Origin Enterprises plc (OIZ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Origin Enterprises plc Preliminary Results Call 2024. Just a reminder that this call is being webcast live on the Internet, and the presentation is available to view on the Origin website. I will now pass over to Sean Coyle, CEO of Origin Enterprises plc. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Sonia. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the full year results call for 2024 from Origin Enterprises. I'm joined this morning by my colleagues: Colm Purcell, our new CFO; TJ Kelly, the Divisional Managing Director of our Living Landscapes business; and Brendan Corcoran, our Head of Investor Relations. The Origin numbers this year have come in at the upper end of expectations, really driven by a strong performance in the final quarter with late-season applications in the business performing well and the overall business coming in with a very small reduction in profit year-on-year considering the weather impact that we endured through most of the first 3 quarters of the year. The business saw a challenging weather environment and decline in profitability, particularly in our U.K. business, although that was somewhat offset by strong demand within our fertilizer and feed businesses with farmers attempting to recover volumes through growth in fodder in the Irish marketplace in particular and also use of fee to compensate for a delayed delivery of feed and fodder on farm again in an Irish context. Our Living Landscapes business saw reasonable growth with an overall ongoing growth in the contribution to group profits supported to a certain extent by acquisitions. And the business continued its disciplined capital allocation, returning over EUR 36.7 million to shareholders in the period, investing in strategic M&A activity and maintaining a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of less than 1x at year-end. Free cash flow was somewhat impacted by the timing of sanction payments through the year but the cumulative free cash flow over the last 3 years has grown at over 115% compared to our target ratio of 80%. Some of the highlights from a strategic perspective. We continue to roll out CapEx on the existing businesses, particularly on the agricultural side with a spend in quarter time, building a new blending plant and warehouse in the northeast of England. We've improved our bottling capabilities and a new micro-pack facility in Timisoara in Romania. And we've invested in a brand-new FoliQ production facility co-located with our seed plant in Alexandro in Poland. And we've continued to invest in our Brazilian liquid and dry production capacity to grow capacity and volumes in Brazil. And alongside that, then we're continuing to roll out our D365 ERP platform across our Ireland and U.K. businesses. From an organizational perspective, TJ has taken up the new role of Divisional Managing Director of our Living Landscapes business. Colm has joined us as Group CFO. We're showcasing today our refreshed branding across the businesses, which hopefully will assist investors in understanding the business but also assist our employee, brand and external marketing of the business at a holistic level. We've got some new divisions and reporting structure as a result of that. And we're also announcing this morning the appointment of a new Non-Executive Director to the Board, Dick Hordijk, who is joining again from an agricultural background. So just to outline the new reporting structure for the business, primarily in two reporting segments now Agriculture and Living Landscapes, with all of our direct-to-farm businesses in Sustainable Agronomy, our wholesale B2B Soil Nutrition businesses, our Animal Feed businesses reporting in the Agricultural Segment. And on the Living Landscape side of the house, we are bring together our sports landscapes and environmental businesses, encompassing and reporting all of those individual business units within a new divisional structure. So perhaps I'll just talk to the agricultural segments before TJ will take you through the Living Landscapes businesses. So from an Ireland, U.K. perspective, the operating profit in the segment was down in 2024, primarily as a result of a very difficult and challenged U.K. planting season and application challenges within the early part of spring unlike through the autumn in fact. And there was a significant reduction in revenue in that segment of the business, mitigated somewhat by operational efficiencies and cost controls across the business. Our Sustainable Agronomy, our agri business, was impacted by difficult weather that reduced planted area primarily down within the winter wheat and winter barley segment and a strong move to spring cropping which, as you know, requires lower investment and less spend by farmers as a result. Our Soil Nutrition businesses saw a strong performance. Operating profit overall was slightly reduced due to falling commodity markets, but we did see a volume recovery in that business and we're pleased with that. Our Animal Nutrition businesses, as we said earlier on, reduced -- saw increased volume, sorry, from challenging in-field conditions, which really drove demand for supplementary concentrate feed in the period. So overall, the business saw a reduced level of profitability. When you compare it to our previous challenging weather year of 2020, you can see it significantly outperformed relative to that 2020 year despite the difficult and challenging weather in the period. From a Continental European perspective, we were pleased to see continued growth in operating profit performance in the business. Our Polish business delivered very strong results with a very stable cropping area and high disease pressure. And the new FoliQ fertilizer plant has now been completed and production ramp-up will begin there over the course of the next 12 months. Our Romanian business achieved a solid performance despite 2 consecutive years now where very dry conditions in Romania, which is impacting product demand, is impacting harvest yields and farm profitability. So what you're seeing fairly challenging weather conditions there but despite that, we delivered a strong performance in the period. And the micro-pack facility that we spoke about earlier on the call has now been put in place and will be launched to meet rising demand in that segment. And our Ukrainian business completed the closure in the third quarter with no material impact on group profitability in the period. Our Latin American business saw a small dip in profitability, which in the context of the macro environment in Brazil was a very significant result. We did see some currency weakness pulling back the results from a reported euro perspective. But broadly speaking, we're fairly happy with the performance given what's happening in the market there. As you probably know, nutrients saw significant write-down of its assets in Latin America over the course of the last 6 months. And one of the main distributors in the market, Agro-Galaxy, also filed for the equivalent of Chapter 11 in Brazil in recent days. So it is quite a challenged market. We're seeing significant pressure on farm as a result of a reduction in crop pricing. But overall, we were pleased to grow our volume by over 37%. We have invested significantly in both sales infrastructure and operations infrastructure to continue to improve our distribution capability. So our costs are rising there, but we're pleased that the overall volume in the business is growing strongly as a result of that investment. We had a small margin impact due to mix. And there is an increased proportion of the lower margin controlled release fertilizers within the mix and an impact on margin, I suppose, as a result of that investment in the infrastructure in the country. Our cropping data points to continued growth in soya area for next year. The harvest has fallen somewhat as a result of lower yields due to dry conditions. And right now with the current key planting time for soya going into next year, and there are very difficult and dry planting conditions at the moment, so we do expect a delay to drilling and a delay to planting in Brazil for the coming year as a result of that. And we're certainly seeing a slower start to the year, this year, as a result of the very dry conditions being experienced in Brazil. So I'll hand over to TJ now for our Living Landscapes review.

Thank you, Sean. Good morning, everyone. Within our Living Landscapes division then, which now accounts for just over 14% of group operating profit, up from 12% in the prior year. Overall, delivered a good performance during the year with earnings up by 7%, hedged by the positive contribution of acquisitions in the current year and from prior years, albeit there was some negative impact from the prolonged wet conditions across the U.K., which reduced application windows and impacted the sports turf products within our sports business. Within our landscape business itself then which includes, among others, Green Tech and British hardwood trees, it had a good year of growth overall. And I would say continues to benefit from what is ongoing public and private investment within the urban greening and infrastructure projects space. Our environmental businesses, which include Keystone and neo environmentals, also continued to grow as the macro drivers there such as legislative changes ran biodiversity net gain and the ongoing acceleration of the move to more renewable energy sources really play to the strength of those businesses. And you will also have seen that subsequent to the year-end, we completed two further bolt-on acquisitions within the environmental space, Avian and Bowland Ecology. During the year then, the group completed two relatively modest acquisitions in Groundtrax, which is a specialist supplier of ground protection and reinforcement systems. And Suregreen, again, a U.K.-based landscape and gardening product supplier for trade fresh notes and DIY customers, which we bought out of administration earlier in the year. These acquisitions provide extensions to the private range ultimately and our channel offerings in both the sports and landscape businesses within Living Landscapes. We complete this market assessment across the U.K. and specific Western European markets, which looks across the verticals of both products and services where we already participate today, albeit purely in a U.K. context. When we stand back from this view, it tells us that there is a significant market opportunity out there across both the U.K. and those specific Western European markets. And also that there is quite a lot of fragmentation in these sectors, similar to what we would see in the U.K. today. And we believe ultimately that these markets provide potential for us to drive further M&A growth out into the future. With that, I'll hand over the call to Colm for the finance update.

Great. Thanks, TJ. Good morning, everyone. Starting with some of the highlights then on financial performance on Page 14 of the presentation. Group revenue at EUR 2 billion was back 18% on prior year on a constant currency basis. This was largely driven by a 26% pricing impact as we saw deflation in the various geographical markets. This was partially offset from a 7.8% volume growth, particularly in H2 of the year. Overall acquisitions accounted for 1.2% of the movement year-on-year. Overall operating profit for the year at EUR 83.5 million, represents a resilient performance for the year, particularly as Sean said, given the context of the challenging weather conditions in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in the U.K. market. Sean noted earlier, the impact of the adverse weather in the year can be seen in the results of our Agriculture segment with overall operating profit back 10.8% on the prior year. Living Landscapes, as TJ said, had a good year with growth of 5.8% and now represents 14.2% of the operating profit of the business, up from 12.2% in the prior year. Our associates and joint venture results showed strong growth in the year, which largely due to the increased animal feed sales, which was in high demand in the year given that the poor weather. Our operating for the margin in the year was up 40 basis points, highlighting the resilient performance of the business, careful cost management and strategic inventory management in a falling market price environment. Our overall adjusted EPS for the year was EUR 0.4806 which was at the upper end of our Q3 guidance following a solid Q4 performance. And while our EPS is back on FY 2023, it does represent a historically high EPS delivery and demonstrate the more diversified nature of the group. Looking at our cash performance then in the year. Overall, our free cash flow at EUR 6.2 million was back on prior year with FY '24 impacted by the higher working capital investment following the payment of just over 50% of the previously withheld payments to sanction parties and the impact of higher year-end receivables due to the strong sales that we saw in July. When we look at the average free cash flow over the last 3 years, as Sean said earlier, which had the benefit of some of these withheld sanction payments. Our free cash flow generation is at 115% and well ahead of our Capital Markets Day guidance of 80%. For FY '25, we do expect some working capital outflow as we expect to pay the remaining withheld sanction payments, and there will be some investment to support the expected increase in trading activity. Our overall net debt position at the end of the year was EUR 71.7 million, excluding our leases, which was at 0.66x of our EBITDA and well within our banking covenant position. The increase in net debt largely impacted by the increase in working capital, as noted earlier, our strategic capital expenditure investments and our outflow from M&A, which I'll come to a little bit later. As a result of the higher average debt and with the impact of our higher interest rates this year contributed to an increase of EUR 5.6 million in our finance costs for the year. From facilities perspective, I'd say we're well financed with our facilities maturing in 2026. Overall, ROCE for the year at 11.2%, which is below our target of 12% to 15% with 2024 impacted by lower profit number and the increased capital investment, both fixed and working. Looking at capital allocation overall then, we continue to pursue a disciplined approach to capital allocation. As I said, we have generated strong free cash flow over the past 3 years as reflected in the 115% cash flow conversion metric. During the year, we spent EUR 34.1 million on strategic capital investments, including as Sean said, a new FoliQ fertilizer plant in Poland, a new micro-pack facility in Romania, a new blending and plant warehouse at the Port of Tyne in our Origin fertilizer U.K. business, expansion of our production facilities in Brazil and the continued rollout of our new ERP D365 platform across the U.K. and Ireland businesses. We do expect this rollout will be largely completed at the end of the calendar year. We returned EUR 36.7 million to shareholders through the share buyback programs and dividends. And this equates to a total returns of EUR 128 million or about 36% of our current market capitalization over the last 3 years. For our shareholders, we are proposing a final dividend of EUR 0.1365, which will bring the full year dividend to EUR 0.168, which is in line with last year's dividend payment despite the reduced operating profit in the current year. Total M&A investment in the year amounted to EUR 44.3 million, which included the close out of the put and call option in respect of our Fortgreen business in Brazil and the acquisition of Groundtrax and Suregeen as TJ had mentioned earlier. As noted, our total contribution from Living Landscapes now accounts for 14.2% of total operating profit. And subsequent to the year-end, we also announced the completion of two acquisitions within their Living Landscapes division of Avian Ecology and Bowland Ecology, two U.K.-based specialist ecology consultancy businesses, providing further capability to our Living Landscapes business. Just to give an overview then of our progress against our Capital Markets Day targets. We're 60% of the way through our 5-year period from FY '22 to '26. And as you see against the operating target of EUR 415 million, we are at EUR 294 million, which represents 71% delivered. And against our free cash flow target, we are at EUR 219 million against our EUR 325 million target, which is 67% delivered. As noted earlier, we also closed out on the EUR 20 million share buyback program in early September, delivering on the Capital Markets Day commitment of EUR 80 million share buyback delivered to shareholders. Recall as well that we did anticipate and cater for a bad weather year event, so very much on track to deliver on our Capital Markets Day ambition. I'll now hand you back to Sean.

I think TJ's going to cover the next couple of slides and then I'll close out the presentation.

Very good. Thanks. Thanks, Colm. So looking at our customer offerings -- offering across the two platforms then and very much in the context of our role of championing sustainable and use our agricultural division provides a range of agronomic advice, services and inputs across a range of different customer types. These customers include -- livestock, food and vegetables growers, and these are serviced on a B2B and direct-to-farm basis across the geographies we operate in, in U.K., Ireland, CE and LATAM. In our Living Landscapes division then, we ultimately provide solutions in the form of products, advisory and services across the sports, environmental and landscape markets. These services cater to the growing demand for either both ecologically and environmentally sustainable inputs and practices from organizations, operating across a range of sectors in sports and recreation areas such as urban and world, green developments and biodiversity and renewable energy sectors. Then as we look out at the end of our current 5-year strategic plan window to FY '26. In the agricultural space, we see continued focus on working capital disciplines and management, and through the well-invested assets that we have, we really look to maximize return on capital employed in those businesses with targeted growth-related CapEx investments being made, such as those already outlined, example being the FoliQ investment in Poland, the extension of the bottling capabilities in Romania and further capacity expansion across Brazil. We continue to lead in technical advice and solutions, whether that be through advice and regenerative practices, supporting on bespoke solutions for soil nutrition and plant resilience and soil nutrition, all continuing to drive and lead innovation through our research facility at Throws farm and our network of iFarms. Within the Living Landscapes space then, our stated ambition, as we've said, is to get to the division to 30% or more of operating profit by FY '26 through a blend of organic and M&A driven growth. And as mentioned earlier, we see opportunities across the broad European markets in these products and service areas where we participate today in the U.K. context. Looking out then at the overall context for the business by 2030, we see ultimately that the transition to biosolutions, specialty nutrition and digital technologies will all play an increasingly important role as farming and farmers seek to optimize their yields in a sustainable way. And in support of that growth, we continue to focus and build internal digital capabilities through the ERP rollout, but also through more efficient customer portals and front-end presentation of our offerings across both the Agri and Living Landscapes divisions.

Thanks, TJ. So just to wrap up on ESG, our nurturing growth policy and nurturing growth sustainability report can be seen on the website at the same time as publication of our annual report and gives an extensive overview of the amount of change is happening within the business, both in respect of our current product portfolio and current product set and the types of services we're offering, but also our alignment with international policies and standards across the board. And obviously, we've set ourselves and validated science-based target reductions for the coming few years out to 2032. We continue to track and monitor our reductions in Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. And in the last few years, since 2019, we've achieved a 24% reduction in CO2 emissions over that period of time. We continue to accelerate our investment in the emerging nature economy and the products and services in that space. And we continue to maintain strong employee engagement scores and strong scores in the areas' health and safety with our reported incident rate down significantly by 35% since FY '22. So the business continues to change the way in which it operates, continues to produce green lists and sustainable varieties of seed, varied fertilizers, which are more technical in nature would have a reduced carbon emission factor within those fertilizers and continue to try and introduce more biological products into the mix of crop protection products applied on farm. So that we not only maintain margin because those profits or those products can equally produce strong profitability on farm but from our perspective, reduces the number of chemicals and pesticides and herbicides used on farm. So that is a positive outcome for the environment as well. So generally speaking, the business is reengineering the product set and solutions that we offer, both in our agricultural business and also within our Living Landscapes business. So to wrap up before Q&A, the overall performance in '24, we think was a pretty resilient one, particularly in the challenging operating conditions we experienced, not just in Ireland and U.K., but also in Romania and to a certain extent, the latter end of the year from an operating perspective has been very challenging in a Brazilian context as well. So significant challenges for farmers, for our customers to put the business performing well in that context. Our Living Landscapes business is also growing strongly and is an attractive platform for continued diversification for earnings away from the Ireland, U.K. agricultural base, which has predominantly been a major part of earnings historically. So continuing to build our growth in the Central European businesses, the growth in the LATAM business and also build our Living Landscapes business to diversify earnings away from just a reliance on Ireland, U.K. weather-challenged businesses has been important for the last number of years. And I think the performance in '24, when you compare relative to the performance in 2016 or 2020 when we had previously weather-challenged years, has been a strong one. The overall balance sheet is in pretty good health with our year-end net debt-to-EBITDA ratio continuing to operate below 1. After the coming 12 months, we intend to maintain our disciplined approach to capital allocation, continuing to drive shareholder returns within the business. We have some strategic CapEx plan to continue to meet growth demand, particularly in specialist product areas. And there's further investment in margin accretive organic and M&A growth within the business to continue to support the diversification of earnings, complementing our organic growth strategy within the business and to broaden the offerings within our nature economy businesses. So that concludes the presentation this morning. I think we're happy to take questions and answers. And after few address the questions, we'll direct them as appropriate internally here.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from the line of Patrick Higgins from Goodbody.

A couple of questions on my end, if that's okay. Firstly, just in terms of farmer sentiment across all your markets. I guess, obviously, a tough year between Brazil and the U.K. Just interested to hear how they're feeling into the year ahead. And specifically in terms of plantings, I appreciate it's already and you've given us some color on Brazil, but maybe a bit of an update in planting so far in the U.K. would be helpful. The second question was just around M&A. And obviously, you've had a good start to FY '25 from an M&A perspective. I just thought the chart on Slide 12 was really interesting and clearly a lot of opportunities for growth within the Living Landscapes subcategories. How should we be thinking about your pipeline deals for the year ahead? And where should we be anticipating potential deals coming through across product areas but also by geographies please?

Thanks, Patrick. Maybe I'll cover farm sentiment and hand over to TJ then on the M&A opportunity. So I would say farm sentiment at the moment is not particularly good and that's a broad across all of our geographies. So the primary driver of sentiment is crop prices. And right now, crop pricing is at a fairly low level compared to where it's been for the last 24 months. Winter wheat is down at kind of GBP 180 in the U.K. and sentiment would be radically improved as that number was close to GBP 200. So you need to see a movement upwards in terms of pricing to that kind of level for farmers to get excited about cropping. And generally speaking, the dry conditions that are pertaining in Brazil and the conditions that have pertained in Romania over the course of the last 2 years have meant that sentiment is relatively subdued in both of those markets. Probably, Poland is the only market where farmers are somewhat optimistic. They've had a pretty good weather performance and wouldn't be as concerned about the crop output prices as perhaps the U.K. farmer is at this point in time. So generally speaking, I would say farm sentiment is challenged. On planting and drilling, we wouldn't really expect a significant amount of progress at this time of the year. So oilseed rape is the primary crop that goes in through the month of August and that has progressed well. The overall planted area in the U.K. is probably down by about 10% to 15% on last year. Most oilseed rape is in the ground at this stage, albeit it's a lower planted area than prior year. Winter wheats and winter barley drilling will have started. But agronomically, the best time for that to get planted is mid-October. So good progress over the course of the next month to 6 weeks would be nice to see. As you'll know from our updates in previous years, winter wheat can be planted up until the end of January. So we would like to see progress over the next 4 to 6 weeks. And reasonable periods of dry weather over the kind of 6- to 8-week period. But as long as winter wheat is going into the ground, that would be good for our business and good for farms generally because obviously, winter wheat is a more profitable crop for the farmer. And given that they didn't have the opportunity in a lot of areas to planted last year, they'll be rotating back to winter wheat this year. So there are the kind of 2 key questions on the Agriculture side. Maybe, TJ, do you want to take the M&A opportunity and the Living Landscapes opportunity?

Sure. Thanks, Patrick. Yes, I mean, I thought the assessment we've done on Page 12 indicates to us that, one, I suppose there is significant potential market opportunity. I think when you look within each of the verticals as we are doing, there is also quite a high degree of fragmentation. And that, I suppose, that combination represents opportunity for us. I think in the product space, there are certainly opportunities in certain markets in the specialty distribution space, so similar specialty type of distribution businesses to the businesses we currently manage in the U.K. today. I think equally in the services space, in the applied services, habitat management, restoration, vegetation management represent sectors in the market that, again, are both highly fragmented and also represent potential margin opportunity for us in that there's -- they -- it seemed to attract a relatively strong share of the profit pool in those particular sectors. So I think in terms of where the deals will come from, I mean, we've got an active deal flow and hopper. It's too early to kind of speculate on where they'll ultimately come from. We have still active M&A targets that we're looking at in the U.K. So I think that's just going to be part of the job of work that's ahead of us over the next number of months and we have been doing over the last couple of years in reality, which is an ongoing filtering of these targets, understanding margin profile, relative growth attractiveness of the assets. And again, as we would have said before, given the fragmented nature of these markets, typically what you get is relatively, I suppose, mid-single-digit owner-managed type businesses. And they require, I guess, a fair degree of attention to any diligence process, and that's really the focus and the process that we're in at the moment.

And the next question comes from the line of Cathal Kenny from Davy.

First one is on the U.K., Ireland. Just interested in your comments around inventory, both within your own supply chain and that on farm. That's my first question. Second question relates to U.K. and Ireland again. I'm just interested in -- to know the farmer respond to lower subsidies in terms of what you're seeing on the ground. What kind of feedback you're getting from the constituency of customers? And the third question is just one for TJ in Living Landscapes. Thanks for the detail on Slide 12. But if you look at your target for '26 and the 30% share of overall operating profit, in the absence of M&A, what do you think that can get to over the next 2 years? So if there was no more M&A, what would that 30% look like? There are my three questions.

Thanks, Cathal. So on inventory, we -- across the three business areas in Ireland and U.K. are seeing reasonably low levels of inventory carry from an operational perspective. So within the Agronomy business or Agri, the inventory is probably as low as it was 3 years ago from a value perspective, despite the fact that we've had some price appreciation in product over 2 years and a small amount of price depreciation in the last 12 months. But generally speaking, inventory levels in terms of units would be down at a reasonably low level, which is good news. Within the fertilizer businesses, we have been running at fairly modest inventory levels over a lot of the last 6 months and strong demand towards the back end of FY '24 with farmers trying to catch up in terms of grassland application to get some additional fodder in the autumn meant that entering the new financial years, inventories at a relatively low level as well. And that demand has been continued to be strong over the course of August and into mid-September. And as you know, the Irish market closes for application in mid-September. So I would say, again, operationally, in terms of tons of raw material on hand, both Ireland and U.K. are probably at pretty low levels. So overall, operationally tons, other than perhaps in our feed business, which continues to experience strong demand and will experience strong demand right through the winter, given the lack of available fodder in the Irish market, in particular, inventories at reasonably low levels. That, of course, Colm needs to be covered with the sharp price reductions that we've seen in both fertilizer prices and feed prices over the course of the last 12 months. So fertilizer prices are well down north of 35% and feed prices, I think, are down by north of 30%. So both feed and fertilizer prices in terms of absolute level of value have also fallen sharply. So inventory is at a pretty low level in Ireland and U.K.

Cathal, on your question, we delivered on Living Landscapes side. I mean again, maybe going back to FY '24, I mean, we did have, as I mentioned, some headwinds in terms of whether they're active in the sports area. But if I look out to FY '26, absent M&A, it should be 20% to group operating profit. And that additional 10% then really would be made up by, again, as we outlined at the Capital Markets Day, our ambition to do about EUR 5 million EBITDA acquisition per annum. So if we did 2 round sums, and obviously, it won't be linear as this. But if we did a EUR 5 million EBITDA acquisition in '25 or '26, then we get to the -- we get to the 30% with 20% organic and that additional 10% coming from M&A. Obviously, the nature and timing of that EUR 5 million per annum will be a variable piece. But I'd say it's very much within our reach to be able to do those types of mid-single-digit EBITDA. They may be slightly smaller. They will be slightly bigger. But ultimately, I think it's with our reach to get to that target of 30% by the end of '26. And again, that assumes that all things in the kind of base business continue on as we would expect, which is that they'll deliver reasonable growth, that at high single, early double-digit growth is what we'd expect that over the next couple of years.

Sorry, Cathal, just to come back then on your farm subsidies question. I mean the chatter at a farm level would have mainly been concentrated around the environmental subsidy levels and the payments in the U.K. in relation to environmental schemes. And when we had the very difficult weather in the autumn and winter, a lot of the noise in the system would have been that farmers were going to move significant tracks of land into environmental schemes and into the environmental subsidies. The reality has been that maybe 2% of land. And I would say that, that is the marginal 2% of production land has moved into subsidy regimes associated with environmental schemes. And the reason that, that might prove challenging for us and had more moved in is typically that's a 3-year commitment by the farmer into an environmental scheme and therefore, the land is lost to production for a period of time. But despite all of the challenging weather and despite all of the concerns that may have pertained in relation to a land moving into environmental schemes, only about 2% of land has made that transition. It may be a bigger percentage on extensive farms. So farmers who are sheep farming in the hills are kind of less profitable farm areas but they wouldn't be a significant part of our customer base. We might get some fertilizer sales into that segment of the market. But generally speaking, we're servicing the arable market and the fruit and veg market rather than the broader extensive farm businesses.

[Operator Instructions] And the next question comes from the line of William Larwood from Berenberg.

Firstly, just in terms of LATAM, we talked about sort of the inflationary pressures there and the investment you're making there. So -- well, it's some sort of adverse margin impact from the mix of CRF. I was wondering if you could provide some additional color on sort of margin expectations for that geography into '25? Secondly, obviously, you've expanded the FoliQ plant. I'm just thinking in terms of sort of CapEx, what can we expect for that going forward in future years? And then also just potentially some color on sort of the ramp-up of the FoliQ plant, when can we expect that to be at capacity or doing the same levels of demand as the old plant? And is there any indications of additional demand coming through?

Thanks, Will. So on the Brazilian side, we would probably expect a small further deterioration in operating margin in Brazil into 2025. I think part of the challenge will be understanding the movement of currency within that. So there's been about a 10% depreciation of the Brazilian real relative to the euro in the last 3 or 4 months. And that is having an impact on some raw material costs. So it's also depreciated against the dollar and that will have an impact on some raw material costs within the Brazilian business, which given the state of Brazilian farming may be challenged in terms of passing on that cost increase at a firm level. So price increases have kicked in. But given the challenging nature of the market, it will be interesting to see how much of that can be passed on to the Brazilian farmer. Wouldn't expect any significant mix impact within the Brazilian business in the coming 12 months. So I think the relative proportions of CRF and the non-CRF specialty product business of the adjuvants and P&M, physiological and nutrition products business, the relative proportions of those will stay pretty static over the coming 12 months. So margin attrition may be simply currency movement on some raw materials not being priced or not being passed on in full to farmers, although some price increases have kicked in at this point in time. So hopefully, that answers questions in relation to Brazil. Maybe Colm, do you want to touch on CapEx going forward?

William, I think on CapEx, if you look, as I mentioned earlier, one of the big out-layers we had this year was the rollout of the ERP system across our Irish and U.K. markets. So we're largely done on that. So by the end of the calendar year, we should be substantially complete. So I think we'll get back to more normalized kind of strategic spend next year, just over that EUR 20 million mark, which would be more kind of in line with our historic strategic spend. But obviously, that will depend on what projects would come along. But I think we'll get back to that more normalized level next year.

[Operator Instructions] And the next question comes from the line of Filippo Migliorisi from TPICAP.

I have two questions. The first regards Brazil. You mentioned that some players filed for Chapter 11. Is that -- does that represent a good opportunity for you to maybe re-indulge in M&A down there as [ pets ] or prey? And second question, could you please give us an update of your final targets in terms of operating profit split by division by the end so by full year 2026?

Thanks, Filippo. So in terms of Brazilian M&A, I think we'd want to be pretty cautious for the coming 12 to 24 months with regard to Brazil. The outlook in the market, I would say at this point in time is not clear. Crop pricing needs to improve for the Brazilian farmer to see any significant improvement in their lots and exposing ourselves at least at this stage to more had retail businesses who have a direct exposure to Brazilian farmers is not something we'd be interested in doing. As you probably know, multiples in Brazil, particularly of product-based businesses and businesses, which have had exposure to manufacturing of products and distribution at a B2B level of products have been trading at multiples in the low double-digit up to mid double-digit level. So we've been absent from the market and staying out of the market as a result of the high multiples that have been paid. Clearly, if we're trading at a 6x multiple ourselves and able to buy back our own stock at a 6x multiple, it doesn't make a lot of sense to be buying businesses in what is a distressed markets at double-digit multiples or mid-double-digit multiples. So we don't see any rush to change our strategy in Brazil at this point in time. There's no evidence of any real M&A activity in Brazil at this point either. The market has gone very quiet from an M&A perspective and very quiet from a transactional perspective. There's been little or no M&A since the Biotrop deal, which was a high double-digit -- high-teen double-digit multiple when that transacted early in 2023. And very little has happened since then. So I don't think we're in the market for significant expansion in Brazil. We've explained to investors on a number of occasions in the past, some of the concerns we have about Brazil. Interest rates are getting higher there. The tax leak from an EPS perspective is significant. The corporation tax rate is in the mid-30s. So the drop through from an operating profit performance to an EPS performance is not all as attractive as the operating profit performance that you might see in the individual business. So I would say we'd be very cautious about investing more in Brazil, see more attractive opportunities, perhaps in deepening our presence in Romania, deepening our presence in Poland and adding to our Living Landscapes businesses, not just in Ireland and U.K., but also in Western Europe, as TJ has outlined earlier on. So broadly speaking, M&A activity will be concentrated on Living Landscapes or availing of any opportunities in Central Europe that come around to buy bolt-on businesses for our agricultural businesses in those two geographies. Okay. So perhaps I'll hand over, TJ, do you want to cover the proportion out of your profit next year?

Well, I think by the end of '26, Filippo, that will be -- again, if we look at Living Landscapes, it's been roughly 30% of the profit contribution. I mean it's -- we're not guiding '25 or '26 today. But I would say kind of a reasonable perspective will be to have LATAM in that kind of range of 15% to 17%. CE in that roughly 18% to -- again, 17% to 20% range, 18% to 20% range and the balance then really sitting across Ireland and U.K. So with -- I suppose, implicit in that is that the continuing underlying growth, obviously, in Living landscapes, LATAM continuing to grow at that kind of mid-single digit rate and CE probably at the kind of the low to midrange. And Ireland and the U.K., I'd say overall challenged in terms of growth, which is, again, I suppose in the context of what we've been just discussing the markets have been quite challenged. And while we'll seek to continue to track more share or possible the general backdrop for the market in Ireland and U.K., Ag is slightly more challenged.

As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand over to Sean Coyle, CEO, for any closing remarks.

Great. Thank you. So we're looking forward to getting out on the road now and meeting investors individually. We're happy to take any further questions that you might have on this year's trading performance. If you want to get in touch with Brendan or any of us directly. The trading start to the current year as I mentioned earlier on, has been okay, but not certainly anything unusual at this point in time. And ideally, we see an improvement in farm sentiment and an improvement in planting conditions, particularly in Brazil over the course of the next few weeks to see a good start to the financial year. We're very early on in that financial year, as you can appreciate. So far too early to be making any calls in that regard at this point in time. The performance has been robust one in 2024. And particularly pleasing was that when we set out at our Capital Markets Day in '22, the ambition over the medium term for the business, first and foremost, in our mind, was the need to diversify the business and see overall operating profit performance improve over the medium term through the mechanism of diversification to reduce the reliance on our Ireland, U.K. agricultural businesses. And I think the first signs of evidence in that being a success is the profit performance this year. We have dipped down in previous bad weather years to much lower results in terms of operating profit performance and EPS and thankfully, the diversification that we've put in place over the last 5 or 6 years. And indeed, going back to the original acquisition of our LATAM business has been instrumental in making sure that, that diversification has worked well for the group as a whole. So we're happy to see that come to fruition in this year's numbers. So thank you very much. We look forward to seeing you on the road in the coming days and weeks. And please get in touch if you have any further questions. Thank you.

That concludes our conference call for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines.