Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Astral Foods Limited's final results presentation for the year ended 30 September 2023. These are the most difficult results Astral has ever had to report on, and as always, the results presentation is very detailed and should provide you enough information on all the headwinds faced by the group this year. Chris Schutte and his team will take you through the presentation, and just a couple of household rules. For those online, welcome. At the conclusion of the presentation, if you should have a question, you are more than welcome to use the Request to Speak button at the bottom of your screen, and you will, Lumi will unmute you, and you will be able to ask your question. Those that would like to make use of the Question tab at the bottom of your screen, please do so, and I will post the questions on your behalf. I now hand you over to Chris. And a special welcome to Mr. Chris Logan. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking interest in Astral. We've got some people attending this presentation, but also a lot of participants that are logged in. Thank you for taking interest, and of course, this is not a good set of results for Astral. I also want a special word of welcome to one of my non-executive directors, Ms. Anita Cupido. Thank you for attending, and to all of you for your time. There's a couple of new slides in the presentation because it was very different and difficult circumstances, and there might be some duplication, but I think it will assist you in analyzing this period under review. And of course, if there's question afterwards, we'll try and fill this best as we can. And we've got a team here, Gary Arnold, Frans van Heerden, Dries Ferreira, and one or two other participants from the Astral management. And here goes the presentation. Just to make sure that you understand that, that we understand that it's not a good set of results. And we openly recognize, and sometimes I personally use the word, that we are a bit embarrassed about this result. Not, not just about Astral making its first loss in 23 years, but we also deal with a lot of international players from a service provider point of view and people that we deal with across the board, and to explain to them why we're making a loss is a bit of an embarrassment. So it's embarrassment for the country and for everybody on the JSE. Things are not going well in the country, and it's... The country is broken currently, and we have to work around it. But unfortunately, whatever we do adds cost to producing a kilogram of white meat. So we recognize it's not a good set of results, and we openly say that, but we also take responsibility for that. We take it on the chin, and we move on, and there's a number of activities that we're currently busy with to improve the situation that was brought about a number of external factors. The magnitude of the load shedding was a massive shock and a surprise to us. If you just think about a four-generation poultry integrated business, and you've got, at any point in time of the day, 40 million chickens that you must take care of, and you work through the process of breeding and hatching and rearing, and eventually you get to a day-old chick, and you rear it to 33 days, and now it must go to an abattoir for processing, and the abattoir is down because of electricity or load shedding. What do you do with that bird? You send it back to the farm. If that happens often, and like what happened in December and January, you had these load shedding for periods of up to 12 hours a day, and eventually it backs up in the farm. Now, you have to keep those birds there, and you have to feed them, and now you feed them with the most expensive feed in our history. And that all add up to a massive cost to the business. And we had this big bird phenomenon, and we had to work through that, and we'll explain a lot about that later during the operational review by Gary Arnold. We have implemented a lot of actions. Some of them was. And the slides are back on, on the front screen. That was just to illustrate what load shedding can do. So thanks to Eskom and to our wonderful government for this practical, show of what Eskom and load shedding can do to anybody in this country. So thank you for that. Perfect timing. So, this slide is to tell our investors, the analysts are there, and we will explain throughout the presentation the impact of all these factors. The excessive cost that goes with it is also illustrated in a couple of slides, both by myself, Gary, and Dries, later on, and there will most probably be a lot of questions on those contributing factors. Then at the end of all of this, when we thought we had load shedding under control with the installation of diesel generators and water reservoirs across the country, that cost us about ZAR 170 million. Money which could have been spent much wiser in capacity or efficiencies. On top of that, we had the worst outbreak of bird flu, avian influenza, with the epicenter up north in the Greater Gauteng area, and it caused havoc among the poultry industry, especially in the layer industry, the table egg producers, and in our breeding stock that produce fertile eggs for day-old chickens. So all of that, and I see people talk about a perfect storm, so maybe we've seen it all now, and we're gonna have to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and move on from there. Just some salient points on what caused these results and where they derived from is poultry feeding cost, and as most of you know by now, is feeding a bird makes up 70% of the total cost of producing a kilogram of white meat. So feed cost is very important. We saw our feeding cost year-on-year increase by close on 20%, and that's a massive increase for 70% of your total cost. Normally, under normal circumstances, you must go and recover that in the market, and we were not able to do that successfully. The broiler production efficiencies also suffered because of load shedding and the backlog on the farms, and that. One of the key things here is you have to keep your birds longer, and you have to feed them, and now you have to learn how to feed a bird not to gain weight, because if they're too big, you can't slaughter them in your processing facilities. It wasn't designed for that. And the bigger the birds, the slower the abattoir or the processing facility operates. So that backlog caused havoc in our industry. And then to create a bit of a vacuum so that we can process these birds, we had to cut back earlier in our production system, and we cut back 50 million day-old chicks by not placing them. But now they already had a cost to them because they come through three generations up to a day-old chick, which you don't place. So you've got the cost, but you don't have the bird at the end of the day to recover that cost, and that added another blow to the income statement. The new strain of bird flu up north, the H7N6, spread rapidly throughout Gauteng. Now, I often see remarks, especially by government institutions, that they've got the bird flu under control. I don't know how you control an airborne virus. So it's not under control. The fact that the infection rate has slowed down is because there's no more chickens left. The West Rand of the Greater Gauteng area was the most densely populated poultry area in South Africa. And just imagine in the winter with the winds and this airborne virus and the stocking density of poultry, what happens to your operations there? Very sad situation, we lost 40% of Astral's total breeding stock, most of them up north. About 95% of them up north in the Greater Gauteng area. So again, that now has to be replenished and repopulated, and this all come at a cost. The negative poultry margins for the first time, 2 halves of the year in our history, was brought about by all the cost of these, external factors like bird flu, like water, shortage, interruptions, and load shedding, and, the cost that goes with that. So the total bill for load shedding at ZAR 1.6 billion, and, the cost of bird flu at ZAR 400 million. So that's ZAR 2 billion just off your bottom line, for things that unfortunately you don't have under your control. This slide is all red for the first time in our history. You've had the presentation, you've seen the information. The revenue almost flat year-on-year, and that is the indication that we still sold almost the same weight as the prior year. Less birds, but they were now bigger. So we sold and produced and sold less birds, but the weight was still sold. But now bigger birds, and that also had a negative impact on the market. The loss of ZAR 621 million is a swing of ZAR 2 billion versus the prior year, coming off a ZAR 1.4 billion and profit, our second best profit in 2022. Now at a ZAR 600 million loss, and again, I explained most of the cost impacts that put us in the red there. Headline earnings per share down 148, and the net cash flow outflow of ZAR 1.1 billion. We started the year with cash of ZAR 700 million, and we ended at negative of ZAR 1 billion. So a massive swing in our bank balances. Again, if you have this additional bill of ZAR 2 billion additional costs, that's what's gonna happen to your balance sheet and your bank balance. This graph is an illustration. We designed this at the interim to reflect on the load shedding cost. Now, these are all actual figures, they're no longer forecast. The big yellow block of that bar graph is the additional feeding costs that were brought about by these bigger birds and load shedding. Remember, you now have the most expensive raw material in history, and now you have to feed birds for longer, and you have to feed them not to gain weight, you just wanna maintain them, otherwise you've got welfare issues, and you don't get the weight back at the end for amount of feed that was consumed. And the biggest part of this was the yellow part of that bar chart, was additional feed cost. The rest of the contributing factors is additional shifts, like I mentioned. If you've got load shedding and you can't slaughter, you have to work over the weekend shifts that are more costly shifts, and that again impact your maintenance program. So a number of factors due to load shedding. Then we had to cut back costs. We—I did explain that we've cut back 50 million day-old chicks or the hatching eggs thereof, and there was a cost to those. So that added up to that. And then the red bar is the physical or the actual diesel bill for these generators. That amounts to about, on average, over the year, at about ZAR 45 million in an annualized year. ZAR 45 million per month, additional diesel costs just for the generators. If you add that up, it's ZAR 550 million per annum, and that's what it can cost you. And just that alone will knock our prior results by about 35%, just the diesel cost. So when we show the actuals year and the second part of the year, the third quarter, the cost of load shedding was about ZAR 100 million higher than our estimated interim. And the second part, as we explained at the time, we will correct the situation with the cutbacks and with some smart planning, and work away those big birds that we couldn't slaughter, and clean out our farms to get into a normal rhythm of a fully integrated business. And all the other costs, except the diesel cost, then disappeared in mid-June. So our target was the 20th of June, and I think, Gary, I had a call by you on the 16th of June and say, "We're back to normal on our farms and in our abattoir." So that what remains is just the diesel cost, the red bars in the fourth quarter. More or less exactly as what we forecasted at the interim. The diesel cost a bit lower, about ZAR 40 million lower in the fourth quarter than what is estimated at the continuous stage six load shedding. So we ring-fence that, let's call it a saving of additional extraordinary cost. We ring-fence that to measure off the base of stage six. This graph just illustrates the change, the yellow line in broiler feed cost, again, 70% of your total cost. So the change in the broiler feed price from an index. Then the blue dotted line shows the poultry margin. You can see how the feed cost or the price of feed continuously moved up or moved north, and then we could not recover that in our selling price. You add these additional costs, and you see two periods of negative margins illustrated here and there, a massive loss year for the poultry division in Astral. This graph says it all. It's the movement between our prior financial year and the current year, and where the profitability there was at ZAR 1.44 billion, now a loss at ZAR 621 million. This is the movement that caused that. First of all, again, I spoke about the raw material and the feed cost. The movement year-over-year of our feeding cost, raw material cost, was ZAR 900 million. We sold less volume and weight. That cost us ZAR 75 million, and then ring-fenced here is the load shedding impact on the business. Additional feed cost, I explained that in a previous graph, of ZAR 1 billion, and then all the other related load shedding costs, which includes the additional shifts, the cutbacks, and the diesel at ZAR 460 million. So there is ZAR 1.6 billion gone because of load shedding, directly related to load shedding. We also had water interruptions. So what happened at our plants or in the rural municipalities and even in, in industrial area in Olifantsfontein, so you have load shedding, and during that period, you also draw down on the water in the, in the reservoirs. By the time that load shedding is completed or that phase, you want to switch on your factory, there's no water pressure in the reservoirs of the municipality, and you have to wait, and you have to wait, and you have to wait, then you have to work an additional shift, and you have to feed the birds for longer. So we had to also, in Olifantsfontein and Vrystaat, spend ZAR 40 million just on spare capacity, building two reservoirs that will give us a two-day cover on, on these water interruptions. So the next issue in South Africa is definitely gonna be water. The same as Eskom, just worse, because you can't generate water like you generate electricity with wind, solar, or diesel. So it's gonna be an issue. No money has been spent on infrastructure, especially in the rural towns. So if you're not gonna be self-sufficient and spend capital on that now, you're gonna run into major problems with water supply. Then we have the bird flu cost. That's the movement. We also had an incident in the prior year. So this is not the exact cost, ZAR 395 million; it's the movement from the prior year. So bird flu cost us ZAR 400 million approximately. Then we had some income from insurance from the prior year and the year before, mostly related to the COVID period, that we had an insurance cover for business interruption, so that was the income now in this year. And ZAR 1.1 billion was an attempt in moving the selling price to recover all of these costs. Now, you can just see in this illustration that by far it was not sufficient to cover all these costs. Then you've got all the other costs combined, all the other... the balance of your Africa, Meadow Feeds, all the other operations, that's the net thereof. Then you get to this unfortunate loss of ZAR 621 million for the year. This is the story of what happened with us, to us, and around us during this financial reporting period. This last graph, before I hand over to Gary for the operational review, if you know this graph, and I know some of you use it, and you're welcome to do so, it illustrates two things. The yellow part is the month-on-month, year-on-year movement of the price of broiler feed. That's the yellow part. So that's how much the price moved in that month versus the same month in the prior period. Now, you can see what happened. As I explained, our feeding bill went up by 20%, the cost of feeding or producing a kilogram of white meat. And you can see the main cause of that is the massive year-on-year increase of your broiler feed price. The blue bars is an illustration along the same basis, but for your broiler selling prices, and it did not move up to the same extent than your input cost. And that's a major contributor. That graph is something, as a poultry producer, and what you've seen there, you don't want to see. You want to see it slightly better balanced, or when you have a good year, like we had in 2018, you see that the movement there was not as massive as here. And that, obviously, our second best reporting period, where the movement and the price of broilers moved at a more rapid rate than the increase of your broiler feed price. Now, Anthony, if you look at this carefully, you can see there's an event here at the end. And we talk about global soft commodity prices, maize, soya, etc., is currently showing a downward trend. There's massive crops coming off in America. South America looks like it's gonna have record crops. So the global balance sheet looks a bit better than a year or two years ago. The movement month-on-month, the slowdown has actually come below the zero line. That's a positive sign. It's not the price, it's the movement. That's a positive sign for the nearby future for livestock producers. And to the same extent, you see some movement in the selling price of broilers. So if you look at that, very negative. If you look at that, very positive for a poultry producer, and it's starting to look like a positive for us here. It's early days because we live in a country where the consumer is under huge strain, very high unemployment, and you can't move this price to the extent where chicken or meat becomes too expensive for households. That's another form of food security. The one is when you don't have enough food in a country. The second layer to is you do produce enough food, and South Africa is food secure at a rate of about 115%. So we are a net exporter of food. We produce more than what we consume. So we are food secure, but if you produce that food at a price that you can't afford, that's another form or another threat to food security. If the food is available, but you can't afford it. And that's one of the things that we talk a lot about, is subsidizing of these key commodities, like poultry meat, to the broader community out there, both by Astral producers, by the retailers, and by the wholesalers. But unfortunately, that's not sustainable. You can't do that for too long, and somewhere, somebody is gonna have to pay for the additional cost brought about by all the factors that we've mentioned. Thank you. I hand over to Gary for the operational review. Thank you, Chris, and good morning to all of those in the audience and everyone online. A very warm welcome to you all. I'll just quickly cover the raw material markets for the year. Chris has already alluded to the significantly higher and record feed price that we experienced early in this financial period. We'll just quickly take a look at some of the drivers there. Just the South African balance sheet for maize. Quick overview of that. We are looking at a very good local crop for the 2023 harvest season in South Africa. In fact, the Crop Estimates Committee's ninth report came out at just over 16.3 million tons for this year's crop. So very good crop coming off the local market this year. The outlook is all about the new crop now, and of course, the talk of the El Niño phenomena, which will be seen to be peaking in December. And moving to a more neutral level from April next year. We're already seeing some early concerns in SAFEX. You'll see volatile trading over the last couple of weeks, and that's really on the dry conditions in the west and on the white maize crop. I think a little bit too early to get too concerned about it. We have had El Niño years before, where if rain falls at the right time, we do get a good crop locally. But you can see that in the trade already some people forecasting the crop down towards 14 million tons. Not a disaster by any means, but we've still got some time to go on there. This is what happened to maize prices through the year, and you can see that these peaks in November and December late last year, but early in Astral's financial year for 2023, maize prices hitting a record of ZAR 5,200 a ton. That was driven by global fundamentals, largely, with a tighter balance sheet on coarse grains, and the rand not helping our local bourse at all. But you can see since the peak, maize prices both globally and locally have trended downwards. With us trading at around the ZAR 4,000 a ton mark at the moment. Obviously, much better levels that we're able to procure our maize inputs at than nearly a year ago. Chris has alluded to the potential benefit that will offer us in feeding costs going forward. Soya meal just over the past three years the price of soy just practically doubling. So you can see that feed input costs playing a significant role in our cost base over the past two to three years. A lot of this driven by weakness in the rand/dollar exchange rate, and of course, again, some global fundamentals playing a role here. We've seen soya meal prices also come off, but a little bit of a rally in recent times and with some concerns in Brazil at the moment around dry conditions for their upcoming second crops. The feed division posted a very good performance for the year. This was supported by the higher internal feed volumes that were sold to our poultry division. So although positive for the feed division, you can imagine that that's a negative for the poultry division within Astral. So although volumes up marginally, just over 1% in the feed division, they did lose some external sale volumes, and we'll cover that in the next slide. Revenue was up for the year, just under 12%. Revenue largely driven by the increase in raw material costs and the increase in selling prices. The feed division did a good job of being able to recover those increased input costs in their selling price, so you'll see margins up for the year and, expenses through the division, well controlled. This, first bullet point doesn't really do justice to what actually happened on SAFEX for yellow maize over the year. So it reflects an increase over our financial year of only 2.3%, but I've already pointed out those peaks in November and December. Soya meal, we've spoken about, but over the year, a close on 22% increase in the price of soya meal included in our feed. And I think we must just reflect on the point Chris made earlier on. We had to feed these birds far higher levels of feed during the year to keep them, alive on farm, at much higher weights and age, through the load shedding crisis, and fed off a much higher feed price.... I've already said that internal feed sales volumes increased. This was solely on the additional feed that, was fed to these birds through the load shedding, big bird era, as we call it. External feed sales volumes decreased through the year, as the poultry sector or the broiler sector experienced a lot of pressure on the livestock markets. The commercial layer industry coming under significant pressure during the year in table egg pricing, but then we saw them hard hit by bird flu towards the end, or from April onwards, in fact, when the first outbreaks of bird flu occurred in commercial layers here in the Western Cape. So we've seen that pressure go through their commercial laying flocks countrywide, of course, put pressure on that market. And then the pig market also came under tremendous pressure during the year, but with some recovery in their selling prices of late. Expenses well controlled, also supported by the higher volumes that we've put through the feed mills, diluting their fixed cost base. So a benefit from the high internal volumes there, but obviously a negative for the poultry division. Just, in the outlook, we do see lower internal sales volumes, of course. We won't be feeding these high levels of feed on that backlog and the slaughter program that we had with the older birds. Now well-equipped with generators to run the processing plants, so we don't envisage any issues in feeding older or heavier birds. And at the moment, with the losses that Chris has mentioned on our broiler breeder flock, at the parent stock level, where we've had bird flu take out nearly 40% of our broiler breeders, we've obviously lost some internal feed sales volumes there. But as we rebuild that capacity, those volumes will come back. You can see the high internal sales volumes influencing the mix in the feed division. So volumes in the sales mix increasing from 60%- 65% of the sales mix sold internally. The opportunity now exists for us to take that capacity outside to the external market again, and Michael Schmitz, the MD for that division, and his team, are working hard to secure additional external feed sales volumes. The poultry division, just looking at it at a consolidated level before we dig down into the results for the commercial division and farming division. Revenue down 0.8%, largely driven by broiler sales volumes decreasing. We can speak more about this on the next slide. Sales realizations, Chris already reflected up by 8.2%, but certainly not sufficient to cover the higher input costs. Breeder revenue up by 4%. Margins reflecting a very difficult environment in the poultry division through the year, with these abnormal costs that we've absorbed, and not recovered in the selling price. Margins negative for the division at 8.7%. Through the year, the broiler feed price, we've spoken about that, increased on average rand per ton 15.4%. What impacted the broiler sales volumes for the year? As you can imagine, with these bigger birds and the larger birds, our We weren't able to conform to product specifications, so we lost sales volumes in the quick service restaurant and fresh areas of our, of our market. Unfortunately, not able to service those markets. At the time, we were only packing chicken into a 5-kilo format, IQF, individually quick frozen portions. And the product specification in that bag was also not ideal for the large portion. So our product mix certainly impacted by the load shedding and big bird era, and we saw a decrease in sales volumes as we lost some market share in the fresh and QSR sectors through the year. Chris spoke of the 50 million- bird cutback that was implemented. That was in an effort to reduce the backlog or claw back that backlog in our slaughter program. Massive numbers of birds, and we'll reflect on that in another slide. Operating expenses, I think we need not say more about that. The load shedding, water supply disruptions, overtime costs, all playing a role. Finished goods stock levels were higher at year-end, compared to the same period in the prior year. So higher at year-end, but subsequently coming off just slightly there than we saw at year-end. But well-positioned, as we've said to the market, to counter any potential shortages on the bird flu impact. We don't envisage a shortage of chicken over the festive season, and you've heard a lot in the press about Minister Patel requesting ITAC to investigate the tariff rebate on chicken on the back of potential shortages. Certainly not something that we foresee in the near future. This is a new slide. Just gives a little bit more detail on what actually happened to our bird numbers through the year. We've pointed to the 50 million- bird cutback through the year in an effort to claw back the backlog in the slaughter program. So that was a down placement of just over 15%. But the big birds reflecting in the total volumes in tons that we produced for the year, only down 4%. If you've reduced your bird numbers by 15%, but only down in volume, weightwise, by 4%, gives you an idea of the big birds that we're dealing with on the ground. Some detail here, I think, is just to reflect on those two plants that were impacted by load shedding. We did not have a load shedding issue in the Cape, as you can see, although we experienced load shedding from time to time, there were curtail agreements in place and generators in place, so we didn't see the significant impact on slaughter volumes here. And we've said through the year, you know, that not all producers were impacted similarly with load shedding. It did largely depend where you were, and unfortunately, Astral was hit the hardest. You can see that in the bird numbers in both Wilgefontein and Standerton in Mpumalanga. A breakdown of the sales mix there. If one quickly looks at this chart, it doesn't look like much has changed, particularly in the frozen sector, but I think if you reflect on the sales or product mix split here between fresh and QSR, on the lower sales volumes, you can then understand how we lost market share in fresh and QSR. I would like to just add that that has come back. As we stand here today, Chris pointed to the backlog in the birds out of the system in the middle of June. That's allowed us to again produce birds of the right quality into the right mix. So we have clawed back sales in that fresh and QSR sector. This is where the biggest impact was, leading to the feed cost bill of ZAR 1 billion through the year in our farming division. Input costs increased significantly, not only on the back of the high raw material costs that we've also already pointed to, but obviously the increased feed consumption through the year. So Astral's total feed bill increasing over 20% year-on-year. Our broiler production was significantly impacted. We cleared that by mid-June, and we'll have a look now at the broiler performance efficiencies on the following two slides. We did, in an attempt to mitigate the cost impact on Astral, we had to completely revise our feeding programs through the big bird era on the back of load shedding, introducing a maintenance feeding program, which was really designed just to keep the birds alive, reduce their average daily growth rate, so that we had a bird that we could process. If we hadn't have done this, we would have sat with birds of 5 kilos-6 kilos that we would simply have not been able to process. And, you know, this was, although very negative for feed consumption, because these birds at that age and weight will continue to eat, was something that we had to implement to manage bird growth. Bird flu has been spoken about already by Chris, and we will speak about it again shortly. Just, on the bird flu challenge, I'm not gonna go through all those points. This presentation is on the website, and it, you can take a look at it at your convenience. But we do have contingency plans in the event of a bird flu impact on the company. A lot of these were developed and implemented on the back of our first outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in 2017. A couple of levers, we call them, that are available to us, to produce more hatching eggs that you would lose from losing your parent stock. Of all the flocks that remain, we can extend the age of those birds or the depletion age of them. So instead of, you know, a shorter life cycle and selling them into the live bird market, we extend the age of those birds, giving us more eggs from every hen that is on the ground. We have also, through the year now, on the back of bird flu, set eggs from younger flocks. Not ideal, egg size, weight, and the chick quality, not always conducive to good broiler performances, but we've had to give up a little bit just to gain something by having more eggs available to sit. We registered three of our hatcheries as import quarantine facilities, and we're currently importing hatching eggs from Brazil. Up until yesterday, we brought in just under 7 million broiler hatching eggs. Some of those to buffer Astral's egg bank, and ensure that we've got, in our integrated broiler value chain, that we've got sufficient bird numbers to supply the market. But also supporting egg sales into the export market and external day-old chick sales in the internal market. So a lot of our day-old chick customers, with the extreme shortage of hatching eggs out there, are willing to pay the price, because these eggs come at a premium, and of course, the chick price is impacted thereby. Are willing to pay the price just to have the chicks available for them to place on their farms. This is the main area, and of course, in these graphs, we normally reflect an average of the results over the year. We've split this up into quarters for the past financial year, purely because the massive impact on broiler performance was experienced in quarter two and three. So slaughter age, significantly up. And you'll remember from previous presentations, we sometimes talk about the couple of hours that we've trimmed off the slaughter age to gain the same slaughter weight. So of course, you know, efficiency is here critical in costs in producing best cost chicken in our company. Here, we're talking on average about 5.5 days, on average, that these birds were older. And that doesn't even actually do it justice, because some of these birds approach 50 days of age, where we normally slaughter them at 32 days of age. So big impact on bird age, and of course, the much heavier birds. Birds on average, 20% heavier, and you know what that does to your feed bill. We've reflected that already. In mortality, of course, with these bigger birds now, on farm, the mortality unfortunately rising as a result of those older birds. The density of the birds placed on the farms was got to a point where welfare became a major concern to us. We had to go into farms and thin birds out. Certainly not anything you would do in the normal course of business. It's just a no-no in terms of biosecurity on the broiler farms, and it's, of course, disruptive to the birds on the ground if you go into the houses and you're catching birds. You have to lift feeder lines and water lines. All sorts of implications for the birds, but on the back of welfare issues, we had to do this. But you can see the mortality spiking during that period. Feed consumption increasing significantly, with the PEF negatively impacted. What I can reflect on here is, of course, the performance back to normal. In fact, in quarter four of this financial year, slightly better than what we were seeing pre-load shedding, and this is how you want to be farming chickens again. Benefiting from, a bird achieving, an ideal slaughter weight at the right age, and on the right feed consumption. Quickly, industry matters. There are always some questions on imports. In December of 2022, the provisional anti-dumping duty that had been implemented by the Department of Trade and Industry expired. What we saw following that was a steady increase in imports up until about May or June of this year, where a couple of factors came into play. The weak exchange rate of the South African rand against the U.S. dollar, I think, having some influence on import volumes there. And then, there was the anticipation by the importers of the permanent anti-dumping duty being implemented in August of 2023, which is exactly what happened. You'll remember, Minister Patel delayed that implementation by 12 months. So that coming into play. One of the factors that we believe is driving the lower import levels you're seeing at the moment, is port congestion. If you just look at the port congestion or the ships that are anchored off Durban, you'll see a significant increase in the number of vessels that are sitting idle. This will be adding to the cost of all of those, that, you know, the frozen chicken sitting on board those ships, and demurrage costs. You know, we've heard that a lot of chicken is actually stuck at the moment, sitting on ships offshore, not in the port. Through the year, the industry slaughtering on average 20 million birds per week. You'll remember that this comes off a high of approximately 21.5 million birds a week, that we've spoken of before. Astral's cutbacks coming into this number. So reducing the local production by a significant amount to 20 million birds per week. Added to that, the 6 million birds per week imported in whole carcass equivalents, and you see that imports are still around 23% of local consumption. When we signed the Poultry Sector Master Plan, that was around 29%-30% of local consumption. Local imports making up a significant portion of the local market share. So down somewhat, but certainly not enough in terms of what the objectives of the master plan was aiming to achieve, where we wanted to produce more local chicken. The investment in that capacity was made, and of course exists in our own processing capacity. We've spoken of the anti-dumping duty. Bird flu impacted the commercial laying industry as much as it impacted the broiler industry, and a significant risk to the poultry industry locally. We are seeing increases in the incidence rates of bird flu now as Europe approaches its winter season, and North America, the number of incidences has started spiking again in those regions. Voluntary vaccination for H5 and the H7 strains of bird flu is well supported by our Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development. We've been working very closely with them on developing protocols for vaccination for our breeding stock. Currently, we have two H5 vaccines registered, with an H7 vaccine being developed locally for registration. And with the Department of Agriculture assisting us there in fast-tracking these registrations. So by all accounts, we are looking to the new year, early in the new year, at being able to at least vaccinating our grandparent breeding stock. The protocols are still under discussion with DALRRD, and some way to go. They come at extreme cost, as you can imagine. You won't just be allowed to blanket vaccinate as you like. A vaccination could mask any field infection from the virus. So the point of the protocols is just surveillance of the flocks to make sure that, you know, the vaccination hasn't masked any infection in spread birds or spread the virus around the country. So strict surveillance of the flocks that will be vaccinated, but certainly something that we'll have to subscribe to. And we've spoken about the importation of hatching eggs to mitigate losses on the bird flu outbreak. This is not only Astral that's importing broiler hatching eggs, but other broiler producers as well, that have lost breeding stock. I'll now hand over to Dries Ferreira for overview of the financials. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Gary. Thank you, Chris. I'm going to attempt to take you through a very logical way of packaging all the events that was described into the numbers. On the profit and loss. Can everybody hear me? On the profit and loss, the income statement, the revenue decreased by 0.4%. That reflects the net movement in feed, where we lost external volumes, gained back some rand value with price increases. Similarly, on the poultry side, lost volume, gained some on the price increases, with the net movement for the group at 0.4% down, or roughly equal to last year. However, if you look at the operating loss incurred by the group of ZAR 621 million, what sits in between those two numbers, mainly in the cost of sales line, is the ZAR 2.1 billion abnormal costs hitting the profit and loss without the commensurate income attached to that. So we're sitting with a ZAR 2.1 billion swing in cost structure, mainly cost of sales, that impacted the profit and loss, and it left the group with a ZAR 621 million loss for the year. What's also significant to point out is, for the second half of the year, we moved into a net borrowings position for the group with our overdrafts or general banking facilities, and we've incurred quite a heavy finance charges for the second half of the year. That will obviously annualize as we work away the overdraft. That left us with 149% down on the loss before tax, recouping some on the tax line, where we recognize that we will have a tax benefit in future periods. When we start generating profit again, we'll be paying less tax, so there's a deferred tax asset that sits in the tax line. So just to put it in context, there's just short of ZAR 300 million of tax that the government did not collect from Astral as a result of the swing in the profit and loss for the group. Loss from continuing operations, ZAR 512 million after tax, down 149%, and that culminates in the headline loss of ZAR 508 million, 148% down, and the loss per share and, and headlines, loss per share are both down 148% year-on-year. The group annual revenue, going back all the way to the start of Astral, what I'd like to point out is this red line, which barring one or two moments where there was a slight dip in the revenue, and very slightly, there's not really been a decline in revenue in Astral's history. If you look at what happened in this last financial year, you can see in the total volume sales in feed that went into the poultry division, and obviously also in the poultry division itself, contributing strong revenue activity. But at group level, after consolidation, the revenue line is flat for the year. If we break that down into the operating profit for the years, here again, you can see it's the first significant loss for the group in the poultry division for a full year, and the first loss for the full year for the group, at a loss of ZAR 621 million, or a negative margin of 3.2%. What's also important to observe here is the consistency of the feed division contribution to the group profitability, with the volatility then coming in through the poultry division. Breaking that into six monthly performances or half years, you can also see, and Chris mentioned that earlier, it's the first time in Astral's history that we had two halves following each other in the poultry division with negative margins or losses. What's important to note is, if you go back to that, the large scaling cost breakdown that Chris had on the screen earlier, you can see that the Q3/Q4 cost sits in the poultry division, mainly. There's a small portion that sits in the feed division, I think ZAR 31 million, but the rest of that ZAR 1.65 billion that sits in the group, mainly in the poultry division. So that outlines to you the massive impact in the second half on the poultry division, and hence the group. Also noting what Chris pointed out in the earlier slide, the movement between the change in feed price and the change in selling prices, starting to show some indications of positivity. On the balance sheet for the group, I'd like to start at the bottom line here, with the equity position moving down 16% to ZAR 4.019 billion. That was driven mainly by a couple of factors. The biggest influencing factor is that the group had to draw down on general banking facilities, where we started the year with ZAR 701 million positive bank balance, and ended the current financial year that we're reporting on with an overdraft of ZAR 1.031 billion. That swing in cash into the negative was invested into non-current assets, and the increase in non-current assets mainly relating to the fact that we had to spend ZAR 168 million on water and electricity backup assets. Furthermore, working capital increased by 30%. I've got a slide that I'll unpack that for you in more detail. We had non-current liabilities, mainly deferred tax, moving down, so the debit reducing the credit on that, on that balance sheet line item, moving down 31% from ZAR 900 million- ZAR 624 million. Therefore, net assets increasing by 24%. But if you consider the movement on the cash that had to be invested in those items, including the loss in the background, reducing the group's equity base by 16%. Capital expenditure. We've got our depreciation and amortization for the group, relatively consistent at around the ZAR 300-ZAR 310 million level. You can see the breakdown between the PPE, the property, plant, and equipment, and the right of use assets, and then the total CapEx spend. What is important to point to note here is the normal CapEx spend for the group was not adversely impacted by what we've gone through, so we are very cognizant of maintaining our asset base in the group. And we're spending ZAR 230 million in the year that was on maintaining our property, plant, and equipment base. But then on top of that, the ZAR 168 million spent on load shedding related and water related costs, CapEx, leaving us with just short of ZAR 400 million spent on capital expenditure. We came into the year last year, this time when we stood here, with ZAR 737 million of CapEx projects planned. What happened in the last 12 months meant that a lot of these projects were placed on hold, and remain on hold for the time being. We've given the outline of the different projects here. Where we stood at the end of the year, ZAR 594 million of CapEx approved by the board for management to implement, but most of those remain on hold until there's a decent visibility on where the cash balance is going, and the quality of the balance sheet can be improved. Working capital in more detail. Again, looking at the bottom line, net working capital increasing by ZAR 533 million, mainly driven by the inventory in poultry, increasing by ZAR 729 million, and that's the largest stockholding in the finished goods position for, for the poultry division. Obviously, pointing out the biological assets line, that is down almost ZAR 200 million, mainly driven by the fact that we had to cull many of our breeding stock. The 40% that was mentioned earlier, loss in breeding stock for the group. And that obviously left the impaired position on the biological assets. Trade debtors, not much of a movement. However, I'd like to point out the quality of the debtors book, where almost, w ell, all of that money is already back in the bank as we stand today, and that is a very high quality debtors book, with almost no debtors beyond the, the 30-day cycle. In current liabilities, trade payables, we found support from our suppliers to the extent of ZAR 223 million more than what we had last year. What is important to note is, under trade payables, our main soft commodity supplier extended our payment terms from 30 days- 60 days, and that's what's reflected in this number of ZAR 223 million more funding from suppliers. Other payables reduced by ZAR 200 million, and that's mainly related to various accruals and provisions in the group for cost structures that's lower this year than what it was last year. On the cash flow, on a waterfall analysis, just graphically demonstrating where the cash went. Again, we started the year with ZAR 701 million cash, ended with. And this is an interesting view of the cash. We say here, ZAR 431 million overdraft is what we ended with. However, we drew down on a ZAR 600 million GBF from one of the main bankers in the country, to fund the day-to-day cash flow requirements and on a liquidity need for the group, to make sure that we maintain sufficient liquidity and solvency in the group on a day-to-day basis. You need to add these two together, that gives you the ZAR 1,031 million overdraft position that we had on the balance sheet at the end of September. You can see that we paid dividends, ZAR 226 million, coming out of last year, and we also settled the incentive bonuses from the prior year of ZAR 270 million for the whole group. Then we generated cash profits. Among all the noise that we're presenting, there was still cash profits generated of ZAR 1.6 billion. And that ZAR 1.6 billion was then invested into working capital growth of ZAR 323 million. That is excluding the ZAR 270 million that we mentioned on the incentives paid. That also forms part of the accruals position. So we spent ZAR 323 million on working capital. We spent the load shedding costs, which was also explained earlier in the presentation. We spent cash, ZAR 335 million, on the bird flu impact. Generators purchased, that's including deposits paid and the net movement on the balance sheet of ZAR 181 million. And we left then with the inflow of ZAR 600 million supporting the day-to-day cash balance of ZAR 431 million, or just to be clear, ZAR 1.031 billion overdraft at the end of September. This is the traditional view of the cash flow statement. I'm not gonna spend too much time on this, but again, just pointing out that the ZAR 600 million there, we don't want to cause any confusion. A net outflow of ZAR 1.1 billion, which includes that ZAR 600 million, so that means ZAR 1.7 billion outflow before we drew down on the borrowings from the general banking facilities. Then on the headline earnings per share or the loss per share for the current year, and then the dividends per share, we show the history back to 2021. You'll note this is the first year that we skipped the dividend for the year. So there's no dividend declared for the current financial year due to the balance sheet position and the loss that was incurred. And that just outlines the position, noting the 2018 large headline earnings per share, and last year's large headline earnings per share. Shows the volatility that we've entered into in the last 24 months. Then in summary, revenue flat or 0.4% down at ZAR 19.3 billion. We incurred an operating loss of ZAR 621 million on the devastating load shedding and bird flu costs. Capital expenditure of ZAR 398 million is higher than normal due to the CapEx we had to spend on the load shedding and water-related backup cost CapEx structures. Cash outflow of ZAR 1.7 billion before drawing down on the ZAR 600 million general banking facilities, and gearing of ZAR 1 billion on the balance sheet or 25.6%. And again, no dividend declared. I'd like to hand over to Chris. Thank you, Dries. Can I use your notes? Thank you. That concludes the biggest part of the presentation. We just wanna give you the management and the board's view on how we see the near future. It may be a bit balanced between some of the more negative aspects and then some of the maybe more positive. So this is how we view the future, and this has been obviously discussed and formalized with a great lot of care to make sure that we give you our view and not just a general view on the outlook. First of all, if you work through the financials with this overdraft, we haven't been in that position for a long time, not being able to pay a dividend. So the first objective, and it's a very clear objective, is to rebuild this balance sheet to its former glory. We don't like debt, and we don't believe in a volatile business like ours, where you're dependent on raw materials, weather, and external factors that you should be geared. If you're geared for the purpose of acquisitions or mergers or whatever, that's something completely different. But we don't want to be in that position, and we want to pay dividends. It's robustly discussed at the board at every year-end meeting, and we want to rebuild this balance sheet as soon as we can. And a lot of focus on that from the management team and everybody responsible for their areas in Astral. The unfortunate thing, running generators is gonna be with us for a long time. We can't run an abattoir with solar or wind power. It's simply too big. It draws down on too much electricity at any specific point in time. So diesel generators are gonna be with us till any one of you can give me a suggestion when load shedding will come to an end. I believe, government is firmly of the opinion that load shedding will be at an end by the end of December, I was told, and, that will be good. Then we can get rid of the diesel cost. But diesel cost is now embedded, and at ZAR 45 million a month, if you do your forecast at stage six, it's gonna cost us, half a billion rand per year, that you're gonna have to somewhere get back from the consumer, which is not gonna be too easy. So from next year on, we will report diesel as an embedded cost, as part of your cost structure. Thank you to those in charge of Eskom. Bird flu remains a major risk, and we're gonna see the mutation of those strains coming every year. Europe already, with the start of their winter, is showing signs of high infection rates of bird flu. And you know, eventually those birds travel down to Africa. So bird flu is gonna be with us for quite a long time. We believe, as a small country at the bottom part of Africa, that the only possibility for us to protect our supply is with vaccination. And Gary is actually spearheading that process through SAPA with the government, making sure that the protocols and everything that goes with vaccination is in place. Maybe in the near future, we can make an announcement about that to protect our breeding stock. El Niño, there's already some Anthony, as you would know, people are starting to get a bit nervous about, not enough rain in the western parts of, South Africa for the new planting season. It's too early to panic. We've had El Niño years before. If you check the history over the past 40 years. In many El Niño years, we had excellent crops. So it's not just the, the quantity of rain, it's also the quality and the timing of the rain. So with the information we have here today, we're not getting very nervous about El Niño yet. But we've got good carryover stocks, so we don't foresee a crisis. Local prices might go north a bit or go up, but we don't foresee a crisis. Global stocks in good balance. I think the key thing in our efforts to reset, refocus, and restart the business to the levels where we want to see it, part of that is to recover your cost. Just the additional cost, but also your annual inflationary cost. I think the one big concern to us as a poultry producer or supplier of food to the South African market is the ability and the liquidity of our consumers not in a good state. People don't have discretionary, disposable income to pay more for everything that are thrown at them. So that's gonna be the biggest concern, is you can move a price up, and you can move it up, and it can be accepted by the retailers or the wholesalers, but at the end of the day, the test is still: Can the consumer take away the volumes that we produce at a new pricing level? And that's not just simply a mathematical sum, it's an art form to play with prices, recover your input cost, and see at what level, at what volume the consumer can take away this. So, a lot of focus on that. We've got a program. It sounds cheapish, but we've got a specific program, specific KPIs and deadlines with very experienced people in place to reset the operational part of the business, that we believe that put us in the so-called number one spot on the African continent, to make sure that those are intact and in place. And that 3 R project is well on its way. We see the results that Gary has indicated from the farms. That's where this business start, and that currently is in a good space. It's actually a bit better than where we left off before the load shedding. So all the biological ability by the birds is and the genetics that gives to us, we're gonna ensure that we maximize and optimize that. Our product mix is normalized. Gary spoke a bit about we reentered the QSR market. We are at a level where we were before the load shedding. Our fresh market is doing extremely well. A good pull on our product, especially up in the northern parts. Big demand for fresh. That's well and balanced. It's a market that we couldn't participate in at the levels we wanted during the load shedding time. And then, of course, there is an effort to try and sell the product at a profitable margin, and that is also on track. It depends on the consumer. And I think one of the positives, what I showed in my closing graph and in the intro part of the presentation, is we have seen soft commodity prices trending down, which is good news for a poultry producer. So there's a number of negatives that we're gonna have to manage, but then there's also the positive side of the business that we'll work extremely hard on to achieve. Most of them already in place in the first quarter of our new financial year, FY 2024. I thank you once again for taking interest in Astral, listening to us talk here for an hour and 10 minutes. We thank you for your time. If there's any questions now, you're welcome. If not, thank you. Thank you, Chris. We'll open the floor for questions in the audience. Okay, first question set before we go to the webcast is from the floor. If there's no questions, do we move to the webcast? Any, any questions? The press release, the presentation, and the slideshow was very comprehensive. There's also a lot of information at the back that you can use. So you also, if you don't have any questions here, you're welcome to phone us. We also have a number of one-on-one sessions over the next three days, today, tomorrow, and Thursday, but we'll take any questions here. Anthony, are you first to go? Oh, there's Charles. Thank you, Charles. Yeah, thanks, Chris. Well, I was on a call, I think a week or so back with SAPA, who said they were meeting ITAC, I think it was the afternoon or the day after the call. I guess I'm just curious to hear if you guys have a sense of when ITAC is gonna rule around the rebates and, yeah, when you're gonna hear about that. Yeah, I'm gonna ask Gary to answer. As I say, he's involved in that. It was a good and a constructive meeting. I think SAPA walked out there feeling good that we could present a good case. But, Gary, if you wanna go into the detail of that meeting? Yeah, I think—Hello? Yeah, not much more than that, what Chris has mentioned. We were invited to give a one-on-one response to their questions. And it was a good opportunity to explain that we don't foresee a shortage in the supply of chicken. Our answers were well received by them, and we left that meeting with a good feeling that they had a grasp or understanding of what's going on. When they're going to actually pronounce on these, on a potential tariff rebate, we're not sure. But we presume it'll be pretty soon, Charles. You know, Minister Patel asked them for an expedited process, and that was already a while back. Yeah. They—Yeah, exactly that. So, I mean, you've got at least n ever mind the port congestion at the moment, there's at least a two-month lead time on ordering chicken, getting it on the water, and landing it in South Africa, at least. So, certainly, hopefully, they don't introduce a rebate, and all the importers rush to get these containers on the water, because they're gonna arrive here at a time when the chicken won't be needed, as the industry is busy restocking parent stock. Thank you, Charles. Anthony, thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for the presentation. Given that you've mentioned to us that year-on-year, your underlying production was down, from my notes here, ZAR 0.158 to 4.9 million birds per week. As it stands right now in your first quarter, how has production bounced back? That's the key thing, because that all then kicks into your efficiencies and the availability of stock going forward. My first question is: How are things right now regarding weekly production? My first question, please. Again, I'll start off. Obviously, you have to balance weight with volume and the age, and that whole reset, refocus programs to get back to our target weight of 1.50. Now, you have to manage the number of birds to get the same weight. So, Gary, where exactly are you in that program? Yeah, Anthony, we kicked off the new year slaughtering around 5.8 million birds a week. It has reduced through November on the back of bird flu. You know, that reduced hatching egg supply reduced our chick supply, and as the market has been constrained on the supply of eggs and chicks from our external sales, we've also had to constrain, unfortunately, internal supply, until we got to a point where the broiler hatching eggs arrived. So on average, through the first quarter, slaughter levels will be around the 5.5 million mark a week. Thank you for that. And then, on HPAI, I'm well aware that the variant that we've had in this country is quite unique. I think only Mexico, from my readings, have a very similar strain. It isn't exactly what we have. Can you give us an update as to what the process is, given you're involved in getting fast-track approval for vaccination? Again, my information leads me to understand that the vaccination costs roughly ZAR 1.50 a chicken, so it all starts to add up, and sometimes, depending on the type of chicken, you need six over its lifespan. Again, that money has to be absorbed by somebody. You know, at the end of the day, do you really think that you could pass that on? Or are we hoping that government will come to the party with some form of kickback to alleviate the mess they've put you through in the last few years? Anthony, on current estimates of vaccination costs will be in the region of around ZAR 50-ZAR 200 a bird. If Astral was to completely vaccinate all of our breeding stock, that annualized cost will be around ZAR 14 million. I think bearing in mind that if you actually went out there to secure insurance cover for the risk associated with bird flu, which certainly won't be available to the market in future, the premiums that you pay for that insurance are far higher than the ZAR 14 million. So a cost that I think one can absorb, given the fact that no insurance will be available to the market. The H7N6 virus that we've seen in South Africa is unique only to South Africa. This is mutated locally. Mexico has experienced an H7N3 virus over the years. Be that as it may, the vaccine is developed around the H7 typing. So, we have a local company working on a H7 vaccine, being developed out of two low pathogenic forms of the H7 virus. Well, they've vaccinated birds already. They've already drawn blood, looking at antibody levels in the livestock. They're collecting safety and efficacy data for the registration. If they're allowed or Act 36 doesn't require any challenge studies, in other words, you go and challenge the birds with the live virus and then look at the reaction, we could have, under the fast track registration process, a dossier available for registration by the middle of December. So we're hoping that, by early new year, we'll have an H7 vaccine registered. There's also an H7 dossier with Act 36, the regulators of, you know, the Fertilizers, Farm Feeds, Agricultural Remedies and Stock Remedies Act, for an international H7 vaccine, one in fact used in Mexico and produced in North America. That's currently where they registered it... Two H5s have been approved to date. I think bearing in mind that H5N1 has affected KwaZulu-Natal in the Western Cape through the year, H7N6 up north. Perhaps my last question to Chris. Yes. Since this government started its economic suicide mission, and Astral spent a great deal of money on generators, water reticulation, among other things. You know, as it stands this morning, your share price is clearly reacting positively to the narrative of results presentation. You're up now 3.14%, with a market value of ZAR 6.4 billion. How much money in totality has this company spent to date, of our money, sorting out the government's mess? First of all, I think it's my mother buying the shares currently. She feels sorry for me. But, I think the second part, I don't have a figure offhand, but we can calculate it, and I can clearly say it is a vast amount of money over the number of years that we spend on duplicating infrastructure that was, t hey're supposed to service us, especially in the Greater Standerton area. But we'll get to a figure with you, but it's definitely way beyond ZAR 2.5 billion-ZAR 3 billion, which could have been spent on infrastructure in the company, on most probably on capacity or efficiency improvements, creating jobs, but it's money just for duplication. Just to get the same water from the same source, just through expensive and private line. And one should remember, in a town like Standerton, where we are the biggest job creator or biggest business in that area, it's very difficult to source water and electricity just for yourself and not for the community that work at your plant. So, Frans and his team are also looking after the greater interest of the town there, and ensure that the people that work for us, when they go, that they also have water and electricity at home. So we also assist with that. Thank you, Anthony, for your questions. Hi, morning. Just on the, c an you maybe give some comments on the, the other sort of private, smaller producers, and especially with reference to your feed business, the risk to those external volumes are potentially credit risk. I'm imagining you struggling, those smaller ones, without the financial, reserves are in a pretty difficult position. Yeah, it's a balancing act. I think the dairy industry and the beef industry doing fairly okay currently. One of the livestock industries under threat are the breeders like ourselves, and you've seen the financials, and then the egg industry. So before you venture into that, trying to just sell off your maize positions, I think needs to take careful consideration of the state of the egg- producing fraternity. That is - that's a high volume offtake for feed, but it's a very low margin. So if you look at the risk reward factor, there, it's most probably not an area that we'll go into for external volumes at this point in time. But then on the other hand, I've seen this industry going through a lot of strain over the past 40 years. Just by the way, this is my 40th year in the industry, exactly this year, and then also my worst year. So every 40 years, we're gonna have a bad year. Want to statistic that in Anthony, in your model. But, there's very resilient farmers out there. We've seen them down and out in the egg industry, the broiler industry, and somehow the resilience of a South African farmer, not just in poultry, is incredible. The world sometimes look at us and say, "Well, how do you do this under these circumstances?" And I will give you a guarantee that most of those farmers will bounce back. We will keep that good relationship with them. So that you're not expecting any losses on external volumes? No. If there's a loss on external volumes, it will most probably be a decision that we take not to pursue certain market areas for a period of time. Also, something that we consider from time to time, if you've got a raw material position that you forward cover your position is what do you do with that position? If it's better than SAFEX or the market, do you sell it outside or do you keep it for your own cost of production? So again, it's a bit of a balancing act. If you need volumes to cover your overheads, you can maneuver a marketing effort to go and get external volumes, but yeah, it's something we consider on a day-to-day, month-to-month basis. Just lastly, just maybe on your financing. So maybe can you give us some broad sense of the terms, the governance, and like the rates on the financing? Thank you, Dries. The facilities that we have in place is with three banks. It's on-demand type facilities, so it's general banking facilities or overdraft. There's no covenant related to that, but that also goes hand in hand with the fact that the facilities are on-demand type facilities. The way we manage that risk is by frequent interaction with the banks, and yeah, so we disseminate all information almost on a real-time basis with the banks, so there's no surprises in numbers that go through to them. Now the reality is that it is a more risky environment, but we feel that we're managing the profile correctly with the banks, and I think we've got a good relationship with the banks. They are very supportive in the process, and you know, we've walked a very long journey with most of those banks. Specifically, if I can say, the Nedbank and Standard Bank side has been phenomenal. We also bank with Absa at the moment, which is a new introduction in the last year. That's the ZAR 600 million that we outlined on the cash flow statement, and that's really just to boost the day-to-day liquidity. But in all three cases, now we've got solid relationships with the banks there, but still, I mean, the risk remains, but we're managing the risk. We also believe, if I can maybe just fall back on a couple of comments. Now, there are various layers that we can go to. Everything is on demand, which means if things get worse, we probably have the ability to bring security to the picture. The banks are unsecured at the moment, on a pari passu basis. So, and excuse for the technicalities, but, you know, it, it's equal playing field for all the bankers. If we had to go to the next level, we put term debt in place with security, which brings a lot more comfort to the process, a lot more certainty in terms of cash flows, which I think will also be on a win-win with the finance providers. So yes, it's a process that we manage, but we're very well aware of how that process needs to pan out. Thanks. Maybe, [Roche], the rate that you're paying on your funding? That's different with each bank. It's prime less. One of them is better than the other two. Maybe just to color in Drie s's comment on our relationship with the bank. For many years, we had a positive bank balance with one of our primary bankers, and I never cracked the invite to the Nedbank Golf. This year, I cracked the invite, so, and I had a prime seat because for the first time, we owe them money, so good relationship. Chris, we've got one question from Siphelele Mdudu, from Matrix Fund Managers. You mentioned that an effort to correct poultry selling prices has been implemented in the market to reverse the unsustainable mix of returns and previously subsidized pricing. Is this enough to stop the losses suffered by the poultry delivery group? It's a bit more complex than a yes or a no. It depends on your volumes. If you increase your price, but you don't produce and sell a matching volume to that, it's not gonna be enough. So we've had... And we don't talk about a price increase. It's not that you're making a nice margin, and you wanna fatten your margin or increase your profits. We're in a loss situation. So the price changes are corrections to correct historic underrecovery. So there was one effort that was successful, and we're in the middle of another effort that will most probably take us into the black in the near future. But then, as I said earlier, you'll have to sit and wait and see what the consumer is gonna do with that new pricing point. Will they take it? Will they take the number of birds away? So the quick answer could be a yes, but it's slightly more complex than that. Time will tell. Presentation. Just you mentioned that, you know, people are expressing the view that load shedding may tail off dramatically or from December. Have you been able to get any conviction around that, or test it, or is there any way? The short answer is absolutely no. You know, I think there's a lot of promises made. It's we're going into an election year. There's a lot of shenanigans from a political point of view. It's fact. If you look at our facilities, the maintenance program, you look at the problems here with Koeberg, I think load shedding is gonna be with us for a long, long time. It's just at what phase? And what is more important, it's not just the phase, it's the unpredictability of the phase. If you can think, if we run a 24/7 business, and if it's stage 4, they give you slots where you have blackouts or load shedding. Every morning, they change that. You have to change your whole production chain down the line. When will the birds come in? When do you not feed them? When do you do that? When does your labor or your staff come in? So the unpredictability is as costly as having no electricity. And you've seen, I think three or four times a day now, they, they change the matrix of load shedding. So, Chris, maybe the fact that we've spent ZAR 170 million on generators is a sad situation, but it will give us the leeway to produce in line with what or slaughter in line with what we produce at the time we want to, unfortunately, at a cost. So the short answer is no. We've got no conviction that load shedding is gonna come to a sudden end, and there's a lot of promises, but I simply don't see that. Thank you for the question. Are there any more questions? No? If there's no questions from the floor, Marlizer, are there any questions from abroad? Chris, that's it. We thank everybody once again. People who locked into the webinar, people present here, thank you for being here. Special word of thanks to my management team, not just for this presentation and the roadshow, which is now in the second day of the five days, but also for your efforts over the past year. It's not easy working in the poultry industry currently. I thank each one of you, and thank you for being here. Goodbye.