Vesuvius plc (VSVS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Vesuvius plc Annual General Meeting Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. John McDonough. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. This is the 2021 Annual General Meeting of Vesuvius plc. My name is John McDonough, and I am the Chairman of Vesuvius plc. It is a little after 11 a.m., and I welcome those joining us via telephone to the 2021 Annual General Meeting. Due to the current COVID-19 restrictions, we are not able to hold a full in-person meeting. On that basis, I have Guy Young, our Chief Financial Officer; Henry Knowles, our company Secretary; and Rachel Fell, our Deputy secretary in physical attendance with me. Darryl Phillips, PwC partner, audit partner; and [ Bish Dash ] of -- our registrars, Equiniti, are joining the meeting by telephone, along with members of our secretariat team. Guy, Henry, Rachel and I are each shareholders in the company. I confirm that we have a quorum of shareholders present in person and by proxy, and I declare this meeting duly constituted and open. With the permission of the meeting, I will take the notice convening the meeting dated the 29th of March as read. Before we move on to the formal business of the meeting, I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of the Board to reflect on the unprecedented times for the Vesuvius business and all our stakeholders. The past 1.5 years has been a period of great personal and economic sacrifice for many, and we have lost a number of valued colleagues as well as people from the broader Vesuvius family. Our thoughts are with them as we continue to do everything we can to support our staff and their families. In the face of these challenges, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our dedicated people across the business for their unwavering determination and support during what has been an extremely difficult time. I would also like to thank Holly Koeppel and Hock Goh, who stepped down from the Vesuvius Board today for their outstanding contributions to the Board over the course of recent years, and we wish them good fortune in their future endeavors. Kath Durrant and Dinggui Gao have been appointed to the Board since our last AGM, and they stand for election by shareholders for the first time today. I am very pleased to welcome them both to the Board. Earlier today, Vesuvius released a trading update providing an overview of the group's current position and prospects. A copy of the full text of this announcement is available on the Vesuvius' website. The outlook statement said that although it is still early in the year and with uncertainty remaining in how the pandemic might still impact some of our key regions like India and Brazil, based on the good commercial performance in quarter 1 and clear evidence of end markets continuing to improve, we expect to deliver group trading profit that is EBITA excluding separately reported items, we expect to deliver that trading profit moderately ahead of the current company compiled consensus of GBP 138 million for the full year 2021. We will now proceed to vote on the resolutions. In line with past practice to record the votes of all the shareholders who have voted by proxy, the vote today will be by way of a poll rather than a show of hand. This means that all votes will be counted according to the number of shares held. I should like to appoint [ Bish Dash ] of Equiniti registrars as the poll's scrutineer. The resolutions for the meeting were set out in full in the notice of meeting. Resolutions 1 to 15 are ordinary resolution and therefore, to be passed, they require a simple majority of 50% of votes cast to be voted in favor of the resolution. Resolutions 16 to 20 are special resolution and therefore, to be passed, they require 75% of votes cast to be voted in favor of the resolution. One of the resolutions relates to the adoption of amendments to the company's articles. I have here with me a copy of the revised articles, which I have signed for identification purposes. A copy of the full revised articles was available to view alongside the AGM notice on Vesuvius' website. I now propose formally that each of the resolutions set out in the notice of meeting and listed on the voting card be put to the meeting as a separate resolution. I confirm that Henry, Guy, Rachel and I submitted votes in respect of our personal shareholdings by proxy in advance of the meeting. As there are no other shareholders in attendance to vote, Equiniti will now proceed to complete the poll. All the proposed resolutions were supported by a substantial margin based on proxy votes submitted by shareholders in advance of the meeting. The results of the poll will be announced later today via a regulatory announcement to the London Stock Exchange and will be posted on the company's website. I would like to thank shareholders for joining the call, submitting their votes by practice -- by proxy. We are looking forward to next year's AGM when we very much hope that we'll be able to meet in person and introduce you to the new members of our Board. This concludes the formal business of the meeting. I declare the meeting closed.

Thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.