystem of rewards and services designed to keep you loyal. So where does this leave us? The market is not standing still, and our challenge is to ensure that our portfolio capabilities and trading model remain aligned to how growth is now being created, not how it was created historically. We are operating in a market that is redefining success faster than legacy models can adapt to. Introducing our health of specialists, our economic engine that will drive the business forward and not just a talent model. So what does this really mean for Libstar. The famous saying goes, a jack of all trade is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one. In food manufacturing, serving the FMCG trade in South Africa, success depends on speed, margin protection and reliability. A jack of all trades adds value because they understand our decisions in 1 area directly impact the other. And it also how it affects customer relationships and how it also affects it throughout the whole value chain. I would rather like to reposition it as being commercially versatile with strong cross-functional capability. Being a jack of all trades is highly beneficial in an FMCG environment because these environments are fast-based complex and constantly changing. A broad skill set allows individuals to understand and connect production, supply chain, quality, finance, and commercial teams, enabling the quickest problem solving and better decision-making. This versatility improves agility during disruptions, but it also supports continuous improvement initiatives and it reduces solo action functions. With just over 1/3 of our turnover made to former retail known as our defined basket within the retail environment. These would include the Shoprite Group, Pick n Pay, Macro and SPAR. For this read, SPAR has unfortunately been excluded because of challenges with their data read. Despite a challenging macroeconomic environment, the business is not just maintaining its position but growing across almost every category. Libstar has achieved a total growth of ZAR 323 million within our defined basket. This growth is well balanced across the 2 primary pillars of the portfolio, namely perishable groceries contributing ZAR 184 million in growth and ambient groceries providing a strong support at ZAR 139 million in growth. Our total annual sales value currently stands at a significant ZAR 3.7 billion, which gives us roughly 15% share within a total defined basket of ZAR 27 billion. The business is built to write stories because it possesses a diversified revenue mix by having high growth categories in both perishable and ambient sectors the category, the company is protected against specific supply chain disruptions or shifts in the consumer shopping behavior. Libstar is seeing healthy upward trajectory in the formal retail environment. In a stormy macro environment, consumers prioritize fridge tables and boundary essentials. Our portfolio is heavily weighted towards these nondiscretionary items, which protects our margins even when consumer spending tightens elsewhere. A data-led and science-driven business uses real-time data, analytics and scientific principles to make better decisions. across demand, manufacturing, supply chain and product development, improving margins, resilience and growth. Our data-led science-driven operating model enables us to make faster, more accurate decisions, optimizing manufacturing and supply chain performance and sustainably grow margins in a volatile South African FMCG environment. The next slide is evident in our key partners and stakeholders, delivering value through our -- through us, to our customers and consumers alike. In our business, we don't make product pricing or expansion decisions based on intuition alone. We combine market data, consumer research and global FMCG trends to make informed scientific decisions. that reduces risk and improve the likelihood of commercial success. Market data helps to size opportunities before investing which allows for avoiding over or under investment. Tracking of competitive activity and pricing pressure makes us more aware of what is happening in the market and how we respond to that. We also identify gaps in the market through looking at the data. And that helps us to respond early to inflation or cost pressures or even consumers downtrading. Before committing to innovation or packaging challenges, we taste ideas with real consumers. We research needs, usage occasions, price sensitivity and brand perceptions, particularly with a diverse South African household in South Africa. We track global FMCG trends, such as value-seeking behavior, health and wellness, sustainability and convenience. But we don't apply them blindly. We assess how these trends translate into the South African context, where affordability, access and practicality matter. Research doesn't sit in reports -- it directly informs our manufacturing, sourcing, pricing and pack sizes as well as our go-to-market decisions. This allows us to optimize margins while remaining accessible to consumers under economic pressures. By combining data, consumer insight and global trends who run a more predictable, lower-risk FMCG business, this approach improves our success rate on innovation. It strengthens our brand equity, and it allows us to deploy capital more efficiently, which ultimately drives sustainable growth and returns. Being a trend set in the South African FMCG means shaping where consumers, categories and retailers are going. By deeply understanding local trends and moving boldly credibly and ahead of the market. In the food industry, most people mistakenly think setting a trend just means inventing a new flavor or alternatively a quickly food hybrid. While product innovation is important to truly set the trend, you must look beyond the product itself. Libstar is a unique and powerful player within the South African South African market. We are the invisible trend setter, which means that gives us private label leadership. Libstar is a partner behind some of the South Africa's most premium dealer-owned brands instead of just competing with retailers, Libstar partners with them to design what the future of the grocery shelf -- what the grocery shelf and the category would look like. High-speed agility most large food manufacturers take years to bring a new product to market. Libstar operates in an agile and decentralized model, which makes us a lot quicker, taking products to market. Technologically advanced, Libstar often evaluates their current technology alongside investing in manufacturing technology to solve consumer problems. The global flavor transition through brands like Cape Herb & Spice, Libstar monitors, global culinary shifts like the rise of the Chili crunch, the Asia, in the Middle East and translate them into the South African Palette. They moved the South African boundaries away from basic salt and pepper towards clean label, non-GMO, no MSG seasonings, effectively educating the local consumer on global food trends. One Libstar the ecosystem model. Libstar isn't 1 joint factory. It's a house of specialized units. The model sets a trend for a portfolio of specialists. Each unit stays an expert in its niche but chase the distribution and data analytics power of the group store. We just get to my last point. That brings my section to a close. Apologies for the glitch. I truly believe that the insights that I've shared would shed some light on our reality within the FMCG industry within South Africa, the challenges we are faced with on a daily basis. but even more so, the great opportunities that are out there to be capitalized on. Next up, I'd like to invite Cornel Lodewyks to join us on stage. Cornel is an Executive Director on the Libstar Board and the category executive for our dairy and convenience meals cluster. Cornel will be introducing our versatile and exciting super categories, along with the executives who lead them. They'll be sharing their personal stories, what they love about their business and how they're currently performing and the plans they have to in place for the future of Libstar. Thank you.

Thank you, Wendy. I suppose I'm giving my edge away, but [indiscernible] first paper. There's a feel of -- -- I see our share as well. Good morning, everyone, and good morning to our guests online. Today, I have the honor of taking you on exciting journey through our various categories and subcategories our brands and our people. You will gain valuable insights into our business, the way we operate, what we actually do on a daily basis and what we manufacture. And then like our Chair mentioned, you will meet and engage with our various business executives here in the front row. Charl did mention our operating model structure earlier on. This is, again, just a snapshot. What operating model means to us is the bridge between our strategy and execution. This is our first point of call when we establish our new strategy. And we said, listen here, we need to change, and we need to simplify things for us to execute our strategy -- it's real simple. It's simple to explain. It's even -- can even put it on 1 page, 2 food categories, ambient products, perishable products with their respective subcategories below. Turning our attention to the ambient products category. Some of these slides, you might be familiar with these -- apologies for that. You might be familiar with these slides we did present it in our results a week or 2 ago. Ambient products category is our largest category in terms of revenue and EBITDA. It contributes 51% of group revenue and 62.7%, close to 63% of group normalized EBITDA. Revenue growth last year, 7.4% up on the prior year, driven by wet condiments and the demand in retail and the contract manufacturing channel. Normalized EBITDA increased by 3.1% and gross margins improved to 25.9%. Going into a bit more detail into the segments. Our largest subcategory in ambient select products includes the business -- business like we used to refer to them, all business units. Rialto embedded in our snacking business, the nuts business up in White River and Coastal [indiscernible] in Vredenburg, Revenue increased by 5.7% with food services up 6.8% and retail, up 6.1%. Our second largest segment of sub category with condiments, they manufacture a range of sources, vinegars, soups, stock powders, baking aids to name a few. Business included in wet condiments is Montagu Foods, retailer brands, Dickon Hall and Cecil Vinegar. Revenue increased by 15% last year, driven by strong retail and industrial demand, production throughput and production efficiencies aided the segment and the group in improving its gross margin. Condiments segment, Cape Herb & Spice and Cape Foods, pack spices and seasonings for the local market and for the international market as well. Revenue increased by 0.8%, mix improvement of 3.4% and and we see a positive shift towards own brand Cape Herb & Spice. And we will elaborate a bit further on the success the team had abroad. Then last but not least, the baking, which includes Amaro and Cani. They manufacture a range of artisanal breads. Croissants, hard crust buns, Tony, I'm sure your factory must be very, very busy. Easter weekend is upon us. Rusk, cookies, gluten-free products and wraps to name a few. Revenue grew by 9.1%, supported by food service recovery and a resilient retail demand. Looking at select products. We have 2 leaders, [ Ruan Downing ] and [ Dairy Cassens. ] There roles are split between channel and brand. Ruan looks after private label and retail. And [ Derick ] food services and retail principal brands, brands like [indiscernible], Kikkoman and Tabasco to name a few. Amazing leadership team, all the decisions are based on data, a very data-driven business. Derek won excellence awards earlier this year for leadership. And that was a leadership award because of the establishment of a completely new food service structure and then obviously, performance from Principal brands which he will -- 2 of them will elaborate now. So enough of me, let's listen to [ Rohan and Derik. ] [Presentation]

Depth of knowledge and obviously, passion business driven by innovation. And I can tell you, it's not a type of business that you can run out of Bolt Avenue in Montagu, you need to hit the road and visit those factories in Europe and Asia. So always very proud to see those products on shelf. I wish I had a [indiscernible]. The wet condiments segment under the leadership of Ingrid Uys, it's been our star performer for the last 2 years. We're immensely proud of what this team has achieved. It's a case study of note. They even won 2 awards earlier this year. The first 1 was an excellent award for category and channel growth. The second was a North Star award as accolade within Libstar. But enough of me, let's listen to the Ingrid. [Presentation]

You can see that energy runs high in Montagu. It's something quite special, and it's something actually quite tangible. And I'm sure you'll feel that when you walk into those factory or factories tomorrow. It shows you what passion agility and execution of plans economies of scale does do a business in great well done to you and your team. Looking at dry condiments, subcategory the 2 leaders, is Paul Jibson, responsible or accountable for Cape Herb & Spice and Gerhard Martin of Cape Foods, 2 entrepreneurs at heart, understand brands. They also captain many export initiatives in the group. They're the expert when it comes experts -- actually stays expert when it comes to exports. Over to them. [Presentation]

So I know how difficulties to build a brand locally. It took many years for Lancewood root to achieve that status as market leader. Imagine doing that a broad team at being very successful in part of U.K. and Europe. Imagine the opportunity poses for Libstar. Again, last but not least, the baking segment, which includes the Amaro business. We even have the bakers year-to-date [indiscernible] is hiding there at the back. Tony is that started Amaro Foods in the early '70s. And today, after 5 decades, more than 5 decades, they're still supplying the key customer business with a lot of heritage and quality when we walk the stores, again, also products would be very proud of [indiscernible], also a smaller business, packing rusk and cookies for private label, but also a small but a branded we're very excited about [ Kane. ] And during the break, please try some of [indiscernible]. The first thing that I do in the morning when I have my first cup of coffee is a double brand rusk I can really recommend that over to the James. [Presentation]

I can tell you, you don't want to walk those factories on an empty stomach. That concludes our overview of the ambient products category. We will now break for tea, eat some of snacks for us and some other delicacies made by Libstar categories. For those who are here, please enjoy those products and just please allow a few minutes for the teams to set up for our virtual attendees. Unfortunately, you can't have some of our products, you must come and visit us, please do so. But please remain online, and we will return shortly. Thank you. [Break]

If we can just take a seat. Yes. Welcome back, and I hope you enjoyed our delicious products. We will focus now on our perishable products category. Perishable products category contributes 48% of group revenue. Last year, revenue grew by 9.2%, with a price and mix improvement of 9.1%. Volumes were relatively flat. Gross margins improved to 17.5% from 16.8% in the prior year. EBITDA contribution to group 36.5%. If you go deeper into the subsegments, Lancewood, the biggest subcategory in the group. Lancewood manufacture a range of [indiscernible], softies, yogurt, butter and powders to name a few. Core category volumes grew by 4.4% and for Lancewood with core categories is obviously [indiscernible], butter and then yogurt. Margins supported by factory throughput, we also gained market share in the natural cheese category as well as the yogurt category, also improved [indiscernible], working cap and cash conversion. Value-added meats, the Finlar business, they are the experts when it comes to -- experts when it comes to crumbed chicken and beef products, they manufacture a range of whole muscle and bone in products for QSR and retail. Revenue increased by 11.5% and driven by strong retail and wholesale sales, up 12.5% and food services and QSR up 15.1%. Our Millennium Foods business -- they sell a selection of fresh and frozen meals on a private label and also under the newly developed dining brand. Revenue increased by 9.4% and supported by own brands and private label growth. If we look at dairy, Jacques will take us through the category, how much is -- Jacques also looks after the supply that he is not only a salesman. He's got a difficult job. He's a salesman, supply chain and also accountable for profitability. That's a lot of difficult to do. Jac has been with us for more than a decade, very proud of his contribution. Also, award winner. You won the impactful chains award that was linked to Lancewood improvement in working cap, RONA as well as lower inventory levels. Those things had quite a big impact on group ROIC contribution. Over to Jac. [Presentation]

Also very proud of the achievements on the brand. We could have imagined launch with the small, call it, small dairy and at Southern Cup, 1 of the best green trees in the world recently also having a followership on social media of more than 1 million active and engaged users or followers is a huge asset. It brings us very close to our customer or consumers which is quite valuable. And once again, proud of the marketing team that work very hard to achieve that in a small period of time, a short period of time. Moving to value-added meats. The crumbing experts, the chicken and beef people under the leadership of Stephen [indiscernible] He is the new kid on the block. He brings fresh new perspective, new eyes to the business. We, as a management of exec team really believe that there's lots of opportunity within the Finlar business. But let's listen to Stephen. What he has to say? [Presentation]

As you can see in those videos, those are state-of-the-art facilities, it's not just a copy and paste. I believe that they're the best in what they do. There's not a lot of businesses that can produce those type of quality. When you eat a site or a piece of chicken from McDonald's, you know it's a product. So all the best, Stephen. Then last but not least, convenience meals. This is a business, a very exciting business, a business driven by innovation, fast pace, also high-growth categories. Unfortunately, the category executive, Katrina Summer can't be here with us. She's in New Zealand. I'm sure she's thinking of us, but let's listen to Katrina I said, very exciting category to be part of.

Then we also have our own brand which you'll find in the freezer in most retail stores. We play in both the fresh and frozen space. So on the fresh side, we do salad [indiscernible] that would [indiscernible] then we also do [indiscernible] some on the frozen side, it's I encourage you if you haven't tasted them to please do yourself a favor and specifically our new soups super convenience, single-serve and we've also recently launched a new beef pie and a chicken [indiscernible] So please give a favor, give it a go, great for pantry loading, great for convenience every night or any day of the week, you just need something to pull it out and have a meal ready. So I think our ability to cater to the fast-paced innovation. So it's a space where the only constant is change actually. You are constantly innovating, renovating, rotating products through seasonal products, soups change every year, salads change every year. So you're constantly rotating. So we're equipped to deal with that. We're geared for it. So from a private label perspective, we are able to meet that demand. And then on our brand on dine-in, there we are able to -- we have the advantage where we can develop to a price point and make that range more accessible. So as I alluded to, just the convenience of being able to pantry load and have something convenient to put out of your freezer and have on your table tonight. facility. And as I mentioned earlier, we really do supply a broad range of products in fresh and frozen across many sort of subcategories. So we really have the capabilities for all of those ranges. So that really makes us unique. And then on the other side of things, people. People will be surprised at how labor-intensive the production actually is. So there's somebody cutting those babyarrows. There's somebody slicing those radishes that go into those sellers. There's somebody of the line assembling it -- so our people really are -- and we focus on upskilling them, developing them where we can. And then from a management team, we have got an incredible depth of knowledge and experience across the functions. So from an operational perspective, technical, new product development, which is really key on the brand side and marketing, on sales. So really like a depth of knowledge. So that, I think, also helps us stay ahead. I really challenge you to just don't taste our meals, it tastes like a homemade me. And there's a fine balance between automating and over automating and also maybe on the other hand, being too [indiscernible]. So it's that fine balance between having the best of both worlds. In terms of unlocking efficiencies, we need to see where it warrants from a volume perspective or where there are bottlenecks in the facility. So for example, at the moment, we've got manual sealers. So we're investing in some -- an automated sealer so that you can push more meals through as you're sealing the film onto the foil. We're looking at bigger cooking pots to allows you to produce more at a single time. We've recently invested in some new soup equipment with us doing some more soup launches. We're in a good position in terms of convenience remains key. A lot of busy South Africans working hard and don't have the time to really prepare meals from scratch every evening. So I think we're catering to that audience. From the South African retailer, a lot of them, this is a strategic category for them. We need to be sure that we can service that demand and that we also source more strategically, ensure that we're not overengineering our products and the same breadth in the facility as well, ensuring that we are operating as efficiently as we possibly can. The facility and the breadth of what we cover. In 1 week, we are [ doing ]...

So that concludes my presentation and jokes. I'm going to hand over to Charl now. He will take us through the investment case of Libstar. Over to you, Charl. Thank you.

Okay. Is everyone still present? Now that you've heard from Wendy, what's driving the market dynamics and you've heard from the senior management teams, what drives the internals of the businesses, it's my privilege to take you through the investment case. Always I would like to see it what makes Libstar unique and what are we most excited about for the future. So to start, the first slide that you've seen multiple times today -- and I would like you to indulge me that if we listen to Wendy and these key market dynamics are driving behavior at the moment in the FMCG market, then firstly, what thematically makes Libstar well positioned and makes Libstar unique? And then what makes each one of our individual businesses unique and able to respond to those key market dynamics. So starting on the far left with sustained consumer value seeking and down trading, if we assume that is correct, then I would like to almost like an advocate put it to you that we are aligned to how South Africans shop and to how consumers and shoppers shop. And that is achieved by our ability to engineer pack price and value SKUs at scale and scale is important. We spoke about scale in Paul's presentation, Paul and [ Sarah's ] presentation, we spoke about scale in dairy. We spoke about scale in wet condiments. So that gives us the ability to engineer pack price and value at SKUs. That also gives us the advantage of being a low-cost manufacturer. Cost leadership enables us to then protect margins to be able to deliver more profitable bottom line from the volumes that we push through our factories. And then lastly, having the ability to have flexible manufacturing arrangements that cater to rapid innovation. And that is something that you would have seen in most of these presentations by management is our ability to quickly respond arguably faster than others to changing market dynamics. If we then move on to the second market trend being rapid growth in private label and increased tiered offerings by retailers, then I would argue that Libstar is significantly -- or what is the descriptive, we are embedded in the retailer strategy. And why we are embedded is, most importantly, actually the last point on the slide, and that's because we follow a category management approach. We are not just a single provider of a single product to a single customer. We provide a basket, whether it's in food service, whether it's in dairy, whether it's in wet condiments, in dry condiments, we provide a basket of products, and that puts us in a position where we believe we partner with our customers as opposed to being purely a transactional relationship. What I spoke to previously on the previous slide around capabilities and flexibility, that also allows us to develop tiered offerings for consumers. Wet condiments is a prime example of that. Red Lion intended for the wholesale market right up to the premium dealer-owned brands. And then ability to support multiple tiers simultaneously. That really makes us unique, and it would have been visible in those presentations earlier. Thirdly, if you look at the resilience of premium segments, I said earlier, we are selectively defending our premium market positioning. Many of our premium categories are shopping destinations. In other words, consumers go to our customers to shop that particular category. And that is something that we want to defend and that we want to grow upon. So we want to support that not only with our own brand, but also with our private label relationships. And that allows us to then balance our volumes, margins and the like across those tiers. So it's really important that we hold on to our premium positioning in categories such as snacks as one example, premium spices and seasonings in our brands, premium dairy, and that's really important to protect. If volumes are under pressure and we accept that it is a requirement that we diversify into under-indexed channels, then I would argue that we are in a position where we have a very strong footprint in retail. However, we have a growing contribution, as I spoke to earlier, from those under-indexed channels. Wholesale is still a very small channel for us. We've seen Red Lion grow from nothing to 5 million to 10 million, and we'll push 20 million, I would believe, shortly. And that is important for us in terms of moving forward. The food service structure, which has now been fully established, that is a fundamental growth driver for us. You've listened to [ Derek ] in terms of how that is set up and why we believe it can deliver future success. And then finally, also exports being a core driver, not only in the herbs and spice and seasonings categories, but also within the likes of wet condiments where BRC approved that happened last year, and we're really pushing hard to enter the export market at scale with our condiments offering. So the diversification is already visible in the numbers when you look at the channel mix. And then to somewhat repeat what I said earlier, resilient food service growth that we're seeing in the market due to tourism, increased out-of-home consumption. And there, what really gives us the edge in foodservice is the sheer depth and breadth of the offering that we can. It's a very competitive market. Please ask Derek all the questions in the break. He will say to you that it's a highly competitive market. You often have entrances and exits within the foodservice market. But what really gives us the edge is our national footprint at the necessary quality standards and the sheer breadth of the range that we can offer, not only to restaurants, traditional QSRs, but other subchannels like catering, et cetera, in that channel. So those are the elements that really differentiate Libstar from others. If I then bring that together in a short slide, how we think about it is there are three elements to our differentiation. Firstly, the fact that we manufacture at scale because we are embedded in a category approach that makes us a preferred partner to our customers. Our group expertise, our people, Stephen spoke about institutional knowledge. We are the crumming experts. We have achieved product innovation or been able to deliver product innovation that was -- that theoretically should have been possible with the same equipment, but somehow it wasn't. So we've built that institutional knowledge over multiple years, and that's very difficult to replicate at scale. And then finally, in terms of differentiators, our embedded customer relationships, Amaro Foods being a supplier to its key retail customer for over 50 years, and that is true for many of our retail QSR relationships. So if we then bring these elements to life in terms of our two core categories, starting with the ambient category. In wet and dry condiments, we have significant scale in manufacturing. That wasn't true necessarily 3, 4 years ago. We were on a journey to define the categories in which we wanted to play. I still remember those meetings that we had, and we were worried about the volume and achieving that scale. And we've now achieved that scale, which makes us be able to deliver at a cost effective as well as from an innovation perspective, far superior to our competitors, I would like to believe. So scale manufacturing across both our branded and our private label offerings. The rest I've already covered. Select products, we listened to [ Ruan ]. You saw that we were benefiting from scaled procurement and the fact that we are entrenched in a premium segment of the market in a long-standing relationship with our key retail customer. And then in baking, we listened to [ Tony ], and he explained to us that we are capable of delivering artisanal capability, premium retail partnerships and a cost-effective solution for our QSR customers, particularly in baking being able to produce a wide range of products. If we then progress that to the perishable products category. In dairy, the first and most important part is our market leadership, our brand leadership. We occupy more than 27% of the natural cheese market. And we've listened to Jacques and Kunal explained how difficult it is to build a brand from scratch. And as one of our Board members said recently, how -- what an achievement it is to be able to continue to grow even when you are the market leader through innovation, which we've been able to do now consistently. Our manufacturing sites, many -- some of you might not know, our manufacturing site in George is situated quite close to the milk band, the milk sourcing area. We don't truck milk around as much as others. And that, we believe, is a competitive advantage as it relates to our cost leadership. And then finally, being able to combine our brand with the private labels in order to deliver category growth. When we looked at Wendy's presentation, we saw that dairy, which was over 40% contribution to our basket, that was growing, and it's growing ahead of the market. So the category is growing not only through branded offering of Lancewood, but also through the private label partnerships that we have with our customers. Moving on to value-added meats. Not to [ belabor ] the point, but our manufacturing capability is specialized. We are the crumbing experts. There are very few in South Africa that can replicate our technical capabilities. And then finally, Convenience meals is a very labor-intensive exercise, a very labor-intensive process, not a lot of room for automation. And notwithstanding that, we are able to deliver consistently high service levels to our customers and able to deliver that complexity with an embedded customer relationship as well and supported by the not so recently launched dine-in brand, which is also allowing us to replicate that [ Lancesit ] model of having the brand and the private label complement each other within that category. So for the sake of ensuring that we repeat our core messages, the wholesale channel is a channel which we view will leverage our manufacturing base. It is not a channel which I want to over accentuate. However, it is a channel that we are investing in, in terms of understanding the market. We're spending time with leaders in the sector in order to understand how we can improve our participation in wholesale. And why that -- why we think we can participate is because of the scale and the cost leadership in terms of our manufacturing capabilities. Foodservice, our national footprint, I spoke to that. It's an attractive growth channel. It seems like there's still runway in terms of the food service sector with the tourism and increased out-of-home consumption. And then finally, again, exports, export capabilities, being able to leverage our scale manufacturing in order to ensure that we also diversify our revenue base through a bit of hard currency. So if I were to then summarize, Libstar is positioned to win by supporting tiered private label, but also developing and growing our own brands, maintaining our selective premium exposure and embedding ourselves into structurally attractive channels. That's underpinned by our operational scale, our category expertise and our deep customer relationships. And that is what will truly deliver earnings resilience and earnings quality moving forward. So the next section -- in the next section, I would like to spend a bit of time on what we are most excited about. And we're going to deal with that under our existing grow, sustain -- simplify, grow, sustain themes and headings for a very good reason. This is not a new strategy. We are going to leverage our strategy moving forward in order to deliver our strategic ambitions. So spending a bit more time on the detail of the next 2 financial years. We shared this slide with you at the results presentation. And the #1 question that we received after the results presentation was, is this just an ambition? Is this something that you hope to achieve? Is this something that's somewhere in a spreadsheet? And the emphatic answer to that was this is built up from the ground. the benefit of the corporate activity was that we had time to really scrutinize where we could deliver value and what was realistic. So with that in mind, the different growth initiatives that I will be talking to, they are all designed to ensure the improvement of our margins, ultimately, to achieve our weighted average cost of capital plus 2%, our 13% WACC ROIC target, whilst maintaining cash conversion and reasonable or within our targeted band of gearing. Working capital was a significant component of the 2025 outperformance. We managed to release about ZAR 160 million worth of working capital, ZAR 100 million in dairy, ZAR 60 million in bulk tea. And that ensured or that allowed us to then reduce our working capital investment to a normalized level. We think there's still further opportunity in the medium term, although in the shorter term, we will most likely remain at the 18% level. And then I don't want to create the impression this morning that this is now either to the Chairman's point, an acquisition strategy or a CapEx drive, a mega project CapEx drive. You will see from Terry's slides that we still intend to be only slightly above our usual targeted range around CapEx because we are picking a select few but high-quality projects in which to invest. So if we look at what success looks like for us from a simplification, growth and sustainability perspective, I want to remind you that simplification has two elements to it. The first being the portfolio and the second being the operating model. I'm going to put them in a bit of a reverse order and start with the operating model, and that's the important capital project that we will embark upon actually from today. Today is the day, 1 April -- or tomorrow, sorry. So the Montagu Foods, Montagu factory that many of you will be visiting tomorrow. That is intended to house the remaining business of Picornor Foods, which is some contract manufacturing for retail as well as QSR into a newly established site next to the Montagu factory. There's a lease cost attached to that on the right-hand side, ZAR 25.6 million and then a capital investment cost of just over ZAR 55 million. Our payback is between 3 and 4 years, and that is supported by essentially savings on rental. So there's a significant saving in rental of the new premises relative to the old Dickon Hall Foods site as well as a significant cost per kilogram reduction in labor. Those two elements are the key drivers to our payback assumptions. However, it will also be driven by a planned pipeline of innovation with the capabilities that come with that machinery. Our time line, we're starting tomorrow and our initial integration will take 8 to 12 weeks. During that time, we will incur some double expenses. Hence, our guidance to the market that the first half results or the second half results will be -- will drive more of the full year financial outcome this year. It's important that we reiterate the slide that you'll see or you've seen from Ingrid as well as you'll see tomorrow, and that is how innovation, the number of SKUs that were launched last year, the number that will be launched this year. And when you listen to Ingrid explain how we're going to utilize that capacity within the source category and even look into adjacent categories where we have the capabilities, but we don't yet participate both in brand as well as in private label. The second significant capital project is that of a site consolidation within the Cape Urban Spice business. So as Paul mentioned in his presentation to us, we have two manufacturing sites. One is in Westlake, one is in Makeland. And then we have two warehousing sites. One is in Montagu Park and one is in Monteagle Gardens. And what I want to point out is you can see how fragmented our footprint is, where we have warehouses in place, we are occupying a part of the building, where we have manufacturing sites, we are occupying multiple buildings. So multiple roofs, multiple costs around technical and to exacerbate that impact, on the far right, you can see how geographically spread these sites are. This is Cape Town, a map of Cape Town. And I want you to imagine what it would cost to drive and transport raw materials to a site, blend pack, transport it back to the warehouse, and there are multiple trips between these sites on any given day. So geographically spread, and that was borne out of the rapid growth of the business over time, but it's now no longer fit for purpose in terms of our needs when we need to remain cost competitive in the market. So I hope I've made that point. So in terms of the rands and cents, this is a ZAR 65 million project. It's a full single site consolidation in Montagu Park in Cape Town. It's a relatively new asset compliant site for us under one roof. The payback at the moment is 6 to 7 years, and you might gasp or think why would you accept a project like that? The reality is that we've been extremely conservative in calculating that payback number because we will be exiting leases on 4 different sites, there will be a period where we will be incurring leases on the one side whilst also incurring a lease on the other. So even despite that, it's a 6- to 7-year payback and our ability to exit those leases earlier will or could and will drive an acceleration of the payback period. Again, the IRR there is above our cost of capital. It's a healthy 10-year return with lease savings on the consolidated premises of ZAR 12.5 million per annum. We've started planning that the technical drawings have been done, but the physical move will commence around Q3 for completion into 2027. So the drivers of that payback, just to reiterate around the duplication of costs, four facilities result in a tremendous duplication of costs. So we will reduce our intersite logistics costs. Operational efficiencies, eliminating duplicated activities, security is one but one example, technical handling, double handling, and the process lead times because of the logistics time lines between these sites and then improving our oversight of inventory, not having them in third-party warehouses, having them under one roof, reducing our risk of any stock shortages as well. So that's the simplification part dealing with operating model. And now over to the simplification elements of the portfolio. And to that end, we have explicitly said that we will continue to seek options that will allow us to exit our remaining HPC business, contact them, and that remains a firm intent in the short term. Finally, I'm also pleased to advise that we are in advanced stages of exiting our Facanor remaining Denny property at a higher valuation, I think, that what we intended initially. In terms of the portfolio, there are always questions around, is there more simplification to be -- is there more simplification to come? Are there other businesses? And the reality is that at this point in time, we are comfortable with our portfolio composition. It will be a continuous review process, but we do not expect any wholesale changes in that regard. On the One Libstar operating model on the right-hand side, we've got Genevieve, our new people executive in the room. We have developed and approved by the Board a 10-year people strategy. Why 10 years? Because there's a lot of work to be done. One of the key questions that we get is, are you now a centralized business? And the answer is no. But we want to be a more standardized business. And one of those elements where standardization can deliver the highest returns is in terms of our people strategy. How we onboard talent, how we retain talent, how we remunerate talent, how we communicate, how we train, and that will be a key element of our people strategy that will be unified under a center of excellence at the center under leadership of Genevieve. Standardized systems. So although we operate one ERP across the group, we had multiple instances of that ERP as one example. So in Ingrid's segment, she explained to us that they have consolidated four different instances of the CIPR system into one. And that's critical because the fewer systems we manage, the more we reduce complexity and the more our costs can deliver the necessary leverage that we're seeking shared services. So you've seen this morning in terms of how the individual categories operate, you've seen shared services within Rialto between food service and retail. And that's something that exists in wet condiments as well. So that is something that we want to develop and mature over time to deliver better efficiencies than operating these individual businesses separately. But there will also be centers of excellence, people being one, industrial relations being another at the center where we provide a service to the underlying units. So in a nutshell, this is about central visibility oversight. It's not about centralization. We remain a decentralized business. Moving on then to the growth pillar. A key element that I think would have been evident from Wendy's section is the importance of mix. Simplification has had a way -- simplification has meant portfolio simplification, operating model simplification, but there's also a product range simplification and to Jacques's earlier comment, the improving our mix, improving our mix away from commoditized categories. So that is a critical focus moving forward. I've spoken about channel diversification and discipline. You would have heard the businesses talk about better visibility around service levels, around efficiencies in the factories and then people and culture being a core element of our people strategy. So on the topic of growth, one of the questions that we often receive is the question around -- it's phrased in different ways, but how do you retain pricing power? How do you ensure that you have pricing power? And I think the first element I want to emphasize is how the brand and the private label works in a symbiotic relationship. We've seen that within the wet condiments category. We've seen that within the dairy category. We're seeing it in the spice category, and that is the way in which we approach category management. However, you would have also seen that there's been a large number of references to investment in our own brands. And that is something that you may not have seen in the past. So whether it is from a Lancewood perspective in continuing to grow already as a market leader or whether it is a small starter brand like Red Lion that ensures that we have access to the wholesale market that we didn't previously have, leveraging the Denny brand, which a few years ago didn't exist, having innovation drive in Robertsons, the dine-in brand that you heard from Katrina and some that aren't even on the slide. I think my latest stat was that we are now the #5 seasoning brand in the U.K. in Cape okay. So the fourth largest spice and seasoning brand in the U.K. in our Cape Herb & Spice brand. And that is a tremendous achievement for a business started in the waterfront in Cape Town. So we will continue to innovate in our brands, but alongside private label, there's that symbiotic relationship that we explained earlier. So informal trade, you've heard me say this a number of times, but it's important. Informal trade at the bottom of that left-hand is an estimated ZAR 90 billion market where we are currently under-indexed in. And there's a reason why Wendy showed us that food service, when you think about informal, you think about [indiscernible] and about how you participate there. Informal food service is an opportunity, and we are looking at ways in which we can participate. Foodservice, QSR now equals full-service restaurants in size at ZAR 40.5 billion, and that gives us the confidence to continue to invest in our food service structures. And then exports is also underutilized at this point in time relative to our capability and our cost leadership. That will continue. So if we were to go a bit deeper into the individual subcategories and look at our focus areas moving forward, in ambient products, we onboarded the General Mills brands last year. And in 2026, we will have the first full year benefit to that. We think that through improved listings, improved distribution, there is still some ways in terms of growth to deliver there. Ruan spoke to us about 2025 being a year of reset in terms of the snacking category. It was an underperforming category. It resulted in the impairment that was recognized in the financial statements. However, that pain was required in order to set us up for improved service levels, which we duly delivered in the second half of the year and a pipeline of innovation in that category moving forward. So critical to our success being an improvement in that subcategory. And then baking, I don't want to create the impression that having more SKUs is always a benefit. You can create a lot of complexity in that, and therefore, you've heard Tony speak about investing in our plants, simplifying our plant layout, simplifying our product offering, but then also ensuring that we invest in our people in that category. On the perishables side, I've been very cryptic here. There are 2 projects that are currently in advanced stages of assessment that will not feature in the numbers that Terri shares with you, but that can drive a significant improvement in the perishables, firstly, the dairy and secondly, the perishables category margin profile and cash generation moving forward. Those projects relate the first one to the theme around improving our mix away from commoditized categories. And the second one is a bit of a blue sky project, but that is really attractive from a margin perspective. And when the time is ready, we will share more with you in that regard. We've also, and you will hear Terri speak about the impact that the loss of beef volumes have had on the value-added meats category, and that cannot be understated. However, we still believe that we have a unique advantage in that category, but it will require an agile response. And in that regard, we are taking the time to do a proper assessment around what commercially and from a CapEx perspective will be required to ensure that, that business is as sustainable as possible moving forward. And when we're ready, we will share those plans with you as well. And then lastly, and just to reiterate, the informal trade acceleration via those brands that we spoke to earlier. Very important to us has been the element of people. I would love to believe that when you listen to the videos today, you heard similar ways of thinking about things, similar ways of speaking or at least that's the feeling I got aside from the passion for the business. And that has been a long road in terms of culture, ensuring that at the lowest levels of the business, we know what simplify, grow and sustain means. When we make a decision, does it simplify, does it grow or does it sustain? If it doesn't do any of those 3 things, then we park it. And that's really important for us as a business moving forward. And a big part of that has been investment in our people. Succession in the FMCG industry is generally quite difficult, and therefore, we've decided to invest in middle management as well as supervisor level education programs to ensure moving forward that we can produce the results that we're seeking to achieve. That's linked to our employment equity plan. I don't want you to think that we've only now developed an employment equity plan, but part of our strategy is to ensure that our leadership programs, our employment equity plan and our business ambitions are completely aligned. And that's an important point to raise. So everyone is still right. The third and final pillar is that of sustainability. I said that has 2 elements, an ESG component and then also a financial sustainability component. I'll start again with the second element first. And that is our absolute drive to reduce our carbon emissions, our water consumption and electricity. We've managed to do that, and there are further programs in place to continue that. Solar is still a relatively small component of our energy -- green energy plan, but we are looking at ways in which to increase that in the group. Group procurement savings. So again, I want to emphasize that we are not a centralized business. That makes driving group or scale procurement benefits an important priority within the divisions. As an example, Ingrid didn't mention it explicitly, but sugar is a component within the wet condiments category. And there was a significant drive to consolidate sugar procurement across the various suppliers, and we achieved significant benefits by doing that. And that is the priority, and that is the KPI of the individual businesses, the individual subcategories on a quarterly basis that they report back on. However, over and above that, we have an engineering executive and procurement executive sitting at the center that has worked with partners in order to identify common spend items, pallets, plastic, and the like. And we have already achieved annualized savings of about ZAR 10 million. Now every bit helps, and we will continue to do more on that front. In terms of sustainability, we are not only champions for good in terms of how we look at the planet, but we are also looking to mitigate our risk of water scarcity, which has been a topical -- we utilize because a large component of milk is comprised of water. We use a lot of water in our manufacturing processes, therefore, in Lancewood, in particular, it is important that we complete a water reuse process -- project that is currently underway. And that will -- in Phase 1, it will recirculate about 20% or 30%, and then in Phase 2 to be completed next year, up to 90% of water reuse. So reducing our affluent surcharges, but also then ensuring that we have a sustainable -- lesser of a reliance on the infrastructure within the George region. Electricity wheeling. This is an area that we've kept on the radar for quite some time. It's a very fast-changing element around energy procurement. It's a way for us to do what is good for the planet, but also reduce our Scope 2 emissions. And we believe now is the time to make a few bold calls in terms of that, not only to save cost, but also to ensure that our carbon emission footprint is reduced. So we will most likely in the coming 12 months, enter into sheeling agreements in order to establish that availability. And then procurement initiatives will continue. So those were the 3 pillars, then simplification, growth and sustainability. I just want to spend a few minutes around capital allocation, how we make decisions. JP mentioned how the light bulb we up for many within the group around how to allocate capital, how to deliver returns above your cost of capital, what that means? And that was quite an education process. In these groups, you often you have the risk of a disconnect between a level of understanding of those principles where the rubber hits the road. So we've spent a lot of time and investment in terms of educating around return hurdles. So the Libstar today uses a ROIC gated investment philosophy. All our CapEx is centrally vetted. We have an engineering executive. So that holds us accountable. We send things back multiple times before we approve to ensure that we are able to justify these projects to our shareholders and stakeholders. So the return thresholds have to be met. And that's the first important principle around our capital allocation the second being ensuring that we continue to protect the strong balance sheet that has been created over the past 3 years with our gearing at the moment at 0.9x, and Terri will give us a bit of a forward view on that. And then also responsibly rewarding shareholders and returning capital to shareholders in a responsible manner. So the repurchase program being topical there, and Terri will update us on that in the next section. So to summarize, the focus in 2026 is to continue to deliver along the strategy that we've set out to deliver and -- but stabilize the base at that level by completing the Montagu Foods integration, the Cape Herb & Spice site integration, exiting our remaining noncore businesses and that site at [indiscernible], implementing our people strategy and then the other initiatives that are noted on the slide, including the rollout of General Mills distribution agreement. From 2027 then, we believe we will be in a position to ensure that those projects are fully integrated and return visible benefits that we will report back to in due course. the Cape Herb & Spice consolidation will only be completed towards H1 -- end of H1 2027. And by that time or actually long before then, we will be in a position to provide more detail around the [indiscernible] capital investment, if any. Own brands will remain a focus area for us alongside the development of profitable private label relationships. And then the sustainability elements that we've spoken to. So it's been a long session. Thanks for bearing with me. But in summary, it's important then that you -- that I convey that those critical trends, key market dynamics that we have a unique positioning within those elements. That's the first point. The second point is that the simplify, grow and sustain still has sufficient benefits to deliver in terms of meeting our ROIC ambitions. So we don't need to rely on elements outside of that. I've shared 2 capital projects with you and 2 others are currently in advanced stages of assessment, particularly driving the return profile of the perishables project -- perishable products category. So with that, I thank you, and I hand over to Terri Ladbrooke. She will take us through more of the financial detail and give you an insight. So if you're a financial analyst and you would like to model the outcomes, now is the time to listen.

Thank you, Charl. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the graveyard shift, but don't worry, we saved the best for last. The numbers are always the most exciting. For those that I have not yet met or had an opportunity to engage with, my name is Terri Ladbrooke, and I am the Group CFO. Today, I'm going to be building on a lot of what has already been presented, but with a focus on the financial perspective, covering our performance to date and how we are thinking about the outlook, including capital deployment and returns to shareholders. Before I jump into the group performance, please just note that all numbers are reflected excluding fresh mushrooms, HPC Ceck Chemicals, beverages and baby food. Additionally, the 2022 and 2023 numbers have been restated in line with the restatements passed in our 2024 annual financial statements. This is to enable us to compare the information presented. Starting with revenue growth across our super categories between 2022 and 2025. In the ambient products category, revenue grew at a compound annual growth rate or a CAGR of 6.6%. During this period, the category was positively impacted by the most recent acquisition of Cape Foods, which was affected in November of 2022. However, the category was negatively impacted by the direct model implemented at the end of 2023. The direct model refers to the direct importing of products by a retail customer in our select product subcategory. In perishable products, revenue grew at a CAGR of 5.4%. The most significant impact in this period was the loss of 50% of our beef volumes with a QSR customer due to supply diversification in our value-added meat subcategory. This happened in 2024, and you can see it visualized by the flat growth between 2023 and 2024 on the graph. The sales growth in 2025 is partly driven by the on sale of raw milk in the dairy subcategory, which was ZAR 138 million in the period. This was done to balance our inventory supplies -- sorry, our inventory levels due to the increased milk supply through that period. At a group level, this resulted in a revenue increase of ZAR 10.4 billion in 2022 to ZAR 12.3 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 5.9%. This slide breaks down our revenue growth per channel. As Charl mentioned, our retail and wholesale channel is our largest channel, making up 55.6% of revenue in 2025 and growing at a CAGR of 7.3%. This growth was driven by the strong performance in wet condiments as well as baking and dry condiments, which was again boosted by the Cape Foods acquisition. Foodservice made up 20.6% of group revenue and is growing at a CAGR of 4.5% over the 3-year period. Again, this channel was severely impacted by the loss of beef volumes in value-added meats. If we exclude value-added meats, the channel grew at 10.3% over the period. This is reflective of the positive impact which the ambient products food service structure has contributed. Exports made up 11% of group revenue with a CAGR of 4.3%. This channel was impacted by reduced volumes of beef exports into the Middle East. Excluding this impact, there was a growth rate of 7.3%. And lastly, the industrial and contract manufacturing channel contributed 12.8% of group revenue with a CAGR of 3.6%. Again, in 2025, the numbers were positively impacted by the on sale of raw milk. And if we take this out, the channel CAGR was 0.5%. So this does line up with the group's strategy to focus on the food service and export under-indexed channels ahead of the more volatile contract manufacturing channel. If we look at our gross profit margins per category, in ambient products, the key margin detractors during the period have been our Ambassador Foods business and to a lesser extent, our Mara Foods business. Excluding these 2 businesses, the margin increased by 2.1 percentage points between FY '22 and FY '25 in the Ambient products category. In perishable products, commodity price changes in the dairy subcategory significantly impacted the margin post 2022. However, the recovery in 2025 reflected at 17.5%, actually increases to 18% if we exclude the impact of the raw milk sales in the year. Additionally, that 17.5% margin would have been 16.8% if we still included the fresh mushroom business. This highlights the positive impact of that disposal. What is important across both super categories is that 2025 marks a point where the declining trend decisively changes direction with improvement being structural and not cyclical. The group follows the same trajectory as our super categories. 2025 was a pivotal year where our strategic actions have started to translate into financial outcomes. It is the first tangible validation that the strategy is working, and it sets the foundation for the margin expansion we outlined in the outlook section. The next slides show our normalized earnings before interest and tax or our EBIT as well as our normalized earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization or our EBITDA by category. And starting with the ambient products category, our EBIT and EBITDA grew by 3.2% and 3.3%, respectively. The strong performance in foodservice as well as the wet condiment subcategory was partially offset by the direct model as well as the snacking and baking underperformance. Looking at the margins on the right-hand side, we note the declines in 2025 have been driven by the top line performance within snacking and baking subcategories. The operational turnarounds in these subcategories will drive the outlook for the margin improvement within ambient products. In perishable products, EBIT and EBITDA have decreased with a negative growth rate of 4.6% and 1.7%, respectively, across EBIT and EBITDA. The significant impact of the loss of beef volumes was not recovered within the super category. The impact of the loss of beef volumes equates to over 7% and 5% of group EBIT and EBITDA, respectively. The EBIT and EBITDA margins showed improvement in 2025, given that the loss of the beef volumes was fully incorporated into the base. And it is noted that the impact of the disposal of the fresh mushroom business has improved the perishable products EBIT and EBITDA margin in 2025 by 0.5 and 0.6 percentage points, respectively. The group EBIT level has been flat or has a flat CAGR and a 1.4% EBITDA CAGR. These numbers are contextualized against the negative trend across FY '19 and FY '22 that was shown earlier by Charl. The 2025 outcome shows a recovery coming through, and it sets the base again for the outlook targets. Looking at our margins at the group level, they remained relatively flat across 2024 and 2025, again, with the impact of the loss of beef, the most significant detractor from the 2022 and 2023 levels. The capital projects outlined earlier will be the key movers in increasing the group margins in the short and medium term. This slide brings together our earnings and our returns. Our headline earnings per share or our HEPS are shown reported per year and not as restated in subsequent years. Our basic HEPS and normalized HEPS are both showing a significant recovery in 2025. Our return on invested capital or ROIC improved to 10.9% in 2025, close to the group's weighted average cost of capital of 11%. And our dividends have followed the group's normalized headline earnings per share performance with an 86% improvement in 2025, further driven by our revised dividend policy. Cash is central to the Libstar story, and this slide shows 3 key measures that we use at the group. The first is our cash conversion, which again improved significantly and well ahead of our internal target to reach 95% in 2025. Second, we look at capital expenditure as a percentage of revenue, which was sustained at the lower end of our group's historic target of between 2% and 3% of revenue for the years post 2022. And third is the group's gearing ratio, which improved from the peak of 2.1x in H1 of 2023 to 0.9x in 2025. In summary, we have grown revenue. We've improved our margins into 2025. We've recovered profitability, and we've strengthened our cash conversion and gearing. This positions us to talk credibly about the outlook and the capital allocation framework. The financial outlook I'll take you through has been built bottom up, as noted by Charl earlier. This is based on detailed forecasts at a business unit level. These forecasts incorporate the approved capital projects outlined earlier, specifically the dry and wet condiment site consolidations. And importantly, the outlook does not include the execution of additional projects currently under consideration within the dairy and the value-added meat categories. The key point is that this is not a high-level estimate. This is a fully costed operationally grounded forecast based on what has already been approved and what is within management control. Looking at the revenue over the 3-year period from 2025 to 2028 by category and starting with ambient products, we have a growth rate of 6.2%, which is slightly behind our current achieved CAGR, but it's driven by the loss of the contract within our contract manufacturing business, which is effective today, as noted earlier. And this impacts the wet condiments subcategory, which alone has a CAGR of a negative 0.8% over this period. The remaining subcategories are all showing growth in the upper single to lower double digits. Embedded in this growth is also the annualized and growth forecast of the General Mills brand, which were added to the portfolio in 2025. For perishable products, the growth rate of 4.6% is also behind the current 3-year CAGR achieved. The base year of 2025 includes those raw milk sales within dairy. And if we were to exclude these sales, they would increase the growth rate to 5.5%. As Charl mentioned, we're investigating projects within dairy and value-added meats, which are not included here, but these projects would look to invest in high-margin categories while exiting low-margin categories. Therefore, this could look different and potentially lower, but with a higher margin profile going forward. The ambition is steady and executable growth and is paired with margin improvement initiatives. At a group level, this equates to revenue moving from ZAR 12.3 billion in 2025 to about ZAR 14.5 billion in 2028 at a growth rate of 5.5%. EBITDA margin improvement is a key focus across all the business units. For ambient products, the site consolidation projects at wet and dry condiments as well as the operational improvements within snacking will drive EBITDA growth at a 3-year CAGR of 9.4%, increasing the margin to 12.6% by 2028. For perishable products, steady performance across all subcategories will drive EBITDA growth at a 3-year CAGR of 8.8%, increasing the margin to 8% by 2028. Again, noting this does not include the projects currently under consideration for this super category. At a group level, the EBITDA margin moves from 8.7% in 2025 to 9.7% in 2028 with a compound average growth rate of 9.3%. And key to enabling these improvements lies within our capital allocation framework. We currently have 3 priorities, which are being utilized by the group. The first priority is our internal growth projects. We are investing where we can see improved returns and strengthen the portfolio. Our second priority is dividends. I will touch on this in a couple of slides, maintaining consistent shareholder return along with our third priority, which is our share repurchases. In our results presentation, we noted the revised short- and medium-term CapEx as a percentage of revenue target up to between 2.5x and 3.5x. In 2026, our expectation is to be at the upper end of this target, again, driven by the site consolidation projects across wet and dry condiments. In 2027, we currently have sight to CapEx of 2% of revenue. However, again, this does not include the projects within dairy and value-added meats. Therefore, while it's not reflected on this slide, we do anticipate 2027 and 2028 being within that range of between 2.5% and 3.5%. Alongside our internal growth investments, we're clear on the balance sheet and the cash discipline. For net working capital as a percentage of revenue, we're currently at 18.1% of revenue with a short-term target of below 18.5% and a medium-term target of below 17.5%. There are some key changes in our working capital profile expected with the loss of the contract within wet condiments impacting 2026 and further capital projects expected to impact this further in 2027 and beyond. The group is really proud of the focus applied to working capital within 2025, and it continues to focus on these disciplines across the portfolio in this regard. Our interest cover and our gearing are well within the targets and the short-term and medium-term target adjustments are to account for the internal growth pipeline that we've discussed previously. Looking at our shareholder returns, we note the update to our dividend policy as was communicated with our year-end results. We have revised our dividend cover to between 2x and 3x of normalized headline earnings per share from the prior 3 to 4x. This has been made possible by the increase and sustained cash generation within the group. Additionally, we announced a share repurchase program, which was approved by the Board. And to date, we've repurchased 4.3 million shares at an average share price of ZAR 4.59. On return on invested capital, we delivered 10.9% in 2025, a significant improvement on 2024 and just below our weighted average cost of capital. Our short- and medium-term targets remained aligned to greater than weighted average cost of capital and weighted average cost of capital plus 2 percentage points, as noted by Charl. The critical sensitivities to the achievement of these targets will be the timing of the CapEx projects as discussed as well as input cost volatility, which is currently being driven by the Middle East conflict and foreign exchange impact on exports. Although we hedge, there is volatility in margins with prolonged strength in ZAR. And then we just wanted to highlight 2 near-term realities for the financial year 2026. First is our H1 and H2 expectations. Over the past few years, our EBITDA has been split roughly 45% in H1 and 55% in H2. So that's over the last 2 to 3 years. For 2026, we expect this to have a stronger H2 weighting around 40% in H1 and 60% in H2, largely due to the wet condiments site consolidation impact. We anticipate 2 months in H1 where we'll be under recovering costs and overheads in the existing Dickonor Foods site. As a result, our H1 2026 EBITDA is expected to be flat or slightly behind the prior year. Secondly, on the right-hand side of the slide, our debt refinancing. Our term debt maturity was extended to the 1st of January 2028 during 2025. So there's no near-term refinancing pressure. However, we will be proactively refinancing in 2026 to optimize the capital structure with a focus on improving our tenor flexibility and cost of funding, supporting balance sheet resilience and funding the medium-term growth strategy. In closing, if we continue to execute on our strategy, Libstar becomes a stronger, simpler, cash-generative, category-focused food company with a ROIC-led compounding story. That's the outcome we are working towards, and that's what underpins our financial targets highlighted today. Thank you very much. And we will be available afterwards for the Q&A, but Charl just has some closing remarks first.

Yes. Thanks, Terri, and thank you to everyone for listening and for giving us the opportunity to reintroduce Libstar to you. We truly believe this is a different business to the one that listed in 2018. We've seen the initial tangible benefits of the simplification, growth and sustainability strategy. But there's a way to go. And we understand that. It's now for us to go and execute on the plans that we've shared with you today, and we are ready to do as much. So thank you very much. We will now break for lunch, I believe. No, we'll first do Q&A. Okay. We'll do a 5-minute break, and then we'll do a Q&A before we reconvene. Thank you very much. [Break]

Good afternoon, everyone. We'll now move on to our Q&A panel session. We've got all our speakers here on the stage. And for those in the room, if you have any questions, we'll start with you first. Please raise your hands and then someone will bring the microphone to you, so you can talk and ask your questions. For our virtual participants, we're also monitoring the questions online. And we'll do our best to go through all of the questions in the time that we've got. And if we don't manage to get to all the questions, please send it to Libstar, our [email protected] address, and the team will also be available for one-on-one meetings afterwards, but I'll just repeat that after the session. We've got some questions online already, but any questions on the floor that you would like to start off with? Let's move on to the first question. Okay, question that we got.

My question is really regarding the Finlar capacity expansion next year. You guys are very -- and it's very worthwhile to say, they're very proud of the Finlar and the chicken coating, and it's very advanced. What happens between now and next year's business decision? You guys say the customers are waiting, ready, they want the chicken. But basically, the decision is only going to be made next year. What decision -- what permutations could that look like? And what happens between now and next year only when that decision is made?

I'll take that one. Matthew, I think maybe I was misinterpreted, or I didn't explain myself clearly enough. The reference to next year was about the implementation of whatever decision is taken this year. So we're putting quite a tight deadline on that, I would say, in the next 4 months or so, 4 to 6 months, and we would want to implement that depending on what the outcome is. At this point in time, there's a wide-ranging number of outcomes. We are -- as I mentioned, we make decisions on a ROIC basis. So its investment must be able to pay back, and it may also include some form of simplification as well. So those are the options, the thematic options that need to be considered in a lot of detail. So to speculate now on exactly what that will entail is a bit premature, but it should fit into those three pillars and have a decent payback.

Thank you, Charl. Any further questions on the floor? If you can also just state your name, sorry about that, Matthew. You can just state your name and then ask your question.

Ding from Stein Capital Management. Wendy mentioned a very strong point on consumers value seeking down trading and the consumers being more of a structural rather than a cyclical thing. So on the back of that, two questions. So firstly, if we see a shift towards economic expansion, easing of consumer wallets, how agile is Libstar's current model to switch back to premiumization? Second question, in your data that you're looking at, are you seeing early green shoots of a recovering consumer, or is the data still pointing towards a prolonged weakness?

Sorry, I didn't get your name.

Dean.

Dean, Okay. Sorry. I think maybe just to quickly go to your second question. So at the moment, when we look at the current trading environment and obviously, it's been a period of time that consumers have been under strain, but it's almost like it's at a -- not really a tipping point, but an exasperated period at this point in time. So I think from a -- retailers are chasing volume and obviously, they want to increase their sales and shares. So there's always going to be pressure on having products available at the right price. Now the right price in your sort of formal environment is very different to something in your informal environment. I'm not sure if that answers that question. The first part, I think through the presentation, we were quite explicit about the fact that we are in a sort of a premiumized or value-added product offering range that we offer. We can dial that up, or we can dial it down. I think that is the versatility within our business and our manufacturing capabilities because it's recipes, it's ingredients, et cetera. So I'm not quite sure it's going to be the one or the other. So understanding the market conditions and meeting consumers where they are, but also meeting consumers where we never maybe looked for them before. So we will be able to dial up. We are very aware of what is happening globally. And we also understand the premium sort of sectors, which we investigate and sometimes we adapt, as I mentioned, to the South African context. But I don't foresee a challenge to be able to do that.

Maybe to add to that, it's not a or, it's an and. So it's definitely an and. So it's not about dialing up or down. It's about attempting to participate where we can. Maybe more directly to your second question, the trend -- I think in our interim results presentation, we showed a declining value trend in retail and with a relatively resilient food service -- sorry, wholesale market performance, and that trend has continued. So you see a continuing declining value growth trend in our defined basket of retailers. So I wouldn't say that you see green shoots from a consumer.

No, certainly not. And maybe, Charl, just to add to that then, if you look at the formal retail environment, it's been quite stagnant, especially the last year. And it's -- the trend seems to be continuing where if you look at your independent trade, and that would be retail, wholesale, that whole sort of traditional trade belt has been showing extreme strong growth, double digits. So there's obviously a lot of interactivity when it comes to the different channels.

Thanks, Wendy. Other gentleman?

It's Dirkonlandon from Chemist Asset Management. I was wondering if you could maybe just explain the competitive environment in the export spice business, particularly on the private label. I think I understand on the branded side, where you would have a, I guess, competitive advantage. But maybe just help us understand the competitive advantage -- competitive cost advantage we have producing spices out of Cape Town against some other very low-cost jurisdictions.

Paul, can we hand that one to you?

Thanks, Dev, for the question. Interesting one, and one I'll try and answer for you. So yes, highly competitive market, highly proliferated shelf in the herb and spice categories. So what is our compelling story that we are on shelf and someone out of India or China isn't. So we have three segments that we play in, specifically in private label. One is premium, mid-tier and then what we consider the discount, your salt and pepper grinders. Now that is a highly competitive market. And to be honest with you, in some markets, we win those tenders once a year and in the following year, we will lose them, and you're talking sense difference. What brings Cape Herb and Cape Foods to the forefront is, number one, a lot of those customers we've had for 20 years. So we understand what their shelves need. We understand what the market needs, and we design products around that. Two, we've got scale to be able to compete at the premium end and design products there, but also compete at the bottom end. So Salt and Pepper is on automatic lines, automated lines and these things run, and we can produce the lower-cost products for the retailers overseas. We are all certified at high top-tier levels for food quality standard facilities. So we bring that a little bit of difference, but at all three tiers. And I think it's also our customer relationships that we've had for a very long time that keeps us in the market.

Samantha Naicker from Absa. Two questions on simplification. So with regards to the efforts thus far on reducing the number of individually managed business and I guess, the element of integration also, are these initiatives fully bedded down? And have we seen the benefit of that as of FY '25? Or are there still more initiatives in the pipeline beyond the CapEx projects in?

The reality is that, yes, we have seen the benefits of simplification. I would say the standout on that front has been the wet condiments performance over the past 2 years. And then there are other elements of simplification where I would say no, like Rialto, Meal Ingredients, snacks, spreads, the select products category, where that integration is really now only embedded. I mean we're still, as I sit here, integrating ERP systems. So those benefits have not yet been materialized. So that gives us the confidence to say that there are still further simplification benefits. Aside from the capital projects, I alluded to looking at better mix, and that's a big focus area for us. Simplification of ranges. We've done a bit of a Pareto analysis around how many SKUs contribute, which levels of revenue and profitability. And we're now only starting to scratch the surface of what that can deliver moving forward. So that would be a big focus area aside from capital projects.

Okay. I guess that was going to be the second part of the question around SKU rationalization and if that did form part of simplification to date? And I guess, how meaningful can this opportunity be?

It will be very specific to the different categories, and we need to tread lightly because our customers want to give their consumers ranges and choice, and we are able to produce that. So it's incumbent upon us to ensure that we don't hamstring our customers in terms of their strategies. But similarly, it's a two-way conversation where we've maybe brought on board SKUs over time that may not be delivering the relevant hurdle rates. And that's all data-driven. So then it removes the emotion out of the conversation. So it will be really category driven. I think in the baking category, we've alluded to that. Even in the wet condiments category, there's some focus there. Those would be the two areas where I think we can, at this point in time is the lowest hanging fruit.

Thanks, Charl. Any more questions?

It's Rohan from Griffin Asset Management. Apologies in advance for the question. I know it's a bit topical, the geopolitical environment we're in. So I just wanted to find out in terms of -- from Libstar side, what are you doing to mitigate the supply chain volatilities stemming from the conflict in the Middle East? Is that impacting your export lines? I've heard from a few corporates different strategies with regards to this, but I just wanted to find out as to how you, as an executive team, are looking at the situation?

If you would have asked me the question earlier in the year, my biggest risk, I would have said food and disease. And obviously, the conflict in the Middle East actually overshadowed that now. So it will have an impact, especially on milk transport. There will be a fuel increase tomorrow. We also saw a reduction of 3% on the fuel levy, which will bring some relief. But that will have -- it's quite a -- it will have a broad impact on our business across the group, not just in transport, primary transport, it will be secondary distribution as well as the cost of plastics polymers because that's a byproduct of crude or petroleum, crude oil. Again, we will focus on our simplification to Samantha's question, there's a big opportunity for us just obviously to innovate but also less SKUs. Less SKUs mean factory efficiencies or production efficiencies. And then it will be a combination of that and price realization. I mean, especially on the brands, brands first and private label later. So it will be a fine balance between the two. And then obviously, I believe there's further procurement initiatives. Charl mentioned a few. I mean last year, we did quite a big procurement initiative where we had more than 18, call it, suppliers of corrugates in the group. We now have around 4 to 5. I believe we can use the scale of Libstar, and there's a few initiatives like that. So more balanced view, but still risk. And yes, we need to focus a lot of attention on that currently.

Thanks, Cornel. Any more question?

It's Matthew from Blue Quadrant again. Just going into Rialto of select products. The direct sourcing, there was a bit of a blip in the prior year of the direct sourcing and removal of products there from the -- from the key -- one of the key customers. To what extent does that risk now carry over to other products in that Rialto supply? And how are you guys mitigating that moving forward?

So I'll take this one. So from the beginning of the direct model implementation, there were select categories that were focused on by the retail customer. Not all of those categories have been implemented as yet. I think three of them have been fully implemented with two further that have just started at the back end of 2025 and one that will start into 2025. I mean, 2026, still living in the past. So the impact on the 2026 year is around ZAR 30 million in the top line. And outside of those identified categories, there's been no further categories discussed with the retailer. I think through this process, it's all been delayed. It's all taken a lot longer than originally anticipated. And it kind of proves the point of this is a specialized skill set that we have in select products. So at this point in time, there's no further categories that have been identified.

Thank you, Terri. Next question.

It's Craig Neetherall from [indiscernible]. Just maybe you want to share some comments around the trends that maybe weren't discussed. Woolworths buying into food. Maybe some comments around that, and whether you see any risk to the business or opportunities? And then secondly, around, obviously, the Chuttne manufacturing going in-house with Tiger brands. Just any additional risks in that kind of -- as food producers take some of the production in-house? Are there further parts of the business that you need to protect against that happening, increased service levels and so on? Maybe just some thoughts around that.

So the honest truth is I have -- and we have no insight beyond what you have in terms of what rationale drove the retail customer to acquire a supplier. However, we have coexisted with that supplier for many years. And there's very limited, if any, overlap between us and that business. In fact, we supply that business with cheese and wraps as two examples. Over the short term, we have been assured that there is no need for any changes to our existing relationships. We are moving forward on our category management approaches across all of our categories. What will play out over the longer term, I think, will be determined in due course. But at this point in time, I don't foresee with the information available at my disposal at the moment that this is a wholesale, and it was even stated explicitly that this is an action that will be replicated in other categories. So maybe let's take it for what it is at this point in time and see how things develop over time. The point you raised about taking production in-house plays into, I think, some of the learnings over the past number of years around industrial and contract manufacturing channel. So it can be quite volatile to use Terri's words, but essentially, it can hurt when these longer-term agreements come to an end or whether they switched on or switched off. And that's -- whilst industrial and contract manufacturing has a role to play, it needs to be approached with circumspection. So that is part of the reason why and a big driver of why it made sense to consolidate the remainder of [indiscernible] Foods with Monte Foods because we are in doing that, diluting the impact that any one contract loss of what remains can have on the combined business. It's not that it won't have an impact, but it certainly won't have a similar impact to what we have at this point in time. In terms of other large contract manufacturing arrangements within the group, the biggest and most obvious one would be PSR within the FILA business. And hence, also the impetus to look at the strategy going forward and what the footprint should look like, what will be most sustainable so that we aren't as exposed to those decisions moving forward. Will we turn down contract manufacturing? No, but there are learnings from contract manufacturing that certainly will make us a bit more circumspect in terms of how, and on what commercial terms we enter into that moving forward.

Thank you, Charl. Any more questions on the floor?

[ Aurant ] from Christmas [indiscernible]. I have two questions, a bit different from the earlier questions that were asked. First of all, revising your operational model and having seen some of the videos you presented here, would you consider introducing the principle of lean manufacturing as part of your operations to optimize. And secondly -- second question, the Minister of Labor in the previous year published, let me just get my spectacles. You published specific onerous targets for your industry to be achieved over the next 5 years. And having adopted your employment equity plan, are there specific focus areas that would eliminate or mitigate the risks for not achieving those targets, which might, in fact, impact up to 10% of your turnover.

Sorry, I didn't catch that. Remanufacturing, green manufacturing?

Lean manufacturing.

Yes. I mean you mentioned operating model, and I mentioned earlier that our operating model is a bridge between our strategy and execution. And part of our simplification process is production efficiencies and lean manufacturing. I mean that's key to our simplification. We believe that -- and a good example is our Swellingam factory. It's the cheddar we produce close to 7,000 tonnes of cheese. We also completed Phase 1 of a water project to be also a green factory in the future. But that's a good example of a long-run single SKUs, highly efficient, low labor cost. And that's something that we will replicate. We've got a few initiatives in the George factory, but also across the group, both lean to be competitive as a private label supplier and a branded supplier. I mean that's key to be successful and to maintain or protect your margin is to be lean. And I do believe we've got lean manufacturing assets, but there's further improvement, definitely further opportunity to improve.

Regarding the question on labor targets, you're quite right. Those targets have been set at onerous levels relative to where we are today. And that's why I wanted to highlight that in the presentation, having the people strategy and the employment equity plan aligned, particularly as it relates to management representation. We see similar issues within our peer group, within the sector. It's been -- it seems like it's been a sector that's been relatively slow to transform relative to, as an example, the financial services sectors. And it does concern us around the targets that have been set and our ability to achieve that. But the good news is we know what's required of us, and we are putting the plans in place that will see us improve. We will do everything in our power to get to those targets. But for our industry, exceptionally high barrier, and it is a concern.

Thank you, Charl and Cornel. Any more questions on the floor?

Yes. I'm [indiscernible] from Coronation. I was just interested to hear your thoughts on the renewed interest of Walmart in South Africa. Do you consider this an opportunity or a threat for a contract manufacturer like Libstar?

I mean I believe this. I think the first round of, call it, restructure within Macro Massmart, I wouldn't call it not successful. Walmart is one of the biggest retailers in the world. Africa or South Africa is a big focus for them. Charl and myself went to a few stores up north recently. And I was very impressed with store layout, the range of products. It's an entirely new management team at Massmart at the moment. And we will continue a big focus for them, obviously, brands, South African brands, imported brands. But again, a key or cornerstone to their strategy, they confirmed it, is the drive on private label. And we are well suited to support that retailer in their efforts to increase their basket or its basket participation in private label.

So at this point in time, much more of an opportunity than a risk.

Thanks, Cornel. Next question.

A question on innovation. So I guess innovation was a recurring theme in multiple of the businesses. I guess what I'm after is a bit more detail on the criteria to assess innovation relative to, I guess, the volume uplift that you may see versus adding complexity to manufacturing and also long-term sustainability of margins.

I'll try innovation, I suppose, the mindset that we have adopted and as part of our purpose. It's the core of our strategy, is customer or consumer centricity. What it means is when you innovate, you start with looking after the needs of consumers. And we do that following trends, all the data that Wendy shares with us. And that's the starting point. And we've been very successful. And again, going from dairy, we've got a few examples, different pack sizes, lactose-free, high fat products, low-calorie, high-protein products. So you need to be on trend, but -- and it's always that, call it, the paradox between innovation and production efficiency. So we've got cross-functional teams working together. And again, it's -- I won't say it's a new thing, but it's a newly adopted mindset that form part of our strategy. And the mindset that we adopted is we want to innovate, we want to add new products, but at the same time, also reduce SKUs. So less SKUs, more efficiencies. And obviously, that plays to our margin improvement or ambition to improve our margins.

Maybe a follow-up question on innovation. So the informal market was highlighted as a potential growth opportunity and I guess, the red Lion range as the primary vehicle of this. Can you chat to the price and margin dynamics as you potentially start to, I guess, shift the sales queue?

Yes. So when it comes to that sort of environment, it's a very different trading environment. So if I can put it like that, it's obviously more accessible from a cost perspective, and you have a very broad distribution opportunity. But once again, you -- it's not about one size fits all. It's about understanding different environments within that traditional trade that you want to participate in, also understanding key categories that are either growing or that you can stretch your brand into. And then just driving that with the specific group or the wholesale environment, et cetera.

Thanks Wendy. Next question?

My name is [indiscernible], I'm from Barclays. I just wanted to find out how the company currently views the benefits of being publicly listed in supporting its strategic and operational objectives. And then I do have a second question about how technology is being deployed in terms of cost savings within your manufacturing across the business. Just in context of -- I mean, we saw now just opened a self-checkout and a lot of the comments were around how it's going to affect labor within the company. So from your perspective as quite labor intensive. And as -- I mean, in the South African context, it makes a lot of sense to do that. How is technology being deployed?

I'll take the first question and the two of you could fight for the second question. We are a ZAR 2.8 billion market cap business. It would be much more advantageous if we could get to ZAR 15 billion. So in that regard, we are aware of the fact that at the moment, limited liquidity in the share is not favorable to all stakeholders. And in that regard, we are looking at ways in which we can improve liquidity. We made it very clear this morning that I don't think anyone is walking away today thinking that we will be tapping the market for large capital numbers soon. So that gives you a part of the answer. And we still believe the share price is intrinsically significantly undervalued, which gives you an indication of whether we would be issuing scrip to buy assets. So I think it's something that's always been topical for Libstar. It's not necessarily something that's under management's control. But we are looking at ways in which we can improve liquidity, but not at the cost of other shareholders.

Do you want to go first? Or do I? So I think for what we've discussed today, and what's been highlighted, I mean, Paul mentioned it earlier, and I'm sure Cornel can touch on it. Where we've got scale, we already have long runs in terms of where we can include automation. We've got some automation in our dairy plant that was implemented about 5 or so years ago now. And so -- and we've got automation more in terms of quality and some other areas of the business. But we haven't seen a mass movement in terms of our labor force around automation. It is -- we always need to be looking at automation opportunities in order to make us competitive and to make sure that we keep ahead of the market or at least in line with the market. But so far, in our experience, it hasn't resulted in a significant reduction in labor force. And where possible, we always rather redeploy that labor force into our growth opportunities. So potentially, you're not necessarily growing your labor force as much as your business is growing, but you're not necessarily shrinking it as well because of innovation.

It's a fine balance between robots or robotics, automation and then obviously, the labor component. We've tried it. We've tested it. It works well. But with automation, you also lose some flexibility, be agile, and we can respond quickly. So that's one thing that I noticed with. Then also, we've got big factories in smaller towns. So we also have a responsibility to the community that we serve especially [indiscernible], George to name a few. So technology in our factories, but technology that I'm very excited about, and I'll touch on it and then maybe Charl can elaborate on that is the use of AI prediction or behavior and forecast demand planning because that's a really difficult thing because sometimes there's a lot of brands on promotion. The next week, we're on promotion in the next week and one of our competitors are on promotion. You have some sort of, call it, customer concentration on the retail front. Behaviors change rapidly. And then we've got this, call it, mindset of ROIC where we need to manage our inventory levels, but service our customers, those service levels. And there's a big opportunity for us on the forecast demand planning. Maybe [indiscernible], I suppose that's the reason why you won that award because of your efforts and what you are doing from a sales and operational point of view to reduce inventory, but the use of technology.

Yes. I think if you don't embrace technology, everybody can agree you're going to be left behind. That's for sure. And I think the way that we, in the dairy side, try to embrace it is to take all the monotonous work away and let the machines think for you or gather information for you. For instance, in terms of all the data, you saw the data that Wendy was alluding to that we get from all different sources. And we get -- and I'm not exaggerating, we're getting billions of data sets in on a weekly basis, how we manage all the stocks in the stores in retail around the country. Across hundreds of SKUs, we measure 15, 20 different KPIs every day, and that figures changed the whole time. So what we do is we use AI to collect all those data, get the biggest growth opportunities and the biggest gaps immediately and send those tasks to the right people. Instead of having 10 people sitting and gathering that information and trying to, in 2 days, get that data out to somebody to go sort, we rather use the technology to get us to the right store to fix the right problem because you can't have a whole team of Libstar employees running out in 5,000 outlets rather get them to the right place at the right time. And that's how we're currently embracing technology.

Thank you, Jacques. Any further questions on the floor? Okay. Should we go to some online questions. I've got a few here. Let's see how far we can get through them. The first one is from Charles from Titanium Capital. What gives the dry condiments a competitive advantage in exports? Are the core or high-volume lines not available from a large number of suppliers globally? Over time, it is unclear why Libstar would retain global customers.

So we've answered that question already. In summary, demonstrating that, well, financial advisers say past performance is not a good prediction of future performance, but our past performance in terms of retaining customers and growing customers in Cab and Spice speaks for itself and the reason why that has delivered the outcomes that we've been speaking to is because we provide a category solution across tiers.

Perfect.

I should just add if you look at the economies of scale, the expertise, that is difficult to enter new categories. Sometimes businesses, they acquire categories because it's so difficult to enter. Paul and his team that they've got the relationships worldwide. Also, I suppose that top of the pyramid ingredient, everybody focuses on that. And you obviously acquired -- you've got the context to acquire the best possible ingredients worldwide. And then like I mentioned, the economies of scale.

Perfect. Thank you, Charl and Cornel for giving some more detail. Next question also from Charles. There was a significant impairment in Ambassador Foods in the 2025 results. Please clarify some background to this.

I'll take that one. So I think, firstly, just a bit of -- we don't speak about it that often anymore. But in 2014, when there was a transition from one private equity owner to another, there was a significant restructuring where essentially, to put it -- to make a long story short, about ZAR 3.2 billion worth of intangible assets were created as a consequence of an internal restructuring. As a consequence, the balance sheet of Libstar has a more significant intangible asset component than what would have arisen had we simply acquired those businesses, or what arose on acquisition, if that makes sense. So in an unlisted environment, you can imagine that we would do what Telkom did many years ago and impair it all, but that's not an option that's available to us in the public space. So why that's important is that it's important to note that the ZAR 200 million impairment was all due to intangibles that were created on the restructuring. Why my earlier comment is also important is that if you have two years of underperforming operational results, it almost by default places that business at an impairment risk regardless of the positive outlook in terms of recovery, just in terms of how the math works. So that's an important introduction. The business had a transition in management from owner founder to a new management team. And in doing that, we encountered some operational challenges in terms of our technical side of that business. And as a consequence, we were not afforded the opportunity to continue to innovate until we sorted our house, so to speak. So with that -- and again, a management change, which we now are much more comfortable with, there was a concerted effort to invest in people, but also to clean up the balance sheet, old labels, old property, plant and equipment that was on the balance sheet that wasn't being used. And those are not things that we are proud of, but they were -- that is how it transpired. The good news is that now it is clean. We've had much improved service levels throughout H2. Our innovation pipeline has been restarted. We've had multiple high scores on audits, and that leaves us in a much better position moving forward. So we would love to be able to say that the hard days are behind us.

Thank you, Charl. Another question from Charles. Please, can you explain the direct model? Does this mean that Libstar doesn't carry red capital, but earns a commission or procurement fee on products sourced from customers?

Sure. So the direct model is implemented in our select product subcategory within the Rialto private label and retail leg. And it is where the retailer directly imports, and we facilitate the relationship with the suppliers, and we earn a commission. We don't hold working capital in that instance, but also to note that the procurement in the ambient side of the Rialto business, you're only holding the working capital on the water. So it's not a significant change in our working capital structure. It does impact it positively, but it's not necessarily a significant change.

Thank you, Terri. We've got another two questions from Carnie from [indiscernible], Carnie. On the 4.3 million share repurchase, was this conducted via open market purchases or structured off market through bilateral agreements?

This was done on market.

No worries. Next one is, what do you think is the fair share price of Libstar, which would accurately reflect...

Higher than...

[indiscernible] question. Another one, could you give some color on how receivables have trended over the period, particularly in terms of days outstanding and any changes in customer payment behavior?

So over the last probably 2 years, 2 to 3 years, our receivable days have remained constant. There haven't been a driver behind our working capital changes. We manage our receivables, obviously, at a business unit level, but it gets reported to the center on a monthly basis. So it's something that we're very kind of conscious on, and we monitor regularly. Our risk in terms of bad debt or debtors provisions have reduced. So we haven't had significant write-offs. So our risk of impairment on receivables is in a very good position.

Okay. Thank you, Terri. I'm just making sure that we've answered all our online questions. Any other questions on the floor perhaps in the meantime?

Perhaps a question on volume losses in the business. So most materially in the last 5 years was Finlar and perhaps to a lesser extent, we've seen volume losses in Rialto and Tickenor Hall Foods. And I guess this also creates a ripple effect on efficiencies and returns. So going forward and considering that industrial is still 12-odd percent of sales and there perhaps are instances where there's lack of written contracts, how does Libstar position to mitigate these risks going forward?

So I think the important -- it's important to note that in many instances of contract manufacturing, especially with multinationals, there will be a contract in place. The point goes back to my earlier response around 2 of those 3 volume losses that you've quoted have arise from the contract manufacturing side of the business, and I've noted where the further risk is. We mitigate that by our simplification strategy. And we've noted what we're doing on Finlar side, and we've responded by being able to turn, I would like to believe the lemon into lemonade between Tickenor Foods and Monteque Foods. Beyond those two, the risk mitigation moving forward is the logical answer is to only invest with sufficient commitment from the counterparty that will ensure that the necessary capital return hurdle rates are met. And that's something that we often speak to and consider when taking on new customers in that channel.

I suppose we have headroom with capacity, but also, I suppose, first one of call, is it margin accretive or not?

Thank you, Charl and Cornel. Any other questions? Just checking if there's anything online. I think that is it. I think that will conclude our Q&A session. If we do miss any questions that come through online, we will take note of them and get in touch with you directly. As mentioned, please be in touch if you would like to set up any further meetings with our leadership team. Thank you also for our leadership team for taking us through all the questions and facilitating the answers with so much detail. I'll now hand over to Charl just to close off today's proceedings.

Thanks. From our side, from a management team perspective, again, thank you so much for taking the time. We know it's a busy reporting season. Many of you have been at the Sun City conferences and conferences. So we really appreciate you taking the time to listen to what we believe is a new dawn for Libstar. There's still much work to do, as I've said previously, but we wanted to share the fact that our plan is in place, and we know where we need to execute. So thank you again for making the time dialing in and being here in person as well as to the media and our fellow Libstar senior managers as well as nonexecutive directors. So thank you so much. Please don't leave immediately. Behind you, you will see to those who are here in person, you will see a display of all of the products or many of the products, not all of them, we won't be able to fit all of them, but many of the products. So please spend a bit of time looking at those products, spend a bit of time talking to management, if you haven't addressed any of your questions, please do stay behind. And then lastly, to those who may have listened today, digested, we welcome any further engagement. If you would like us to visit you in terms of a one-on-one engagement. If you have any further questions or concerns that we haven't addressed today, please feel free to reach out to Natasha, and we will do our best to respond to those questions and also attend to one-on-one meetings to the extent required. That's all from my side. Please travel safe, and thank you very much, but please do stay for those engagements with management. Thank you very much.