I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Miles Hurrell, CEO. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thank you for joining us this morning. I'm joined this morning by Andrew Murray, René, and Richard here to answer your questions on the half-year results. Headline comments from me is that really pleased with the results that we've been able to put out today on the back of an increase in milk price in recent times, of which we've increased our forecast on that this morning. The team have delivered a set of strong results across all parts of the organization. On that, I'll hand across to the questions. Thank you. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question today comes from Joshua Dale with Craigs Investment Partners. Please go ahead. Morning, gentlemen. First question, could you give us a sense of your exposure to the Middle East, I suppose both from a revenue and energy cost perspective, and presumably any exposures captured within the range of your guidance for this year? Did you say energy cost? I didn't quite get the second part you said there. That's right. Yep. Whether it's diesel, coal, et cetera. Yeah, got it. Okay. From a Middle East perspective, at the moment, we've got product flowing up, which is good. We're pretty comfortable with that. Obviously a bit of shipping delays in there, and there are additional sort of shipping costs that are coming in. We have got a little bit of impact of that, but nothing obviously in the first half of the expected earnings range. We have taken into account that. If I look at it in terms of cost, diesel, et cetera, we are well hedged in those positions. I don't We won't see an impact of that at least through until the sort of last quarter, I would expect, before we see any sort of impact there, 'cause we do maintain a hedging program for all of those things. We're in a pretty good spot from that perspective. The relationship that we have with Kotahi is allowing us to get product up into the right space. We're pretty much hitting the right ports at this point in time, although there's a little bit more land transport in those Gulf countries. If I look at it from that perspective, yeah, it's actually not too impactful at the moment. What we have is that if I look at our range for the earnings for the back half, then yeah, we've got a little bit of conservatism in there to take account of the fact that if this goes on for a little bit longer, then it's gonna start having knock-on effects. So at the moment, relatively muted, but we have been cautious with our back half just in case this falls out a little bit longer than we're expecting. Got it. That, that's helpful. Thanks, Andrew. Previously- Just on that. Sorry, go ahead. No, I was just gonna say from an energy perspective as well, just if you look at that, you know, we hedge out those as well. You know, from an energy perspective, it's not having a knock on either. Okay, great. On ERP costs, previously, I think it was mentioned those costs were to peak in FY 2026. I noticed on slide 4 you're talking FY 2026, FY 2027 now. Do you see a ramp down in those costs in FY 2028 still, or does it push out the timing of your target of getting back to pre-divestment levels of profitability by FY28? Yeah. It's not gonna impact that. We're just gonna have. We'll probably end up with just a little bit less spend in FY 2026 and a little bit more in FY 2027. We're just having that full load. We are on track and on budget for the total program, and we expect that it will still end in the same spot. We've just done a little bit of rephasing between FY 2026 and FY 2027 as things have played out. We are live in two sites and in one market at the moment. That has all gone as we expected it to. We're not seeing any cost overruns. We're not seeing a time overrun, but just a little bit of phasing between FY 2026 and FY 2027. Okay. That's helpful. Thanks. Last one. Your dividend policy remains unchanged. Your balance sheet's looking stronger now compared to when it was set initially. Any foreseeable change to dividend policy at all? No, we're not looking at anything from a dividend policy at this standpoint. Obviously, you know, we look out, you know, we've got our capital program that we wanna continue to invest in. Obviously that's part of us getting back to our 20 earnings, is to continue to invest in the growth parts of the business. We feel pretty comfortable with where we are from an earnings and a dividend standpoint at the moment. Okay. Thanks very much, guys. Your next question comes from Arie Dekker with Jarden. Please go ahead. Oh, good morning. Yeah. Firstly, just a quick mention, Miles, congratulations on an amazing tenure in charge as CEO. I don't think there'd be many cases, as in terms of the wide gap between, you know, the state the business was in and when you took over as CEO and the state you leave it in. Yeah, well done. Just first question. On the farmer offering slide, obviously very strong growth in milk supply, you know, for a range of reasons, including the net gains from competitors, which is great to see. Can you just sort of talk to what your expectations are of sort of the sustainability of milk supply at those sorts of levels and what sort of factors would swing it? I'm not sure I understand the question entirely, but we are still seeing new conversion in the South Island is probably a key point. We haven't seen any new competitor builds announced in recent times, so that's helpful for the next couple of years. Now that said, it's a competitive environment, of course, and the dairy legislation, while that's up for a review at some point, doesn't mean that changes the competitive landscape. So we're confident in our farmer offering. It starts with obviously a strong performance of the organization and obviously we've got sustained performance now and as a result, we're starting to see good strong momentum with farmers wanting to come back or existing farmers actually looking to grow also. Those things give us confidence, you know, position into the long term is sort of that, slightly up, I guess, if you can call it that. Historically, you might have called it flat. Flat to slight decline might have been a position we've taken historically. Our position at the moment is now flat to slightly up is probably the way to describe it. Weather dependent on any given year, of course. Off this FY 2026 base of supply, you would sort of have expectations of it being flat to slightly up? Yeah. I think this year's a slight anomaly and obviously. Yeah. A strong milk price last year and this year. You might wanna normalize back slightly. We're at 1,565 versus last year's 1,509. You know, somewhere in the middle of the two might be a good starting point if you wanted to then use my basis of a flat to up slightly. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's helpful. Thank you. Just on that competitive landscape, I mean, obviously we've seen a number of your competitors struggling. Have you sort of entertained any discussions re sort of, I mean, consolidation probably wouldn't be the right word, but where sort of, you know, assets, you know, might have been offered to you and does the co-op have any interest in that? Probably the first and maybe the only thing I can probably say in this area is that if we were to ever look at any assets that may or may not have come available previously, first and foremost is it the right thing to do for our existing shareholder base? Mm-hmm. if it answers yes, then you start to look at the next phases. Yeah, that's probably the most important thing here. Yeah. Nothing else would come more important than would it support our existing shareholders? If the answer to that was yes, then you'd go to the next phase and look beyond. I won't say probably much more than that. Cool. Just one final question from me. Just, you know, going through the ERP transformation at the moment as Josh touched on, and, you know, the annual spend at the moment, you know, and including sort of in first half run rate across both your normal information technology spend and then the ERP replacement is around the NZD 300 million mark. Have you got? I mean, you must be at a point, presumably where you sort of have an idea of, you know, what that cost base, you know, in IT will settle at once the new ERP is implemented in 2028. Yeah, just looking for a bit of guidance on what that level is, just, you know, 'cause it probably informs a reasonable amount of those earnings sort of upsides that you pointed to at the FY 2025 result. Yeah. I think if we take the ERP program, obviously that's a significant investment, which gives us a good sort of base technology level, which we've been obviously investing behind. You know, there's a chunk of that spend that will come out obviously, 'cause we won't be continuing to do that. However, technology is certainly a part of the business that continues to be something that we will invest in. You know, there's plenty of new technology out there that allows us to perhaps get other efficiencies elsewhere. What I would say is, you know, we'll certainly reduce down from what's currently there, but I don't think it would be the whole impact of the ERP just coming out. Take it somewhere between those. Okay. Thank you. No worries. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Matt Montgomerie with Forsyth Barr. Please go ahead. Hi guys. Good morning, I'll just echo comments from Arie with respect to your tenure, Miles, well done. Just maybe firstly on Foodservice and margin specifically, a pretty strong couple of quarters to start the year. Could you maybe just strip out the China consumer components within that? Like what's sort of been the delta between this year and last year and getting losses, you know, maybe back to break even and where we sit today on that side? Yeah. I mean, just at a high level, the consumer piece of it is sort of almost a rounding error. It's material in that number. That is a strong growth in Foodservice margin. To be fair, you know, it comes on the back of a you know, declining fat price in the first half of the year. We've been able to hold those prices up while our fat pricing came back from a COGS perspective. That's been a key driver of it. At the same time, you know, driving you know, growth as well. It's a combination of all, but consumer part of it is very small. Okay. Consumers may be at breakeven now, so there's not that sort of earnings benefit to come through that. Um- I can't remember what the loss was like. It was still somewhat significant. I can't remember. No, it had turned to profitability in the last couple of years, albeit relatively minor. Some of the brand new entrants. Yes. Yeah. If you're buying the new entrants. The underlying performances. Yeah. Yeah. Correct. It's still minor. Yeah. Yeah. Just to confirm on one of Josh's earlier questions around the three-year earnings target, is there any reason that hasn't been, I guess, reiterated today? You know, presumably you're still well on track, if anything, you know, maybe. Yeah, we are. First half is. Yeah, no change. We're 100% committed to that. Just on this year's guidance, you know, the midpoint has been lifted, you know, [2.5], but it feels like the first half is probably tracking quite a bit better than that. I guess we make the assumption that the Middle East, yeah, doesn't, I guess, get out of hand relative to your current expectations. Is it fair to assume that we're probably tracking more towards the top end of your range today, albeit, you know, appreciate there's a range there for a reason, and the uncontrollables that can come through. Yeah, it just feels like the first half is probably better than, say, what the guidance uplift has been factored into. Yeah. I think that's a pretty fair reflection is that the situation we see ourselves in the Middle East means we've just got to see a bit of water going under the bridge before we make any further changes. You're right. A strong first half, more sales will be coming in the second half given the milk flows. Things look positive in that regard. With the downside risk of what could play out through the Middle East. Hence the reason we still have kept the top end of the range unchanged. Yeah. No, thank you. Your next question comes from Nick Mar with Macquarie. Please go ahead. Morning, guys. Just in terms of stream returns and the likes, looks like this sort of hedging and risk management products you've got on have sort of worked quite well. Can you just talk to how you sort of view the net impact of those going forward and whether or not you think you've genuinely smoothed a lot of that delta on a go forward basis? Yeah. I mean, I think from that perspective, you know, it's not having a big impact in the half results for sure. We are starting to see that, you know, as we've developed, as has been the plan, is that we are using our hedging to be able to offset against the volatility that comes through in that space. It's not something that we are, you know, particularly thinking is either a big net positive or negative, for the results going forward. That's what we've been designing it around. We expect that that will continue. I don't know, Richard, if you had any more. I would suggest, Nick, if you look at say our 2026 and 2025 sort of contributions, they're pretty similar. Based into our current forecast, 2024 is a little bit lower than that. You would suggest that that's three years now, that's pretty close to what you've got to think our sort of ongoing average is gonna be. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's good. Just the sort of volatility was quite significant prior to all this, so, Yeah. In terms of the sort of three-year forward, are you guys able to share any more color on your thinking of the sort of composition of the, you know, earnings growth between some of the cost out and sort of, I guess, revenue or sort of? Mm strategic execution items? I guess you've just sort of said that, you know, the ERP won't fall all the way out. You've got sort of a bit more work to do, I guess, on other buckets. If you could provide any color, that'd be helpful. Yeah. I mean, I think, as Mar said, obviously we remain comfortable with those as they are. You'll see, you know, even the investment that we announced today as well in for the pastry butter sheets. The, you know, execution of the strategy that we've got is what delivers us the upside. We're moving more into food service, which we previously indicated, and we're moving out of, you know, more of the commodity ingredients into the advanced ingredients for ingredients. Advanced ingredients for ingredients, sounds good. That becomes obviously, that's the core of the plan. I think last year as well, we did say that the makeup, you know, was probably around a 50/50 split between costs and then what would actually be earnings growth. You know, we do have a cost opportunity within the business as we simplify post-divestment. So that is coming too. We've had actually some decent progress this year. We've got, you know, a couple have come through in the back half as well. So I feel comfortable about us taking the cost out where it needs to because we are a leaner organization. We have, you know, less complexity. So we'll see that come through. Yeah, we continue to do what we said we're gonna do around Ingredients and Foodservice. That's the makeup of how it pulls through, and we feel pretty comfortable about it. No, that's great. Lastly, just on Mainland, obviously a strong result for that business and there were some impacts like you brought out of inventory revaluation. Can you provide any color about that and just sort of, I guess, proving that this wasn't sold too cheaply, and that this isn't necessarily the, you know, run rate for the business going forward? There is a chunk in there. I think if you look at it, I guess this shows some of the volatility that still is within that business. You'll see in there of that NZD 71 million, let's say NZD 50 million of it was in that Australian ingredients business, but it was actually just seeing the benefit of the commodity cycle change. If you go back, maybe even back 18 months, you know, the Australian ingredients was a loss-making space. We're now in a space where that isn't the case anymore, so that volatility still remains there. I would say what are we looking at year-on-year, you know, improvement of around about, you know, NZD 20 million maybe let's call that, in terms of underlying performance in the consumer business, actually, not the Foodservice part, but the consumer business where, you know, they've held on to some decent margins, and also had the impact again of, as our Foodservice business had of slightly lower input costs. That's how that's played out. There's, you know, it's that sort of same sort of cycle that you would have seen in the consumer business. But it's played well. From our perspective, we're still talking about a 9% return on capital. You know, look at it. That's, you know, based on our ROIC capital invested, not what we actually got for it in terms of the pricing. I look at it and I'm like, have we, you know, is there anything to make us think that we've made the wrong call? Absolutely not. That's great. Thank you. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Hurrell for closing remarks. Great. Thank you very much for joining us, this morning. Of course, the team are available for any further follow-up questions, that you may have. Again, thank you for those comments that were also made about my tenure. This is my last results that I'll be fronting and so I appreciate all your support along the way also. Thank you very much, everybody.