The six months ended 31 March 2023. We'd like to apologize for the late start of the presentation. But Eskom has stolen our thunder this morning, so we just had to wait so that everyone can get online. Chris Schutte, CEO, Dries Ferreira, CFO, and Gary Arnold, COO, will be taking you through the presentation this morning. If you have a question, you can use the Request to Speak icon at the bottom of your screen, or alternatively, you can use the Question tab and I will post the questions to the team at the end of the presentation. I hand you over to Chris Schutte. Thank you. Good morning everybody t hank you for taking interest in Astral. We appreciate that. With me in the room I've got our Chairman, Dr. Theuns Eloff, our Lead Non-Exec and Chief of our Audit Committee, Diederik Fouché. I've got the full operational executive team here for Q&A later on in this presentation. There's a couple of small changes to the presentation, just to put a bit more focus on what it is that impacted us during this first half of F-23. I'll explain those slides in the presentation as we go along. You'll see that the theme of this presentation is focused a lot on Load Shedding. Not just Load Shedding in itself, the impact that Load Shedding has on a company fully integrated in poultry production as Astral Foods, and the impact for if and when you have around 40 million live chickens on hoof at every minute of the day that you must feed, rear and process. The impact of Load Shedding is as important or has such an extensive impact as Load Shedding and the diesel co-costs of itself. During this period, we had high feed costs. That will be the theme of this presentation. Right at the end, if you'll hold your horses, we've got a new slide, the very last slide in our presentation, to give you a bit of a peep into the nearby future. It is not a forecast, but it's an estimate on how we will manage to get back to normality except for the diesel cost. Thank you. Just a quick view on who will present what. Marlize has already announced that Louis will do the finance. He's now no longer the potential financial manager or Chief Financial Officer. He is now in reality, facing reality of the poultry industry in a very short period of time. Then of course, Gary Arnold, the group's Chief Operational Officer. In the business overview, we've split the slides. Normally, we had some salient points. This time round, we decided to give a bit more perspective with regard to what impacts us from a macro environment. Here, as you already know, the failed service delivery and infrastructure had significant consequences for the entire poultry production value chain. Local cost grain prices soared sharply over the period on weaker local currency and negative global fundamentals in the soft commodity market. Of course, exacerbated by ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Ukraine regarded as one of the key exporters of grains into the world. Recently, as late as last week, there was a negotiated arrangement that that channel will stay open at least for the next two months, and we've seen that had a positive impact on global grain prices. We've also seen in the last six months that poultry imports increased markedly over the period and now has a bigger impact than over the past year. That has now moved way above 40,000 tons per month again, mainly from Brazil. Of course, we know that that anti-dumping duties on Brazil was not implemented. We talk about stagflation in South Africa, underpinned by record levels of unemployment. Desperate situation for the people without a job there and those job seekers and for the youth of South Africa. We know that unemployment is now at 32%, and the extended figure is quoted as high as 44%. That will have a massive impact going forward on disposable income. On the operational environment, that impacts Astral, poultry feeding costs increased by close on 30% over the period. As you know, as we explained in the past, poultry feed make up about 70% of the cost to produce 1 kg of meat or to produce a bird. If your feed costs go up by 30%, it has a huge impact. If it calculates up to 70% of your total cost. Our broiler production efficiencies, which we'll explain in more detail by Gary later on, has deteriorated markedly over the period due to the backlog in the slaughter program brought about by the Load Shedding and the impact of Load Shedding. That is quite a difficult situation to explain in a presentation like this. However, we will try to explain what the impact is in the upstream production chain when you can't process chicken in your abattoirs. Due to the above, we had to implement extensive broiler placement cutbacks over the period in an effort to work away the backlog in the slaughter program of the much older and heavier birds now consuming a lot more feed than when we are in our normal production situation. This is all as a result of ongoing Load Shedding as well as now water supply disruptions. We also report negative poultry margins realized on the record high feed prices and staggering Load Shedding costs that could not be recovered in the selling price of poultry, and hence our reference to the state of the consumer. There will always be an effort to at least recover your input cost, the last effort that we try to just recover cost, not to profiteer was very difficult to absorb by the retail, the wholesale, and the consumer. A bleak view on the key financial indicators. Revenue increased to ZAR 10 billion, mainly on the back of higher raw materials sold through our feed division and our effort to move up prices just to recover input costs. Again, I want to state here when we talk about the increase of prices in chicken, it's got nothing to do with profiteering. It's got to do with trying to recover your input cost at least, and that any business should do in order to be sustainable in the long term. Our PBIT down 88% to close on ZAR 100 million. Profit for the period at ZAR 62 million. Headline Earnings at a negligible ZAR 1.63, down 88%. One of the key items of the six months is the Net Cash Outflow of ZAR 1.2 billion. That will be explained in more detail by Dries later on, but mainly driven by the increase in working capital as well as the impact of Load Shedding cost. As you all by now would realize that based on these results, the board has decided not to declare an interim dividend. If there's one slide that you can show to illustrate what happens in the poultry industry, it's this slide that we developed many years ago. I see it's been used a lot in international reporting these days. The yellow part depicts the change year-over-year, month-over-month in broiler feed price. The blue bars is the month-over-month, year-over-year change in broiler selling prices. You can see that the feed cost has increased year-over-year on the same month at a much quicker and higher rate than what we could move poultry selling prices. This block indicates how much the feed cost that went up close on 30%, exceeded our efforts to move up prices that was just above the 10%-11%. On this slide, again, you can see the change in the broiler feed price. This is a index, how the feed price that make up 70% of your total cost is increased with a sharp increase over the last six months. That's got a lot to do with the raw material cost, especially maize and soy. A rapid increase in your breeder feed cost there. The margin, if you don't move your prices up at the same rate as depicted in the previous slide, you see the impact on your margin now coming down to negative territory below the zero mark, and this margin of broilers into the market at minus 4.4%. One of the worst margins ever reported. If you look at the historical data, you will see we've been down there once before. This is of course of a much higher and more rapid movement in feed prices. In between this, we had additional impact of Load Shedding costs. This is a new slide, what we want to illustrate here is the impact of Load Shedding, not just Load Shedding itself. We can maybe spend a bit of time on this slide. This total cost over this six-month period adds up to ZAR 741 million. Now, if you add the bit of profit we made, the close on ZAR 100 million, this could have been at about ZAR 850 million, which would have been one of the best halves we've ever reported on. This slide should feature most probably in every piece of media because this also tells that the impact of Load Shedding on food prices is severe. As recently suggested by the Competition Commission that we moved up prices way beyond what was necessary. This is to tell you gentlemen, come and have a look at what the impact of what the state-owned entities are doing to business South Africa. The yellow part here is additional feed costs. This is index. We take the prior year as almost zero. In October, additional feed cost just due to Load Shedding, nothing to do with pricing at this point in time. Because of Load Shedding, you have to slaughter additional shifts, and that is the additional shift and the related cost to that. You cut back to try and make up for the birds that you couldn't process because of Load Shedding, and that is production cutback cost. The birds were placed almost two and a half years ago. If you take it throughout the full value chain, it's a two-and-a-half year planning program. You can't just turn the volume up and down from day to day. If those birds are in the pipeline and you have to cut back, there's a cost to it. The red bar depicts the diesel cost. When we talk about Load Shedding cost, a lot of people just talk about the diesel cost into generators. In our industry, there is a severe impact on Load Shedding, not just diesel cost, and I think you will see that throughout the entire agricultural sector and food production sector. In November, more or less along the same lines, December, when we started to move into the heavy Load Shedding periods, look at the diesel cost increase. This is also when we could fully start up in the middle of December, that massive generator project in Standerton, and you can see the increase in diesel cost. Remember, again, this is additional cost to the prior year. Also, the birds getting a bit older now, consuming more feed, and we have to plan further cutbacks. That's the first quarter. Total of a quarter of a billion rand, these three bars together. Moving into the second quarter, which is January to March. You can see what happened. Now the birds are getting older on the farms, they're getting heavier, and there's more birds on farm. Our open period is caught up completely, and you have to feed those birds. Again, feed make up 70% of your total cost. There you can see the impact of additional feed cost on the farm. Again, the cutback related cost in the blue. This is additional shifts to try and catch up and your diesel cost increasing. In February, you can see this massive spike here. Birds getting older and older, eating and feeding on expensive maize and soya. We also started to change our feeding regime here that Gary will talk a bit on later. In March, the diesel cost still high, and the additional feed cost still very high because we now have more birds and older birds on the farm. Please keep this slide in mind when we get to the close of this presentation. I will compare this to a bit of an outlook into the near future. The last slide of this part of the presentation is the movement in the profit. Last reporting period comparable to this reporting period, ZAR 785 million. Remember I referred to the ZAR 100 million we made in this six months. If you add back the Load Shedding cost, our profit could have been at close on ZAR 850 million compared to that half. What happened then between the ZAR 785 and the ZAR 98 million there? Broiler raw material cost increased sharply. We all know what happened to Chicago Board of Trade prices, severely impacted by the war in Ukraine and other global phenomena. Up about 30% year-on-year. This is the movement. We've blocked this out in Load Shedding impact. The big one, remember in the prior slide, the yellow bar? It's the Feed Conversion Efficiency. You've got an older bird, a heavier bird, and there's more birds on farm, and they eat. They eat to stay alive. We started to change our feeding regime. For the first time in our history, tried to feed a bird not to grow because you can't slaughter or process these birds at the same rate as our average targeted weight of 1.850 kl in the abattoir. The Load Shedding expenses and that relates to mainly to diesel cost. Our broiler sales volumes down approximately 10%. That's the impact. If you sell less birds, broiler sales volumes down, that impact was ZAR 80. If you add up all this red, there's an effort to try and recover just your input cost. Not to profiteer, just to cover this. You can clearly see we were not in a position to fully recover the impact of all these costs together. If we exclude that, it would have been a much different picture. The positive impact of broiler selling prices moving up at ZAR 836 million. The net of all the other costs in the business, mainly from the poultry division, adds up to ZAR 314 million. That includes the operations in Africa, the feed profit and the losses in the poultry division, mainly those. That brings us to the net profit before interest at close on ZAR 100 million for the six months. I thank you. I now hand over to Gary Arnold to take you into the operational side of the business. Thank you very much Chris g ood morning to all. We'll, before we move into the feed division and poultry division for commentary on the results for the six months ending 31 March, we'll quickly cover the raw material markets. As always, we supply you with a supply and demand balance sheet, detailing the crop history as well as the estimate, crop estimate for the current harvest. As you can see, and well known to all of you, we've had four very good crops, maize crops in South Africa in a row. Small outlook on early outlook rather to the forecast next year. That's a smaller crop in the balance sheet. That's really on the back of the El Niño phenomenon, which is starting to show its head. Important number on the balance sheet is the carryout for this year, just over 13%. On the models that we use, together with Prof Christo Auret at the University of the Witwatersrand, that would give you an implied local price of around ZAR 3,000 a ton. We however, don't trade there. We're trading at a absolutely floor price, which is export parity. As you can see, the market's not trading at ZAR 3,000 a ton, but higher than that in current activity. I think this graph says it all. Chris spoke of record high feed prices earlier on and the rapid escalation in the feed price earlier in the year. You can see that SAFEX Yellow Maize Prices moved to just under a peak of ZAR 5,300 a ton. That was in late November, early December. Astral, as a minimum, holds three months, a three-month position on yellow maize, which is well stated to our shareholders. That's a minimum position of three months. Under our board mandate, we can hold a nine-month position. At those peak prices, certainly we were holding a shorter position, which on the downward trend in the maize price we have lengthened a bit as the prices have dropped off. Prices dropped off here on the back of a decrease in the Chicago corn price. A Brazilian basis coming off with a very good crop out of South America or Brazil this current season. A rand which did strengthen during the period, however, not reflecting in the price likely Soymeal. Chicago futures for soybeans also increasing dramatically over the period. We had to price soya through this and down into the decrease in the market. Very recently we've seen increases in the soy price again on the back of a weaker currency. In the feed division, the feed division reporting revenue up at just over 37%. This largely driven by an increase in the raw material cost, which feeds through into feed selling prices and serve to increase the revenue for the division. Average selling prices, that's a feed selling price, up just under 25% in the feed division, while sales volume's up 10%. We'll speak a little bit more of the sale volume split in the next slide. Operating profit up 28.5%. Good result posted by the feed division, obviously benefiting from the higher internal feed volumes, which is not a positive for the group. Net margins at 5.9%, down slightly on a comparable period at 6.3%. That's really just driven by the higher sales revenue number, which is driven by the increase in raw material costs. Expenses were well controlled in the division, notwithstanding the impact of Load Shedding felt in the feed division as well, to a much lower extent than in the poultry division. Rand to ton margins increased, reflecting an ability to recover the higher raw material costs in the feed selling price for the division. As already mentioned, SAFEX Yellow Maize Prices increased dramatically for the period, up just over 24%, around ZAR 900 a ton. Soymeal prices up ZAR 3,100 a ton, close on 35%. It's a significant move in the coarse grain raw material markets that Astral participated in, given the, given the purchases that were required in the first quarter, second quarter of this reporting period. Internal feed sales volumes up substantially, 21.5%. We talk a lot about this through the presentation. The higher feed consumption by the birds, which were older and heavier on farm, purely as a result of the backlog in the slaughter program on Load Shedding, up 22%. External feed sales down as the pig and commercial layer or table egg sectors came under tremendous pressure. Not only the broiler industry feeling the pressure of cost increases, but other sectors, livestock sectors as well, and that was on higher feed costs and lower selling prices for their products, which pushed or placed volume and downward pressure on our feed sales volumes. We've spoken of the expenses which were well controlled and the margin which increased. You can see the split in the sales mix. The feed division, the increase from 61% of total sales to 66%. That's all integrated poultry business and really just reflects the higher internal feed sales or feed requirement on the back of a much higher consumption on the broilers as they were older and heavier. On the poultry division, a consolidated view here. Revenue up for the division 3% to just close on ZAR 8.2 billion, driven by sales realizations, which were up 11.5%. Sales volumes down 10.6%. We'll talk a bit more about that just now. Breeder revenue in our parent stock and day-old chick businesses up by 8.6%, supporting some growth here in the revenue. Operating profit down 161%. Very disappointing result for this division with net margins for the poultry division that includes broilers at -3.5% off a high of 5.9% in the first half of 2022. Big move in the realized net margin for the poultry division. Broiler feed prices up 29%, all on the back of those substantial moves in the yellow maize and soy prices we spoke of earlier. This was a division where there was a material impact from Load Shedding that cascaded right through the poultry value chain in the poultry division. Broiler sales volumes decreased twofold. There was lower demand for our products as the product basket changed. We were producing less fresh and quick service restaurant type products into the basket. We were not able to supply the demand completely in those areas, particularly the fresh and QSR sectors. A lot more product impact into five, the 5 kg IQF product as portion size was bigger on the back of the heavier and older birds. We implemented significant production cutbacks, as Chris already alluded to. Close on a 16% decrease here, slaughtering an average of 5 million broilers per week. I just want to add, though, that our total slaughter weight for the six months was only down 1.5%. Although we introduced significant cutbacks to try and offset the backlog in the slaughter program, it wasn't enough to counter the unexpected and increasing frequency of failure in the national municipal services, particularly during March, where we had massive disruptions from water and downtime in the processing plants. We've spoken of the negative broiler margins at -4.4% or 3.5% in the prior period. This really is a result of not only the soaring feed input costs, which Chris alluded to and showed you on the earlier slide, but the costs associated with Load Shedding that could not be recovered in the selling price for poultry. The margins were also impacted by the sales mix or the product mix that was available for sale and our inability to completely supply QSR and fresh markets, as already mentioned. What did the sales mix look like? Relatively unchanged. You'll see a small decrease in the evaluated segment. This is where the QSR volumes sit. Although showing a slight increase in the fresh category here, which primarily came from sales in October and November of the last calendar year, that was on the back of the increased volumes through the Festive expanded capacity. All of this as a percentage on a much lower sales base. A decrease across the categories, lower volumes, although the percentages remaining more or less unchanged. Lower volumes in each of the product categories. On the agricultural side of the business, we continued to experience good demand for the Ross broiler genetics and were able to secure further supply agreements for the Ross parent stock in that sector. Feed input costs increased significantly. A lot has been spoken about that already. Broiler production was severely impacted on the back of Load Shedding. The plants with downtime due to the unavailability of electricity could not slaughter the full complement of birds that were placed on the farms from the beginning of the financial year. The generators were commissioned in Goldi Standerton in mid-December. The generators gave us a little bit of a reprieve and some flexibility to be able to slaughter birds there not impacted by Load Shedding, although we still experience municipal interruption from time to time. The generators were commissioned in Festive in the middle of February, and up until the middle of February, Festive was impacted on Load Shedding stages four and upwards, where we lost half of our production capacity in Festive. A significant impact on the ability to slaughter the birds. These birds remained on farm. They continued to consume feed. They got older and heavier. To counter that, we had to introduce broiler maintenance diets into the feeding program. In November, we introduced a maintenance feed into the Goldi operations, late in December into the Festive operations. As late as March, we had to further dilute this feed to curb broiler weight gains as the birds continued to gain weight as the slaughter efficiency was interrupted. This obviously has a massive impact on the feed consumption and feed conversion ratio, and it was a deliberate decision to try and curb broiler weights. Broiler weights, which averaged just over 2.3 kg for the period, would have been significantly higher, impacting operations even further. Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza remains a major risk in South Africa and for the poultry industry at large around the globe. What is concerning is the recent outbreaks in commercial layers in the Western Cape in the last month. Here you can see the massive impact on our broiler production parameters. Live weight. These birds were approximately 500 grams heavier than in the comparable period, and the age as much as 7 days older than in the comparable period. Average daily gains or live weight gains, slightly up to around 57 grams per bird per day. The impact that we have seen in our production, farming production results is due to the higher age and the higher live weights that we had to contend with. This impacting broiler efficiency significantly. As you can see, feed consumption increased dramatically. That's the efficiency with which we produce every kilo of live weight gain. This deteriorated by as much as 250 grams over the comparable period. 250 grams more feed per kilo live weight gain. That lies in that massive feed cost or those incremental feed costs that Chris showed you in the earlier slide. Of course, with the older, heavier birds, mortality increases. The amalgamation of all of this is a drop in the Performance Efficiency Factor for our broiler farming performances. We've included a slide on operational sustainability because I think this will be all on our lips as we look forward to how Astral can counter the impact of power and water and what it is we're doing to secure our electricity and water supplies. We have installed capacity through diesel generators through the 3 divisions. The feed division is almost 100% covered. We are in the last stages of installing switchgear for all of those plants. We have either purchased or have rental generators in place, which gives us 100% backup diesel generator supplying to the feed division. The agriculture division, that's all the farms, hatcheries, and associated operations, 100% covered by diesel generators. As you can imagine, you're dealing with a live biological asset there. It's livestock, you can't afford any disruptions in the electricity supply to the hatcheries and farms. The commercial division was where the problem was. We didn't have generators in Goldi up until December or Festive up until February. We now have 85% installed capacity in the four processing plants with the last phase that needs to be completed in County Fair in the Western Cape, and that they do have some installed capacity. They have about 30% of their power requirement, but that is on the cards on the radar screen to install. We have appointed an energy consultant. We went through a number of rounds with various specialists in the field. As you can imagine, we get bombarded on a daily basis with solar proposals, battery installations, and it's very difficult to weed out who's who in terms of supplying the quality and the size that's required in our operations. We have had discussions or held discussions with a particular company that's an international company, specialists in the field of solar power generation. They do not supply solar panels, so they're completely objective in their views, they've been appointed to assess, optimize, design, tender, and oversee the initial installation of solar power on 13 key sites. We will consider power purchase agreements there. We're busy with a project to extend our water storage capacity at Festive. We'll increase our water storage capacity by 10 ML. That gives us just two days in the event of a water outage. We have been experiencing outages, unfortunately through February and March, not only in the back of infrastructure failure in the supply, pipelines, but also Load Shedding impacting the levels in municipal reservoirs. We will install a water pipeline to Goldi Standerton from the Vaal River, crossing approximately 7 km of property, and that will be for the total water requirements and complete removal of our dependency on the municipality for water. This project earmarked is about ZAR 100 million, and it's within the ZAR 400 million that we've had to earmark either having spent or will spend on water and power security to ensure operational sustainability. Just very quickly on industry matters. Of late, you can see the dramatic rise in total poultry imports increasing to just over the 45,000 ton mark for March. This all whilst we await an announcement by the Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition. We implemented anti-dumping duties against Brazil and four European countries, but in August last year delayed that implementation by 12 months. We expect to hear something on this in August, and we hope that a decision is made for the benefit of the local industry, and we have already spoken about Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in a continued risk to the industry. We remain on high alert. Our biosecurity program is in place, and we continuously monitor wild bird populations for the disease. I'll now hand over to Dries Ferreira for the financial overview. Thank you very much. Thank you Gary t hank you Chris Morning to everyone. I'm gonna kick off with the income statement. Just as a wrap-up to all the operational slides Gary has spoken to us. Revenue for the group increased by 6%. That's despite the decrease in volumes in both Feed and Poultry division, and reflects the recovery of some of the input costs that we try to just keep the revenue line ticking in the right direction in order to recover the input cost that has been pushed over to our side. When you get to the operating profit line, it's clear that the profit for the year was decimated with a ZAR 98 million operating profit line, down 88%, which reflects the massive cost that was pushed onto the group as a result of direct and indirect Load Shedding costs, the ZAR 741 million that was outlined earlier. Left the group with an Operating Profit Margin of 1%, down from the 8.3% in the comparative period. Tax expense for the group is down ZAR 200 million to ZAR 22 million, leaving us with profit of only ZAR 62 million compared to the ZAR 547 million in the previous year, previous period, down 89%. That leaves us with earnings per share of ZAR 1.62 and Headline Earnings Per Share of ZAR 1.63, being 89% and 88% down respectively. Group revenue and profit margin performance and operating profit split into half-year performances going back to 2012 indicates that the 1% margin that we made this year. In the period we're reflecting on. Also going back, I did some research, and it's the lowest margin that the Group has had to report in its 23-year reporting history. Leaving ZAR 98 million off a revenue line of ZAR 9.964 billion. What's clear here is the volatility of the Group's operating margin if you track the red dotted line across the history presenting on the screen here. On this graph, in a bit more detail, reflects the probably the main drivers of profitability in the group, or more specifically the Poultry division. This reflects the rate of increase on the red line of the feed price changes, mainly driven by the input cost. On the green line we have the change in the broiling selling prices we recover from the market. Where the red line rate of increase runs higher than the green line, you can see the impact it has on the poultry profitability and also the volatility of the poultry profitability if you look back into the recent history. What is also clear off this slide is that the Feed division is a very consistent performer year in and year out as it performs very healthy profitability into the group's performance. The group's balance sheet. The main items I would like to outline to you on this slide is firstly that the net working capital has increased by 56%, compared to the September 2022 balance sheet we reported most recently. That is an increase of from ZAR 1.75 billion to ZAR 2.7 billion. The main driver for that increase is the current assets, excluding the cash. That increased from ZAR 4.167 billion to ZAR 5.3 billion, and I'll outline that in more detail in a later slide. There was some support from the current liabilities, which increased by only 5%, providing some relief to the large increase in the current assets. On the non-current liabilities, we saw a 4% increase. On the lease liabilities, the rate together with the right of use assets, we can see that there's been a reduction in the lease liabilities. Just quickly referring back to the income statement, that's also the main reason why we have a smaller interest expense or finance cost line on the P&L for the group. This leaves the group with almost ZAR 1 billion more net assets invested in the group in the six months or on the 31st of March, with the sources of funding being the net equity of ZAR 4.5 billion and moving the group from a ZAR 700 million surplus cash into an overdrawn position of ZAR 506 million. The capital expenditure profile for the group. Firstly touching on the depreciation. Compared to the full year for the last financial year, we can see that there's no surprises on the depreciation and amortization. The total CapEx spend, however, has got a change in mix underlying the ZAR 180 million that we capitalized onto the balance sheet this six months. Half of the ZAR 180 million or ZAR 90 million relates directly to generator capacity installed. The outstanding commitments we reported on in the September results of ZAR 737 million, with the profile that underpins that. I've given you an update. The outstanding commitments as we stand today is ZAR 241 million, indicating also that some of these major expansion projects has had to be placed on hold as a result of the operating environment with Load Shedding that we're currently going through. Outlining that we've got ZAR 89 million earmarked in the 241 directly for water and power-related expenditure. This is also lining up with the ZAR 400 million that Gary quoted in his earlier slide, that we've had to redirect growth capital into sustainability of energy and water supplies. On the working capital in a bit more detail, I think this is probably one of the pertinent aspects that we need to focus on. We've got, again, the ZAR 1 billion increase in current assets, and the profile behind that is the biological assets increasing by ZAR 280 million, poultry inventory by ZAR 514 million, and feed inventory by ZAR 159 million. From how the numbers being stack up, it's clear that the biological assets have got two main drivers behind that increase the value. It's the feed price of the higher coarse grain prices that we had to endure in the last six months. On top of the fact that we've got more and larger birds on the ground or on the farms. That ultimately flows through into an increased poultry inventory once the birds are slaughtered and ends up in inventory at both higher value, as well as we've got a buildup in the poultry inventory that we're also experiencing. On the feed division, clearly reflecting the higher coarse grains in the feed. Trade receivables, very small movement. I can confirm that the trade receivables are still in very good shape, and all that cash has been received as we stand here. I'm gonna jump forward to the trade payables, which expanded by ZAR 254 million, providing some funding for the current asset growth. This mainly reflects our normal trade payables. We have the net working capital position that expanded by almost ZAR 1 billion. The cash flow for the group reflected the volatility of the performance of the group in a negative way this year or this period. We started off the balance sheet on the 1st of October with ZAR 701 million cash on the balance sheet or surplus cash. At the end of March, we closed with ZAR 506 million overdrawn against our general banking facilities. That gives us a ZAR 1.2 billion movement or cash utilization. The main items I wanna point out, firstly, on the positive side, generating cash profits in this volatile and harsh trading conditions of over ZAR 1 billion. Before we had to invest that cash into mainly the working... The Load Shedding related cash outflows. Here's the 413, that is the feed conversion that we explained earlier, plus the ZAR 328 million, giving us the 741 Chris outlined earlier as Load Shedding related cost. Plus ZAR 90 million cash invested into generators. On top of that, we had a working capital expansion in a harsh trading environment of ZAR 705 million. Those are the main drivers behind the working capital behind the ZAR 1.2 billion cash utilization for the group. This thing, the more traditional view of the cash flow statement, just again focusing on the ZAR 701 million cash, moving to a ZAR 506 million utilization against general banking facilities in the ZAR 1.2 billion swing. In the cash from operating activities, we've got the load-shedding costs as well as the working capital expansion embedded in the ZAR 671 million. What I do want to outline is the strong cash generation we had in the comparative period of ZAR 1 billion, which brings the ZAR 1 billion cash inflow from the previous slide into context. In summary, revenue increased to ZAR 10 billion, up 5.7% compared to the prior half of ZAR 9.4 billion. Operating profit at ZAR 98 million is down 88%, mainly as a result of the load-shedding impact to the operational efficiencies and the cost base. Capital expenditure capitalized on the balance sheet of ZAR 180 million for the year, for the half year. Cash outflow of ZAR 1.2 billion, mainly reflecting the severe impact of load-shedding costs and the working capital expansion. We clearly concluded with no interim dividend being declared as a result of the harsh environment that we're operating in, as well as obviously the utilization of the cash that has to be redirected Load Shedding related sustainability. I do want to confirm that in the past, we confirmed that we have a resilient balance sheet. The balance sheet has taken a good knock, but we do have sufficient banking facilities in place to ensure our liquidity and our solvency position. I'd now like to hand over to Chris Schutte. Thank you Gary and Dries for that. We come to the close of the presentation. Again, we have split the prospects into macro and operational, and that's just to give you indication of how it impacts on Astral. I'm sure you're aware of most of the macroeconomic factors that will impact our country and the business environment. We talk about the lead up to the 2024 national elections that will bring about its normal stunt of party tricks. I think that will bring more uncertainty with regard to policymaking and poor service delivery from government. We have a macroeconomic crisis in the country. Hardly any growth in the near future, hampering any prospects of job creation, which is so desperately necessary for this country with young people coming into the market now with the extended unemployment rate of 44%. Disposable income or discretionary disposable income also under severe pressure. The cost of living crisis deepens as recession looms in the large for our country. The failing infrastructure and the lack of service delivery from a government that is what we call asleep at the wheel. There are solutions. We can make plans. Most of the times there are plans, but it's a matter of execution, and we've hardly seen any good plan being executed by our current government or the state-owned entities. That comes to a massive cost burden on business and the consumer alike. I deem it necessary to say that if the Competition Commission want to investigate poultry price increases, they must first go and sweep in front of the door of the state-owned entities because they are the cause of food price inflation currently and not producers. You've seen the massive impact of non-service delivery from both a load-shedding electricity shortage, you can call it blackouts or whatever you would like to call it, and also failing water infrastructure that also disrupt our operations. The big part of the drive behind food cost inflation is locally manufactured by our state-owned entities. We've seen the dramatic demise of Eskom, who not too long ago, 20, 25 years, was regarded of one of the best electricity generation and distribution organizations in the world, is now a mere shadow of what it used to be. The same for water affairs. It's in an appalling state with hardly any capital being spent on infrastructure and maintenance there. Just to illustrate that, if somebody doesn't believe me, get in a car with us and drive to some of the countryside towns where we operate in. We'll show you that in some cases, we as an organization, as Astral, maintain the water maintenance program for the entire town, not just for our operations. That adds to the cost of producing chicken or a basic foodstuff like poultry. The continuous costly disruption to agri-processing businesses and the integrated food production value chains left South Africa with deepening hunger and poverty levels, especially amongst the most vulnerable of the communities. I would like to state, a while ago when I started to speak about food security, remember we started to talk about cutbacks and cutbacks and more cutbacks to alleviate the pressure brought about by load-shedding. It will create a vacuum. We know that other agro-processing industries are also in trouble. This will have to come to mind when we think about food security for the 60 odd million people in this country. It is now a threat, I can state that without causing panic. Just in our industry, we're cutting back on production because we don't have the capacity to process whatever we used to produce. Just before we go into the operational environment, remember the slide we showed earlier on the load-shedding cost. We'll depict that with a bit of an estimate again after this slide. The activities that will impact us and in the future, looking at prospects, this is now from an operational environment point of view. Astral's second half period will reflect a half of two halves, and I'll illustrate that in the next slide, where we still see the severe impact of Load Shedding and water disruptions in our third quarter, the one that we are currently operating in. With costly actions we have to take to counter the impact of that, and that we will see how that negatively impacts the cost of producing food in South Africa, and we're not even in a position to recover that to the market. I have to state at this point in time that Astral, as a poultry producer, is currently subsidizing the consumer as well as the wholesale and the retail sector. I'm also well aware that especially the retail sector are also putting in money to try and curb the cost of production and the pricing of poultry. The price of chicken that you see on the market currently is not the real price. It's been subsidized from two levels, both the producer and the retailers. Broiler placements will be aligned with market demand. We've now got a capacity to produce and process approximately 6.2 million birds per week. We will not place that's where the food security comes in. We will have to place the number of birds in line with demand and our capability to process. We trust that we will get closer to normalized production mix and our ability to service the market towards the last quarter of this reporting period, our Q4, which is up to the end of September. We also need to desperately return our efficiencies to normal from a biological efficiency point of view. The plans in place is from July onwards, with particular reference to the age, the live weight, and the feed consumption. If I can refer you back to those slides presented by Gary, Load Shedding and water disruptions had a extensive impact on our poultry efficiencies. We need to normalize that because that's what we're known for, and that is what has moved us to the so-called number one producer on the continent. We have plans in place to rectify that. Raw material cost, 70% of our total cost. Feed will reduce from Q4 onwards. Gary again explained that if you buy maize today, the impact of that pricing will only impact your production cost four to six months later. The benefit from lower raw material prices we will only see towards the end of the fourth quarter. If we fix all of this, what we will definitely still have to bear with is the significant diesel cost, because our operations will now run most of the time on generators. At average base stage of stage six of Load Shedding, this will represent approximately ZAR 45 million per month for diesel cost. Mr. Government, that's food price inflation. It is not poultry profiteering. All capital expenditure has been placed on hold, and only what is required for necessary maintenance and emergency expenses towards curbing electricity and water supply disruptions will be spent. In the last quarter and in the F2024 period, we will focus on rebuilding our balance sheet, get out of debt, and you know how resilient our balance sheet is proved to be for us, especially during these trying times. We will spend a lot of effort to rebuild our balance sheet and get out of debt. On the last slide, please remember what I illustrated earlier. This is not a profit forecast. It is the cost impact of Load Shedding, and it is our best estimate that we can give for the third quarter and the fourth quarter. If you see this is the historic slide I've shown how the feed cost is incurred and increased the diesel cost. This is our best estimate going forward with a massive peak in this third quarter. Higher diesel cost. We now have generators in place. You have to feed them diesel. Because of the huge backlog and the increase in feed consumption on farm, we had to put quite aggressive production cutbacks in place to get us back to normality. That cost the blue bars, will all be incurred in this third quarter. If you look at that massive impact that Load Shedding will have on us and the corrective measures to get us back to normality in the fourth quarter at ZAR 722 million, almost equal to the total spend for additional cost of ZAR 741 million, in the first half. Our actions and activities to take out the additional feed cost, the cost of cutting back. Our estimate is that early in July we will return to, let's call it normality, but we will still have the diesel cost going forward. This is based on Phase six of Load Shedding. I believe there's already noise of seven, eight, nine as much as Stage 11. This is a diesel cost of approximately ZAR 45 million per month. That is driven or that drives up poultry production cost. Again, I want to emphasize this is not a profit forecast. This is Load Shedding cost and our best estimate going forward when we return to normality and sit with a diesel cost at approximately ZAR 45 million per month. This is a new slide. I hope it gives you a bit of a view and an input on the impact that Load Shedding and other municipal infrastructure failures has had on Astral, a poultry producer, fully integrated with at any point in time close on 40 million birds on hoof. I thank you. Part of the thank you is our actions, Project 3R, Re-Set, Re-focus and Re-start, and that was depicted in the prior graph. I thank you for your time. If it wasn't for the 10-minute late start on Eskom, we would have been spot on with an hour. I thank you for taking interest in Astral. I also want to thank my board for the support during this difficult six months and approving our plan to reset, refocus and restart going forward. Thank you. We will now move into a Q&A session, and I'm sure there will be. Otherwise, we hope that the presentation has been of such a nature that it answered most of your questions. We thank you. Thank you, Chris. The first question is from Anthony Clark from Small Talk. Hi Chris. Missed your band in Cape Town. The results were as awful as you guided. I don't know why the market is so shocked. Can I ask a question on inventory? It rose 121% to ZAR 1.9 billion. Can I ask how the stock is valued? How much tonnage or daily production do you now have stockpiled? How long do you estimate it will take Astral to get back to inventory normalization? Thanks. Thank you Anthony, I read your report last week, and again, you were spot on how you read the poultry industry and the sector and how you analyze food production. Thank you for that question. I have absolutely no idea what you've asked now, but I'll hand you over to Dries Ferreira. Thank you Chris, t hanks, Anthony. I think it feels like I'm back in the audit committee now. The essence of the valuation, there's a couple of moving parts there. Firstly, we've got the biological assets. The breeder stock is, for all intents and purposes, unaffected by the Load Shedding costs. That is a normal fair value based on the actual costs incurred. That is undisrupted valuation pattern in the breeder birds. In the broiler birds, however, where we've seen the larger and more birds on the farms, there we've actually capped our capitalization of costs which reflect fair value at our standardized feed conversion ratio. Which means in short, any additional feed necessary to keep the birds alive and grow them is expensed directly to the P&L. Also the ZAR 413 million increase in feed efficiencies on the Load Shedding cost impact as we depicted on our graphs. Obviously the inventory is done at standard costs. Where we've got abnormal and increased costs in the processing part of the business. Similarly, we work on standard cost, and that cost is also expensed directly to the P&L. In a roundabout way, the valuation of our biological assets is done at fair value, in the full sense of fair value. It recognizes the increase in the kilograms that we carry, but not necessarily the increased cost to grow that kilograms. On the inventory, we obviously have the standard cost of inventory. Both cases, we've got a volume increase in biological assets as well as in inventory. We've got a volume increase. It's also driven by the fact that the feed cost, the actual coarse grain, the soft commodities was higher. Thank you. How much tonnage or daily production do you now have stockpiled? Thank you. When we talk about finished goods stocks in, on the poultry side, we talk about cases. We have a model stock, and our model stock is approximately 1.4 million cases, and that's to service and keep the supply chain full. We are about 40%-50% higher than we would like to be, and hence the actions to cut back and bring our birds size and ages back together with promotional activity. We will be back according to our plan, our forecasts and estimates, we will be back to model stock by the end of September of this year, trying to have a normalized situation going into the new financial year. Thank you. Charl Gous from Bateleur Capital Good morning, can you please discuss Astral's level of own electricity generation capability, generators and solar, at the start of the financial year and then currently, and plans in place for the next six months? Thank you Charl I point to the slide that I presented on power and water security, you'll see that the focus is on the poultry division, where we are now covered by around about 85% of self-production, and that's solely through diesel generators in the event of a power outage. That figure was well below 50%. In fact, a correction there, that was around 30% prior to the generators that we commissioned in Goldi and Standerton in December, then moved up to around the figure that you see now once we commissioned the generators in Festive, in mid-February. We have a project which we're currently busy with, installing additional generator capacity in Festive, which will take that supply to 100% in the event of a power outage. As I mentioned during the presentation in the Cape, we have 30% backup generation in County Fair's processing facilities. Is on the radar screen to increase that diesel generation capacity as well. We should qualify what we've just said there and say that we have been least affected by Load Shedding at County Fair in the Western Cape. The priority and focus, particularly around the projects because they've got long lead times and the spend, has been up in what we call the central region, and that is at Goldi and Standerton and Festive in Olifantsfontein. That's where the heavier and older birds have been. We have a normal age and weight at our operations at County Fair. Solar we have a couple of solar projects rolled out on our hatcheries, not providing a full power generation there. As was mentioned during the presentation, we are actively pursuing the installation of solar on 13 key poultry sites. That doesn't only include farming sites or farms and hatcheries. We are also looking at projects on the larger sites, such as the processing plants as well. Thank you. Xander Rederlinghuys from Meadow Feeds. With the local disposable income under pressure, what are the chances of exporting poultry products? Thank you Xander It's Franz here, c urrently with bird flu AI in the country, the whole country is blocked from exporting. That's the current situation. Looking forward, once we've cleared the country from a veterinary point of view, with AI, there's opportunities to export fully cooked product already. We are in the process of talking to both the European and the Middle East countries with regards to our products. Just to conclude on that, one must remember what we've emphasized throughout this presentation. It is quite easy to suggest exports as a opportunity or a option. Remember, our input cost is now at such a level that we can hardly claim that we globally cost competitive. Again, we must thank our state-owned entities for increasing the cost of production of poultry. How do you compare with Brazil that are clear of Load Shedding, water infrastructure in place and a government that fully support the agri-processing and export impact in that country and their efforts? It will be very difficult as a South African poultry company from a cost perspective to be globally competitive if we now have to base our production costs on diesel generators. Thank you. Thishan Govender from Truffle Asset Management. Hi, guys. Would you be able to give us some guidance on expected net debt and net working capital balances at year-end? Some color on how much liquidity you currently have, and what are the debt covenants? Thank you for the question. Firstly as Chris outlined in the previous question about the inventory levels, we're targeting to normalize our working capital position towards end of September. What you must also bear in mind is, as the soft commodity prices decrease, there will be a natural reduction in investment in working capital. That's the first part. The net debt will clearly dovetail the reduction in working capital. Obviously the tailwind or the support from the P&L in the second half will be quite thin given the Load Shedding costs that we will have to incur as we outlined on that graph. In terms of the net debt position, we are targeting to claw back on our overdraft position as close to zero as possible for the year-end. Obviously that is dependent on our ability to reduce working capital. We have general banking facilities in place close to ZAR 2 billion. We have utilized, at the reporting date, ZAR 506 million. As I've outlined, there's sufficient working capital facilities in place to cover our liquidity and solvency assumptions. There's no covenants related to those general banking facilities. Thank you. Siphelele Mdudu from Matrix Fund Managers. "With huge increases in additional feed costs and generator operating costs as shown in slide 45, will you be able to pass through these in your prices? Have you been in touch with retailers, et cetera, regarding these potential price increases? The short answer is if we look at the state of the consumer, it's going to be very difficult in the third quarter to pass on those costs. I think the best that we will do as a poultry industry as a whole, not just Astral, is to maintain prices, which means we subsidizing the consumer to the tune of ZAR 2.50-ZAR 3.20 a kilo. It depends what product you deliver. That subsidy is currently in place, and we call it a subsidy because we're making a loss on every chicken that we produce. The benefit that could derive will be in the fourth quarter. If you can hold prices at the same level, hold volumes, but now with a lower feed cost. A lot of the impacted costs from Load Shedding will now be absorbed in our activities, and our only effort will be to cover or recover the additional diesel cost. Price increases during the winter on this expanded input cost will be very difficult. We will most probably the best we can hope for is to sit it out and wait for the impact of the lower raw material costs come into play. Thank you. Grant Morris from Clucas Gray. "Thank you very much for the comprehensive presentation. Could you please expand on the issues with regards to backlog in the slaughter program? Is there a solution to the generators? How much of the slaughter program can be done via the private sector? Thank you. Just the first part. The last part was difficult to understand. Please. Can you expand on the issues with regards to the backlog in the slaughter program? Okay, with the backlog in the slaughter program, obviously, if you've got this value chain or production chain of two and a half years planning 40 million birds on hoof at any point in time, any disruption at the end stage where we work on a just-in-time system. If you're down one shift, you have to slaughter it in the next week. If you're down another shift there, you've got no spare capacity in the third or fourth week. The impact is quite severe. You can then back up your birds on the farm where they now get older and heavier. If they get older, they consume more feed. If they get heavier, in the next open shift you have, you struggle to slaughter at the same rate or pace or efficiency because the abattoirs were not designed to process bigger birds. It was never the plan in South Africa to produce birds on average above the 1.850 kg. That impact is quite severe. The big costs come in when you keep the birds on farm and you have to feed them. At the same time, you've got the highest feed input cost in history. It is quite severe on processing. We, in the early parts of this year, we started to work additional shifts up to a point in time where there were no additional shifts left to slaughter. We then had the backup on the farm, and that's when, we started to see the impact of Load Shedding throughout the value chain. Chris, maybe just ask again, can the slaughter program be done via the private sector? Yes. Without disrespect we are the private sector. We fully integrated. We have our own feed mills, our own breeding programs, our own rearing, broiler production abattoirs. We do everything in-house. If you maybe refer, are there capacity outside of Astral where we can do the slaughtering? Most of the producers are integrated to some extent, not fully integrated. If you want to be a profitable or a competitive producer, you run your facilities as full as possible. Spare capacity in the private sector is hardly existing. Very difficult. From time to time producers do assist one another with slaughter, but that's mainly in one or two once-off crisis with breakdowns in abattoirs crisis situations. In general, no, there is no other spare capacity available in the country, and that is what we as Astral in the past has regarded ourselves as one of the better producers because you run your facilities full efficiently and effectively to reduce your operational cost. Thank you. A follow-up question. I'm not asking you to comment on specific competitors. Is there any concern around the financial stability of the industry in general? Is this contributing to your concern around food security? Was the option not to comment? You want me to comment about. The only way I can explain that, Raw material or feed cost is 70% of your cost. It doesn't matter where you produce in South Africa or in the world, you're gonna have your feed input cost. In South Africa we had a two-pronged feed input cost impact. The one is high raw materials, and also our weakening currency that further exacerbate the price of raw materials. As raw materials that we buy are priced in line with Chicago Board of Trade. If the local rand or currency depreciate, then that also further impacts our price. From a local perspective, just for a bit of timing maybe, I cannot see that there's any producer that will have a different feeding cost than what Astral will have over a prolonged period. We all buy our maize on the SAFEX stock exchange where the pricing is done. There's may be a small impact from your location and the distribution and delivery cost. Over a year period, we would most probably all be in the same boat and that will most probably put all producers in quite a predicament. I know that some of the other producers, our competitors, have had a less impact from Load Shedding, depending on their geography or where they're located, where they were expanded or excluded from extensive Load Shedding programs. It would have had a lesser impact on them. In general, I think we're all in the same boat. Thank you. Tinashe Kambadza from Intellidex. How much longer can Astral continue to subsidize prices until that becomes unsustainable? Up to three months ago. So If you look at the impact, we're not subsidizing out of choice. I think any business that wants to call itself a business or a sustainable business must be in a position in the long run to make profits, how small ever. That profits normally you spend in three ways. First, you pay your taxes. Unfortunately, over the past six months, we're gonna pay much less tax, so there's less money to go into a pot that can be badly spent by some of the benefits from state-owned entities. That's the one benefit from not making profit. The other negative parts is you have to reinvest in your business. You have to also share your profits with your shareholders. If you don't make profit or decent profits, you won't pay tax, you won't be in a position to return dividends to your long-term investors and shareholders, but you will also not have money to reinvest in your own company and in growth opportunities to produce more food and to employ more people and to feed more people at a base cost of what poultry should be. Profitability in any business is important. In our business it is critical. However, the business is of a cyclical nature. In the long run if you don't make profits, you're gonna be in trouble, hence all the actions we've taken to reset, refocus, and restart with only the diesel cost, and that in the future we will have to somewhere recover in the market. Astral and most food producers cannot incur this cost for much longer. Something will have to give, and that is why we spoke about our resilient balance sheet that stands in good state over the past six months, a year. We will have to rebuild that to face the challenges of the future. This situation has been going on for too long, and that's why we are in overdrawn position and we will have to rectify that. Profitability in the food sector is incredible, and incredibly important to keep on producing food for our nation. If we start to become a importer of food prices will rocket. We have to be 100% food secure, supply our own food. With this currency if you want to import food, we are in great danger. Remember, if the masses are hungry, the rich and the fortunate won't sleep. Follow-up question. Given the expected load-shedding costs as you mentioned, is Astral expecting the fuel rebates from government, as has been publicly announced? Over to Dries. Thank you w e certainly right on top of that one. There is still a process for government to go through. It will be claimed back via the VAT system. The government's not ready to activate that yet. Obviously, we're keeping all our records. We'll be able to claim back from 1st of April. Thank you Charl Gous, M orning. Thank you for the detailed explanation of the cost pressure Astral needs to deal with. In the last couple of months, feed costs reduced notably. What is Astral's procurement position given current input cost prices? Thank you for that. I think as explained, maize and soy peaked earlier in our financial period. If you've got a average position of forward buying at about four months, and you then have to feed that higher raw material into a bird for 40 days, and then you have to sell the bird and recover your money another 45 days later. If there's a reduction in raw material prices, it will most probably only come into effect four to six months later. Yes, raw material prices have come off, and our feed input cost is slowly starting to reduce. I think the full benefit of the prices you would see on SAFEX today will only come into play, close to August and September in Astral due to our forward buying program. Thank you Myuran Rajaratnam from Midvale. Just looking at solar at your premises, what% self-sufficiency can you get to with your 13 key site solar projects? Thanks for the question. At this stage, it's a small percentage. I mean, bearing in mind Astral has 180 agricultural sites around the country, and then the feed mills and the four main processing plants. This is a start for Astral, and certainly by no means on the processing plants can you become completely self-sufficient on solar. These plants range anywhere between 8 MW and 12 MW plants, consuming huge amounts of power, and certainly that's not available from solar or from battery backup. Just at Goldi in Standerton as an example, you'll need 12 hectares of solar panels, perhaps half the equivalent space just for batteries, and then you hope the sun shines. Certainly we'll never be self-sufficient just on solar alone, but that is an option for the farms and the hatcheries. On the hatcheries, solar will make up a larger proportion of the power requirement. I think the important aspect of solar to remember on the bigger operations is that it'll supplement the costs or help reduce the cost or the running costs of diesel generators on diesel. In some cases, we're actually seeing that solar is coming in at a better tariff on some of the farming sites than Eskom themselves. Certainly we'll prioritize the rollout to capitalize on the cost savings rather than security of supply through solar. Chanté Kane from Excelsior Capital. Thanks to the team for the presentation. It is terrible seeing the impact of load-shedding on the company's performance. I know that the idea of moving to stage 8 has only recently come into talks, do you perhaps have an idea of how this could run up the costs? Well, at this point in time, if we complete our program to get our efficiencies back in line, it will most probably only impact our diesel cost. The cost of that we've shown there of ZAR 45 million per month is for an average at Stage six. That will most probably increase it by 15%-20% if you move to Stage eight. Thank you. Jovan Jackson from Laurium Capital Good day. Thank you for the presentation. Can you comment on industry capacity? Have you seen smaller competitors closing down due to the increased cost in the business as rolling blackouts continue? What is your estimate of birds per week will be cut by yourself and possibly other producers? Currently the industry as a whole, process or produce or slaughter between 21.5 million and 22 million birds per week. We believe our estimate or calculation of cutbacks by smaller guys, and we see that through the buying program of day-old chicks or fertile eggs to be set for future production. We think that local production on average per week could come down by about a million birds per week. Thank you. Thishan Govender. What is the expected P&L impact on promotional pricing to reduce currently high stock levels? Could the impact be on GP likely to be higher than the ZAR 2.50 to ZAR 3 kg as you clear stock over the next few months? Calculated into our best estimate is, That prices could remain where they are currently from a promotional activity point of view. We've tested lower levels without positive outcome on moving volumes. I think the sweet spot for moving product at close on your production rate, at the current levels is intact. That subsidy impact is close on ZAR 3.10 that we selling chicken below the cost of production. Our cost of production will start to reduce in the fourth quarter, and that ZAR 3 subsidy will shrink to something different to what it is now, most probably close to a break even just on a poultry side closer towards the end of the year. Thank you. Chris Logan from Opportune. Thanks for the presentation. Your request to speak doesn't seem to work. Chris, have you pressed the button request to ask a question via audio? We'll look into that. To what degree can you increase your energy independence of Eskom and expensive diesel generators in the medium term, and at what cost or return profile? Some companies are talking about positive IRR from solar. Also some five years ago you talked about electricity from chicken manure. Has that gone anywhere? Thank you for the question. I allude to my earlier statements on solar. We are seeing some positive IRRs on solar projects even through the power purchase agreements and early proposals that we've had. Certainly on those sites where there is a good payback cost saving not only on moving over to solar, but better tariffs than we currently receive either from municipal or Eskom rates. We will and are pursuing solar that is in the program. Where it's not necessarily an area that we have to spend the CapEx to install the power, there are favorable power purchase agreements available. On the poultry manure project, there is still an ongoing project in the Cape where a third party developer is looking at the financial feasibility of a biogas plant. That has reached quite an advanced stage. I must add that that project in the Cape is not to generate electricity initially. That can become part of the project later, although its early economics are not that great. That plant will be designed to produce compressed natural gas, which will replace our requirement or use of LPG in the Western Cape, and that comes at a saving to the life cost to produce broilers in the Western Cape. Certainly still a project that is under investigation. Thank you. Sorry, just to add, that requires a very significant capital investment from a third party developer, close of ZAR 2.5 billion. As you can imagine in the economy currently, there's some. They're quite cautious in their approach to investing such significant amounts of money in South Africa. Thank you. Chante Kane a s a follow-up question, there has been mention of load curtailments in the agricultural sector. Has Astral benefited at all from this? Load curtailment is not something we've benefited from. If you look at the networks that we're reliant on in Goldi and Standerton, we're reliant on the municipal network, and it's not possible to cut us out of that network and enjoy any benefits from load curtailment at all. In Vrystaat, in Olifantsfontein we in fact enjoyed up until October last year, no Load Shedding on stage four and beyond. Eskom then introduced a load reduction to the Olifantsfontein or Clayville Industrial area. Amongst the users there, we've had to reduce our consumption by 50%, hence us having to implement diesel generators in that industrial area. Thank you. There are no further questions. Is Mr. Logan, can he not log in to ask a question? They are assisting him. Are they assisting? Okay If there's no other questions, we'll wait for a minute or two for Mr. Logan to try and log in. Okay. If not Mr. Logan is welcome to phone us on his cell phone while I'm here at the podium and see if that can work and we can hear his voice. It seems that somehow again Mr. Logan is not being able to log in to talk to us directly. It's definitely not something on our side here. Everybody else were able to ask question. Mr. Chris Logan, you're welcome to speak to us or phone us at any point in time, or to see us in person with regard to your questions. It seems that unfortunately we can't hold up the rest of the audience for that technical glitch, hopefully not on our side. It seems like all the questions are concluded. Marlize, can I confirm that? All questions. I hope the questions has been answered or addressed to your satisfaction. Over the next two and a half days, we'll travel the country and do one-on-ones where we will also try to answer your questions in more detail. We thank you once again for taking interest in Astral. It's been a horrible period for us, especially the quarter that we are in now. I want to state to the audience here that we will do everything and more, in what it is that we can do to return back to normality. Unfortunately, this is the impact of farming with livestock. It is not canned fruit or making something else that is alive where you have to keep it on a farm somewhere. We've got our plans and our work job cut out over the next six months, and we will do our utmost best and more to stick to what it is that we've given to you today in this presentation. Thank you very much. Good night, good luck, and goodbye.