Trifast plc (TRI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Trifast plc Annual General Meeting. [Operator Instructions] I'd now like to hand over to Company Secretary, Christoper Morgan. Good afternoon.

Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon to everyone who joins us here today in the room and also on our online platform, and welcome to the 2024 Annual General Meeting of Trifast plc. My name is Christopher Morgan, as Mark indicated, and I'm the Company Secretary. Before we start the formal business, followed the meeting, some housekeeping points. If you did have your all headphones on mute, please, we are not expecting a fire drill. But if you -- for those who are in the room and are attending our U.K. national distribution center, if you do hear the fire alarm sound, please make your way through the doors here and follow the letter at exit signs, and that will take you outside to the building where a role call will be taken. For those of you joining us on Investor Meet platform, please ensure obviously that you are aware of your safety aspects of wherever you are located today. I can confirm that this meeting is recorded and will be uploaded to our website following the meeting. And if I can now pass over to our Chair, Serena Lang.

Good afternoon, and welcome to shareholders and guests to our Annual General Meeting 2024. May I take the opportunity first to introduce our Board members. On my right-hand side here, Iain Percival, our CEO; and then Kate Ferguson, our CFO. Our independent nonexecutive directors, we have Clive Watson, our Senior Independent Director; We have Louis Eperjesi, who's our internet nonexecutive director chairs in responsible business; Laura Whyte, who's Chair of our Remuneration Committee; and our Non-Executive Director, Nick Mills. As a team, one of our key objectives is to improve the sustainability, the financial sustainability of the business and make Trifast more resilient, stronger, more efficient and create value for all our stakeholders. The 1 TR strategy that Iain and the executive leadership team have developed under the Recover, Rebuild, Resilience framework is aimed at achieving just those objectives. As you have read in our annual report, we've started the transformation journey and the year being reported upon has been one where we faced both internal and external challenges, but also we've been able to celebrate success. Part of the success that I referred to is reflected in where we're standing today, or sitting today, in fact. And on behalf of the Board and my colleagues, we welcome shareholders and guests to our national distribution center. 75,000 square-foot facility here in the Midlands, which has enabled us to consolidate all of the TR U.K.'s operations and gives us the ability to focus on the drive to improve productivity and returns whilst creating a single center of excellence for our customers, both now and in the future. Before we start the formal business of today, I would like very much to congratulate Kate Ferguson on her appointment to the Board as CFO with effective of today. Kate is already a tremendous asset to us as a Board, having been acting CFO since February. And her diligence gives us the data and the confidence to be able to navigate this journey we have ahead of us. This morning, many of you will have read our trading update, which I shall now read out. We are pleased to report that trading in the first 4 months of the current financial year has been in line with the Board's expectations. Our objectives delivering margin improvement year-on-year, together with enhanced cash generation through working capital improvements are also on track. Whilst economic and geopolitical challenges remain, we are committed to the execution of our 4 key strategic initiatives, those at margin improvement, focused growth, organizational effectiveness and operational efficiency. All of which will enable us to maintain the positive momentum as we look to make progress on our Recover, Rebuild, Resilience journey. As a Board, we are driven by the need to deliver against our midterm strategic growth drivers and a significant opportunity that exists to return performance to historic levels, whilst rebuilding our employee value proposition. Trifast has a proud heritage and is fortunate to be able to call on a number of talented teams as it looks in the next chapter of its growth and success story. The group expects to release its results for the 6 months ending 30th of September 2024 in November of 2024. And let me now formally welcome everybody to this year's Annual General Meeting. I have pleasure in declaring the meeting open. And unless anybody objects, I propose that the notice of the meeting -- convening the meeting to be taken as read. Thank you. If anyone would like a tour at the building at the end, please do let us know because we have made arrangements for this. And as Christopher mentioned earlier, we're also live streaming the AGM to our investor meet company in order that the AGM is accessible to as many shareholders as possible, and I welcome all of you that are online with us today, and thank you for joining. Now on to the formal business of the AGM, I will read each resolution for shareholders in the room to vote. And unless anyone has any specific questions about the specific resolution, I propose that we need your questions until the end. So on to the resolutions. Resolution 1, to consider the company's annual report and financial statements and the reports of the directors and auditors for the year ending 31st of March 2024. Resolution 2, to approve the directors' remuneration report as contained in the annual report. Resolution 3, to approve the directors' remuneration policy. Resolution 4, to approve a final dividend of 1.2p. We will now move on to the resolutions to reelect and elect the directors. Resolution 5 is to reelect Clive Watson as a Director. Resolution 6, Louis Eperjesi. And now I should pass you over to Clive Watson to propose Resolution 7.

Resident from 7 is to elect Serena Lang as a Director.

Resolution 8 is to elect Iain Percival as a Director. Resolution 9 is to elect Laura Whyte as a Director. And Resolution 10 is to elect Nicholas Mills as a Director. Moving on to ordinary resolutions. Resolution 11 is to appoint BDO as auditor of the company. Resolution 12 is to authorize the directors to fix the remuneration of the auditor. And Resolution 13 is to allow directors authority to allot shares. Moving on to the special resolutions now. Resolution 14, to allow the directors authority for the disapplication of preemption rights. Resolution 15, to allow the directors authority for this application of preemption rights for an acquisition or capital investment. And Resolution 16, to authorize the company to make market purchases of its own shares. And also, Resolution 17, with a general meeting other than an Annual General Meeting, may be called on not less than 14 clear days notice. And finally, those are resolutions relating to the share plan rules. Resolution 18, to approve the executive turnaround plan. Resolution 19, to approve the equity incentive plan. And lastly, Resolution 20, to approve the Save as You Earn plan. The final results of the meeting will be available on our website later today. And that concludes the formal business of our 2024 Annual General Meeting. So thank you for that.

Thank you, Chair. If we can all move to Q&A, for any of the directors here today. We've had no questions submitted in advance of the meeting. So I'm happy to take any questions from the room first. And obviously, through the Investor Meet platform, they can be presented as well, but if I can take any questions that may exist in the group.

I read that the new MRP system is completely now installed. I just wondered, was that letting in [indiscernible]?

Yes. Thank you for the question. That's correct. So the ERP implementation program we completed successfully at the end of last financial year, so at the end of March. And actually, we have already begun and seeing some of the benefits in terms of data availability. One example I would call out is the improved visibility on stock allows us to drive the working capital improvement, manage stock more efficiently, which ultimately is helping us generate cash. So we're already seeing benefits coming through from the system, clearly more to come.

And I could see from the information boards outside, you've worked closely with your customers. I just wondered what collaboration you have with other companies that supply parts because at the interface between your products and other people's products, that's quite important that they actually need to work well together. So I noticed again from the areas you like to promote products, say, a company [indiscernible] does the wiring. And I just wondered, did they do the connections at either end? Or do you collaborate with something like that or -- but they fixing some fasteners each?

David, what I'm going to do is I'm going to get, because I know you're going to have a visit afterwards. I'm going to get the team to take you through that question if I can because it's operational relevant relation today's resolutions. And just to help answer that question once you go around with us, is that okay?

Yes. I wasn't sure how many patents you had on your products. And what kind of approach you have to -- if you have any enforcement of those patents?

Should I answer that -- yes. So yes, we do have patents on some of our products. And clearly, as you've called out, the focus on our engineering, particularly the application engineering work that we do with our customers through that, we continue to develop patents. And of course, we protect our development so that we return the full value for the company and for our shareholders.

So on the enforcement side of that?

So we -- as of today, we haven't had to have any specific enforcement actions.

Any other questions in the room? If I can move then to the Investor Meet company platform. And to answer, too, if there's any questions there.

There are no questions, Chris, from online currently.

That's fine. Okay. Serena, I'll pass it over to you.

Goo. Well. Excellent. Well, on that basis, thank you all for joining us online today. And for those of you here today, thank you for taking the journey up. And there are some refreshments here at the back of the room and some lunch. And as I said, anyone that would like to take a tour, please ask Chris, he'll make sure that it's organized. Thank you very much.

That's great. Thank you to the Board of Trifast. Could I please ask attendees not to close the session. We'll now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the Board can better understand your views and expectations. So take a couple of moments to complete. I'm sure it'll be greatly value by the company. On behalf of the Board of Trifast plc, I would like to thank you for attending today's Annual General Meeting. Good afternoon to you all.