Skellerup Holdings Limited (SKL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning, everyone. Close enough to 10:00, so we'll get underway. Thanks for joining us for this presentation on Skellerup's First Half FY '26 Results. For those of you that don't know, I'm Graham Leaming, the CEO; and with me is Tim Runnalls, our CFO. As per normal, Tim and I will provide an overview of our business, and then we'll take questions at the conclusion of the presentation. Please do keep your microphone on mute until [Technical Difficulty] Okay. I think we're good again. We might have just temporarily moved into mute mode there. We'll move to Slide 2. And as reported earlier today, very pleased to report record revenue, operating earnings, net profit after-tax, and cash flow for the first half of FY '26. EBIT was up 16% on the pcp, which was also the prior record. And as the graph shows, over the past 7 years, we've achieved a compounded annual growth rate of 11%. NPAT was up 20% on the pcp, which again was the prior record. And as the graph shows, over the past 7 years, we've achieved a compound annual growth rate of 12%. Cash flow was also up 20% on pcp and a record first half result. Our record earnings and cash flow means we've again increased the interim dividend up to $0.10, up $0.01 per share, or 11% on the prior comparative period. At the close of the first half at December 31, 2025, net debt stood at $17.5 million. That's just 5% of the value of the total assets employed in our business, or 7% of the net assets. As our results suggest, our business is very well placed. I think our team are doing an excellent job focusing on the things we can control, executing on current business well, and that provides the platform to win new opportunities. Of course, the geopolitical uncertainty persists and that makes forecasting difficult. However, based on year-to-date results and our prospects ahead of us, we've increased our FY '26 earnings guidance for net profit after tax to be in the range of $57 million to $62 million. Before we get into more detail at the divisional level, Tim will discuss the key drivers of net profit after tax change and the key financials for the first half of FY '26. Tim?

Thanks, Graham. The waterfall chart with which most of you will now be familiar, reflects the key drivers of the 20% increase in reported NPAT for the first half of FY '26. Moving from left to right on the chart, I'll start with the Industrial division, where more than 60% of this division's revenue is derived from the key potable and wastewater applications, as well as the roofing and construction application. We're pleased to report good growth in both of these product applications this half year. Firstly, in potable water, we've seen a strong increase in demand and market share gains in the U.S. infrastructural pipe fitting market and a positive return to more normal levels of demand from a key U.S. tapware customer. Revenues from the sale of our vacuum systems in the U.S., primarily used in wastewater, continue to grow through market share gains and new product development and launches. We've seen a return in demand for roofing products. Primarily roofing washes into the Asian market as well as indications of a rebound in the Australian residential construction sector, which has been subdued for several years now. Demand for solar roof flashing products has continued to provide a key driver of growth, particularly in the U.K. Pleasingly, we've seen solid growth in all other industrial applications, except for automotive, impacted by weaker demand in the European gas automotive market, and in health and hygiene, where a key customer paused production or paused their production to relocate their operations for most of the first half of '26. Supply has now recommenced to this customer with volumes consistent with prior levels. Moving to the Agri division. Dairy has benefited from a strong demand from international customers, both from OEMs and from our own high-performance dairy rubberware products sold under both the Skellerup brand as well as our own Conewango brand in the U.S. New products, customers, and markets have contributed to this growth, something that Graham will touch on in a bit more detail. Pleasingly, we've seen significant growth in sales of our silicon tubing manufactured in the U.K., particularly in the U.S. market, and to a lesser extent, growing sales of our Ambic-branded animal hygiene products. Across our dairy manufacturing operations, the stronger demand flowed through to production volumes, which, together with our ongoing focus on equipment and productivity improvements, meant a lift in gross margins. Demand for our specialty rubber footwear has been solid with revenue growth in New Zealand and the U.S. Increases in raw material costs and lower overhead recoveries from a deliberate slowdown in Q1 production volumes to manage inventory levels have negatively impacted margins in our footwear group for the half year. The unfavorable FX result for the period was largely a factor of settlement of currency hedges at rates unfavorable to market spot rate. The benefit of the lower spot rates on the underlying operating earnings is reflected within the product applications on the chart. A reminder that as a group, we have a fairly strong natural hedge, so our net exposure is relatively small when compared with top line sales. We remain well hedged for the second half of FY '26 at rates comparable to market spot rates currently. You will note that across the 2 divisions, we estimate the impact of U.S. trade tariffs on the first half to be around $1 million, $700,000 falling within the Industrial division and $300,000 falling within the Agri division. This is the net impact after taking account of the mitigations put in place to reduce this cost. Moving to Slide 4, which reflects the group's key financials over the past 7.5 years. Revenue growth has been broad-based across divisions, markets, and applications, resulting in an 11% increase against the prior comparative period. Gross margins have improved for the Industrial division through the introduction of new products at better margins and a focus on operating improvements. Agri division margins grew favorably in dairy, but as previously mentioned, footwear margins somewhat eroded the impact. Indirect costs were well controlled, up 8% on the comparative period and below the growth in both revenue and gross margin. Around half of this increase is due to the impact of the weaker New Zealand dollar on the translation of foreign operations. However, ongoing investments have been made in additional headcount within sales and development to drive revenue growth and product innovation. Lower financing costs and a lower effective tax rate against the prior period have meant NPAT finished 20% above the comparative period. As Graham mentioned earlier, operating cash flow is a record for the first half and, in fact, any half year with the increase in after-tax earnings and prudent management of working capital, where inventories have reduced following some pretariff build to more manageable levels, although still elevated to mitigate the impact of tariffs, supply chain disruptions, and to meet increasing customer demand. Net debt at $17.5 million reflects a continued low level of gearing despite an increase in the FY '25 final dividend paid in October '25 and an increase in capital expenditure to around $8.9 million. This increase reflects the timing of investment activities in modernizing production equipment, primarily in the Agri division. It's important to note that this is not the new run rate of the group's CapEx, rather reflects the timing of those cash flows relative to the execution of the projects. With that, Graham will cover more detail on the individual divisions specifically.

Okay. Moving to Slide 5, and again, this will be a chart you're familiar with. We're just waiting for -- I'm sorry, there we go. So group revenue by market geography. And as this shows and as we've talked about many times, more than 80% of our revenue in the first half of the year was generated from international markets. We are a global business. North America continues to be the largest share of our market with an increase there from 35% in the prior comparative period to 39% in the first half of this year. As Tim has mentioned, we've increased sales into the key dairy, potable, and wastewater applications when Tim discussed the earnings bridge. New Zealand remains the next largest market, and whilst down 1 percentage point on the pcp, absolute revenue was up just over $1 million, or 3% primarily from increased sales into the dairy sector. European revenue ticked up 1 percentage point, principally due to the growth in dairy applications in the first half of FY '26. The Australian market was down with some growth in roofing and construction, offset by the timing of project-related sales for mining applications. We expect this to recover in the second half of the year. We have a good, strong order book for sales of products in the mining applications. Asian revenue share was flat with growth from sales into roofing and construction, and dairy, partially offset by the lower sales into the health and hygiene sector, as Tim mentioned, where a large customer paused production for a period whilst they relocated their assembly operation. Business resumed at the very end of the first half, and we expect that will be at normal levels for the second half of this year. U.K. and Ireland share of revenue was maintained with sales into roofing and construction, and in particular, the solar application continuing to grow compared to the first half of last year. We'll move to Slide 6. And Slide 6 provides revenue cut a different way, split this by market application. And we continue to focus overall our development and manufacturing activities and investments on products for -- we talked about this a lot -- high-performance and high-conformance applications. In the first half, more than 50% of our revenue came from sales used in the transportation of milk and water. Sales into dairy applications grew to 27% of group revenue and sales in potable and wastewater applications paced the overall revenue growth of the group, comprising 25% of group revenue. As we noted, roofing and construction revenue moved up 1 percentage point with growth in sales in Asia, the U.K., and Australia. Health and hygiene was down, as mentioned, the customer pause, resulting in a fall of about USD 850,000 in the first half of FY '26 compared to the prior year. Mining was also slightly down due to timing. The percentage sale of sales into footwear and all other industrial applications remained in line with the prior comparative period. Moving to Slide 7, which is a bit more of a focus on the Industrial division. We've touched on some of these factors. But if we look at things on a constant currency basis, headline revenue up 6%, earnings up 12%. If we adjust for currency movements and express it in a manner consistent with the prior comparative period, EBIT was still up 9%. And that compound annual growth rate of EBIT over the past 7.5 years sits at 11%. As we touched on, potable water and wastewater growth was strong, up 17% on the prior comparative period. The largest contributor for us was in the U.S. market where we had good growth, we believe, in share into the pipe market where we sell gaskets and some recovery from some of our tapware customers contributing to that increase. Also, we continue to do well in the Australian market with some good growth into the pipe gasket market there as well. Demand for our vacuum systems, which are used in wastewater applications again increased, reflecting the position that we hold in the market there with a high-quality product very well delivered to our customer base. Roofing and construction growth up, as I noted there in all of our key markets with the exception of the U.S. where we had a very strong finish to the end of FY '25 and as a consequence, slightly softer first half for our roofing sales into the U.S. Health and hygiene sales impacted by customer production pause as we've noted. On the back of that revenue growth, we've also improved gross margin, and that really does reflect 3 factors: pricing improvements we were able to make in the market, the mix of products we sell, and productivity gains, and very pleased to achieve these despite the impact of tariffs in particular, in the first half, as Tim noted on the preceding slide, incrementally around about $700,000 of additional cost to us, net of the changes we made and mitigants that we implemented, compared to the first half of last year. Equally importantly, we have a healthy pipeline of opportunities for both OEM customers and our own branded products. There's a couple of images on the page there. On the right-hand side in the middle there, the sectioned image of a dual check valve used in smart metering applications in Australia, something we've talked about before as an area where we think we'll get good growth in the coming years. We expect that growth to begin to materialize in the second half of this year based on the forecast and orders we're getting from customers and to be a good incremental revenue growth for us over the ensuing 2 and 3 years. On the left is an example -- sorry, is an image of product we manufacture that's used in a water tempering valve. That product includes, again, a couple of check valves, which is used to moderate the flow and the mixing of hot and cold water in behind the wall in large residential and commercial buildings. So that's a new product that we've developed that not only services new valves going in, but also as a replacement product into existing valve installations and a nice feature of that product is -- it doesn't show on this picture because it doesn't present very well, but a sleeve we supplied and allows for easy installation as an example of some of the innovation we bring. So there's just a couple of examples. We do have a very healthy pipeline of opportunities for the Industrial division. And I think the quality of that pipeline is better than I've seen for a number of years. So we're in good shape there. Moving to Slide 8 and the Agri division. Obviously, an excellent result for the first half year for Agri with revenue up 21%, earnings up 20%. Just noting there that the Agri division, which has the largest net currency exposure and therefore, was impacted by the hedging arrangements put in place. If we adjust for that, EBIT was actually up 24% on pcp on a constant currency basis. That performance means that the compound annual growth rate for EBIT over the last 7.5 half-year periods now sits at 10%. The dairy growth, as we've already touched on, was broad-based. And importantly, there's a strong contribution from new products. There's a couple of images there again in the middle of the presentation. Those of you who have sat in our presentations at recent times recognize on the left-hand side, there's a Thriver calf feeding teat. That was one of the contributors to revenue growth in the first half. First half revenue from sales of this product were a little over NZD 1 million and that quadrupled the revenue we achieved from that product in the prior half year period. We've also had good growth for sales of our own branded liners and strong growth through the OEM customers that we service as well. The image alongside the Thriver teat there is a high-performance liner that we've been selling and growing very strongly within the U.S. market for the past 18 months. And actually, just this month or next month, we'll begin to sell that liner in a single-use shell, which is what's shown in that picture here. We have been supplying a silicone liner and lower volumes in a single-use shell over the first half of the year. Just an outstanding results for the Agri division. There was a small boost or a contribution to that growth from a change in customer incoterms with a couple of customers, which grew revenue by 4%. So again, if we normalize that out, our revenue growth would have been around about 70% for the Agri division, still a very good number. And as we've talked about in the past, the opportunity for growth is most significantly in the international market. The international sales for the first half of the year were up 29% on the prior comparative period, but the New Zealand domestic market was also robust, as you might expect, given the overall environment for dairy up 16%, and it also includes some improvement from the range of products that we sell. The increased production volumes have been delivered with improved productivity. You've seen the capital investment we've been making over the past couple of years to modernize our capability in our facilities, and that's continued in the first half of this year. As Tim touched on, footwear revenue up in the first half. New Zealand domestic revenue up slightly, and we have a significant market share in this market. So the opportunity for growth from our existing product range is somewhat capped, but we had good growth in the international market and in particular, for our specialty footwear into the U.S., used in the U.S. utility applications. We're continuing to make investments in our development capability and our manufacturing platforms and the positions -- sorry, the business is well placed for growth. Just from a footwear point of view, I mentioned there the strong market share we have in New Zealand that caps the opportunity from existing products in Q4, you will see us launch a new product in what we're calling our lifestyle range, which will be a really exciting step forward for Skellerup. I'm not allowed to show you any images of that yet, but you'll get to see that in the very near future. So we're pretty excited about that as well. Okay. Moving to really a final slide. And again, this is a page you've seen before. We're keeping to the core principles of our business strategy, and that is utilizing and investing in the deep technical expertise that we have to make predominantly polymer-based products for high-performance and high-conformance applications. Our development activities continue to be customer focused to ensure we understand their requirements and deliver what they need. We are a global business. At the end of December, almost 60% of our just over 800 people were based outside of New Zealand. Over the past 6 months, we've added additional sales resource in the U.S. and Asia to ensure we can capitalize on the opportunities for growth we see. We have made further investment, as I said, to boost capacity and productivity in our manufacturing facilities, both Agri and Industrial. And we continue to evaluate further investment in international markets. Alongside these focus and priorities, our business model with accountability and resources, where we make and sell products, i.e., in the markets that we're in, remains a cornerstone of our business now and in the future. Thanks for your time. Let's take some questions. So I can see 3 hands up already, and we probably could have predicted those. We'll start with you, Guy.

Well done on a really strong result, very impressive. I think I guess the first one for me just around the dairy side. That growth, particularly, as you said, from the international markets, North America and Europe, has really accelerated. How should we think about that annualizing? I know you called out a little bit of the contributions from new products, but it appears that there's some pretty reasonable underlying share gains. Is that fair?

Yes, I think you have to conclude that we won some market share. The difficult thing is always there's a number of nodes in the supply chain. So how far through can you see those, and is there any inventory build happening somewhere in the chain. But notwithstanding that, we have definitely won market share in the U.S., and we believe we've won market share in Europe. We're beginning to win some new business in markets we've been focusing on in Europe. France is a market where we haven't had much in the way of sales in the past, and we picked up a new customer there. And also we are beginning to sell some product into customers in Eastern Europe as well, which has been a focus and a priority of ours. And we did have the boost from a change in incoterms in the first half as well. But even allowing for that, a really strong performance from us in the first half. It does reflect and I guess validate the work we've been putting into investing in our product development team. And my observation is we are able to complete development projects a lot more quickly than we would have, say, 3, even 2 years ago -- 3, 4 years ago. So that gives us an opportunity to grow at a faster tempo than we did in the past.

Okay. And just given that growth in Agri, like how should we think about the seasonality of earnings going forward? if I look historically, I think seasonality of NPAT was always second half weighted. But if you take the midpoint of guidance, we're closer to a 50-50 assumption this year. How much of that is this change in earnings mix maybe in favor of Agri versus general conservatism around geopolitics and supply chain disruption?

Yes. I think we're right to be cautious about the second half. Obviously, if you take the midpoint of our guidance range, that's a modest increase over what we achieved in the second half of FY '25. geopolitical is something that we're mindful of and what impact that could have on demand. We have got a slight incremental increase in tariff costs. So we talked about, compared to the first half of last year, there's about $1 million of additional cost, net of the mitigants we've undertaken in the first half result. We're still continuing to make inroads on that cost, but one of the benefits that we enjoyed in the first half was the inventory investment we've made. That's largely worked its way through now. So we expect about an additional $0.5 million of tariff costs in the second half of the year. You might recall when this thing first broke about a year ago, we said we think we can get back to an annualized incremental cost of about $5 million. We're probably now back at an incremental annualized cost of $3 million, and I expect by the time we get to the end of FY '26, we will have made further dent on that. And I'd like to think we're back to an incremental cost annually going forward, assuming no other changes, of $2 million. So continue to shrink it. I guess the other thing in the second half of the year, something to be a little bit cautious of is New Zealand dollar has strengthened a little bit. A lot of our earnings are overseas. Yes, we do hedge our transactional exposures, but the currency is a little bit stronger. So we're mindful of that. We're certainly protected from a transactional point of view, but there could be some translational headwind there. And we're continuing to invest for growth. Tim and I mentioned, we've made some investments in some additional people. And whilst those aren't massive, but in the last 3 months, we've added in 3 personnel at the front end in the U.S. and also employed someone to head up our growth initiatives for dairy in China. So we're adding in costs. Whilst I think we'll get a pretty rapid payback, I'm not sure that we'll necessarily recover all of that cost in the second half. So yes, we're being cautious with the guidance we provide, but we think it's appropriate given all the factors out there. Yes. And first half, second half split, traditionally, I would think that we would continue to have a stronger second half than we did in the first half. You might recall during the COVID time that got disrupted a little bit, and we've gone back to a slightly more normal pattern. I think I did say last year that the weighting for the second half was probably a little bit stronger than we might expect going forward, and we expect that gap to narrow a little bit. But generally speaking, with the seasonality of some of our business, whilst that has less of an impact now than it once did, if you think about the first half of the year includes a Northern Hemisphere summer, particularly in Europe, things slow down for a period. And then Thanksgiving and the Christmas period, typically, our second half is a little bit stronger than the first half of the year.

And then I guess just one last one for me. You talked about the additional investments you've made. There's also, I guess, a reasonable step-up in CapEx as you flagged previously. Can you talk a little bit about expectations for the full year for that number, but also maybe just where some of that additional investment is going?

Yes. So I think last -- in the preceding couple of years, we're around that $8 million, $9 million, $10 million mark. And I said I think for the foreseeable future going forward, you'd expect to see us spending an extra $2 million to $3 million. We have -- because of the success in the results that we've had with some of the investment we've made in modernizing the equipment capacity, particularly at our larger facility in Wigram, we've probably started to move a little bit faster with investing in more of that. So there is some timing of payments going on. We expect full year CapEx for this year might be $13 million to $14 million range. Then in ensuing years, I think perhaps we come back closer to $12 million to $13 million, but you certainly wouldn't want to take the CapEx we've incurred in the first half of this year and double it. I think that was a new normal. It's more that $12 million to $14 million range I see for the near term because we're seeing the benefits of the investments we're making in terms of providing us with the additional capacity we need to meet the growth in demand, both for Agri and Industrial, and doing it in a more efficient and effective manner. We'll move to you, [ Rob ].

Congratulations on a great result. To kick off with, so I believe you said that you did 10% year-on-year NPAT growth in the first quarter '26 and then you've delivered 20% for the first half. So there's obviously been a pretty strong acceleration in the second quarter. Can you speak to what drove that? Is it like revenue or...?

Yes. So traditionally, the second quarter is our weakest quarter of the year. So we're always somewhat cautious on that. And certainly, it was our weakest quarter in the year last year. The second quarter has been stronger for us this year. If you look at the delta between Q1 and Q2, it is much smaller in the second quarter of this year, and there's a bunch of factors driving that. We have had stronger demand than we were anticipating, continued strong demand than we were anticipating 3 months ago for our potable water products, particularly in the pipe gasket market in the U.S., and we continue to see strong demand for our dairy rubberware products. They are the 2 biggest contributors to that result in the second quarter. And as I say, when we look at the profile of our earnings typically over many years, the second quarter normally shows a stronger dip than what we've seen this year.

But just to be clear, so -- yes. But a year-on-year basis would take out that quarter-on-quarter strength. So I guess what I'm saying is that revenue was very good for the half, 11%, but that might have accelerated in the second quarter.

Yes, certainly, compared to the second quarter of the preceding year, there was a greater -- if you look at the quarter-by-quarter, the growth rate in Q2 of FY '26 compared to Q2 of FY '25 was larger than it was for the Q1 comparative.

And just on the guidance, so you're guiding to second half NPAT of about $31 million at the midpoint, and that's up 1%. But obviously, there's tariff impacts. So if I think there was $1 million tariff impact in the first half, and you said you'll expect an extra $0.5 million, so long story short, taking out the tariff impact in the second half, it implies underlying growth of 4% NPAT. What is driving that? Because it's a pretty significant slowdown from the 20% and the revenue is accelerating in the second quarter. So what's driving that slowdown in the second half?

I think it's the -- I guess the slowdown hasn't occurred yet, [ Rob ], but I think it's caution -- if you look at the strength of the Agri result, particularly dairy in the first half of the year, we are always mindful of could there be some timing with the demand from some of our international customers. Remember for a lot of these customers, we sell product on a delivered basis. We have had some changes moving to FOB, which gives us greater certainty over when we book the revenue. But with the dairy revenue so strong in the first half, we're cautious over whether this year we might have brought forward some demand from the second half into the first half results. So that's certainly one of the reasons. And then I touched on a few of the other ones. Yes, there's a small impact from the tariff. We have added in some additional costs, which we think is good for our growth relatively immediately, but certainly moving into '27 and '28. And we've taken a cautious view on where the FX rate may sit in the second half of this year compared to where it sat in the first half of this year and indeed in the second half of last year, I guess. So yes, we've been cautious, but I think that's appropriate at this point in time given where we are. We're not backing away from our ambition for the business and the opportunities that we have. But I think it's prudent that we consider all those factors when we provide some future guidance for the near term.

No, that all sounds good. And because obviously, there's been a bit of volatility with stocking and destocking in Agri, so good to be cautious there. But just to be clear then, because it's obviously stellar growth in Agri division. That's historically been about 4% revenue growth. But up to date in the second half, are you seeing any indications that there's been stocking into the channel in Agri?

No. Obviously, we're 1 month into the second half. So our January result was good. Fractionally above our expectations. So we've made a good start to the second half. But we don't have a long visibility really for much of our business. Whilst we have the pattern of demand we have over time suggests we have customers with pretty robust businesses and therefore, pretty robust demand for us. In terms of open orders on the books, other than for sales of products which are going to be on a delivered basis, which is some of the Agri and dairy sales as we talked about, we don't have a long visibility on an order book. So we can't see too far into the future.

Congratulations again, guys.

Rohan.

I just turned my camera one. It's turned off, again. Sorry.

There you go.

Sorry to go on and on about guidance. But through that presentation, you said mining will be up in the second half. Health and hygiene is restarting, so that's up in the second half. Tapware is more normal. So I assume that it wasn't that good in the second half of '25, so that will be better. You've got new Agri products, which are doing $4 million to $5 million incremental revenue. Calf feeding is 4x. You probably didn't have that second half last year. You used to talk about tariffs being a $5 million headwind full year run rate. And I know that's probably phased in over this year, but that's now $3 million, so there's a $2 million upgrade. Smart metering comes in second half, productivity and margin benefit run rates build because you've been installing the CapEx over the half. So I'm assuming that gets better in the halves ahead, hopefully. Footwear is in the fourth quarter, and incoterms, I'm not sure whether that repeats or not, like you said, but there's a possible benefit there. Like are you just being way too conservative?

No, I don't think so, Rob (sic) [ Rohan ]. I think if we break down -- we will tick off and address all of those things. But I'll say, Rob -- sorry, Rob. Sorry, Rohan.

You're close.

He's been called worse.

That's right. Just going back to the calf feeding piece for a moment. Yes, we did have reasonable sales in the second half of last year. So that's a little bit of an unknown for us in terms of what level of market penetration or growth we might achieve in the second half of this year. We are trialing on U.S. farms, and we're into our third round of trials now, but we don't expect that to be a material contributor to the second half performance of the group. But we will have the normal seasonal demand in the New Zealand market, which is most of our calf feeding Thriver sales at the moment. So yes, we expect to get some incremental growth in the second half of the year. We -- I think we're right to be cautious on liner sales because the numbers we achieved in the first half exceeded our expectations. The incoterm boost will not repeat in the second half of the year. That was -- we picked up all of that benefit because essentially what it meant was we got some both delivered sales and then switching to FOB, the timing of recognition became sooner. So that won't repeat in the second half of the year. Thinking about on the Industrial side with pipe gasket sales, they were very strong in the first half. I think we called out potable and wastewater sales were up 17%. They were also pretty strong in the second half of last year. You'll remember last year, I think our first half impact splits were 24% and 30%. And some of that improvement is driven about by a lift in potable water sales into North America. So again, we're a little bit cautious that we won't necessarily see that continue. It's always difficult to -- no matter how many conversations you have with some of those customers and they tell you, yes, it's true demand, then all of a sudden, you find that it's not true demand and they've got a little bit of inventory. So we had some caution around that. And then smart metering, that was really just a hint for the future. This year, I don't want to overstate the contribution of this, but it's a good business to have in Australia. Our sales in Australia next year we expect to grow to in excess of AUD 1 million and then ensuing year up to AUD 1.5 million. This year, it will be less than AUD 0.5 million. So these are good jumps for a business in that market. But we're not talking $2 million or $3 million incremental jumps from a product set like that. And then just mentioning there also your question on the absence of the Gojo product in the first half. We expect the second half to be in line -- we expect the second half to be in line with what we achieved last year. So we'll wait and see how that plays out. So no, we don't obviously provide a range for a reason. And we will be providing our best endeavors to achieve, obviously, the best we possibly can. But we think given the factors that I talked about, that's a sensible range for us to project for the year.

And just on the product suite going forward and the market entries that you've done. I believe foam in Europe, you were hoping to get to breakeven relatively quickly. Can you give us an update on how you're going there? And also the other Agri products, the calf feeding clusters and those things in terms of timing of market launch and expectations?

Yes. So foam in Europe, it's a good one. First half was broadly in line with our expectations. We're not going to get -- whilst we've got a fantastic pipeline of opportunity, the conversion is a little bit slower than we thought. So achieving that sort of, if you like, breakeven point has probably moved out to the end of the fiscal year rather than the midpoint of the fiscal year where we are now. So it's a small headwind against their expectations in the second half of the year. But at the moment, it's a relatively small business. So it's not a massive headwind or contributor to the group overall. So that's where we're at with that. Your other question was on some of the developments in the dairy side. So as I noted, we -- in the image on the page there, we are about to launch the rubber liner, which we sold in very high volumes, the high-performance liner, about to launch that in a single-use preloaded shell. So I was actually speaking to the guy who runs our business in the U.S. this morning on the way it'd work, and see how he's feeling about it. And he's notoriously conservative, but he's pretty optimistic and he said he's had a few customers that, first of all, said to him, no, we wouldn't want that saying they now want to talk about it. So yes, that's a good opportunity for us. It's not that selling it in the shell creates a significant large increment in revenue capture for each product sale, but it gives them another reason to sell our product. So capturing more liner sales is a motivation on providing a product like that to provide the customer with that benefit of a faster change out. In terms of the development of classes and what have you, that's at an earlier stage. So we're not in the market [indiscernible] yet. We've got some prototype products and some early trials happening at farms, but that won't be a contributor to the second half results. What we have done quite well, I think, Rohan, is we also talked about wanting to grow our share in some of the more developing markets. And the 2 that we're primarily focused on is what we call Eastern Europe, but also slightly a wider part of Western Europe that we weren't accessing. And I called out France as a small example there. But also in China, we have existing business in China, but we've now put someone in place over there to provide us with the opportunity to capitalize on what we think is a pretty significant medium-term opportunity to have a more direct relationship with some of the big players over there.

Excellent.

Is there any other questions? We can't see any other hands up, but anyone else got any questions? I can see. I can just quickly check the chat as well. Nothing in there. Okay. If there's nothing else, we'll close it out. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. As I said at the start, obviously, we're very pleased with the result and very appreciative of the contribution that our team make across the world. So I'm sure there'll be a few of them on this call. So thank you guys. You've made a great contribution, and we're in a good place and look forward to future success. Thank you.

Thank you.