Omnia Holdings Limited (OMN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

It's my pleasure to welcome you to Omnia's interim results presentation for the 6-month period ending 30 September 2025. We're delighted to have you with us this morning, either in the room or online as we reflect and engage with you on our performance, our key milestones and just the outlook for our business. Safety is the core value of Omnia and one of the ways in which we live this value is to start formal proceedings such as this one with a safety moment. This morning, the safety share will be presented to you by my colleague, Rian Nair. Rian is the Executive for Operations at Protea Chemicals. So I am not going to delay any further. I'm going to call Rian on, and he will then present to our CEO, who will take you into the meat of the meeting. Thank you.

So good morning, ladies and gentlemen. So before we start with the safety moment, just a few housekeeping rules in terms of our evacuation procedure. So firstly, we do not have any emergency drills planned for today. So should you hear an alarm, please treat this as an emergency and evacuate the building. When evacuating the building, briskly walk, do not run to the assembly point that's located in front of our office building. Follow the green exit signs that you see on top of the ceilings to the nearest assembly point. There are 2 evacuation routes from this room. The primary evacuation route is to my right and at the corner of the building. The secondary route is through the main entrance that you entered into this morning. At the assembly point, go to Assembly 0, a roll call will be taken by one of our safety representatives, and please wait until the emergency controller has declared the building safe before returning to the building. Please refrain from smoking at any assembly point. So safety isn't just a priority. At Omnia, it's a core value. I appreciate the opportunity to stand before you to discuss this important topic. Our safety moment today delves into the permit to work system, which is a key pillar in our process safety management culture. A permit to work by definition, is a formal written authorization system used to control hazardous or nonroutine work activities. In plant operations, nonroutine activities are those that are not covered by a standard operating procedure. These are commonly experienced during maintenance or breakdown activities. And at the higher levels of risk, hazardous activities include hot work, such as welding, cutting or grinding, working at heights, confined space entry, excavation work and high-voltage electrical work. These types of activities, together with failures in permit to work systems have resulted in various global high-profile industrial incidents. The Piper Alpha disaster of 1988, the Texas City refinery explosion of 2005 and the West Fertilizer explosion of 2013 all had an element of inadequate hazard identification and communication. While there are many other simultaneous contributors to these incidents, a robust permit-to-work system could have mitigated some of the risks. So in application, while permit-to-work systems authorize the work to be done, effective permit-to-work systems provide the additional benefits of ensuring proper communication between all parties involved in a job, communication of what was done to make the area safe, which includes isolation and lockout and also communicating what risks remain after safe making of the site. It allows for a dynamic risk assessment that's in the field and provides a final opportunity to identify any risks that could have been missed. And from personal experience, it also allows a manager to see and understand if everybody performing the job fully understand the safety and risks of the job to be taken. These benefits of a permit-to-work system, therefore, go beyond just an authorization. The permit to work is therefore not just a ticket to ride, but the final step in pre-job risk mitigation. I urge everyone to apply the methodology, not to just industrial applications, but also at home. We have all had to deal with burst geysers, electrical failures, roof repairs, construction or gas installations at our homes. While I doubt everybody has a permit to -- a permit book at home, it is still possible to follow the core permit to work principles. Therefore, whether at home or at work, assess the risks of the job. Ask yourself, what could go wrong? Control the hazards, has the person isolated electricity? Are they wearing adequate PPE? Communicate with others in the household, especially children and ensure that they cannot access the area. Finally, verify completion before restoring power or removing any isolation. So in conclusion, remember, a permit to work is not just paperwork, it's protection. It's the last line of defense before the job begins, respect it, follow it and speak up if something is missing. Safety is everyone's responsibility, whether at work or at home. Thank you for your time, and let's keep safety at the heart of everything that we do. Seelan, over to you.

Thank you, Rian, and good morning and good afternoon to all of our shareholders in the room and online. Thanks for making the time to be here, and thank you for your interest in our company. We also have a number of staff members and Board members on the line. Thank you to you as well for your contribution and for all the work you do to make Omnia successful. So if I can start, firstly, what is our purpose? We know that businesses that don't have a very clear North Star and purpose are businesses that are not sustainable in the long term. Omnia's purpose is innovating to enhance life and together creating a greener future. How do we do that? There are 3 core principles that we've built our execution on. The one is innovation. And what you will see through the presentation, when you speak to our customers, when you speak to our partners, when you speak to stakeholders, they will explain to you our science-backed approach to mining and to agriculture. Our investments, our customer solutions and our business is underpinned by clear R&D, innovation and innovative solutions to customers. The second thing is sustainability, and Ditebogo again, will take us through our sustainability performance. But everything we do, our investments, our current business and our future investments is underpinned by strong ESG principles. You'll see us invest in used oil in our emulsion. And you'll see how our nutriology concept and services actually help farmers use less chemicals, less water and actually optimize the value of inputs to enhance yields. And then finally, we do this with a lot of collaboration and working together. As a company of 3,800 people in 23 countries, we know that we have to have partners. So we've got some very strong partners in Canada, in Indonesia and in our AgriBio business in India, in China and Brazil. So collaboration is an important part of our business to have our teams, our manufacturing teams, our supply chain teams, our agri teams, our mining teams to an extent. And then our partners, our customers, our service providers, our input providers work together to enhance our purpose of creating a greener future. So if I move to the matter at hand, which is our results, I think I stand here today delivering yet another very, very strong set of results of the Omnia Group at half year. Half year, as you know, is not our end scorecard. Half year is really the -- when we are in our deep cycle from cash utilization and for preparing for the planting season. But what you will see here is all of our metrics are incredibly strong. Our profits, double-digit growth of 12%, up to ZAR 900 million. This is the strongest profits we've had since the peak of the commodity cycle, which I'll show you later, and it's been delivered at a much lower current commodity cycle. We've had -- our revenue is 3% up to ZAR 11.2 billion. Our operating margin is also up at half year. Our HEPS is up. Our cash generated is up and a strong cash position of just under ZAR 700 million at half year, no debt again. Our net working capital ratio also improved down to 16%. What caused that? Very strong performance in our mining business. Our Mining business and our Agri business, very focused on customer solutions and on doing what's right for the customer. We have a resilient performance in our Agriculture segment overall, and Stephan and I will unpack that during the course of the session. But bear in mind that we have had a 60-day shut in this half year, incredible performance when you think of a 60-day supplier shut to deliver these results. Our teams worked in conjunction, collaborating with our supplier and our customers and none of our customers, our farmers or our mines were impacted by this supplier shut. Again, what you see is very, very strong cash generation, strong underlying earnings quality. So BME contributing roughly 63% of our profits today at half year. And yet again, a strong balance sheet, a balance sheet that positions us well and positions us well to grow in the coming period. Maybe just one other statement to make. This was also delivered with the geopolitical changes, uncertainties and the impacts you've seen on currencies, supply chains, shipping routes and others, and we will come to that a little bit later. But before we get into the meat of the business update, I'm going to hand over to Ditebogo, and she's going to take us through our safety, our ESG and a little bit on our CSI scorecard. So thank you, Dite.

Good day, and good evening to everyone in the room and online. So I think, as mentioned, so safety is one of our core values. It's critical to our business. We work in a very high-risk environment. So this is one of the things that we take very seriously. So as a starting point, we're just going to go through our safety performance, but I just want to take a step back to the second half of last year and where we ended up there. We did see a deterioration in our safety performance. And I think this was just a reminder for us to never take your eyes off the ball when it comes to safety. We have a lot of inherent risks in our operations and transport in our manufacturing facilities. We had a number of things coming at us as well. So we need to be prepared to respond to those. But there's also generally just behaviors that we need to manage, encourage and discourage that contribute to our safety performance. What we're seeing in this first half of the year is a somewhat of a stabilization of our safety performance, but that does mean that there are safety incidents that occurred in this half year that we're not proud of. We had 7 recordable incidents and unpacking the incidents, there are 2 main areas where these come from. So the first is on the road, specifically in SADC. So we have -- we understand that there's infrastructure challenges in SADC region. There is extreme weather conditions that have an impact on the road risks, but also just behaviors, whether it's of our own staff, but also third parties that come at us as well. The second part, Stephen mentioned that we had a 60-day shut in our Sasolburg operation. And we've seen that -- we had incidents that also come from majority of that period. Shut period is inherently a higher risk -- it's a high-risk environment, but shut period is an even higher risk environment. So there's a need for us to just step up our controls, step up our hazard identification and support our teams during that period. With this said, we have seen an improvement in some areas, specifically in our process safety. And I think this speaks to our engineering and maintenance disciplines and that's supporting that. Secondly is just the risk-based safety initiatives that have been implemented following that identification of certain risk and hazards across our business. And looking forward, I think it's just -- we have been working on this, but we need to continuously focus on the visibility of our leadership on our site and on the road. It's the management of our vehicles, our driver behaviors, coaching, training, awareness and also just the general management of our logistics because we do have third-party logistics service providers. We work with a lot of contractors. So it's up to us to manage and influence the management of contractors as they work with us before work starts as it's happening and after it's been completed. We continue to focus on leading indicators. So these are inspections and audits, but it doesn't end up at just inspections and audits. A lot of those come out with actions and these actions when worked through and closed out actually continuously improve or reduce the risks and the management of risk in our operations. Lastly, is continuously building a learning culture. Every time an incident happened and near miss is reported, there are learnings that come out of these incidents and near misses. And it's for the management team, for our staff, the people on our site, the contractors that we work with to be deliberate and disciplined about learning from those incidents and actually sharing the learnings across different learning platforms. I think lastly, one of the motors that as Omnia we left by is see something, say something and do something and it's just continuing to encourage our people to be alert and see what's happening, say something when they see something happening, but actually do something about it. I guess that's the action part of that. But I think lastly, because we have had a serious incident happening to us on one of our facilities over the past week or so. So I think I just want to say from a safety perspective, thank you to our staff, our leaders, our suppliers and unions who've shown commitment, responsiveness to safety incidents and emergency situations. We couldn't do it without you. Moving on to our environmental performance. Once again, and I think you'll hear quite a bit of this is extended shutdown has had an impact on our ESG performance. But I think what we show is our operations are quite resilient, fact despite this extended shut, our performance is relatively flat. From a carbon emissions perspective, the intensity -- the carbon intensity of our product shows a slight increase, and this is due to lower production volumes over the period. From an energy perspective, our energy efficiency remains flat. Our renewable energy increased -- the use of our renewable energy increased slightly. And from a water preservation perspective, our water use efficiency has improved. And I think this is also in addition to the shut, we saw a municipal water shut that we also had to navigate through during this period. The recycling of our water, which is -- and this has been impacted predominantly by Sasolburg and the production that was happening -- production and shut in Sasolburg, we see a reduction. But what is positive is that across the rest of our site, we're still seeing a positive trend in terms of water recycling. And I think lastly, we continue to contribute to water preservation through the collection and use of waste oil in the production of our waste -- of our emulsion in BME business. Looking forward, we've got our plants running for the second half. We've got Phase 3 of our solar plant that has recently been commissioned. And I think what we're seeing is that there's continued stabilization of our ESG performance in the second half of the year. Lastly, the management of our investments, our customers and stakeholders in general wouldn't be possible without our people. And this is why at Omnia, we believe ensuring value that is created with our staff, starting with the employee share scheme that was implemented a number of years ago and continues to invest in tranches over years. The share scheme has delivered over ZAR 69 million in value to over 3,000 employees globally since it's been launched. And I think for us, this is more than just a financial transaction. From a safety perspective, from an operational perspective, we expect ownership from our staff. And what this says is we share the outputs of that ownership with our staff as well. Additionally, we -- and Seelan is going to be taking us through our strategy and business performance a bit later. It's important for us to invest in the right skills, leadership and capabilities to be able to execute on that strategy. It's for this reason that we have a range of development programs for our management teams. This is from executive to middle management and our supervisors as well. We have development programs for our apprentices, graduates, engineers and bursaries that we share and give out to our staff members to be able to develop themselves. And lastly, we've got learnerships for persons living with disabilities, and this is acknowledging that these are more vulnerable members of our societies. Therefore, we support them to be able to actively participate in the economy. And lastly, we've recently held a successful leadership conference where we had over 170 of our global leaders just across the road. And what this helped us with is just getting insights and getting them to contribute to the strategy, the culture of Omnia. And I think we're going to see part of that results in the business and financial update that we've seen today. And with that in mind, I'm going to hand back over to our group CEO, Seelan, to take us through the business update.

Thank you, Ditebogo, and thank you to you and your team for all you are doing to keep our people safe and reminding us of our focus on ESG and being able to measure that and deliver towards it. So if I step forward for a second, I'm just going to go into the business update and start off by talking about the environment that we have operated in. And this environment, the global complexity of this environment, the risks and the volatility continues to persist. I think what we do know is that the President in the U.S. has given us a lot of changes and forced us to think about not only the primary impacts of tariffs and change, but also the secondary impacts of that. And what we've seen is across the world, uncertainty. We've seen commodity prices change. And we've seen currencies fluctuate. That has been driven by countries becoming more insular thinking about themselves and maybe a little bit of polarization of countries thinking about how they can do things together or how they can do things differently. For a business like Omnia, we are in 23 countries. We operate with a global supply chain. So we've had to focus heavily on our agility and our strategic optionality to ensure that we can continue to move product around and do that in a way that works for us when there is a disruption. We also have looked at the impacts of tariffs and what that potentially means for our AgriBio business and our mining business. But in all of those instances, it hasn't changed our capital allocation and it hasn't changed what we set out to do. So our business continues to remain fairly resilient to some of these changes. We've -- the currency volatility is something we'll talk about a little bit later, but we have seen the strength of the Kwacha impacting our business negatively. Having said all of that, we still performed really well in the current 6 months. Climate change, wherever you look, climate change is happening and upon us, and we will speak a bit about Brazil and Australia being in drought and those 2 segments' results have been muted by the drought position. That has been offset by good volumes and good delivery in our South African business and some additional benefits to our manufacturing and our supply chain. Having said all of that, we've challenged ourselves previously and have said in spite of all of that, why do we do so well? We do so well because we're in primary sectors. So both our businesses, Agriculture and Mining, food production and mineral extraction, both of them are core primary sectors in economies that drive GDP growth, that drive economic growth, that create employment. So it's got a high degree of resilience and sustainability in those. The mining sector has got a strong underpinned by the energy transition. So we see the demand for certain metals increasing. Whilst there's been challenges in diamonds and others, those have been offset by opportunities in uranium and other metals for the energy transition. From an Agriculture perspective, strong demand for our products. We've seen some leveling off of the playing field in Zimbabwe, in Zambia, and you'll see some of that come through our results from a positive perspective. And then our Agri business in Australia, still strong demand for humates and biological products, and you'll see how that business has performed and the outlook around that. If I move to the actual results on a page, but maybe before I get there, we put another chart up to show you this volatility and to show you this change. And maybe I'll pick up on a few comments here. The first one is the geopolitical changes. So more wars, more disruption and all that results in -- is changes in shipping routes. It results in changes in demand. It forces us to be more and more agile. And you know for the last few years, we've been focusing on the resilience in our supply chain, the strength of our balance sheet and the agility of our people and we have performed well under these conditions. That geopolitical conflict has obviously resulted in the currencies. We've brought out a few of the big currencies that impact us. You can see how those currencies have moved. And during the reporting period as well, you can see the volatility in there with the Kwacha being the one that's moved fairly significant during this period. Climate change, I've spoken about, and I won't go through that, but that also requires us to be more resilient in our supply chain, our ability to produce and our ability to sell on an agile -- in an agile manner. From a population perspective, we're positively disposed to urbanization and the need for food security. And obviously, from that perspective, we know that Africa needs to be fed, we can see that as the global political landscape is changing, countries are getting more insular and they need access to more inputs and they need those inputs earlier. They need them at the farm site or in the country earlier because there's supply chains, logistics are not as reliable as we'd like them to be. Obviously, the demand for critical minerals still continues, and you will see the performance in our BME business and our Mining chemicals business, very strong performance there, outlook also strong. And then sustainability, wherever you turn, while currently, there's a little bit of a slowdown in focus on ESG if we look at what's happening in the U.S. But in the long term, Europe and the world will continue to focus on sustainable practices in Mining and in Agriculture. And you know our business is positively disposed to those changes. We try to double-click on a long-term chart of showing our profits at half year and our profits at full year. A number of you who have been following our company for a long time, ask about the ammonia price, the commodity prices, the urea prices and how does our company perform over this. And 10 years ago, we often said Omnia is an agriculture company fully correlated to ammonia and urea. And what this chart demonstrates to you is how we focused on diversification, one from an earnings perspective and a business perspective and also from an agility perspective in our supply chain and how that has impacted our earnings. So what you see in the current half year, our earnings are the highest it's ever been, the highest -- the higher earnings -- the higher earnings than this year was the one at the peak of the commodity cycle in half year '23. So a very, very respectable performance, strong performance from an earnings perspective at a low commodity cycle at a time when there is significant currency volatility and also off the back of us having a 60-day shut. So our business was able to navigate that. The movement of having 63% of our earnings coming from mining in the current reporting period also demonstrates the increase in profitability, the diversification benefits and the move away from maybe just an ammonia price or urea price. What you're seeing here is the execution of our strategy, the change in our business, the allocation and the deallocation of capital actually having real profitability benefits for the Omnia Group. Having said all of that, you know that our -- this is our half year scorecard. So usually at full year, our scorecard is where you see the full position of cash and the full position of earnings. So I think this is a very, very strong half year performance if you contextualize it from 2020 to where we're finding ourselves, considering that we've had such a significant shut. Then what is the scorecard actually look like? Our revenue is 3% up to ZAR 10-odd billion to ZAR 11.2 billion. Our operating margin is up 8%. Our gross profit down 2% to ZAR 2.4 billion. Our operating profit, I've said already, 12% up to ZAR 900 million, both earnings per share and headline earnings per share up 13% and 11%. Then our return on equity is also up to 12.3%. Our net working capital is down, which is what you want to see to 16.3%. And our net cash position, very, very respectful at just below ZAR 700 million. You know that this is the peak of our planting season. So you'd expect us to be in a low cash position, but we are cash positive. We are not in debt, and you can look further into the pack and Stephan will get to that around cash generation. So I think if I look at this forecast, a very, very strong financial performance, something that the team can be proud of and having achieved this with a 60-day shut demonstrates the resilience, the agility and the performance of our teams. So how did each business unit perform? And maybe I'll start with Chemicals. A few years ago, we said that we will be restructuring that business. That restructure has gone very well. We've closed a piece of it. The management team have been able to systematically work our way out of the stock positions, convert that to cash. We're busy exiting some of the land and the properties and the warehouse in that business. And there are 2 pieces of it left. Those 2 pieces are profitable going forward. It's the bulk trading business and the water care business. The bulk trading business, we will combine that into our supply chain. And I think you will -- we will not worry about that going forward. And our Water Care business at the end of last year, we said that business is held for sale, and we will exit it at the appropriate time. That business is doing well. It's profitable. It's secured new customers. So there's no need to rush with the sale of that business. What our shareholders will see coming out of the chemical sector is more cash as we exit some of our plants, warehouses and land that will convert into cash and actually enhance our cash position. So I think the chemical sector has now reduced. That has impacted our GP a little bit, and Stephan can talk about that later. But I think being managed according to model and the strategy execution being executed very well by the team in place in that business. From a mining perspective, our mining business continues to grow, great volumes in SADC, great growth in our mining chemicals business. And yet again, we see BME margins up, profits up and a very strong outlook. The mining business was impacted negatively by the currency movement in Zambia. So in spite of that, you're still seeing this growth. Good progress made on projects to mobilize in Canada and Australia, and I'm very pleased with the performance and the outlook of that business. From an Agriculture perspective, agriculture as well margins fairly resilient. Obviously, our Agriculture now -- our Agriculture segment has the MOS, the manufacturing and supply chain shut in it. So it's benefited from a very strong performance in Agri SA. Agri SA has had good agronomic conditions and good volumes in the first half of the year. The team in that business has done incredibly well. And then Zimbabwe and Zambia have settled. We had quite a difficult time there last year. We put in some new management and the new management have done well to stabilize that business, to get that businesses back to profitability and to start relooking, which we've told you at the operating model in those businesses. From a humates and an international perspective, strong export sales of humates internationally, and those have been offset by the drought in Brazil and some of the drought in Australia. So when you look at the detail of our international agri business, you will have -- we will separate that for you in the detailed pack, but you will see that play out. Overall, strong strategy execution in the group, profits ZAR 900 million, group margin at 8%, strong volumes in Agri and in Mining. And I think a very strong performance in spite of the shut. What that has led to is good cash generation and a strong balance sheet again, and we can talk about that a bit later. So just talking about our manufacturing and supply chain. And I think I must emphasize at this point that our manufacturing complex, our supply chain, the bulk of it, which is in Sasolburg is incredibly important to us. This operation of ours is of world-class standards. We have got the largest nitric acid plants in the country. We have got the highest output production capabilities, and we have the most modern plant in the country, our nitric acid plant. We have been investing systematically over the last 5 years in rail wagons where we have a fleet of over 220 of them. They're well maintained. They're working currently. Jacques can tell you where they are and what they're moving. And we've got an incredible team of engineers and leadership, some of them in this room or in this building and a large chunk of them on the plant. So our Sasolburg facility is value adding. It's a competitive advantage for us, and it is something that we will continue to invest in and delivers value to our mining business, to our agri business and a chunk of trade ammonia derivative sales that we've delivered out of that. We've invested in road tankers. You see a picture of some of those, which also enhance our redundancy of supply if we have challenges with our local supplier or if we have challenges with the trains and being moved around the country. We've invested in our reliability. We've used the opportunity of this big shut to actually upgrade some of our control systems on our nitric acid plant and our most senior engineer teaches me this weekend of how we can use that to diagnose issues sooner and actually run our plants better and enhance reliability. So this facility of us is core. This facility is not for sale. It's something we will invest in, and it is something that enhances our competitiveness and enhances our ability to be agile and to diversify our earnings and optimize the value of the nitrogen molecule through ammonia into mining and into agri. And obviously, we have the great flexibility to be all the way into the customer, selling to the customer, but also selling on a B2B basis to some intermediaries who then sell to customers. We've continued to invest in solar. You probably saw that in one of the bullets in Ditebogo slides, another 5-megawatt plant that we put in. I think it's fascinating to see the amount of solar that we have in this facility and also our reverse osmosis plant. We had a challenge in that plant in the last 6 months. So we didn't get as much throughput through it, a little bit of the shut and then a little bit of a repair that we needed to do, but a great facility, world-class facility that we have that enhances our competitiveness. How does that -- how did that flow into working capital for us? A very respectable performance of working capital. We increased our stock positions a little bit to prepare for the shut, a little bit for slightly higher prices. And then we provided our supply chain team with the flexibility to take certain positions on the right side of buying early. All of that has worked positively for us. Some of it in this half year, some of it still to come. But as you can see, working capital well managed, also good use of supply chain finance and receivables well under control. And I feel that the team has really progressed in terms of working capital management. And if we go back to 2018, 2019, where we were having a working capital draw of ZAR 1.8 billion, ZAR 1.5 billion, you can see that our working capital draw is significantly different, and we've changed the profile of working capital and cash generated at Omnia sustainably now for a number of years. Let's talk a bit about capital, and we're just systematically going through sort of profits, working capital and now capital, cash, cash, cash because we want to make sure that at the end of the day, we focus in carefully on investing and cash. And here again, very, very disciplined in terms of our capital allocation. So taking our -- managing our cash well, taking our cash and investing in our current core business to protect it taking our cash and investing in businesses for growth, and you've seen growth coming through our earnings, investing in our mining business globally and our humates business in terms of enhancing our distribution in the U.S. and others and capital in sustainability like the solar farm. And having done all of that, when we look at what's available at the end, then continuing to declare very strong dividends and a special dividend last year and also buying back shares. In total, since we launched the share buyback program, we bought back 5.7 million shares at an average share price of ZAR 62. We can talk about that a little bit later, and Glen or Stephan can unpack that. I'm going to hand over to Stephan now, who's going to do a deep dive into the financial results per division and also the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement. Thank you, Stephen.

Thank you, Seelan. Good morning to all our shareholders, our Board members, our staff and to all our other stakeholders in the room as well. Maybe just before we jump into some of the details of the financial numbers, just a quick update on the SARS matter. We're nearing the final stages of the ADR process. There was a lot of engagement with the SARS team over the last couple of months, and the teams are working tirelessly to close that out as quickly as possible. Maybe from an overview point of view is that, as Seelan mentioned, the group delivered a strong financial performance for the half year, again, demonstrating our ability to navigate all the external pressures, as Stephan highlighted. The teams maintained reliability of supply to our customers while demonstrating this effective working capital management. And you can see how that profile has changed over the last couple of years. And this result then reflects in the solid cash generation across the business, taking into account normally only biggest chunk of cash gets generated in the second half as we unwind the summer planting into the SADC region. And that resulted in a strong balance sheet. So jumping into some of the details. Revenue increased by 3%. That was driven by the higher volumes in our agriculture SA front-facing business as well, also supported by pricing dynamics in that business and then the volume growth in mining and that portfolio diversification across our core businesses. That growth was offset by the restructuring of our Chemicals business, as Seelan highlighted. And that just reduction in chemicals was ZAR 440 million for the half year. From a gross profit point of view, gross profit decreased by 2% to the ZAR 2.4 billion level, and that was due to the rationalization of the Chemicals segment. So that came out of the gross profit as well as the extended supplier shutdowns, which affected specifically the production volumes and the cost recoveries during the quarter -- during quarter 1 of FY '26. From a distribution and admin expenses point of view, that decreased 9% relative to the comparative period, again, due to the restructure of the Chemicals that comes out of the base -- that was close to ZAR 100 million that comes out of the base as well as some one-off cost that was baked into the prior year that related to restructuring costs, site closures and some regulatory costs in West Africa. From a net other operating income in that line specifically, that includes some movements in ForEx. Seelan highlighted some of the currencies already. There's also fair value adjustments relative to derivatives as well as our insurance sale captive and also noncore asset sales that gets baked into that line. From an impairment losses of financial assets, that relates to our ECL provisions. And you can see that is lower relative to the comparative period. And in the comparative period, the rest of Africa, specifically in our Agriculture segment was negatively affected. The year net profit on investments, that relates to our Indonesia joint venture in our Mining business. It's that the half year result was impacted by some regulatory challenges in the local environment, which affected 3 of the customers over the period. But if I look at it from an operating profit point of view, a really strong operating profit growth. You can see double-digit growth up 12% to the ZAR 900 million level and then the operating margin up to 8%, which get us into the bottom end of our group target range. The net finance expenses increased relative to the comparative period, and that was threefold. Firstly, the high use of the supply chain finance platform to support the increase in our inventory as we lead up for the summer planting season as well. There was a lower number of interest earned on cash balances, taking into account the prior year started with a higher cash balance that was carried over. And that was partially offset by higher interest earned on debtors, mostly in Agriculture Zambia. And as you -- if I maybe just cast your mind back to the year-end number, there was a bit of carryover debtors specifically in Agriculture Zambia. A lot of those collections has played out in this half of the year, and that resulted in higher interest income earned on those debtors. From an effective tax rate point of view, our effective tax rate is at 36%, which is at an elevated level. That's mainly due to a deferred tax liability that was raised in Agriculture Zambia, and that's on the unrealized foreign currency gain due to the movement in the Kwacha relative to the U.S. dollar. That resulted in an increase of 3.8% to the effective tax rate. And in the prior year, we're also at an elevated level due to the Zimmer matter that was closed out in the prior year. That resulted in the prior year also being elevated by 4.6% from an effective tax rate point of view. That resulted in this robust delivery of earnings per share and headline earnings per share, which was up 13% and 11%, respectively. Maybe jumping into some of the detail, specifically if we could start off with agriculture, South Africa, we've seen increased fertilizer sales in our front-facing business. That demand was underpinned by the favorable economic conditions that we've seen play out across the region, and that was further supported by our unique Nutriology model, which the sales teams drive opposite our customer base. There was also further support by the change in pricing dynamics relative to the comparative period and the revenue overall grew by 13%. You can see the profit and the margins were adversely impacted by the extended shutdowns, and that resulted, obviously, in production volumes as well as cost recoveries for the current period being negatively impacted -- relative to the prior period. If I maybe just adjust for the potential impact relative to the comparative period, our operating profit would have increased by just more than 10% relative to the comparative period, just to indicate some of the impacts there. But despite this, we've seen increased demand playing out from our customer base. And that resulted over the extended shut, the teams planned for strategic inventory management, that was really well managed through our manufacturing and supply chain to ensure security of supply to our customers. If you look at the rest of Africa, the prior year was obviously a disappointing performance for us. There was a lot of improvement and operating model changes implemented in the rest of Africa. You can see an improved performance increase in revenue as well as in profitability. That was also driven by better agronomic and economic conditions across the regions. The prior year, there was an extended drought, obviously, playing out specifically in Zambia that also affected the electricity supply in the country. Then in our current 6 months in our Zambia business specifically, we've seen higher commercial sales driven by our sales teams. And our performance was also further enhanced by the currency movements, specifically the Zambia quite strengthening against the U.S. dollar. In our Zimbabwe operations, in the prior period as well, we embarked on a restructure specifically in that business. In the current 6 months, you can see the benefits coming through. The Zimbabwe business got a lower cost base, specifically, and we've also seen increased volumes more opposite the high-value crops and that your export crops out of Zimbabwe, mostly in the tobacco space. And lastly, to close out the rest of Africa, we're also nearing our completion on the restructure in our Mozambique as well as in our Kenya operations. Then if I look at the international business, specifically, as Seelan mentioned, from an Agriculture international point of view, we've seen rising global demand for sustainable farming practices. That supported our higher export volumes. So we've seen a significant increase in our export volumes out of our Morwell production facility in Australia. That is to new as well as our existing customer base. This was offset, as Seelan highlighted, due to a significant drought specifically playing out across Australia, which reduced the volumes across that region, specifically on the local side. In Brazil, the first quarter of our financial year saw a bit of an overhang of the adverse weather conditions, also the drought playing out there, which affected the country's economic conditions, but the team has done well, specifically in Brazil to maintain stable volumes and a stronger performance towards the latter part of this half year. And then in the U.S., we continue to mobilize. And we can see that there's more front-facing business coming online. We saw an increase in sales volumes over the last 4 months. Maybe just bear in mind, the U.S. peak season is towards the latter end of our financial year. Then if I just step forward to our Mining business, and If I start with South Africa across our mining business, we've seen increase in revenues as well as profitability and margins. Specifically in South Africa business, we've seen a strong performance in a challenging environment, which was influenced by trade volatility. We've seen the impact of commodity prices and some operational challenges at some of our customers. But we've seen from a blasting solutions or explosive business, higher sales volume coming across the region, and that's due to contract renewals as well as extensions, which is really pleasing. That showed continued profit and margin growth, which was further supported by cost efficiencies out of our South African business. From an international point of view, we've seen growth coming out of Zambia region as well as Mali in West Africa. We've seen new contract wins in Namibia in the Blasting Solutions side as well as the metallurgy or our Chemicals side. We've seen operating profit growth across the international business, which was supported by product margin mix coming out of the different regions. But we've seen the negative impact of the strengthening of the Kwacha, specifically in our mining business, which functional currency is Kwacha based, and that negatively affected our mining operations. In Indonesia, we've seen -- I spoke about the line on the income statement. The challenges from a regulatory point of view, which affected those 3 customers resulted in a fairly flat performance throughout the operation, but we've seen continued progress in the integration, and we can still see growth coming out of that markets going forward. From a Canada and Australia point of view, we continue to mobilize. So for our shareholders, just to take note that those mobilization costs gets baked into the cost base, which is the earnings is yet to come in future reporting periods. And that's in line with our execution of our growth strategy from a mining international point of view. Maybe just to close out from a metallurgy point of view, we've seen a strong performance by our metallurgy point of view, which was supported by the growth out of Namibia as well as the ammonia derivative sales, which is supported by our integrated manufacturing and supply chain capabilities. And maybe just to close out the segments from a chemical point of view, the chemicals restructure continue to execute in line with our strategy to streamline the business. And we could see from a working capital point of view, there's a release of capital coming out of the business. The restructure is expected to be completed by the end of this financial year. We also saw in our Water Care business, which is an asset currently held for sale, we've seen new contract wins in that business. And our bulk profitable business -- our bulk trade profitable business is currently being integrated into the group's integrated manufacturing and supply chain capabilities. Our focus remains on scaling that profitable bulk trade business to drive sustainable returns going forward. And then if I maybe just jump into some of the details from a balance sheet point of view. Our financial position remains strong. That's reflecting our disciplined capital and working capital and cash management approach. Total assets increased by 3%. That was driven by the elevated inventory levels to support the earlier planting season in South Africa and across SADC in Zambia as well. We can see the working capital release on a net basis from the restructuring and chemicals basis, which contributed ZAR 184 million release relative to the comparative period. Our net cash position is slightly lower to the prior period. That was due to the prior period having a higher opening balances. Maybe just cross your mind back 2 or 3 cycles. The last 2 cycles included shareholder distributions, ordinary and special distributions. And the third cycle only included an ordinary shareholder distribution affected our higher opening balance in the comparative period. Then investments associated using the equity method on that line, maybe just that's the profits from the Indonesia JV as well as other assets relating to the chemicals, which is held for sale gets recorded in that line. And then other assets increased primarily due to the chemicals assets that's classified as held for sale. From a liability point of view, we've seen an increase by 7%, driven by the increased supply chain payables to support our higher inventory for our upcoming season. And then from an equity point of view, equity remains stable with the earnings offset by the shareholder distributions, the ordinary and special distributions in the current half year. Overall, the net working capital decreased by 5%, which is a really strong performance relative to the comparative period. And our return on average equity increased by 4% to 12.3%. And maybe just to close out from a cash flow point of view, we've seen cash generated from operations increased from our strong performance throughout all our businesses that contributed to a solid cash balance. Our net working capital, including our supply chain finance payables, we've seen an investment of ZAR 360 million, which is low compared to the prior year of ZAR 530 million. And if you compare the price dynamics as well, we've got increased inventory and the pricing dynamics in the current environment is also at elevated levels compared to the comparative period. Cash flow from operating activities include the reduction in tax payments, cash payments -- the prior year's expense included a higher provisional tax payment in Zambia as well as the closeout passes on the Zimmer matter as discussed under the effective tax rate. The investing cash flows mainly relate to the organic and growth CapEx, as Seelan previously highlighted and the proceeds from the sale of noncore assets. The restricted cash was just the release of a cash balance in the DRC that was lifted during the current period. From a financing activities point of view, that includes the repurchase of the treasury share. And in the current environment, there was less shares repurchased for the share repurchase program relative to the comparative period. The lower supply chain finance payables, that is just due to procurement timing differences. In the prior season, it was at a later stage, the ramp-up of the procurement. And at this half year, we restarted ramping up earlier for the summer planting season. Overall, this resulted in a solid cash position, which is driving our strong financial position. Maybe just from my side, a big thank you, obviously, to all the finance team and the business teams to get us into this stage. And I also thank the Board and Seelan for their support. I'll maybe just hand over to Seelan to close out.

Thank you, Stephan. I think we must recognize that there's no way the volume of work, the result and the production of all these slides and documentation can be achieved without the finance team and yourself. And yet again, another strong production of results and strong results. There's two sections left for me to complete. And the first one is, really just to talk about our strategy and where will our future growth come from and then a few slides on outlook, and then we will go into Q&A. So if I just focus on our strategy for a second, we've been focused on disciplined execution and global growth. We have been focusing on diversifying our business, ensuring resilience and agility and doing that in 3 spaces. The first one is to protect and grow our core SADC business, enhancing our customer value proposition underpinned by innovation and sustainability and ensuring that the efficiency and our production facility in Sasolburg is leveraged further. And I think what you see today is after a 60-day shut, now obviously, after a shut, what you will find is that the production facilities of our suppliers and ourselves will work a lot better. These shuts come around every 3, 5 10 years. So after a shut like this, we will have significantly enhanced reliability from our supplier and from ourselves. I mean what we've already seen is that our teams have been able to pay back at least 20 days of that production already, which you will see coming through going forward. So we will continue to optimize and enhance the efficiency of our supply chain, grow our share in the agriculture market and leverage our competitive value proposition in SADC. We've got 2 businesses that are growth vectors, barring the business in SADC, which you see continues to grow. And that's our mining business. BME will continue to invest in its customer propositions and access the new markets that we've invested in, Indonesia, Australia and Canada. And our AgriBio business, which is an incredible asset for us operating in a different market with higher margins and a higher demand will also continue to diversify our business and enhance our profitability. The balance sheet that Stephan spoke about and our strong cash position also provides us with a lot of optionality for growth to explore selected investments and M&A that will be good for our shareholders. That will all be based on sound values, safety, doing what's right for the environment and a high-performing team. It's not possible to deliver double-digit growth in the markets we operate in without our team performing really well, in some instances, having to do things very different to what they did yesterday or the year before. I spoke about -- a bit about innovation and technology. And if you look at our products, all of our products are not the traditional products you will find in agriculture or mining, but the products that are based on sound principles and innovation. We will do that in a very disciplined way and be very disciplined with capital and our track record of distributing cash back to shareholders by way of dividends and buybacks, you will be able to see that and monitor us on that. In terms of our plants, and I know we spoke a lot about the supplier shut. This is a huge competitive strength and advantage for us and the outlook for our delivery, our reliability and our capacities have actually been enhanced. There's one issue I want to raise on this slide. A few years ago, you know that what we produced and what we bought, we largely sold through BME and our Agriculture business. We then said we have got some capacity in our plant, and we would like to enhance our sales through -- on a wholesale basis into the mining sector. And that we did by building an ammonia derivative business. On a prior slide, we showed how that business has grown over the years and is now a key part of profitability. If I were to suck my thumb and just sketch a picture for you, it's probably taken the place of what Protea Chemicals was or could have been a few years ago. We then said there is additional capacity in our plant that we can also potentially use from our supply chain and our plant and consider some bulk trading. And for now, what you're seeing on the slide, the second block on the right from the bottom is another business calling Bulk Trading. And that's a business where we will take the bulk trading piece of Protea, combine that with the bulk trading of our supply chain where we can benefit from pricing and logistics and actually back-to-back use that to enter into a new profit market or generator for us. We know in the 10 or 15 years ago that you can get that wrong if you don't have back-to-back sales. So our mandate to our team is to ensure that any contract or any purchase that you've made is back-to-back out with a customer on the other side. So I'm very, very positive about unlocking further value from our manufacturing and supply chain, optimizing costs, optimizing productivity, strategic procurement, leveraging our supply chain to access new markets and optimizing our supply chain, not just locally, but also a little bit more on a global basis from an AN perspective and to think about how we can grow our partnerships from a supply chain perspective and collaborate with others that will allow us to be stronger. Then if we just go into SADC a little bit, what we do know is we have the strongest brand in Agriculture. Our Agriculture business is driving a huge amount of food production across SADC and our products are known to be the best in the market. Our Nutriology concept, our agronomists and our ability to add real value to the farm, reduce risk and enhance output is something that we stand for. We're able to demonstrate that year-on-year with science and with data. We put out a little chart here to show the growth in specialty volumes. You know that if you are -- we're not just a fertilizer sales company. We are a company that sells holistic solutions and our distribution and sales team have been doing an incredible job to grow specialty products to optimize what our -- the value our farmers get. We've got the largest soil testing lab in SADC. We test over 500,000 soil samples. The picture on the right is a generated picture. So the color of the land of all those different colors is actually the soil map that our systems generate to help farmers see where to plant, what to plant and what the soil conditions are relative to the output and the yield. We have a strong distribution footprint in Zambia and in SADC with our supply chain and our manufacturing plant in Sasolburg. And we will continue to innovate. We will continue to play a role in these markets and grow and strengthen our position to enable food security. I think what you see is as our SADC business maybe last year didn't deliver what we wanted to. This year, our SADC business comes back on scale and our Agri SA business delivers more than what we expected. So the diversification of the business, the resilience of the business and the competitive moat of the business remains heavily intact. This business is also generating more cash than it did 5 or 10 years ago, which puts us on this great footing to be able to grow and expand and return cash to shareholders based on our distribution model. Then if we move to Agriculture International, this business, you know we've been growing and expanding. It's got a higher profit margin than a traditional NPK business. It also has a higher CAGR, and we put out a CAGR number there of 14% from 2022 to 2025. The business is lumpy. So it takes time to foster long relationships with Deepak, Mosaic, with other distributors in Brazil and the U.S. and the Middle East. But as those come online, you see the step change in this business' profitability. So while we had good volumes out of Brazil and Australia, we believe there's still a lot more to come. The business' moat is still very secure. The pipeline is very strong in terms of new markets and new opportunities and the testing and the interest in this business continues to be very high. It's low capital, and it's positioned to deliver strong cash for us and continue to diversify our earnings both geographically from a currency perspective and between a traditional Agri business and an AgriBio business, which trades on much higher multiples than a traditional Agri business. Obviously, our mining sector is a key growth vector for us. BME has earned the right to win globally. We've won contracts locally and on the African continent and globally. The demand for critical minerals continues. The demand to have more sustainable emulsion product and bigger blasts and more complex blasts continue to enhance profitability of mines, and BME is well positioned for that. You have seen the growth in this business, and we've put out a 5-year trajectory here as well, a strong CAGR of 41%. And if I look forward, if I look at the contracts we've secured, if I look at where this business is going, there's significant potential in the BME business. And as the Omnia Group, we've got behind this business. We've restructured some of our teams to support Ralf and the team and fully engaged and fully involved to unlock further value in this business. These are the areas we're focusing on in the mining business. So our Indonesian joint venture is doing well. It's strong. We've had a number of strategic engagements over the last few weeks and the opportunities in that area continues to excite us. Indonesia wants to play a big role in the energy required for big data and AI that's going to be needed in China. And I think that's going to drive some of the metals and some of the mining market in Indonesia in the medium term. From a Canadian perspective, our plants have been commissioned. The detonators are coming out. Our investments are doing well. And I think what we want to see is those detonators being sold to our partner, Consbec, and to third parties and then to be sold to other parts -- to other customers in that region of the world. So we're still positive about the Canadian JV. We also have commissioned the capital deployment for Hypex Bio plant in Canada. That plant has been build in Stockholm and is currently on the water to Canada, and that plant will add to our value proposition for customers. It will add to the future sustainability of mining in that region. It will be the first Hypex Bio plant in Canada, and we have significant interest from customers to be involved in that plant. From an Australian perspective, our AXXIS plant has also been commissioned. We've been investing in our people and our team there. But both the Canadian business and the Australian business is still in investment state. As soon as we see that those businesses go to profitability, you'll see another step change in the BME delivery to our group. And then just finally, coming back to the African continent. It's a continent that we've been winning on. And there's been good contract wins in Namibia, in the uranium space. And from a mining chemical space, you have seen that we've created a BME metallurgy brand. We've moved that business under the head of BME as well. We've enhanced some of the team members in that business. And I'm really pleased to see the traction that business is getting, the new contract wins and others that have come from that space. What we do know is that global explosives companies, they trade on higher multiples than Agri companies. And obviously, the left of the slide shows recent transactions. A number of those might not be listed. But the right slide shows some of the listed companies that are reference points. And if you look at our business, how it's been systematically changing the fabric of our profits from Agri to Mining with now 60-odd percent of our profits coming from mining, what you see is that we are well placed as a compelling value unlock opportunity to partner and to continue to grow our business as our mining business grows. And we believe that the mining sector offers an attractive space for us to grow and to unlock value for our shareholders going forward. We obviously say [indiscernible] at the bottom that Omnia is fairly undervalued in the global context. So we're hoping all of you shareholders see that and buy more Omnia shares going forward. Then if I move to outlook, from a margin perspective, we've been heavily focused on the margins -- see if I go back with it fixes it, no, it doesn't. Heavily focused on margins in our group. And whilst BME at year-end was slightly above the target range, we haven't adjusted the margins yet. We will relook at that at year-end. Stephan and I will see if there's any change we need to do there. We believe that with the growth in Agri and a good outlook, we probably will end up with Agri now getting closer into margin guidance. And we need to continue to focus on growing our Agri segment, our AgriBio business, getting more efficient around our manufacturing and supply chain. And hopefully, that margin will also start to lift going forward. We've also just dotted down a return on equity number removing Protea Chemicals. However, what you do know at half year, our return on equity numbers are usually slightly higher than year-end, and that is probably driven by the denominator of the cash at year-end. We've generated a lot of cash at year-end and paid quite significant dividends thereafter. So those dividends get paid out in the first half of the next year. So obviously, what you can see is an upward trajectory. We still would like more from a return on equity perspective, but this is just a half year number. In terms of what we're focusing on is increasing our operating margins, increasing and optimizing our asset turn and then obviously, disciplined capital allocation. What you're seeing from this management team is that we've been very prudent with the way we've spent money. We have invested in sustainability. We have invested in certain plants and investments across the world, but we've also disinvested from assets and business that -- the businesses that haven't performed the way we would have liked them to. We've shown you this slide before, which is really a view of how we will unlock value, and we're progressing well against this. You see some of this coming through as an example, in SADC, where we've enhanced some of our management there and that management is now stabilized the business, and now you can see that business tracking more to a model, more to what we've expected. And obviously, I've mentioned some of the other spaces, but we can discuss a little bit more of this in the one-on-one meetings or through some Q&A, if you'd like that. So from an outlook perspective, we're very, very pleased with the current set of results. We think it's a strong, strong set of results, a strong cash generation and a strong balance sheet position for half year for Omnia. And we're positive about the outlook in the second half. As Stephan said, the second half is where all our action happens. We're in the midst of a very strong planting season in SADC at the moment. We have continued to see good contract wins in our mining business and our mining chemicals business. And globally, all of our investments are in place to unlock and deliver significant value. We spoke -- we didn't speak a lot today about our hydrogen peroxide investment, Hypex Bio. But for any of you who would like more information on that, we're more than happy to share that. But we think we've got a gem of an investment there. We own 10% of the business, and we've sold or just under -- and sold distribution rights in certain territories. We think that hydrogen peroxide emulsion is going to revolutionize the mining explosives industry in the medium to long term. And it's really great to see our BME business and our explosives engineers standing at the forefront of that innovation and of that change. From an Agriculture perspective, I think we've spoken at length about the local manufacturing and supply chain, but we do see additional value being unlocked out of SADC. I think the discipline and the way that team is managing that business gives me a great sense of comfort. We're seeing the stock positions. Remember, when we closed the year-end, we had a little -- slightly larger stock position in SADC. We're seeing the team dealing with that. We're seeing the debtors flowing into cash, which is all good signs to demonstrate that, that business is being managed to model the way we'd like it to be. And from a Chemicals perspective, I think there's not much of a story there, but what we promised is what we're delivering. And you will see some cash flow out of the Chemicals business. And at the right time, we'll make an announcement about the Water Care business. There is no rush in doing that. There is no -- it's not -- I think there isn't anything about Chemicals that is substantial and significant impacting the Omnia Group. The big core businesses, Mining and Agri are strong, great customer value propositions, winning in front of the customers, generating cash and performing strongly from a growth perspective, and they have driven the 12% double-digit growth in operating profit and the strong cash that has been generated. Then if we just talk about a little bit more of our shareholder returns and distribution, you -- and maybe I'll start with the proposition. We operate in primary sectors. The diversification and international growth of our company is clearly going to come from Mining and the AgriBio business, two very strong customer value propositions. We've got some more to do on operational excellence. There's areas where costs have come out. There's areas where costs can still come out and maybe costs have gone in. But I think overall, as a management team, we're fairly frugal on costs, and we don't just take cost out at the expense of a customer proposition. Our cash generation is strong, and it's been another 6 months of strong cash generation. So I think it will give you a lot of comfort to show how we navigate commodity prices, how we navigate shuts, how we navigate disruption. So I think strong credibility from that perspective. And obviously, at year-end, we take all of this and we put it into a melting pot and the Board and has a look at it, and you've seen a very attractive dividend yield. So we will continue to manage cash prudently, and you will continue to be rewarded for your patience and your investment. So if we think of cash, there's dividends, there's special dividends and there's share buybacks, and thank you to the shareholders who have voted for the buybacks. And at each half year, we show you what we've done and how those have played out. So I think a very strong value proposition. And I think what you do need to know is that we, as a management team, work very hard every day to ensure that Omnia is successful, that Omnia makes a profound impact in the markets it operates in, and we do that in a sustainable, safe way. And the team now has a track record of doing that for a number of years and have demonstrated delivery in different conditions. That's always not easy. Sometimes we also have our own arm wrestles as a team and high performance comes with some arm wrestles, but I think we all know about that. So I'm going to pause there. Thank you to all of our people on the webcast. I think we've just -- we've got a number of people who have listened in. Thank you. I see a number of familiar names. If you do have any questions or any comments, you know where to get hold of us. And I think we will open, and thank you to all of you who have come in here, and we will open up for Q&A now. There's a number of Omnia management available that will also be able to answer the questions. Thank you.

Do we maybe have any questions in the room first? Any questions on the...

Yes. We just have 2 questions from John Arron at SBG Securities. The first one is asking for just a bit more detail on what is being done to mitigate the impact of the extended supplier shutdowns. And the second question focuses on -- he's asking if you could elaborate on how head office and elimination costs reduced by 20% and if this is sustainable?

Great. So thank you, John. I think the first thing to say is the shut has happened. So what you're seeing is the impact of the shut in the result. And going forward, what you will see is the upside of an extended maintenance shut of both our supplier -- a number of our supplier components or component plants and our plant. So I think from my perspective, the way we mitigated that was by ensuring we had additional storage, by optimizing our ammonia supply from both our local provider who went on shut, but also our trains and our storage in Richards Bay. And then I think last year, sometime we announced that we commissioned another 5,000 liter AN storage tank. And then our supply chain folks manage this with our customers, our internal businesses and others. I'm not sure if any of the management team would like to add anything to that. But the shut is behind us. And if anything, I think Stephan whispered a number. But if we didn't have the shut, our results would have even been better than what it currently is. The second question, just repeat that for me.

Can you elaborate on how head office and elimination costs reduced by 20% and if this is sustainable?

Okay. Then I'm going to ask Stephan to maybe -- there's a few moving parts in that number.

Sure. I hope everyone can hear me. I think, first of all, from a cost point of view, there remains a big focus on cost throughout all our operations, not just at a head office level. And you can see that playing out in our operating margins. Over the last couple of years, specifically in that line item, the head office and eliminations, we've seen a lot of one-offs coming through that number as well. But maybe closer to the current year, the biggest driver in the current year was our legacy AX system that gets upgraded to D365. And the legacy system was capitalized and there was amort and depreciation coming through, which in the current period as we upgrade is nonrecurring. That resulted in obviously some of the reduction that you can see coming through there. And also the D365 as we start rolling it out, all those costs are expensed. So it's not capitalized going forward as well. The second one then is, there were certain cost that was also directly allocated to the business unit, certain of those costs. And then I think as we step forward and we move forward, I think we're moving now to a more sustainable level, specifically on that head office and elimination line.

Thank you.

That's all from the line.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for your time. I'm sure we will have a cup of tea for all of you who are here, if you could, welcome to join us. Thank you.