M.P. Evans Group PLC (MPE.L) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

September 19, 2024

London Stock Exchange GB Consumer Staples Food Products special 5 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Steve Darling

attendee
#1

Welcome back inside our Proactive newsroom. And joining me now is Matthew Coulson. He's the CEO of M.P. Evans Group. And Matthew, it's good to see you. How are you?

Matthew Coulson

executive
#2

I'm very well, Steve. How are you?

Steve Darling

attendee
#3

I'm doing well. Thank you. And excited to talk to you because I know you've got your interim unaudited results out for the first half of 2024. And company saw a 5% increase in total crops processed. So it's positive, and that's a good thing for the company, I would think, Matthew.

Matthew Coulson

executive
#4

That's exactly right, Steve. So we're very pleased to have our interim results published and to be able to share that news with the world. So we processed just over 0.75 million tonnes of fresh fruit bunches in the first half of this year. And very importantly, for the first half of this year, we've had all six of the Group mills up and running throughout the period. And not only have we been able to increase the crop that we've processed, we've also been able to increase our certified sustainable production, which is a big deal for the Group.

Steve Darling

attendee
#5

Yes. You saw a 78% increase in operating profit to GBP 41.6 million. That's a significant jump, Matthew.

Matthew Coulson

executive
#6

Yes, it is. And that stems from being able to process more crop but also then being able to put that crop, as I say, through our own mills, and we've been able to increase the extraction rates that we've delivered from those mills. So you take that together alongside some very healthy pricing in the first half of the year and very good cost control as well, I should add. And you take all of those factors together, and that leads to the operating profit you described.

Steve Darling

attendee
#7

Yes. Matthew, I know that you put a lot of things in place to get you to this point where you're starting to see numbers like this. Can you talk about the work that you've done to try and get you to this point?

Matthew Coulson

executive
#8

Yes, absolutely. It has been a very long-term story. We've worked very hard for a very long time to get to this place. So we now have 65,000 hectares that we manage and we harvest. And as I say, we now have six Group mills all working very hard to deliver that output. So it's been a long story. And it's not the end of the story, I should hasten to add. So there's a lot more still to come.

Steve Darling

attendee
#9

Yes. 20% increase in interim dividend as well. Obviously, that's a positive one when you're talking about your shareholders and seeing the plan come to fruition. And obviously, the dividend is an important part of it.

Matthew Coulson

executive
#10

Exactly. And we have a lot of long-term loyal shareholders who know that we've been on a very long plan of progressive dividends, something we're very proud of. We've had a 30-year plus track record of only ever maintaining or increasing our dividends. And we're very pleased to announce another increase as part of that long story. So interim dividends of 15p per share, up by 20% from the 12.5p we paid for the first half of last year.

Steve Darling

attendee
#11

Yes. Let's look ahead now. Obviously, you want to keep momentum going. And is that the basic focus of the team now moving ahead?

Matthew Coulson

executive
#12

Of course, yes, it is, absolutely. And we're pleased to be able to report that we've seen some very healthy pricing as we move into the second half of the year. But looking further ahead, we're very much focused on continuing growth for the Group. One of our priority areas has been to continue increasing the planted hectarage that we have -- we continue to look for opportunities to do just that. We're continuing to plant new areas in our project in South Sumatra at Musi Rawas. And we're excited about opportunities to bring in new planted areas at some of our other locations as well.

Steve Darling

attendee
#13

Yes. Is that the key is the planting will keep things going? Are you looking at potentially acquisitions and things like that? Do you have sort of a pipeline plan that you look at and try and move forward?

Matthew Coulson

executive
#14

It's a combination of both, Steve. So we continue to plant some of our own areas, but acquisitions play an important part, too. We acquired just over 10,000 new hectares last year, and we're busy with the process of integrating those into the Group. But we continue to be on the lookout for more. We're excited about bringing new hectares into the Group as well.

Steve Darling

attendee
#15

Well, Matthew, congratulations on the interim results. We look forward to seeing how the rest of the year shapes up. It sounds like it's going to be a positive one as well. And good to see you as well, and thanks for the update.

Matthew Coulson

executive
#16

Thank you very much, Steve. Thank you.

Steve Darling

attendee
#17

All right. There's Matthew Coulson, the CEO of M.P. Evans Group Group.

Read the full transcript via the API

You're viewing the first half of this call. Get the complete M.P. Evans Group PLC transcript — plus 246,000+ transcripts from 12,000+ companies, speaker segments, AI summaries and full-text search — through the EarningsCalls.dev API.

Get the API View API docs →

Other M.P. Evans Group PLC earnings calls

Peers in Consumer Staples

For developers and AI pipelines

Programmatic access to M.P. Evans Group PLC earnings transcripts and 246,000+ others is available through the EarningsCalls.dev REST API. Plans from $24.99/month — full transcripts, speaker segments, full-text search, and the recently-added /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.