Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ridley Corporation Limited FY21 first half results presentation. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Quinton Hildebrand, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead. Thank you, Melanie, and good morning to everybody. I'm joined this morning by Alan Boyd, Chief Financial Officer, and Amy Alston, Company Secretary. For those of you who have not yet seen the ASX release today, after almost 12 years at Ridley, Alan has decided to start planning his retirement, and he's afforded us an extended period so that we can go through the process of appointing the next CFO of Ridley. This has given us the capability to make sure we have an orderly transition. In the meantime, Alan remains fully engaged as CFO of Ridley and is heavily vested in the results that we'll be presenting today. As the first step in this transition, today the board has announced that Amy Alston will take on the role of Company Secretary in addition to her role as General Counsel. Amy has previously held the role of general counsel and corporate affairs director, which included company secretary at Murray Goulburn Co-operative, and she's had previous senior roles at Deutsche Bank, Singtel, Optus, MinterEllison and so she's well experienced for this role. The format for the presentation today, Alan and I will run through the first half results presentation, and then we'll hand over for some questions. Just following through from the investor presentation that's up on the ASX website, I'll be starting at slide two, the highlights. We're very pleased to announce that today we have an EBITDA from ongoing operations and before significant items of AUD 37.6 million, which is 12.9% up on the prior comparative period. This has been driven by the execution of our growth strategy and has been achieved even though we've faced the transition from drought and the seasonal impacts of that, as well as the challenges of COVID-19. We're very pleased with the profit performance of the business in this half. Equally, our focus on cash management has delivered a AUD 21.4 million net cash inflow as we've reduced our working capital. As we advised at the 30th of June, we were carrying quite significant COVID contingency stocks, and we've managed to reduce some of those, although we are carrying some additional contingencies for obvious reasons. This also signals a return to a normal CapEx environment after the completion of the major asset refresh with the opening of the Wellsford feed mill in July last year. If we move over then to the segment reporting, following the restructure that took place in the FY 2020 year, and with effect from the 1st of July last year, we've adopted two reporting segments. These are the bulk stock feeds reporting segment and the packaged feed and ingredients reporting segment. If we move through to those slides on slide five, you'll see that the bulk stock feeds performance in this period was AUD 14.5 million EBITDA, which is down 20% on the prior comparative period. This was a result of the drought feeding ceasing and a reduction in the beef and sheep sales in this period relative to the prior comparative period. Also, the abundance of pastures has also impacted the dairy volumes as dairy farmers have the benefit of good on-farm grazing. Despite a reduction in the sales to the ruminant sector, we've seen an improvement in the monogastric sales. That's through the broiler, layer, and pig volumes growing up, and that's been a welcome offset. As far as the margins are concerned, we've seen the mix changing. Obviously, we make more margin on the smaller sales as opposed to the large monogastric sales volumes. Also, there's been some impact as we've transitioned from the smaller grain crops and raw materials from the prior year, moving into what has been a very good crop growing season and the reduction in prices over that period has meant that we have carried through some of the higher value prices. There's a bit of a tightening contribution there which has impacted us within this half. I also call out there that as part of our Northern Victoria with the transition to our new Wellsford feed mill, we have had a transition period whilst we've been operating the Mooroopna feed mill as well, and that will be closing at the end of this week. The costs of operating Mooroopna have been borne within this half that we are considering. Moving to the next reporting segment, and that's the packaged feeds and ingredients. This segment had an EBITDA performance of AUD 23 million in this first half, up 52% on the prior comparative period. This reflecting strong performance in rendering, driven by the prices. Obviously, the droughts impact has meant that there's a drop in the red meat raw material supply into the rendering industry, and that has supported prices of finished product. Pleasingly, we've also seen good improvements in the operational efficiency and yields driven by the plant reliability and interventions in raw material segregation. A good performance from the rendering business unit. The branded packaged sales through the rural network and the urban pet specialty store chains traded well and on the back of targeted marketing and promotional campaigns. The aquafeed sector continues to be highly competitive. With the construction of two new extrusion plants in Tasmania in the last two years, one of those being our Westbury plant. We're pleased to say that even though this is a highly competitive sector, we have grown volumes through our aquafeed sales in this period. Finally, with effect from the 1st of July 2020, the Novacq Thailand operation is no longer capitalized and is reflected in the numbers as a commercial operation. We've sold all the available product in prawn feed predominantly into the Australian operations. That's the breakdown on the segments as we had reported. Also, I skipped over slide number three. I do want to just highlight that in addition to the financial performance that we've achieved and that we are pleased with, this has been complemented by a record safety performance within the business, as well as an 8% improvement in our employee engagement score. That really demonstrates the stability of our operations over this period. I want to acknowledge the Ridley employees for their enormous commitment during what has been a challenging period, but we've kept customers fully supplied and also have managed to improve our efficiencies and grow profitability while dealing with the challenges of COVID-19. This set of results is something that the employees of Ridley should be proud of. I'll hand over to Alan now to take us through the detailed financial results. Okay. Thank you, Quinton. If we move to the profit and loss summary, the first financial slide, Quinton's already referred to the segment reporting. This is a format that we can follow now. It'll be consistent with what you'll see in the annual report and the 4D and the 4Es as we move forward. AUD 37.6 to AUD 33.3 year-over-year equivalent comparison, excluding significant items. We've got an AUD 600,000 reduction in corporate costs period to period. That just reflects the FY 2020 restructure that we did and ongoing cost control. That flows down to the next line. Individually significant items before income tax, we sold the last remaining parcel of land at Lara in the period. We recorded an AUD 1.8 million pre-tax profit on that. The prior year period of AUD 12 million, that excludes Last year when we reported that, we included a AUD 2.6 million favorable offset with regard to the introduction of the lease accounting standard. Because we've got two consistent periods with that new standard in operation, we've taken that AUD 2.6 million back out and put it up into the normal EBITDA from operations, because that's how it's going to be reported going forward. That's why that figure is different. There were AUD 12 million of adverse individually significant items at the half year last period. Our depreciation and amortization charge has gone up. That's largely due to the commencement of depreciation at the Wellsford facility, which was formally opened in July and depreciated from that month. The net finance costs reflect two interest rate reductions in November and one in March 2020, and lower debt levels as we start to pay back or pay down the debt that we've got. A AUD 400,000 reduction period to period. The income tax expense reflects the increase in operating profit for the period. Within that period, there's a AUD 570,000 tax on the profit on sale of Lara. There's an over-provision of tax reported at 30th of June that comes in to offset that. That gives a AUD 5 million charge for the period. The corresponding period last year was a benefit of AUD 0.8 million as a result of those individually significant items. It drops down to a net profit of AUD 11.569 million, compared to AUD 0.396 million in the prior period. Up AUD 11.1 million. If we very quickly move to the balance sheet assets, the cash and cash equivalents is simply a function of what's in the bank account based on collections and payments, that cycle. That does fluctuate on a daily basis. The important component there is net debt, which we'll touch in a later slide. We did have some contingency stocks at 30th of June, which increased our inventory to AUD 104.5 million. We're progressively working down that as we gain confidence in the supply chains to be able to withstand any further outbreaks of the pandemic. We've got nearly AUD 10 million reduction in the first half, we want to make further inroads into that in the second half. Our receivables profile is very consistent from a day-to-day perspective. We do operate within that 32 to 35 days of sales outstanding. Again, that's just a function of timing around the half year close. As a result of a lot of work that went into the finalization of the 2020 tax return in the after reporting the full year results, we've got a tax receivable position when we finally lodge an amended return for 2020. That'll be cash in the bank coming through in the second half year in and around that AUD 2.2 million mark. The assets available for sale at 30th of June that we had of AUD 0.2 million represents the Lara property that was sold in the period. That's why that's gone to zero. With the completion of the Wellsford feed mill, that concluded the major asset refresh program. There hasn't been a great deal of movement in property, plant and equipment, the net carrying value over the period, but that's despite the increase in depreciation that we've talked about in the earlier slide. Again, the transition of the Novacq operation in Thailand from an applied R&D project recorded as an intangible and capitalized, moving now to operations, means that that expenditure that's previously been capitalized is now coming through in the operating result. There are some non- current receivables. The tax assets on deferred tax, that's just a function of the timing of the tax assets and benefits moving forward in the future. All drops down to AUD 631.7 million total assets reported at 31 December. In the next slide, we'll just touch on liabilities. Current payables, again, is just a function of our normal trading terms and the timing of how month end falls, and our trading terms. At 30th of June 2020, we were required under the accounting standard to report our borrowings as current, but we've reverted back to the non-current traditional disclosure further down the slide at AUD 161 for 31 December versus the AUD 193 as at 30th of June. The important component is the net debt, which has reduced from AUD 147.2 down to AUD 125.8 when you offset the cash and cash equivalent balances. Hasn't been a great deal of movement in current provisions over the period, or the current lease liabilities, but the non-current lease liabilities has gone up significantly as a result of the extension of a number of property leases, which are long-tailed. Therefore, the lease liability beyond 12 months of reporting date has increased by approximately AUD 6 million. Overall, those numbers dropped down to a 275.9 net asset position. That reflects the earnings, also movement in reserves. There was AUD 1.6 million worth of share capital issued in the period. That was equity consideration in payment in the six-month period of accrued FY 2020 short-term incentive entitlements. There are some components that you'll see within the Appendix 4D balance sheet reflecting those movements. If we move to the cash flow slide, the next slide, we'll start with a consolidated EBIT. We add back the depreciation and amortization, which is non-cash, to give us a consolidated EBITDA, which is a good surrogate for our initial cash. We look at what's happened to the movement in working capital, which is essentially debtors, creditors, and receivables. We've had a favorable movement for the period of AUD 2.2. We've always reported our maintenance or stay in business CapEx as a mandatory cash outflow. We have to maintain the assets and keep them safe. We put that above the line, as we call it, to give us an operating cash flow of AUD 30 million. In our development CapEx, you can see we've tailed off significantly following the completion of the Wellsford feed mill opened in July 2020. AUD 24.8 in the prior period versus AUD 2.6 in the current period. I did mention before about Novacq Thailand moving from an applied R&D capitalized intangible project to operations, that's essentially the reduction from period to period in the expenditure in that regard. There was no final dividend paid in the period compared to the AUD 2.75 paid in the prior period. The net proceeds of the sale of property from at Lara was AUD 2 million for the period. Net finance costs and tax payments are just a function of timing of the bank facility interest payments, tax installment payments. Lease payments now. What we do now is we capitalize the right of use assets on the balance sheet with the equivalent lease liability as a current and non-current liability and record the lease payments as a cash outflow in the cash flow. The 21.4 that Quinton had in one of the earlier slides, that's where you see that number. That's essentially the overall cash inflow that we've had for the period that we've been able to apply against our net debt to take it down from AUD 147.2 at 30th of June to the AUD 125.8 at 31 December. In the final financial slide, we've introduced a new slide here on net debt gearing and leverage. The first three rows of the table there talk about the development CapEx that we've had over the period, and you can see the extent of the major asset refresh with over AUD 95 million spent between FY 2018 and FY 2020 on Westbury and Wellsford together. The impact that that's had on net debt is the next three rows. We've got gross debt, again, just plucked from the balance sheet, less the cash and cash equivalents from the balance sheet gives us a reported net debt. Then we've just gone and dropped that down to what our gearing is, which is a net debt to net debt plus equity calculation based on our banking covenants. You can see we peaked at 36% at 30th of June 2020, and have reduced that down to 31.3% with hopefully further inroads in the second half of the year. The other critical bank covenant that we operate against is the leverage ratio, which is our 12 months of EBITDA performance at any reporting period, against the net debt position. That dropped down, it was peaked at 2.73, actually, at 31 December, marginally reduced at 30th of June to 2.63. Significant reduction with that AUD 21.4 million going off against the net debt for the six months. Significant reduction to take that down under two and report a 1.9 leverage ratio at 31 December. They're the key financial components of the result, and I'll hand back to Quinton. Thanks, Alan. Moving on to slide 13. In keeping with the theme that we introduced 12 months ago, I've repeated the growth strategy slides just to remind shareholders of what we are doing to drive the underlying performance of the business. If we flick over to slide 15, starting at the top right-hand side, we're making progress in driving the efficiencies of Novacq and progressing international sales. We've changed the coloring of the new range for packaged product, as we've now commenced the launch of some new packaged products, which will come to market in the second half. That's now partially executed. There've been some further customization of products out of the rendering business. Looking at the sales side, good progress being made driving our sales performance. As indicated previously, this has been facilitated by our new structure and also the support we're giving from a technical basis, through to the sales teams. I've reported previously that our bulk stock feeds mills are at about 80% utilization and our extrusion facility is at about 70%. There remains opportunity there for us to grow and we're focused going in on the sales. Today, I thought I would focus a little bit more on our supply chain aspects and the optimization there. If you move over to slide 16, you can see the next round of optimization within our core business. You can see on the right-hand side chart there, just an illustration of how our rendering and the ingredients from rendering and Novacq, flow into what is the three operating business units of stock feeds and packaged and sups and aqua feeds. Obviously, those ingredients from rendering and Novacq, a portion of them are flowing directly through our feeds to our customers. We also have sales both domestically and export in the case of rendering and export within Novacq. This level of integration within our business gives us the opportunity to really differentiate for our customers and the integration of our supply chain and the closeness with which we can work with our customers to get the optimization of their livestock performance. Obviously, the relationships that we have with the processors giving us byproducts back through the rendering business. Where we're really focused now and in the next 12 months is really on driving our competitive advantage through our place in the market. We're focused on our nutritional capability, we're the only provider with experts in each of the species. Leveraging our procurement volumes and the merchandising team within Ridley and the capability to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities across different ingredients in different parts of the country. Having completed the asset refresh, we have new large-scale assets, it's a leverage technology across our whole operational supply chain to deliver more efficiencies and value. Continuing to work at optimizing the ingredients coming out of the rendering business so that we can customize those for the needs of our customers. Moving on to slide 17. This is the group of people, the leadership team behind the transition that we're going through and the successful change management that's been delivered. As you can see on this slide, with the years of service, there's a real mix of long-term Ridley experience and some fresh approaches with four new additions over the past 12 months. This is the team that's working hard on driving the next phase of our growth strategy. Moving finally to the outlook, which you'll find on slide 19. We consider that we have the controls in place to manage employee welfare as well as protect against the potential business interruptions from the ongoing risk of COVID. We've seen that this has stood us in good stead up until now, and we remain prepared for future disruptions. In the second half, we see earnings being supported by an improvement in the bulk stock feed segment from the ongoing strength within the packaged feeds and ingredient segment, as we enjoyed in the first half, and the continuing implementation of the growth strategy. The net upshot of this is we see operating cash being generated within the business and with the prudent management of working capital, we see that this should result in a further reduction in our term debt by the end of the financial year. That concludes our presentation for this morning, and I'll hand back to Melanie to take any questions that anybody has on the call. Thank you. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Paul Jensz with PAC Partners. Please go ahead. Hello, Quinton and Alan. Morning, Paul. Hey, Paul. All right. Just main questioning is around the aquaculture space where there's obviously a major push on there, Quinton and Alan. You talk about the competition coming in. Are you able to talk about, I suppose, the way that you're winning new volumes down there, in the short term and the medium term, please? Great, Paul. Yes. As you know, we constructed and commissioned our Westbury operation in July 2019, and one of two that is down there constructed a new facility which came online about this time last year. Yeah, we've seen the increase in capacity within the sector. We divide up the aqua sector into what we've called temperate species, which would be majority being salmon and then in Tasmania as well as in New Zealand, and then also the yellowtail kingfish on the mainland. That would be the temperate and, that's probably given the location and the three plants in Tasmania, that's a very competitive area. That segment also had some impact, through the impacts on food service. Very competitive market and, but despite that, we've managed to hold our position. Obviously, we would have liked to have grown that, but that hasn't been such the case. If we look at the tropical species, and so this is mostly prawn, barramundi, et cetera, we've seen good growth in that area with the expansions that are happening and the investments that our customers are taking. As a result, there's been quite significant growth in our sales into that sector as our customers have been growing. The net of it all is that, we've seen a lift in our sales volumes, through our two aquafeed extrusion plants. We do operate them together, so, we're optimizing production between the two. We've also focused on cost reduction in those operations. The net of that is that, we've actually had a positive contribution despite, it being competitive and margins being under pressure. Just a couple of questions around that, Quinton. I suppose the amount of pet food that you're making with, particularly the Tasmanian plant and then how you're leveraging Novacq into expanding your aqua feed, please. The companion dog food, which we're producing is happening up in our Narangba plant. As we've grown production through that plant, we've shifted some of the aqua sales down to Westbury, so that's how we're operating together. Yes, that's a focus on the companion sector for us, and that's contributing volumes as well. As far as Novacq's concerned, as you know, we're obviously the only domestic seller of product containing Novacq, and the performance of our product continues to deliver good performance in the prawns. That has been a, it's a competitive advantage in our offering, particularly in the early-stage diets of what's been supplied into the prawn sector. We're enjoying the benefits of being able to offer this bespoke ingredient through our aqua sales. Thank you, Quinton. I'll go back in the queue. Great. Thank you, Paul. Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one. Well, Melanie, if there don't seem to be any more questions, I know there will be opportunities in the coming weeks if there are any others. Paul, I believe, Melanie, that Paul's got another question there. If I could, I went back in the queue. Thank you. Didn't realize it was a queue of one, Quinton and Alan, and Melanie. You're welcome. Just on the, I suppose, the cash flow being very impressive performance there, Alan. Is that something that you can continue into the second half? Is this, I suppose, a step change in the way that you're dealing with your customers? Well, I guess there's three components to the answer of that, Paul. The first drop cash flow is obviously earnings. Quinton's commented on that we think there's some strength in the second half from that perspective. The second component of that is working capital. To be honest, we don't have a lot of leverage around our debtors and our payables if we stick within our trading terms. As you mentioned before, the aqua sector is under a little bit of pressure to extend trading terms as part of a competitive environment. The main lever is inventory. As I said in going through the financials, we did get nearly an AUD 10 million reduction from the 30 June levels. We'll have to see what level of confidence we have at 30 June 2021 with regard to where the pandemic sits and any contingency levels that we have, and also whether there are some opportunities in the marketplace that we might take positions on to go a little bit longer. Otherwise, we'd hope to squeeze a little bit more out of working capital from that perspective. Then I guess the third component is CapEx. We have a very tight process now and a monthly council where all business units are represented and put forward their case. It's a capital allocation on a scarce resource basis. By maintaining the control of that, and it's probably worth pointing out now as well, that sort of maintenance CapEx to depreciation nexus is well and truly broken with the major asset refresh that we've had. It's no longer a valid comparison to say, "Oh, well, maintenance CapEx has gone below D&A" because D&A went up a lot, and we would expect maintenance to go down a bit with regard to the new plants that we've got. All I can say there is there's tight control over the maintenance CapEx. We're still open to receiving proposals from the development CapEx side. The operating cash flow line that we'll be continuing to report at the full year, it should be positive on all three of those fronts. The other question there is around dividends, Alan. I've only had a brief look at the numbers, but I didn't see a statement there as to the change on the dividends, because I think you stopped the dividend there at the second half last year. What's the policy around dividends as we improve the cash flow? Yeah, Paul. You're right. There was no payment at the end of last financial year. Again, the board has taken the decision not to pay an interim dividend now. Our job really is just to keep focus on driving the performance of the business and the cash flows, and that'll give the board options down the track. As you've highlighted, we're focused on cash generation, and we'll leave that up for the board to deliberate at the end of the financial year. As part of the normal half and full year sign-off mechanism, we put a detailed analysis up to the audit and risk committee, which meets ahead of the board meeting, and we look at all the forecasted cash flows, the threats and opportunities and the outlook with regards, and our debt position. Those factors are all considered in a detailed analysis at that point in time. The payment timing will be at the end of October. The board, in reaching its decision on this interim, has only considered the current scenario and decided that debt retirement for the second half of the year remains the priority. Good. Okay. All makes sense to me. Thanks, Alan. Thanks, Quinton. Thank you, Paul. Great. Thanks very much, Paul. Thank you. And I am. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Hildebrand for closing remarks. Great. Thank you, Melanie. Thank you to those who've attended today. I wanted to just highlight, this is after a significant business reset in the FY 2020 year, with some significant items that were incurred. This is a set of results which is clean and definitely demonstrate our focus on cash. That's where we're focused, and we look forward to presenting to you our full-year results in six months' time. Thank you very much. Thanks for your attendance today. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.