Good morning. Welcome to the Glanbia Plc half-year 2021 results call with Siobhán Talbot, Group Managing Director, and Mark Garvey, Group Finance Director. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Liam Hennigan, Group Director of Strategic Planning and Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you, operator. Good morning and welcome to the Glanbia half-year 2021 analyst results presentation. During today's call, the directors may make forward-looking statements. These statements have been made by the directors in good faith, based upon the information available to them up to the time of their approval of the Glanbia plc half-year 2021 interim financial statements and analyst presentation. Due to the inherent uncertainty, including both economic and business risk factors underlying such forward-looking information, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. The directors undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made on today's call, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I'm now handing the call over to Siobhán Talbot, Group Managing Director of Glanbia plc. Good morning, everybody. I hope you're all well. Thank you very much for joining Glanbia's half-year 2021 results call. This morning, I'm going to cover the results. I'll provide an operating and strategic update for our segments, and I conclude with an outlook for the remainder of the year. I'm joined this morning by the Group Finance Director, Mark Garvey, and he will go through the finances. Firstly then, turning to our half-year results, I'm delighted to report that Glanbia has delivered a very strong performance across all our financial metrics for the first six months of 2021. As always, this is due to the efforts of our people, our supply chain partners, and of course, our customers and consumers. COVID, as we know, has not gone away, and the teams continue to execute really well, both operationally and strategically, while navigating the ongoing challenges of this pandemic. We delivered a very strong top-line result in the H1, and within our key platforms, GPN delivered like-for-like branded revenue growth of 30.5%, and Nutritional Solutions grew revenue by 20.7%. This growth has been converted into a significant profit uplift, with GPN EBITA up year-on-year 418.4%, and GN EBITA up 17.1%. In turn, that has delivered adjusted earnings per share growth of 85%. While the prior year Q2 comparator for GPN was undoubtedly very challenged due to COVID, underlying consumption trends remain very strong for GPN. Our Nutritional Solutions performance was quite robust through COVID in 2020, and in that context, the business and team delivered a strong build on that performance in 2021. Our H1 2021 performance in both GPN and GN Nutritional Solutions was well ahead of where we were in the H1 of 2019. Our strong operating performance also delivered rolling 12 months operating cash conversion of 129.6%. This has left the group in a strong position to invest in growth and to also increase returns to shareholders. We've increased our interim dividend by 10%. Today, we're launching a new EUR 50 million share buyback program. Including these initiatives, over the past five years, we'll have returned almost EUR 500,000 million to our shareholders. Looking at the strategic update. As well as delivering a strong operational and financial performance, we made significant strategic progress in the H1 of the year. Within GPN, the transformation project, which commenced in late 2019, is very much on track and delivering ahead of expectations. We're really excited to have the acquisition of the 60% stake in LevlUp, a profitable e-commerce gaming nutrition brand for our GPN direct-to-consumer portfolio. The GN team completed the commissioning of our new $470 million joint venture plant in Michigan on behalf of the JV partners. At the group level, we strengthened our balance sheet through continued strong working capital management and a further reduction in our exposure to defined benefit pension schemes by restructuring legacy U.K. schemes. We’ve also progressed our ESG agenda, where we have both established a board committee to oversee delivery of this agenda and also allocated responsibility for the area to a senior member of the executive team. This will bring further focus and accountability to our strong ambitions across all of the pillars of environmental, social, and governance. Turning to our outlook for the remainder of the year. The positive trends we’ve seen in the H1 have continued to date in the Q3. We continue to invest behind and build on the relevance of our brands and our ingredient portfolio to our customers and consumers. We therefore expect both GPN and NS to continue to deliver very good top-line growth in the H2 as our portfolio leans into those powerful ongoing health and wellness trends. We also had an excellent margin performance in the H1 across the two main platforms, with the transformation program driving significant structural improvement in GPN margins in particular. There was also some positive phasing benefits. At this point, we see inflation-driven margin headwinds in the H2 in GPN and in NS, but we are taking further pricing actions to mitigate these. Having moved pricing in the latter part of 2020 and planned now for 2021, underlying margins are very solid across the business. In particular, in GPN, we are consciously using the higher margins achieved to date as an opportunity to increase H2 investment in our brands to drive sustainable growth of those key brands. Overall, therefore, for the full- year, we expect the net effect to be very positive, with strong margin improvement in GPN versus a COVID-challenged 2020, and 2021 Nutritional Solutions margins close to the 2020 level. As we previously noted, our strong H1 performance has raised our full-year expectations, and we expect to deliver between 17% and 22% growth in full-year adjusted earnings per share on a constant currency basis. Turning to GPN performance. We saw very strong consumption trends, which accelerated in the Q2, which drove that 30.5% increase in like-for-like branded revenue. Volume growth was strong, at 22.2%, and was broadly based across regions and channels. This was driven by both increased brand investment and the return of consumers to our brands as lockdown restrictions eased globally. As you are aware, we made the decision to raise prices in the H2 of last year, and that helped to deliver the 5.6% top-line growth by pricing realizations. Finally, as announced, we've closed the LevlUp transaction at the end of May, and this has made a small revenue contribution in the period. I'll speak more to that acquisition a little later. Our EBITDA performance in GPN at EUR 90.2 million was up over 400% from the prior year, reflecting our strongest H1 performance in GPN. As well as our strong top-line growth, we saw a significant uplift on margin, which improved by over 1,000 basis points to 14.1% from last year's low. The prior year Q2 comparator was the most challenged due to COVID, so positive operating leverage played an important part in margin improvements. Improvement was also driven by the realization of benefits from the transformation project, where the team have driven improvements across many areas of efficiency, demand, and indeed revenue growth management. On the cost of goods side, we actually had a positive phasing effect in the H1 on raw material costs, as we had relatively lower cost inventory coming into the year. Our raw material costs increased significantly in the Q2 and remain elevated, which will impact our margins in the H2. As I said earlier, we're putting through price increases to mitigate that as we move through the year. Looking at the regional performance in GPN, the Americas region delivered a strong result with like-for-like branded revenue growth up over 25%. With restrictions easing in the period, we saw sports nutrition consumers keen to return to their fitness routines. This backdrop, together with the strong marketing support, drove a really strong result for the Optimum Nutrition brand in particular. The SlimFast brand was in line with the prior year, but we continue to see some headwinds as we navigate COVID, as consumers haven't yet fully re-engaged with dieting. We believe this will return in the latter part of the year, and we have strong consumer-focused programs in place for the back-to-school, back-to-work period. It's worth noting that we have seen progress in the ready-to-eat space in recent weeks as general consumer mobility improves. This has been captured by really good growth in our think! brands. As you may remember, our international business was the part of GPN that was most impacted in Q2 2020 by COVID. This year, against that comparator, international growth really accelerated in the Q2 as restrictions were lifted in multiple jurisdictions, with this part of the business delivering year-over-year growth of well over 37%. Again, we saw consumers very keen to return to their active lifestyles. All markets grew in the period, with Asia and Middle East delivering particularly strong results. While there were some elements of customers rebuilding inventories in the period, our consumption is very strong. We ended the half- year with market inventories well-balanced to consumption trends. Turning to the channels. You can see that all channels delivered good growth in the H1. Food, drug, mass and club, and online channels remained open during the 2020 lockdowns. We were really happy to see continued growth in those channels. Having been the channels most influenced by lockdowns, the distributors and specialty channels benefited most from the easing of restrictions. We believe that we now have a strong and balanced channel mix for our brands, a point of focus for us over the last number of years. A key part of our transformation initiative in GPN has been to focus and invest behind our key brands of Optimum Nutrition and SlimFast, which combined make up over two-thirds of our revenue. We have increased marketing investment in these brands in recent years and will continue to do that in 2021. This investment is delivering results. Optimum consumption for the 12 weeks to 13 June was up 30.5%. As I mentioned earlier, performance-oriented consumers were keen to return to their fitness routines, this helped drive category growth across all channels. We have leaned into this trend by up-weighting our investment in the brands. We've both increased our marketing investment and also focused strongly on making it more efficient and effective. For Optimum, we have refocused on the core strategic product groups, including, for example, Gold Standard Whey and AMIN.O. Energy, both of which are growing strongly. We have refocused spend to the highest returning return on investment media. As you might expect, our consumer insight work also has reiterated the importance of brand social responsibility. Building on the trust that consumers have in our brand Optimum Nutrition, we launched the Building Better Lives campaign. This campaign has the goal to improve access to fitness resources, make a difference to individual lives, help address disparities in underserved populations, and support the goal of a more diverse, inclusive fitness industry. A campaign that has generated great interest and really good reach. In the 12 weeks to 13 June, consumption of SlimFast was up 6.6%. As I said earlier, we are seeing some headwinds in the diet category as it effectively missed a season in the early part of the year, and diet routines have not been yet as positively impacted by reopening as sports nutrition. We plan to also increase marketing investment in SlimFast in the H2 to capture that back to school, back to work trigger event. The brand has some really exciting programs across new campaigns, product launches, and various events planned across core retailers in the U.S. in the H2, as well as an ongoing expansion of our digital touchpoints with consumers. I'd now like to speak briefly to the GPN transformation project. This is something that the team have been working really hard on since late 2019. As a result of that, GPN was really well-positioned when markets reopened this year. The project initially focused on simplifying our product portfolio, streamlining our route to market, which included the exit of practically all our private label contract manufacturing. We reorganized our business across Americas and international regions. We aligned our resources to the growth opportunities. As we've previously referenced, we have consolidated our manufacturing footprint in North America, and this work is now almost complete. Overall, this project has enhanced our prior business model. It has improved productivity, driven out efficiencies, and focused activity on investment and growth. A key part of our volume, price, and margin progression this year is down to the efforts through that transformation program, and the strong outperformance in the H1 has given us the opportunity to invest in our brand marketing, as I mentioned earlier. Although our H2 margins will be lower than the H1 due to the net effect of raw material cost inflation and the phasing of price increases, and indeed the conscious decision to invest more in brand marketing, we are confident based on what we see today that we will deliver against our original target for this GPN transformation project, delivering for 2022 a GPN margin between 12% and 13%. Finally, on GPN strategy, I'm delighted that we completed the acquisition of a 60% stake in LevlUp in the Q2. LevlUp is a German direct-to-consumer brand in the eSports gaming nutrition industry. In Europe, we estimate this category to be worth about EUR 2 billion and is growing double digits. This acquisition allows us to leverage the capability and team that we have in our European direct-to-consumer platform and is a really attractive adjacent category to performance and sports nutrition as we witness the rapid growth of eSports and associated products. The brand has a really attractive profit profile, generated EUR 19 million in revenues last year, and we expect it to continue to grow double digits. Looking to our other growth platform, Glanbia Nutritionals. It's worth noting that this segment delivered a very resilient performance in 2020, and in that context, delivering 15.9% like-for-like revenue growth and a 17.1% improvement in EBITA in the H1 is a very strong performance. Turning now to Nutritional Solutions. That business delivered 14.9% volume growth and 1.8% price increase. We had good volume growth across all the key business areas, with particularly strong demand for our vitamin and mineral premix, where we have a very strong global offering within the food ingredient space. Demand for these products was across mainstream food and beverages, right through to immunity-related offerings and indeed supplement products as consumers continue to seek health and wellness oriented offerings. We also had the volume benefit in dairy of the commissioning of the joint venture Midwest Cheese facility, and indeed saw an overall pickup in demand for our dairy ingredient solutions in the Q2 as demand for more convenient, healthy snacking improved as mobility trends improved. Pricing was positive, reflecting the pass-through of dairy market pricing. EBITA in NS was up 29.2% to EUR 56 million as a result of the strong revenue growth and margin improvements. Margin was driven by positive operating leverage in the H1 and positive business mix. We do expect some margin headwinds in the H2 due to input cost inflation and a rebalancing of mix as the dairy ingredient volumes will pick up further. Overall, we expect NS to deliver good volume growth in the H2 by virtue of the ongoing activity we have with key customers. Just looking briefly at the strategic journey of Nutritional Solutions over the last number of years, which has set us up with a great platform for growth and bolt-on acquisitions. Nutritional Solutions started out as a specialty ingredients business, predominantly dairy-based. Having completed a number of years ago a full integration of all our technology offerings to create one platform and one face to the customer, we now have built on those technologies with strong organic growth and a number of bolt-on acquisitions. This integrated capability is now really agile and can be scaled and leveraged across new and existing customers, and it provides capacity for both more acquisitions as well as ongoing organic development. We're really ambitious for Nutritional Solutions, and we're confident it will continue to deliver sustainable attractive growth. I'll conclude then before handing to Mark with U.S. Cheese. Revenues grew by 15.6% in the period. The business completes the commissioning of our flagship $470 million joint venture plant based in Michigan on behalf of the partners. This new project drove the 18% improvement in volume and will provide a similar volume impact in the H2. Pricing did decline as a result of lower cheese markets. Overall, EBITA declined in cheese for the H1 due to some cost inflation, but we expect the full- year earnings to be broadly in line with 2020 overall. With that, I'll hand over to Mark. Thanks, Siobhán. Good morning to everyone on the call. I will walk through the results of the H1 of 2021. Looking at the group's income statement for the half- year, wholly owned revenues were EUR 2 billion, up 20.3% constant currency. Wholly owned EBITA was EUR 160 million, up 108% on prior half- year, driven by a strong result from Glanbia Performance Nutrition and Nutritional Solutions. As end markets continued to recover post-COVID lockdowns, operating leverage improved and the GPN transformation program resulted in improving margins. Wholly owned margins were 7.8%, an increase of 330 basis points over prior year. Net finance costs were EUR 10.8 million compared to EUR 11.5 million in the prior year, reflecting lower average net debt levels as a result of strong cash flow. The group share of joint ventures profit after tax before exceptionals was EUR 29.9 million compared to EUR 31.8 million last year, in line with our expectations. As previously mentioned, for the full- year, we expect joint venture profit after tax to be broadly in line with the 2019 result. The effective tax rate for the half- year was 13%. We expect the full- year rate to be between 12% and 13%. Adjusted earnings per share was EUR 0.5286, up 85% on a constant currency basis and 70% on a reported basis compared to the same period in 2020. Basic earnings per share post-exceptional items was EUR 0.279 compared to EUR 0.1873 last year. In the H1, the group, including joint ventures, incurred exceptional charges of EUR 52.2 million net of tax, which are related to the transformation program in Glanbia Performance Nutrition and the restructure of the group's legacy U.K. pension schemes. In the H2 of 2019, the group performed a comprehensive review of GPN across brand strategy, geographic footprint and operating model. In early 2020, we announced the prioritization of investment in the Optimum Nutrition and SlimFast brands and a streamlining of our product portfolio by rationalizing 35% of SKUs in the business, including exiting contract-related business, enabling a simplification of business operations, including a reset of distributor relationships and the consolidation of manufacturing operations in Chicago. This transformation program is on track and has contributed to the strong margin performance in the H1. As the program continued, there were EUR 14.8 million in costs incurred in the H1 related to people, property-related costs and professional fees. We anticipate approximately EUR 5 billion of additional costs will be incurred in the H2 related to this transformation program, which will conclude the investment phase of the program. In the H1, a decision was made to de-risk the group's balance sheet in relation to U.K.-based legacy defined pension benefit schemes. Following agreement with an insurance company, a buy-in process was completed, which will ultimately lead to a full buyout and transfer of these schemes to this insurance company by early 2023. The charge associated with this de-risking was EUR 38.9 million. The cash cost of the buy-in in the period was EUR 36 million, which is less than what the group had already committed to or would have expected to contribute to these schemes in future years. The buy-in process effectively de-risks the group's balance sheet in relation to these pension schemes and eliminates volatility going forward. By early 2023, these schemes will no longer be on the group's balance sheet. Acknowledging the de-risking of these legacy U.K. pension schemes at the end of the half- year, the group had a net defined benefit pension liability balance of EUR 19 million relating to other pension schemes. The group continues to focus on cash flow management. We continue to see strong cash conversion. Operating cash flow was EUR 161 million in the half- year, an increase of EUR 114 million compared to prior year, primarily due to improved EBITDA for the period and a modest working capital outflow. On a rolling 12-month basis, the group reported operating cash flow conversion of 129%. The group has an ongoing target of converting 80% of EBITDA into operating cash flow, and we are on track to outperform this target in 2021. Free cash flow for the half- year was EUR 142 million, an improvement of EUR 99 million over prior year due to the higher operating cash flow, somewhat offset by higher cash tax outflows as the prior year benefited from tax refunds. Dividends received from joint ventures were EUR 17.4 million in the half- year, broadly in line with the prior year. Strategic capital expenditure was EUR 34 million for the half- year compared to EUR 20 million in 2020. The primary spending was on the consolidation of GPN manufacturing facilities, as well as some IT spend associated with expansion of the group's direct-to-consumer platform and the integration of acquired businesses. For the full- year, we expect total capital expenditure, including business sustaining, to be in the range of EUR 80 million-EUR 90 million. During the Q2, the group acquired 60% of a direct-to-consumer e-sports gaming nutrition company, LevlUp, for an initial consideration of EUR 31 million. This business had revenues of EUR 19 million in 2020, is growing at a strong double-digit rate, and is profitable. The acquisition is subject to earn-out provisions in 2022 and 2023. The group has an option to purchase the remaining 40% in 2025. In the H2, we expect to pay approximately EUR 18 million, representing the earn-out payment for the Foodarom acquisition, bringing the total acquisition cost to approximately EUR 60 million. We are pleased with the business performing very well, which would lead to this earn-out payment. The group will pay an interim dividend of EUR 0.1175, which is a 10% increase from the prior year. The total 2021 dividend will be within the group's 25%-35% of adjusted earnings per share payout ratio. At the annual general meeting, the group again received strong shareholder approval to implement a share buyback program. The technical resolution on the Rule 37 waiver, although approved, did not achieve the 80% level. The group followed up with a shareholder consultation process, which resulted in feedback from investors, which was supportive of the group's capital allocation strategy. Following the completion of this consultation, and in light of the strong cash flow position of the group, the board has decided to commence a EUR 50 million share buyback program as of today. The group has ended the half with a strong balance sheet. Net debt was EUR 550 million compared to EUR 651 million at the same time last year. We are well within our banking covenants, with net debt EBITDA of 1.51 x. At year-end, the group expects the net debt EBITDA ratio to be broadly in line with the level at the end of 2020, and indeed 2019, which was approximately 1.7 x. We've committed facilities of over EUR 1.1 billion, with a weighted average maturity of 4.4 years and no facilities due for renewal in the coming 12 months. With that, let me hand it back to Siobhán. Thank you, Mark. To conclude, the top line trends for Glanbia continue positive to date, and we're well-positioned for further strong revenue growth for the H2 of the year. We are, of course, very vigilant to the ongoing threat of COVID, the strong H1 performance gave us the recent confidence to raise our guidance for the delivery of between 17% and 22% growth in adjusted earnings per share for the full- year 2021 on a constant currency basis. Underlying margins in the key business segments are very solid. We do see some mixed changes and inflation-related margin headwinds in H2. With the usual time lags, we will be executing pricing decisions to mitigate known cost increases. As noted earlier, we are using the opportunity of the strong half- year to further increase investment behind our GPN brands as we are seeing the returns on that investment through the top-line momentum achieved to date and indeed planned for the rest of the year. Our financing and cash management discipline has continued. Our balance sheet is in a very strong position, and of course, that provides us with resources to fund further growth opportunities. With that, operator, I would like to turn the call over to questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, press star one to ask a question. We will take our first question from Cathal Kenny with Davy Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Good morning, Siobhán. Good morning, Mark. Two questions from my side, both margin related. Firstly, on GPN, could you provide some building blocks around the H2 bridge relative to H1 for GPN margin? Perhaps some early commentary in terms of how you see margin progressing in FY 2022. My second question just relates to margin within Nutritional Solutions. Perhaps you can explain just the mix effect or that dynamic that's going on between the Vits minerals business and the dairy ingredients part. Thank you. Good morning, Cathal, and thanks very much for that question. In terms of GPN, what I might do is speak to an overall perspective as you ask on H2 and bring in 2022 into my response. The first observation I would make is that the work that we've done on the GPN transformation program has to date, and indeed will continue to be a real underpin of those GPN margins. With this program, we are optimizing our gross margins, and that is giving us the space to invest in our brands if we feel that's needed. When you go up to the helicopter level, based on what we know today and on the planned incremental brand investment for H2, we're confident of getting close this year to our targeted margin of 12%-13% for GPN and delivering within that range for next year as previously guided. Maybe turning to your point and to more specifics around the moving parts of margin, we've seen a big swing in whey input costs in the H2 over the H1, because what we had was a declining market price trend last year and a rising trend this year. We had that lower piece coming in in inventory as we entered into 2021. The positive H1 phasing that we've seen in the H1 will swing to be negative in the H2. For the full- year, in terms of whey inflation, we're probably around that mid-teens% increase. Importantly, the other side of that from a margin perspective is that we've executed price increases, as you know, in the H2 of 2020, and we've more planned now for the H2 of 2021. On a full- year 2022 basis, that pricing should largely negate the known whey increases at this point. There's obviously other inflation dynamics you'll have heard other organizations speak to, and there's varying degrees across COGS. We expect that the transformation program savings will actually counter those at this point. Looking into 2022 on the whey cost piece, it's very hard to call at this point in time. This year they did spike to multiyear highs, but that trend does tend to be transitory in the dairy space because supply does rebalance to demand. It can take a few quarters to level out. Rebalance, but generally in the supply base, there's production flexibility, so that does over a period match supply to demand. The last point I would make is that, of course, the other important factor for the H2 margin is that we are using the opportunity of the strong H1 margins to upweight investment in our brands. That is in an absolute and indeed on a percentage of NSV basis. We believe that this increased marketing investment is really the right perspective to take now because consumers continue to emerge from the pandemic. We've seen really good ROI on this investment, and it's driving top-line momentum. That gives us the confidence to continue to invest as we move through the year. Hopefully that helps, Cathal, on GPN. Yes. On NS, indeed yes, there is a mixed piece. We had really strong growth on the premix side in the H1. We saw and we have good margins within that part of the portfolio. Dairy, as you can imagine, particularly on the ready-to-eat space, was more impacted by COVID as we were coming through 2020 and the early part of 2021. We see that actually in recent weeks coming back. We're going to see a more balance to where we might have historically been between that dairy and premix space, and that will just have a little bit of a margin mix effect, which was more positive in the H1. That's great. Very clear. Thank you. Thanks, Cathal. We will now take our next question from Patrick Higgins with Goodbody. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Good morning. Thank you. Just two questions from me. Firstly, on GPN, just a comment around the competitive landscape. A trend through COVID was bigger brands like ON winning and taking share. Has that continued? Have you been able to underpin that share gains or are you seeing competitors come back in the market? Following on in terms of your expectations for getting price increases in H2 as well, does that competitive landscape give you confidence that you'll be able to get them through? Secondly, just on the LevlUp acquisition, could you just give us a bit of an idea of the historic growth of the business, the type of products it provides, and maybe the profitability of the business as well, please? Thanks. Morning, Patrick. How are you? Just in terms of your questions on the competitive landscape for sports nutrition, we feel very good about that. Siobhán talked about the 30% consumption we're seeing in the 12 weeks to the middle of June. Optimum Nutrition has done extremely well, actually, and we would say that we are doing quite well from a market share perspective there as well. We feel very confident, I would say as well, in terms of price increases. We've already communicated price increases across our global markets, not just North America. Again, with the inflationary environment you're seeing in the U.S., that's not something that's actually quite different. A lot of companies are looking at price increases there now. We're, again, very confident that price increases will go through mostly around the September timeframe. I would say we are keeping an eye to elasticity as we look at the Q4 just to make sure we understand how consumers will react to that. We absolutely have no issue in terms of getting those prices through with our retailers. We're seeing as well in other brands, frankly. Isopure is doing really, really well also in terms of their product offering. think!, we would say, has gained share in the ready-to-eat market as we've seen that come back. With some of the offerings like keto as well, they've done very, very well. I feel pretty good. The area, I suppose, that we're watching a little bit is the weight management category. Siobhán, again, mentioned that's been slower to come back, so that probably hasn't come back as fast as sports nutrition. We would say that's just a factor, again, of folks who are not back to work, not back to school. All that activity hasn't fully happened yet. I think we'll watch that into the fall and into the winter and the new diet season. Again, we have a number of programs ready to sort of jumpstart that as well from our perspective. On LevlUp. LevlUp is a very interesting adjacent acquisition for us on the e-sports gaming side. A number of our consumers we know participate in this landscape as well. We saw an opportunity here to buy 60% of a company. That's a very new company. It's a startup. It's 2018. In fact, it's relatively new, but it's had quite significant growth. It had EUR 19 million sales last year. You'll probably see EUR 30 million+ come through this year based on what we're seeing. It is profitable. I'm not going to go through the margins except to say it's probably a little bit accretive currently to our overall GPN margins. The advantage for us in getting into this space and the way we've structured it is we can learn more about the space. We clearly have the direct-to-consumer technology where we can integrate the company quite easily into our existing Body & Fit platform, for example, and it's a low-fat, ready-to-mix product that works well with the consumers that we're targeting as well. Perfect. Great. Thank you. We will now take our next question from James Targett with Berenberg. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Good morning, Siobhán. Good morning, Mark. Couple of questions from me. Coming back on GPN margins, can you just clarify, do you expect GPN margins to be down year-on-year in H2? I know they're obviously going to be down versus H1 in H2. It's going to be down year-on-year as well. Within that expectation, what kind of level of pricing are you expecting to happen in H2? I think in Q2 you were nearly at 7% level, what level of pricing in GPN should we be expecting for the H2 of the year? My second question is on SlimFast. Sorry, Mark, you were just talking about it a little bit in the last answer to the question. We're obviously hearing from some other companies as well about the softness of the weight management category. Weight Watchers were calling it out. What gives you confidence that this is going to recover? I would be curious what you think your market share performance is in the weight management category. What's your expectation for SlimFast growth for the full- year? Maybe just as well, if you could just say what you think your expectation is for overall GPN like-for-like growth for the full- year. Thank you. Hi, James. Good morning. At this point in time, we expect the GPN margins to be back on H2 last year, the real variable within that is actually the incremental marketing investment that I mentioned. There's a bit of lag on pricing and cost of goods we're never complacent about taking pricing, the real story there is that incremental investment, we're very happy and comfortable to do that for the reasons I said earlier around the return that we're getting on that. On the overall pricing to that point, we're really looking overall at about mid-single digits. Again, building on the pricing that we put through the back end of last year, working through that, as Mark has said. Confident that we will get it at this point in time, but working that and never complacent about the elasticity always, as Mark also mentioned. I think in good shape to execute that. Yeah, SlimFast, it's a great brand. We've great brand awareness. We have great positioning across the key retailers in our markets, particularly in the U.K. and in North America. I think there's just an undeniable fact that consumers haven't re-engaged with dieting as yet because there's a lot of consumers still working from home, still not moving about as they have been historically. We absolutely believe that that will come back. Give an exact timing of when that come back, it could be a point of discussion, probably the latter part of the year, maybe around Q4. Summertime is always quiet in the dieting season, there's a bit of seasonality there. We have a lot of programs in place to really own that space when they do come back. We have new creative that we're working on. We have a number of product launches. We have a number of activities with some of our key North American retailers. We see this as just an element of COVID recovery, to be honest, that hasn't happened as yet. We're increasing our investment behind SlimFast in the H2 of the year as we are doing in some of our other key brands. Different parts of the brand portfolio are just recovering at different pace. We've seen a very great recovery allied with the increased investment and the actions we've taken on the sports side. We've seen the Ready to Eat come back. We're seeing really good growth in think!. We are seeing other brands, as Mark mentioned, like Isopure, again, grow really strongly playing into that clean protein. We believe that the dieting weight management piece absolutely will come back as consumers reemerge, ultimately, probably most particularly in that back to work, back to school piece. Investing behind capturing that as I referenced. In terms of overall like for like branded revenue growth for GPN for the full- year, our perspective at this point in time, probably just a bit watchful of potential elasticity at the Q4. James, we will always be a bit watchful on that. I think it is fair to say we would expect probably at least mid-teens at this point in time for the year. Thanks very much, Siobhán. Can I just quickly follow up on the marketing investment? Is there any sort of color you can give in terms of the size of the incremental investment, either kind of year-over-year growth or as a% of sales in GPN? Yeah, I suppose what I can say is that we're moving from a number of years ago, our marketing rate of investment of top line was probably in that kind of mid-single digits even maybe trending to a little bit to the high, We're moving to double digits this year. Focusing really on the key brands that I've referenced, Optimum Nutrition, SlimFast, and where we have particular opportunities to dial up a message on think! or indeed a brand like Isopure, we're doing that. Moving into that double digit zone for the total portfolio, James, which will be somewhat of a step change for us. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. We will now take our next question from Lauren Molyneux with Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi there. Thanks for taking my question. Yeah, just a couple. I was wondering if you'd talk a bit more about your hedging strategy and the time horizon in terms of when this will be hitting the P&L, this inflation in whey and other input costs, and then whether you have any kind of natural hedges within the business that offset that as well. Just in terms of, again on GPN marketing, you mentioned you're seeing good ROI on marketing. I was just wondering if you could talk a bit more about what you're doing differently here and do you see yourself gaining market shares, and yeah, just a bit more about the marketing side of things. Thanks. Hi, Lauren. On your hedging point, and it's related to the whey input cost primarily that you're referring to. Generally the way GPN acquires whey, there's a three or four month lag in terms of what's happening in the market as to what will actually end up in our cost of goods sold, just in terms of how we procure and then how that gets pushed through into the particular product. That's why when Siobhán was mentioning earlier that we saw whey costs coming down at the end of 2020. We benefited that frankly at the beginning of 2021, and we're seeing whey costs increase in beginning of 2021. That will actually be a factor in our overall COGS in the H2 of 2021. In terms of our ability internally, we pretty much work at market pricing from GPN perspective, whether they're buying that from an internal Glanbia Nutritionals business or whether we're looking that externally. There's not really any difference substantially. You could argue that there is a benefit of having security of supply to the extent that things may get a bit tight in the market, and that's obviously be beneficial from time to time, but not necessarily from a overall pricing perspective. I'll hand back to Siobhán on the marketing point. Thanks, Lauren. Yes, I would say we've done a lot of work over the last 12- 18 months around the return on the investment that we could get on our marketing. We did a number of test and learn exercises through 2020 indeed, that really actually gave us the confidence to increase investment this year, and we've continued to do as I say. A few areas I would call out that I referenced in my earlier comments. Firstly, I think in Optimum Nutrition, for example, our focus really on those strategic product groups, around Gold Standard, around AMIN.O. Energy. In terms of marketing activity, we did a lot of work on how we could get the best return across the various outlets. We found, for example, that streaming TV has a really good ROI for us. Naturally, you would expect, we've also found that digital engagement is really important, social engagement, the Building Better Lives campaign. We've brought the science to the marketing really, as one should, and are really focused on in very real time, establishing, well, what are the best returns that we can get? That will continue to be a very live program for us for brands like Optimum Nutrition. SlimFast, again, very classic marketing. It's all there about the master brand and how that interacts. We have a strong media efficiency in the SlimFast brand. What we've been increasing there is our digital touch points around the SlimFast app, around social engagement. Likewise, again, coming back to James' question earlier, making sure that we're there for consumers when they really engage with the diet piece. A lot of new resources, a lot of activity in the marketing space and then really watching the returns. Thank you. We will now take the next question from Alex Sloane with Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yeah. Hi, morning, Siobhán, Mark, and Liam. Congrats on the strong results. I've got three questions, please. The first one, just on GPN, you had over 100% growth in the H1 with distributors. I appreciate that's from a depressed base. Can you give a sense of inventory levels at your key distributor partners? Maybe more broadly, can you talk about the disciplines you've introduced to give your management team better visibility in terms of managing sell-in, sell-out risk versus history? Secondly, just going back to the GPN marketing point. Am I right to understand from your answer that you're moving from historical mid to high single-digit brand investment as a percentage of sales last year to double-digit in the H2 this year? Potentially up to a 500 basis point step up in marketing spend. Is that the right way to think about it? Should we think about that as just a sort of a one-off investment, reinvesting the windfall from the strong H1? Is this double-digit level of investment a new normalized level going forward? Just finally, just on the Nutritional Solutions strategy evolution chart, which is interesting that you show, perhaps rolling that forward. We are seeing quite a lot of momentum in the synthetic bio industry. Just wondered, when you think about Nutritional Solutions long term and your legacy whey protein exposure there, how are you viewing that trend? Is it a competitive risk in way or a potential opportunity for Glanbia to get involved maybe at some point? Thanks. Good morning, Alex, and thanks for the questions. In terms of the distributors, yes, that's been a clear comeback in terms of where we were at this time last year. A lot of that, as you alluded to, relates to our international operations. Your question around inventory, an important one. We have very new disciplines now in terms of, we have, as you know, we changed quite a lot of our distributors, a number of different markets. We have much more visibility in terms of, A, their inventories and B, their sell-out as well. We are seeing right now, and we've seen great growth come through, frankly, in India, China, Southeast Asia, Middle East over the last number of months. We would say to you that yes, there's been some inventory moving into the various regions as you sort of look at supply chain length, but sell-out has been very strong. From our perspective, there's no significant inventory build going on in these markets. We're actually seeing very smooth sell-out. That's very, very positive for us as we sort of move into the H2. Your point on marketing, and this has been something I suppose we've been talking to over the last number of years, even as we acquired SlimFast as more and more lifestyle products, we knew that there was going to be a higher percentage of marketing, for example, for a lot of those products that we might have traditionally spent on some of our sports nutrition brands. Even our sports nutrition brands now are moving up, in terms of the percentage of marketing sales rather we're spending in terms of marketing. I think as I've called previously, I said towards the high single digits for brands like Optimum Nutrition, low single digits for SlimFast. Certainly, when we're looking at H2, we are taking some opportunity here based on the strengths of the H1 to put a bit of extra amount in that. You mentioned 500 basis points. I'd probably say that's more like 350, 400-ish in terms of what we're doing. As we look into next year, yes, we are more focused on making sure we have space. Some of that's coming through from our transformation program to allow us to invest more in our brands in terms of moving them forward with the consumer. That's the model we wanted to move to as we went through the transformation in GPN. Yes, you should expect generally that we're moving to a higher level. Whether it is exactly at the same level as H2, we'll sort of assess that as we get into 2022. I'll hand back to Siobhán on the Nutritional Solutions point. Thanks, Alex. Yes, it is interesting, of course, the evolution of the synthetic bio industry. We don't see it as a fundamental risk to our whey dairy propositions. Absolutely, we will and do keep an eye to the evolving moves in that area and in that space, and it may well be an opportunity for us. That's how we would look at that just now. Very helpful. Thank you. We will now take our next question from Karel Zoete with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a few ones left. The first one is with regards to the turnaround program in GPN. Most of the work seems to be done. What's still required to be done? Somewhat related to that, of course, is what innovation agenda going forward, and particularly thinking about plant-based? The second question is then also on GPN. Given this turnaround program, what will be the structural improvement in your gross margin, more or less, you think, if you think about mix supply chain optimization? Some of the answers are, of course, very focused on short-term cost inflation and pricing. If you think about the operating model going forward with structural gross margin improvement and higher A&P support, how should that look like? Thank you. Good morning, Karel. Thanks for your questions. In terms of GPN, yeah, we're almost concluded. In my comments, I did mention we have another smaller amount of investment for the H2, but we're almost done in terms of the restructuring work we've actually put in place, whether it's resetting distributor relationships, exiting contracts, combining our manufacturing facilities, that would be done essentially by the end of this year, a little bit ahead of schedule for us as well. From that perspective, we feel in very good shape there. I think as we get through the year and into next year, we'll talk more around our strategy on innovation in terms of performance nutrition. We already talked about a number of things we're working on in SlimFast. Plants is important for us as well, but there are a number of things going on with the North America team particularly that I think we'll be excited to talk about into next year in terms of innovation and what we're doing with our brands. We don't talk specifically about gross margins, as you know, but as you can imagine, the efficiencies that we're able to achieve now through this transformation program is just freeing up a lot of flexibility for us in terms of investing behind our brands or investing from an innovation perspective and still maintain a good margin in that business. I think the way you should think about it is the restructuring that we've done has given us that ability to have a flexible CPG approach in terms of how we approach the business. We're well on track to that 12%-13% margin range for next year. All right, good. Thanks. Again, I had one follow-up question on SlimFast. Why did the diet routine not return? Because we, of course, have also seen that the U.S. market is open for a bit longer, but also home cooking from scratch is up, that's often seen as healthier. What are your consumer insights in terms of why the category is still a bit slow? Thanks. I think it is that really people have, in the 1st instance, just been engaging and getting out and about, to be frank, and in the social side of the early openings and mobility and maybe less about the diet aspect of it. If you take certain diets, for example, like the keto diet, it takes an element of discipline. We are confident that when people actually really get fully back and they're back to kind of the normal rhythms, that absolutely, it's just a matter of time when they reengage with their weight loss goals and ambitions, and SlimFast will be there for that. Really see it as a timing piece. All right. Thank you. Thank you. We will now take a question from Heidi Vesterinen from Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Good morning. I have three questions. A question on your 2022 margin guidance in GPN. Could you clarify once again what you are assuming in terms of pricing and inflation? Are you assuming a full recovery? Second question, we just talked about dieting being slow. Do you expect promotional activity to increase if it remains a slow market? What have you assumed in your full- year guidance? Last question on Nutritional Solutions. I think previously we had talked about some exposure to infant nutrition there. How big is that and what are you seeing in the market, please? Thank you. Thanks, Heidi. Within our guidance and stated ambition of achieving the 12%-13% for GPN for 2022, what we've said is that we believe that through the transformation program and the pricing, we will take known cost increases at this point in time. Of course, we don't have full visibility as to how whey prices will evolve through 2022, but for what we can see today, that would cover that largely off. On the promotional agenda of diet, no, we don't think so necessary at this point in time. We are investing in marketing, investing in consumer activity, investing in new creative, investing in product launches and innovation. At this point in time, don't see that as a particular thematic that will be necessary to bring the category back into a stronger growth phase. Infant formula, yes, it is part of the Nutritional Solutions portfolio, not a very significant part. We're seeing the trends that others are seeing in that space where it's a bit more challenged than other sectors. As I said, we're seeing really good growth for our Nutritional Solutions across a wide range of other categories, mainstream food and beverage in particular, immunity, supplementation those categories doing really well for us. Thank you. Thank you very much. We don't have any further questions at this time, so I would like to turn the call back to Siobhán Talbot for closing remarks. As always, thank you very much for your time this morning. We look forward to speaking with you again soon. Do stay safe and well. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.