Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Ridley Corporation Limited full-year results. 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 Mr. Quinton Hildebrand, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Renan, and good morning to everyone, and thank you for joining us today. With me is Richard Betts, Chief Financial Officer, and Kirsty Clarke, General Counsel and Company Secretary. The results presentation that we're going to be going through today was published on the ASX platform this morning along with other financial disclosures, and you'll be able to access the presentation through this open briefing platform. However, before we start today, I just want to bring your attention to two other disclosures made by the Ridley Chairman, Mick McMahon, in the last 24 hours. Firstly, an announcement involving board succession with Julie Raffe joining the board effective from the 1st of September, and David Lord announcing his retirement from the board after the AGM in November due to his increasing commitments elsewhere. Secondly, the announcement that Ridley will be undertaking an on-marketed share buyback in FY 2023 for up to AUD 20 million, commencing around the 13th of October 2022. If you'd like further information on either of these matters, please refer to the announcement on the ASX platform. I'm now going to commence with the results presentation starting at page two with the FY 2022 financial highlights. I'm very pleased to report our third successive strong performance, a net profit after tax of AUD 42.4 million and an underlying EBITDA of AUD 80.1 million. This is a 16% year-on-year growth in our underlying EBITDA and represents growth in both reporting segments. In addition, the balance sheet was substantially strengthened in the year with a net debt reduction of AUD 60.2 million following the sale of the Westbury extrusion plant and the disciplined capital management within the business. This has taken our leverage ratio to 0.29x, and from this position of strength, we've opted to fund the larger inventory position at the year-end as we've proactively ensured that we meet our customers' demand in spite of fragmented supply chains. This performance has culminated in an underlying ROFI of 10.9%, which has been recognised in the movement in our share price, having demonstrated a 62% lift in TSR for the period. Reflecting the confidence in the sustained performance of the company, the board has opted to declare an AUD 0.04 dividend, up from AUD 0.02 in the prior comparative period, and the intention to commence an unmarketed share buyback of up to 20 million, commencing this half. Behind these financial highlights and moving to the next slide, FY 2022 has been another successful year for the company during which we've completed our first ambitious three-year growth plan. We operated safely through the COVID-19 challenges, met our customers' needs despite the disrupted supply chains, proactively managed through some pretty volatile commodity markets, including the implications of the Russian invasion into Ukraine, and through this, we've increased our asset utilization and added market share, and grown earnings, generated cash, and reduced debt. While performing in-year, we've also been developing our capability for future growth by investing in capital in profit improvement projects and capacity upgrades, recruiting specialized capability that'll differentiate our future performance from our competitors. Richard's established a protected cell captive in Guernsey to access the reinsurance market more directly, and that's enabling us to actively manage our risk and to lower our insurance premiums. We successfully went live with our ERP upgrade and have been deploying NIRS technology more extensively across the business, and at the same time, we've developed our sustainability pathway. All of this is creating a solid platform for the launch of our FY 2023- FY 2025 growth plan that we shared with you on the 31st of May and which I'll refer to later in the presentation. Moving now to slide four with the reporting segments. The package and ingredient segments delivered an EBITDA before significant items of AUD 58 million, up 25% on the prior year, and an EBITDA ROFI of 28.5%. Our ingredient recovery business, which we formerly referred to as rendering, improved its returns as we benefit from our ongoing capital investments and product premiumization, and we're also been enjoying higher selling prices for tallows and oils, some of which is shared with our suppliers. As you know, the feedstock is indexed to the finished product prices, so we share those gains with the suppliers. We've also achieved strong volume uplift in our branded package sales business in both the traditional rural distribution channels, and we've been increasing sales in the urban pet food markets. In the year, we had lower aquafeed volumes following the sale of the Westbury facility as the sales to our salmon customers were curtailed, with production allocated to maintaining our supply to the growing prawn and barramundi markets in Northern Australia. Our Novacq operations in Thailand broke even, however, there was a small loss incurred within this segment due to the costs of the R&D site at Yamba prior to us closing that facility in May 2022. That's the sum up of the segments. I'll now hand to Richard. Sorry, I skipped a page. Moving on to the bulk stock feeds segment, which is slide five of the presentation. This segment delivered an EBITDA of AUD 32.4 million and an EBITDA ROFI of 29%. Pleasingly, we increased the market share across all major species in bulk stock feeds, and the most significant growth volume's coming from poultry and dairy. These volume gains have improved our mill utilization and lowered the costs, and this is the flywheel effect that we have referred to before. We've also leveraged our competitive advantage in raw materials procurement, and that's assisted us in succeeding through what's been a pretty choppy commodity market period. I'll now hand over to Richard to run through the financials in greater detail, as well as our capital management. Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Quinton. Turning now to slide seven, the profit and loss summary. As Quinton has already walked you through, the operating segments delivered a combined EBITDA of AUD 92.3 million, which represented an improvement on the previous corresponding period of AUD 13.3 million or 17%. The corporate costs increased by AUD 2.3 million to AUD 12.2 million, with the underlying costs remaining well controlled. The increase related primarily to the higher accruals associated with the employee incentive schemes, which are aligned to the increase in the performance of the business. During the period, the business reported a net significant gain of AUD 8.9 million or AUD 6.2 million after tax. The gains related primarily to the sale of the Westbury extrusion site in August 2021, the sale of three non-core sites, and the reversal of related excess business restructuring provisions created back in FY 2020. During the period, the business successfully implemented D365, and as a result, incurred a further AUD 2.3 million of costs associated with the provision of software as a service. No further costs in relation to the implementation are expected to be brought to account as individually significant items. Depreciation for the period was AUD 25.8 million, representing a decrease of AUD 3.8 million, which related primarily to the reduction following the sale of the Westbury facility. The increase in income tax of AUD 7.9 million was commensurate with the increase in underlying profit and the net significant gain. Pleasingly, the net impact of the above was an increase in net comprehensive income of AUD 42.4 million, representing an increase of AUD 17.5 million or 70%. On page eight is an overview of the balance sheet, which shows an increase in net assets of AUD 28.5 million. This included the benefit from the retirement of net debt of AUD 60.2 million, which was partially driven through the sale of the Westbury facility and the other surplus assets, which were held for resale in last year's balance sheet. The net working capital increased by AUD 17 million, which related primarily to the strategic decision to hold additional inventory to help support our customers and maintain our margins, given the challenging supply chain and commodity conditions that prevailed during the financial year. These challenges are expected to remain at least into the first half of FY 2023. However, the business is well positioned to react to these. While the net increase in working capital was in line with expectations, the movement in individual line items was significant, reflecting the impact of large increases in the cost of raw materials and higher supply chain costs, resulting in increases in both inventory and creditors at year-end. Pleasingly, the robustness of our business model has been demonstrated as the increases were largely able to be passed on to customers, which is also reflected in the higher trade receivables. Property, plant, and equipment remained in line with the prior year, reflecting our commitment to reinvestment economics. The implementation of some of our CapEx was, however, delayed due to COVID and supply chain-related issues. Turning now to page nine and the group's cash flow. The business reduced net debt by AUD 60 million during the period and currently only has net debt of AUD 22.9 million. The total reduction in debt over the last two years has been AUD 124 million. The net cash flow for the year was achieved on the back of strong earnings performance and the proceeds from the sale of surplus assets of AUD 60 million. The cash flow was negatively impacted by the increase in the working capital of AUD 16.9 million. While affected by rising costs of raw materials, as previously discussed, the primary reason for the increase was the strategic decision to hold AUD 21 million of additional inventory. CapEx during the period was AUD 24 million, resulting from our continued focus on reinvesting in the quality of our assets, with AUD 13 million or 54% of our total CapEx spend relating to maintenance or sustenance capital. Pleasingly, the strong earnings growth over the last two years resulted in the return to paying of dividends. During the period, a total of AUD 17.1 million was paid to shareholders by way of fully franked dividends. The increase in the net tax payments is reflective of the improved operating performance. The prior year was reduced on the back of the large restructuring costs incurred in the FY 2020 financial year. As set out on page 10 of our presentation, the reduction in net debt from AUD 83.1 million- AUD 22.9 million has meant that the company has a very healthy balance sheet and is operating well within our key metrics, with gearing falling from 28.9%- 7.2% and the leverage ratio falling from 1.2x down- 0.29x. The strength of these ratios and the low level of net debt has enabled the business to announce its intention to complete a share buyback of up to 20 million of issued capital. This initiative will be funded through existing facilities and still leave the business with further capacity for investment in growth. Turning now to page 11 and the capital allocation model. This model was implemented at the end of FY 2021 and used to support the prioritisation of our available capital by aligning the returns from the investment in the business and the desire to make returns to shareholders against our communicated metrics. During the period, the business delivered strongly against the model, with the following key deliverables achieved. The business used its strong balance sheet to carry in excess of AUD 20 million of strategic inventory to help minimize the impact of supply chain disruptions, invested appropriately in maintenance capital despite the challenge of COVID-19-related delays, increased dividends both paid and determined from AUD 0.02 per share in FY 2021 to AUD 0.074 per share in FY 2022, including a final dividend of AUD 0.04 per share as announced today. The AUD 0.074 per share in FY 2022 is at the top end of our stated range. These results have helped deliver a total shareholder return of 62% in year. Finally, the combination of the strong operating performance, our improved balance sheet, and strong outlook has enabled the announcement of our intention to complete a share buyback of up to AUD 20 million of issued capital. That concludes the financial component of the presentation. I will now hand back to Quinton to run through the growth strategy. Thanks, Richard. If I can refer you to page 12 of the presentation. I don't intend to go through the growth strategy in detail today, as we did outline that back in May, and we can elaborate that when we go through on the roadshow in a few weeks' time. I do want to just summarize the plan as we have it. This is a plan that's been developed by the team, and we have growth expectations from each business unit within the portfolio. If we just go to the next slide before we get into the new growth plan and we look at slide 13, this is just a summary of the FY 2020- FY 2022 growth plan. Some of you will be pleased this will be the last time you'll see this, but this is the first time we've been able to put the financial results for that plan up. That shows the EBITDA growing from AUD 48 million in FY 2019 through to AUD 59 million, AUD 69 million, and AUD 80 million this year. With this momentum, we've set the growth plan for the business units going forward. Moving to slide 14, and this is the bulk stock feeds reporting segment, where Ridley's got a market share of about 20%. Our strategy is to continue improving our customer experience and winning business and getting higher utilization through increasing volumes. We'll have plans to debottleneck our sites and increase capacity, and all of this will add to the flywheel effect that will grow earnings for the business. If you move to the next slide 15, the packaging and ingredients reporting segment, which consists of four business units, and each one of these has a different strategy within them. Within our ingredients recovery business, the plan is to continue climbing the wall, and that's premiumizing our end product. That will continue to lift our margins in this business as well as give us the capability to pay more for raw materials and continue attracting the supply. In the packaged product business, we look to continue growing our market share with a particular focus on companion animal. In the aqua feed business, our focus is on securing the tropical aqua species shares and making sure that we can differentiate our offering on a number of sustainability solutions that we have developed. Finally, our plans to commercialize NovacqPro and to make sure that we continue the scale-up in Thailand as well as shifting sales, which have historically been domestic, to penetrating the international market. If we move to slide 16, just repeating here the importance of our sustainability pathway to our three-year growth plan, as we see this as a real opportunity for us to differentiate ourselves from our competitors. We've landed on four key pillars here. Sourcing smarter ingredients, optimizing production, delivering effective solutions, and enhancing the meaningful partnerships with our customers, staff, and communities. This pathway's designed to deliver better outcomes, both environmentally and financially, and to present further competitive advantage for Ridley. Moving to slide 17, and no surprise here that the sustainability pathway is a key foundation stone for the FY 2023- FY 2025 plan, and so is embedded at the base. On that foundation, we've identified key optimization and growth initiatives in both bulk stock feeds and our package and ingredients segments. These key initiatives are labelled on the right-hand side of the slide, and our teams will be focusing on executing these initiatives over the next three years. We believe that we can continue to extend the growth that we've achieved in the past three-year plan. As we go forward, we'll be reporting against our performance on this growth plan. That takes us to slide 18, where I just wanted to summarise why we're backing ourselves to continue this growth momentum. Firstly, the macro demand outlook is positive. The Australian farm gate output is forecast to continue increasing. Ridley, as a market leader in the animal nutrition sector, has a number of scale benefits that we can differentiate ourselves on a cost basis. We have the capacity to employ specialists and adopt technology so that can assist us in continuing to differentiate our offering to customers and support our margins. Ridley's got a competitive advantage in the sector within sustainability, and as expectations rise from consumers, we think this remains a real opportunity for us. Ridley's got a geographical spread, and we supply multi-species across the range and have a broad spread of customers. This, together with our risk management discipline, we believe protects our earnings resilience through weather, disease, and market cycles. Finally, we've got a well-defined growth plan and a strong balance sheet. Sticking to our disciplined approach to capital allocation, we think that we're well-positioned to continue to drive growth and take advantage of opportunities that will create shareholder value. Last, moving to the outlook on slide 20, Ridley expects to grow earnings and cash flow in the year ahead by increasing sales as we support the growth of our existing customers and win market share, by implementing cost savings and efficiency initiatives, and by executing on the growth plans in place for each business unit. With the cash generated from operations and a strong balance sheet, we expect to support the ongoing investment in the business and to pay the dividends, leaving capacity for us to undertake the announced on-market share buyback and to pursue growth opportunities. Thank you to you all for staying on to the end of the presentation. I'll now hand back to the moderator, who will field your questions. Thanks. 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 are on a speakerphone, please pick up the headset to ask your question. Please hold while we assemble our roster. Your first question comes from James Ferrier with Wilsons. Good morning, Quinton, Richard, and Kirsty. Congratulations on the result, and thanks for your time. Can I ask about the packaged and ingredients segment first? The second half EBITDA was up AUD a few million on the first half. There's obviously some good drivers there of the full-year growth that you've referenced in the presentation. Can you give some color on the half-on-half increase, please? Thanks, James. Yes, half-on-half, seeing growth in the rendering business, so the ingredient recovery business, and so that ongoing strength there, a number of key projects completing at the start of the second half and contributing to the earnings, and then ongoing price support. The other half-on-half in terms of packaged, pretty steady performance. A marginal improvement in the aqua feed business unit post the Ridley exiting Westbury. Then, importantly, Novacq. You'll recall at the half we indicated that there's a timing in the first half of the year we have work in progress where we're making the Novacq in Thailand, and in the second half we dispatch it from Thailand to Australia and account for that. Those are the contributors to the half-on-half. Excellent. Thank you. That makes sense. Secondly, on the bulk side, that's sort of the opposite. We saw second-half EBITDA decline on the first half, and again, some really good drivers of the full-year growth in that segment. But can you give some color there on the half-on-half decline? Yeah. In terms of volumes, we saw a marginal increase, half-on-half, in the bulk stock feed segment. There was a fair amount of volatility in the raw material side. That was following the Ukrainian war and subsequent movements in commodity prices. As you know, we are successful in passing that through onto the customers and in the marketplace, but there can be a lag in that process. During the second half, we withstood some of that volatility. I don't see any structural issue to our margins going forward. Great. Thank you, Quinton. Third and final question from me, just on the growth initiatives. Can you give us a bit of flavor for what sort of contribution to earnings you achieved in FY 2022 from Project Boost and any other initiatives in play and what you'd expect to fall into FY 2023? Now let Richard answer, please. Yep. Yeah. James, just in relation to and for those who are not aware, Project Boost was a project that we announced in excess of 12 months ago, which effectively is a consolidation of small projects totaling about AUD 15 million of capital spend with an expected benefit of around AUD 9 million, so high-returning projects around the combination of efficiency, debottleneck, and debottlenecking initiatives. It's fair to say that some of the challenges in relation to the supply chain and the issues with accessing, particularly products such as steel and the like, and just accessing equipment from overseas has meant that where we were expecting our first year of contribution from Project Boost in FY 2022, that's now been delayed into FY 2024 just due to the delay in spending. However, we've now had a combination of AUD 11 million of capital that has either now started to be implemented or has been approved. The expectation is that that AUD 9 million would deliver a full contribution in FY 2024. I guess, subject to the timing delays and issues that we're seeing in terms of just putting capital on the ground, we would expect it somewhere in the range of sort of AUD 2.5 million-AUD 4 million of improvement in FY 2023 as a result of Boost. Thanks, Richard. Just to clarify, you mentioned FY 2024 there a few times. Effectively, full run rate in FY 2024, and then you quoted that AUD 2.5 million-AUD 4 million would be the FY 2023 benefit. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Great. Fantastic. Thank you for your time. Thank you, James. Your next question comes from Paul Buys with Credit Suisse. Morning, guys. First one, a follow-up, if I may, please, on that commentary on the bulk side. I don't know if I'm sort of overemphasizing it. Just Richard's comment, I guess, earlier in the presentation, talking about the pass-through and said kind of largely pass-through. Then, Quinton, you were talking about the lag there. I just want to understand that. Does that mean there are parts that aren't pass-through, or does it mean it was largely pass-through in this period and you will get the rest of it at a later stage? Just trying to understand that. With reference to the fact that the second half was down in bulks on both first half and PCP, just trying to understand, is there kind of catch-up that comes in first half 2023, or just trying to put that momentum in context? Yeah. Good. The pass-through should be achieved into the market in full over time. It's just, to answer your question, it's a timing matter. Just to give you some context on that, you'll recall we've got some large monogastric customers who take their own price risk on commodities. In those cases, they bear the impact of rising raw materials immediately. They're sort of excluded. You've got a category of customers that we have, and the example being dairy, where when prices go up, we need to pass those through, and that can take a couple of weeks. We've obviously got to be mindful of what's happening with our competitors as well. There's a short lag on that category. The third sort of category would be our packaged products, where we're supplying through distribution networks, and those require us to change distribution prices and price lists, and that can take over a month to work through. That's sort of the color behind the raw material impact. Ultimately, as our competitors are facing the same underlying cost pressures, those have to be passed through. Just a little bit further to that, James, just to be clear, the use of the term primarily in mind was in relation to just the delays in recovery rather than a shortfall in terms of recovery. Thanks. I'm sorry. Yeah. That was what I was going to say. It was me being picky, not James. Yeah. Sorry. All right. All right. All good. Okay. Just so with your broader outlook comment then on expectations for further growth into FY 2023, just for the sake of clarification, presumably, you would be expecting both divisions to grow underlying profits in FY 2023? Yes. Okay. Okay. That's correct. Thank you. Then just, I guess, on the rendering ingredient recovery side of things, I guess just keen to get a sort of updated market outlook or market expectations from you guys in terms of those selling prices, which has obviously been a favorable tailwind for the last little while. Just want to get an idea of what you're seeing in terms of momentum and expectations into next year for those selling prices. Yeah. We don't see any softness in the price outlooks going forward. In fact, price expectations on tallow and oils in the short to medium term are actually stronger. That's, again, driven by the demand in the U.S. and the government policy, both state and federal, for the biofuels industry. Recent announcements that have just been made by President Biden have just supported that further. The outlook on tallows and oils is for ongoing strength. Meat proteins, we see those prices supported as well. Got it. Thank you. Kind of also an extension, I guess, to James's question, you just touched on Project Boost. Supply chain rationalization, I think you said at the half-year results, which might have been something you'd have done this year. You'd spoken about pushing that into FY 2023. I'm just wondering, given, I guess, ongoing disruption to supply chain, if that rationalization is still something you expect to do next year or if that's perhaps pushed out? We've just started with some of that implementation on a phased basis. Just in terms of some of our transport contracts through a tender process a few months ago, we've consolidated a number of contracts on the bulk stock feed side and with some benefits there that will start to contribute in FY 2023. We've also, just from a procurement, sort of a non-raw material procurement process, we've got some new capability within Ridley and driving a bit more overseas direct procurement. Some small wins have started there. The way I would view that is the supply chain initiative, you can see that it was in the first three-year plan that we had, and it's now pretty prominent in the second three-year plan. It's likely to come to the fore through 2023, 2024, 2025 on a phased-in process. We're probably a little bit more conservative as to how we execute, just given the environment we're in, but we've commenced that. Thank you. Last one from me, pushing my luck a bit here, but just wondering if you had any comments on a news item that's been prominent in the last month or so, which is for the FMD, seems to have died down, certainly in terms of news coverage, but just interested in any comments in terms of how you see that playing out and any potential impact or otherwise to your business. Thanks, Paul. Yeah. We're taking the foot-and-mouth threat very seriously, and we do that for all biosecurity matters. Within our operations, we're very focused and set up for biosecurity risk, and we have very disciplined operating procedures. We have formed a separate sort of oversight group to manage foot-and-mouth internally, and that's just working through the operational aspects. We've done audits of the sites and those kind of things just to make sure we're ready to deal with any risk. We've also we're engaging with externals, both the regulators as well as our customers as well, just to make sure that we're all aligned. We've appointed an external epidemiologist, Mark Stevenson, who's from the University of Melbourne, and he's very involved in the different government bodies. He's just assisting us to review our plans and make sure that we're doing the right scenario planning. As a company, we're well-positioned for these sort of biosecurity risks through our geographical spread and through the fact that we have different species as well as we have a broad range of customers, a broad portfolio of customers. We're as well-positioned as we can and relative to others, but nevertheless, there's just no room for complacency. Got it. Thank you very much, guys. That's all from me. Great. Thank you, Paul. The next question comes from Paul Jensz with PAC Partners. Thank you very much, Quinton, Richard, and Kirsty. I suppose the next growth phase, Quinton, it does depend on that nutrition discussion with customers. Could you go through a little bit about how that discussion is going to premiumize the product that is going to customers? I suppose, Paul, it's different in different segments. Where we're supplying feed, say, through bulk stock feeds and through aqua, our capability, both having species-specific nutritionists with international networks and making sure we're leveraging the latest thinking on nutrition, plus our global mix software, which we're the only ones who operate at that level of sophistication in the country, plus linking our laboratories on both measuring the ingredients coming in the raw materials and then the finished feed product, we're able to hone down our nutritional inputs from both a cost-effectiveness point of view as well as to meet the specific needs of the animal. You want to get it spot on. You don't want to be over-allocating ingredients because it's costly, and the animal doesn't need it, so that's environmental wastage. You don't want to be short on any ingredients or nutrition because the animal will underperform. That capability is important. Particularly in the newer mills, that technology in our mills, and we've got the capability in our people and the nutrition systems. That's a key area for us to continue to invest and to differentiate ourselves because that's our value proposition. In the ingredients recovery business, where we're premiumising our meat protein meals and tallows, and that's coming from, again, using our laboratory and NIRS technology and honing our capability there, but also working quite specifically with some of our end users. This might be in aqua, but also a key market for us is the pet food market, where they're wanting specific digestibility. As you know, we've spent some capital to give us the capability to be able to meet higher-value products that are high spec for niche markets. It's slightly different in different parts of the business, but making sure that we're driving the science is part of our future success. Excellent. Maybe a question for Kirsty then. With the changes that Ridley's made and you've initiated really last three years with relationships with the customers and contracts and the value at risk, I'm interested in Kirsty's experience with contracts and with the way that risk is managed within Ridley and how that's on an improving path, please. Well, we do have standard templates that we use with customers that are tailored to or that are designed to capture the key risks that we have at Ridley in terms of supply. I'd say that we're mature in that area and that we, particularly when we're renewing contracts, we make sure that we're using contracts that are based on the key risks that we have here at Ridley and that we have an understanding of where the liability lies and how that liability is controlled contractually. Yeah. It's just been a big change, I think, in the last few years in that we've gone from a sort of a confrontational type thing three years-five years ago to a more commensurate and collegiate and respectful approach, Kirsty and Quinton. Yeah. I mean, that's absolutely true. Having a contract that can manage the risk and the liability is important. Equally important is to have that understanding and relationship with your customers that you resolve issues as they arise and they don't become legal matters. I think that's, on top of the contractual component, it's that proactivity and approach which is important for us. Maybe switching to Richard for a final question then. It's just this whole value at risk approach and, I suppose, the longer-term nature with inventory. How mature are you now with that sort of process? Is there another iteration, do you think, Richard, to eke out more value, or do you think you've got that mature value at risk model now? Oh, no. I'd never say that we had finished in that space, Paul. I think the very nature of our industry and the opportunities that arise at various stages and the risks that come about means that we're constantly having to look at the nature of our model and how we react. I mean, I think you only have to look at the events of the last six months to indicate when we thought we'd seen it all. You get thrown something else. I think we continue to look at many of those. At the moment, quite often, how we react to that is through manual process. I think one of the things we'll be looking at through D365 and the implementation of the system and then in further enhancements is how we get a more automated view of those things. We'll still never take away from the fact that you need to react and react quickly to changing events, but I think there's certainly more work that we will continue to do and need to do in that space. In terms of the, I think, the maturity level we've got at the moment, it's strong, but I would never say that that work is finished. Thank you very much, Richard, Kirsty, and Quinton. I'll jump back in to keep. Thanks, Paul. Your next question comes from Apurv Segal with UBS. Oh, good morning, Quinton, Richard. Congrats on the result. I just had a few follow-up questions, actually, from some of the previous questions I already asked. Quinton, you made a comment earlier that you expect both divisions to obviously grow in FY 2023 and EBITDA terms. Is that comment consistent for first half 2023 specifically as well on a year-on-year basis, I guess, particularly as the pass-through in that stock feed business starts to come through in the first half? Yes. We do expect volumes in bulk stock feeds to continue to grow, and it's hard to know what's going to happen to commodity pricing going forward, but the pass-through cycle of the first half has realized it in the pricing that we have today. That's subject to what happens from here onwards. Got it. Just to clarify on Project Boost, did you say the contribution there was zero in FY 2022 before hopefully AUD 2.5 million-AUD 4 million EBITDA in 2023 and then the full AUD 9 million in 2024? Did I hear that right? Yeah. It wasn't zero, but it was not significant. I think we saw 4 projects that were completed in the last quarter, and the contribution was sort of in the range of about AUD 100,000 for the year. Closing up at zero. Okay. Then just on the supply chain rationalization piece, again, just wanted to clarify that I got it right. Was that zero in 2022, hopefully a couple million contribution starting in 2023, but maybe you're saying the full benefits sort of come through across 2024, 2025? Is that right? That would be a fair summary. Okay. Just on Novacq then, you've said a break-even result in EBITDA in FY 2022, which is consistent with what you called out, the first half results. Going to 2023 then, should we expect some sort of low single-digit positive type EBITDA number for Novacq? Yeah. I suppose if we go back in so this year, excluding Yamba, was break-even. The prior year we indicated was a minus AUD 2 million contribution from the business to support the growth of Novacq, and we're hoping to keep that sort of trajectory going forward as we increase sales and reduce our costs to grow margin. Perfect. Just Richard, sorry? Yeah, mate. I was going to say while I've got you, Richard, just on inventory and cash conversion into FY 2023, I mean, should we generally expect some sort of normalization over the next 12 months? Yeah. I think, look, I don't know that we would commit to that because I don't think we, in the current environment, we know what the new normal is. Having said that, I think as we're starting to see some of the highs of particularly some of the commodity cycles start to come off, we're starting to look towards our bias being towards a reduction. I think I would be reluctant to commit to anything other than to say the quality of our balance sheet allows us to take advantage of the movements in the cycles in terms of both holding more inventory. However, I will say that our current thinking is if conditions continue as they have, it would be fair to assume there will be some sort of reduction in FY 2023 based on where we sit today. Perfect. Thank you, guys. Thanks, Apurv. Take care, Pip. Your next question comes from Mark Topy with Select Equities. Oh, good morning, Quinton and Richard. First question just around, I suppose, the capital use and obviously the announcement of the buyback. I suppose there's a little bit of a signal on capital management use, but I'm just trying to put that in context, perhaps, of any acquisition opportunities that are out there you might see or just how you think about that. I suppose there's been, over time, rationalization, consolidation in the industry. Is it fair to assume that you think you might be able to, if you like, gain market share, pick up customers that are longstanding customers with existing operators in the business as opposed to perhaps making acquisitions that might bring in customers like that? Just more generally, how do you see the acquisition opportunities out there relative to your balance sheet strength now? Sorry, long question. That's good, and it's a pretty broad one. If I can start at the back end of your question and then work back. As you summarised, first prize for us is to gain market share through our existing assets and get the asset utilization up. We've absolutely been doing that over the last three years. We're growing in market share, and our mills are significantly fuller than they used to be. Part of the growth plan is we've got four debottlenecking projects underway as we speak. We see ourselves continuing to grow in volumes, grow in market share, and attract new customers. That's the first prize. Obviously, there is a transport economics equation in here, and a certain distance from your feed mill, we won't be competitive into a new geography. We will continue to look at acquisition opportunities. We have been, and we haven't made any in that area. The reason for that is just taking a disciplined approach to returns. In some cases, some of the assets that have changed hands haven't had the quality of earnings or the quality of the asset. It just hasn't warranted us making an acquisition. Our returns are coming right now from us investing back in our own assets, organic growth, and these are just debottlenecks with pretty good paybacks. That's what's getting the priority at this point. We'll continue to look at other acquisition opportunities, which, given the debt reduction that we've achieved and the current level of our borrowings, it's sort of AUD 20-something million, means we're in a very strong position. We still want to keep options for M&A opportunities going forward. We want to remain with a conservative balance sheet just due to uncertain times. The buyback at up to AUD 20 million really would move us from AUD 20 million- AUD 40 million in debt, still have a very low leverage ratio, and leave the opportunity for growth and buffer. We think that the board made the decision based on this being a happy hybrid, and we've obviously increased the dividend payments as well. That's sort of a summary on our thinking on capital management. I hope that's satisfied your broad question. Otherwise, happy to take a second on that. Yeah. No. Probably as a follow-up, can you maybe just expand a little more on how much market share you've taken or how do you see the opportunity there? It's hard to put a number around these things. Is it a 5%-10%? Just to give us some quantum and understand that in terms of, say, the Victorian, New South Wales market or however you'd sort of segment it. Yeah. Again, different parts of our portfolio, but if I get your questions are more on the bulk stock feed side. In bulk stock feeds, we would be about 20% of the market. Just based on our volumes and using some ABARES data, we would think that going forward, as we put on with the debottlenecking, some additional capacity, we think that we would be growing at sort of 1% of the market per year. That would be a sort of a target that I would hope we would achieve and would support our growth plan. Right. Okay. That expands that. Just on that cost side and the ability to pass through costs on the bulk, there's obviously been a range of cost increases in addition to raw materials. Does your rise and fall in the contracts permit you to increase on the range of sort of cost input, perhaps energy or other cost inputs as well? Yeah. Good question, Mark. We are. We're feeling the same pressures as everybody in terms of the inflation drivers. We're probably a little better to manage some of these in different areas just given scale and given some of our arrangements that we have and the fact that we're growing in volume, which also helps offset that. We've got a number of cost-out initiatives across the group. All of that helps to offset. Specifically, do we have pass-through mechanisms? Those depend on the different contracts that I sort of indicated. There are contracts that would have a specific material change clause. Yes, we've initiated some of those. Those would be on the term contracts that we have where we've got a multi-year contract in place. In some parts of the business where I talk about the two-week price increase process, that's really just our position relative to the rest of the market. The fact that these cost pressures are widespread and our competitors are bearing the same, we're competing in the end market, and we need to recover and pass through some of those cost inflation aspects. I suppose so do our competitors. Our focus is to make sure that our relative position is better. We're working hard to work on those cost reduction opportunities and to grow the volume, which will sustain that for us. Right. Just lastly, I suppose, and again, in general industry, we've seen most recently foreign companies come in and buy Australian food companies and most recently yesterday in the agriculture space. I suppose my question is, do you think that is a positive in terms of potentially the expansion of Tassal via the Cooke acquisition? Also, is there any risks that you see with a multinational coming in that they might have preferred supply agreements that might disturb existing relationships, if you like? Is it a positive or negative in terms of foreign companies coming in and making these acquisitions? Well, yeah. Might be premature, but yeah. Sure. Just answering that generically, I think we're seeing a trend where we are seeing the trend ongoing in Australian agriculture where we're seeing consolidation and larger production facilities attracting the capital and the technology deployment and those kind of things. By and large, I actually see those as advantageous for Ridley because with these larger well-capitalized players comes higher expectations and more expected from suppliers. Ridley's well-positioned to meet those expectations and to partner and integrate with those larger operating units. I think at a sort of generic level, that's very positive. You referred to the Tassal arrangements and the announcement by Cooke yesterday. I think our sales to Tassal are more around their prawn business whereas we're not prominent in the salmon anymore. Our location to their facilities, the products that we have with Novacq and the like, I think that's how we've got to differentiate ourselves. I think that will be our value proposition to Cooke as well. Yeah, should that go through, we'll engage with Cooke on those opportunities. That might open up other opportunities for Novacq internationally. By and large, I see consolidation and greater technology and sophistication as a plus for Ridley. It helps us partner and support the extraction of value up the supply chain. Right. Okay. Great. Thank you for that. Thanks for your time. Great. Thanks, Mark. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Please hold while we gather the query requests. Brandon, I'm assuming that there are no further questions then. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Sorry, sir. We have a new question from James. You're with Wilsons. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, guys. I thought we were going to wrap up there, but I did have one quick one for Richard, if I may, just on the depreciation. Richard, it dropped a bit into the second half. We can understand why it declined year-on-year for the full year with the exit from Westbury, but declining second half- on- first half, what are you expecting for the year ahead given that run rate? Look, I mean, we're expecting it pretty much to be around the same level into the next year. The reduction was, in reality, only one month extra of depreciation on the basis of because we obviously sold Westbury in August. It's five months versus six months. Obviously, there are some growth initiatives that are coming through as well. I don't see that the depreciation charge will be too dissimilar to what we saw in FY 2022. Is that kind of view on that, John? That's helpful. I mean, on the tax rate, what tax rates do you think we should apply to normalized earnings in FY 2022 given the big items there and what's the rate you would expect for FY 2023? Yeah. Look, I still expect it in terms of this year, we're at about 29.8%. At this point, I'd expect it to be sort of somewhere in the range of 29.5%-29.8% that I'd be working towards, John. Great. Thanks for your time. Thanks, mate. Your next question comes from Apurv Segal with UBS. Thanks, guys. Sorry to drag the call a bit longer. Just had a question on EBITDA skew. Just if I look at FY 2020, second half was about 54% of the full year. FY 2021 was about 53% of the second half. FY 2022 looks like it's 51%. What's sort of the right EBITDA skew first half of the second half we should generally expect for this business going forward? I've looked at historical, and hard to normalize always. Typically, the first half is sort of 50%-52%. Typically, slightly stronger first half. That's just to do with some of the different cycles, Aqua, etc., coming in in the first half and a small amount of seasonality within the bulk stock feeds as well. That would be the historical. In recent years, we've been growing, and so that's sort of offset that to some extent. Then now we've also got a little bit of a difference that'll happen with Novacq, but that's a relatively minor player. I don't know if that's given you any sort of context, but marginally strong the first half is the sort of seasonality bent. Yep. No, perfect. Thank you. Your next question comes from Paul Jensz with PAC Partners. Yeah. The follow-up question was for Richard on the insurance side. Were the insurance costs going up quite a lot? I'm interested in whether this move to base that in Guernsey is a material issue, or is it something that is quite minor in this kind of things? Look, I mean, that's being done for two reasons, as Quinton said. First is from a risk management perspective to broaden the scope of the insurance pool. The other side of it is obviously, everyone's experienced cost pressures. It is about managing costs for us. The reality is by moving to this model, though, that has helped us to keep our insurance at the current levels. We would expect that as we continue to focus on using the captive that hopefully it will be a tool that will enable us to take out any of those big cost increases that have been seen in the past. Certainly, it's been very successful this year in terms of in a challenging insurance environment of ensuring that we've been able to remain where we were, in fact, with a very slight reduction. Thank you. Well done, Richard. Thank you. Thanks, Paul. Cheers.