Good morning, everybody, a warm welcome from sunny Western Cape on the interim results presentation for the six months which ended the 2nd of April 2023. Our presentation outline will follow the following sequence. We'll first do a review of the six months, whereafter Tiaan will take us through the financial performance. Myself will then cover the trading performance, some comments on the regional and the international segment, as well as speak a bit about capital investment, make a couple of comments on the outlook and also field some questions. Just before I start with the review of the six months numbers, some comments I would like to speak about. In our trading update, which covered the five months until February 2023, we only dealt with revenue and volumes and not profitability per se. We had a very strong March, as we made mention in our SENS announcement this morning, in both the regional and the international segment, which boosted our performance for the six months. International shipments are usually strong in March as we start to ship canned peaches from the new peach crop, and our regional business also performed well in March as our customers took in stock for Easter. Our diversified business, as one of our cornerstone strategic pillars, really supported the overall business performance. Looking at the review of the six months, a resilient regional and international sales growth, where sales growth was driven mainly by price inflation. I might mention of the strong trading performance in March in a highly competitive trading environment. The consumer still stays constrained with volume pressures and volume decline experienced in certain product categories. The ongoing impact of load shedding had a big impact on our business with investment in backup generators over the past seven years that did put us in good stead to be able to manage that efficiently. ZAR 37.8 million was spent in diesel costs for the first six months. I must say, I'm extremely proud of our people that really did exceptionally well in the very challenging manufacturing environment. I talk about operationally fit people, and I really think that Rhodes Food Group people did extremely well in the past six months managing this difficulty. With the better performance, the recovery in profitability was extremely pleasing, with our regional operating profit margin increased by 260 basis points, where the recovery of high input costs in regional markets was achieved. We had a significant turnaround in our pie category, our international operating margin increased by 770 basis points. Our good export pricing was supported by the weak rand. Our strategy stays consistent with execution being adapted to market conditions and changing market dynamics, led by our five strategic pillars to ensure sustainable long-term growth. If we then have a look at our medium-term targets that we've set ourselves, the three specific metrics that we focus on being revenue growth, operating profit margin, and return on equity. If we look at our revenue growth target of 10.2%, we managed to achieve that in the first half at 10.2%. Our operating margin goal, which is set at 10%, we managed to increase it to 9.2% from the prior year's 7%, so I think also a pleasing improvement. From a return on equity perspective, where we strive to get to WACC + 2%, which currently adds up to about 16%, we managed to achieve 14.1%. Also very pleasing that we managed to beat WACC and also making progress with regards to this, to this target. Thank you. Tiaan, if you can just take us through the financial performance. Good morning, everyone. Revenue for the six months grew by 10.2% to ZAR 3.8 billion. That was driven by 9.5% growth in the regional revenue and 13.2% in the national revenue. The current period included 26 trading weeks versus 27 weeks in the prior period. The group operating profit increased by 43.2% to ZAR 346 million on the back of a operating margin improvement of 220 basis points to 9.2% for the period. The current period didn't include any extraordinary events. While in the prior year, there was once-off restructuring costs for the Today acquisition, included in the results amounting to ZAR 23.6 million, as well as an insurance claim that was paid out for business interruption during the COVID lockdown of ZAR 43.4 million. Regional operating profit increased by 54.2% to ZAR 273 million. For the period, again, the operating margin expanded by 260 basis points to 8.9%, and it was largely driven by cost recoveries in most of the major categories, like most notably fruit juice, ready meals, dry foods, meat, and pies. The international operating profit increased by ZAR 32 million- ZAR 73 million. Again, the margin improved by 700 basis points to 10.4%. The large drivers of this improvement was firm international pricing, which held during this period, as well as the tailwinds from a weaker ZAR against the basket of trading currencies. EBITDA increased by 34.3%, while the margin improved by 230 basis points to 12.8%. Headline earnings increased by 37% to ZAR 217 million. Diluted headline earnings per shares were 37.5% higher at ZAR 0.829 per share. In terms of the balance sheet structure, the net debt to EBITDA, net debt to equity ratio rather, was improved from 32.3% in the prior year to the current 46.7%. During the period, long-term loans of ZAR 189 million was repaid. In the prior period, that amounted to ZAR 39 million. Net debt was ZAR 19 million lower at ZAR 1.464 billion at the end of March 2023. Capital expenditure for the period amounted to ZAR 144 million, which was ZAR 3 million down on the prior year. Group revenue grew by a compounded annual growth rate of 9% since the first half of 2019. Importantly, Pieter mentioned it, volumes at the group level were down by 8.5% during this period. Price inflation amounted to 14.8%, and was the largest driver of revenue growth. The tailwinds from the currency at the group level contributed 2.7% to the revenue growth, while acquisitive growth in the first four months of the current period relating to the Today's acquisition contributed 2% to the revenue growth. A comparison of revenue growth between the current and the prior periods. Again, it's clear there that there's a change in fortunes as far as volume growth is concerned. Last year, the business achieved 12.5% volume growth. This year it turned around to be 8.5% negative volume growth. Again, the price inflation at 14.8% more than compensated for that. In the prior period, price inflation amounted to 10.3%. I think at this point, it is worth noting that we did all along during the course of the prior financial year, we mentioned that we were struggling to recover cost inflation from the market. Eventually, that started to come through in this half, together with continued inflation, albeit at lower levels. That gave rise to the relatively high price inflation this year compared to the prior year. Normalized operating profit over the past four years, the compounded annual growth rate amounts to 18.9%. Important to note, for the recent five years, this year's margin of 9.2% is by far the best over the 5-year comparison. Normalized operating profit, one can see that the international segment started to contribute from last year, ZAR 21 million to operating profit in the prior year, and ZAR 73 million in the current calendar year, or financial year rather. Compared to the prior years, we had made no contribution, or in 2020 a loss of ZAR 44 million. At the time, that was largely driven by a revaluation loss on foreign exchange contracts. International revenue, importantly, the mix stayed relatively the same. U.S. dollar is still the largest currency in which the business trades. A swing between GBP and EUR, if you want, but still 65% of foreign revenue is US dollar denominated. It happened that so happened that the rand weakened the most against the US dollar during the current period. Our average US dollar rand exchange rate for the period was ZAR 17.85 compared to ZAR 15.20 the prior year. That change, combined with the changes in the other currencies, added ZAR 92 million to international revenue. In terms of working capital to turnover, slight increase of 190 basis points. It's largely inflation driven. In terms of working capital days, It's exactly the same as the prior year at a net 135 days. Free cash flow. Those of you that are familiar with the business, in the first half of our financial year, it's always a situation where cash is utilized, no free cash flows. ZAR 207 million in the current year versus 191 million Rand the prior year. Largest contributor to the increase is CapEx, which increased by 32 million Rand year-on-year. Cash management during the period, the business required 575 million Rand to fund its operations, and that was funded from existing working capital facilities. During the second half of the year, it's expected that the most of the 575 million Rand will be repaid. In terms of the long-term debt profile, pretty much the same as what was reported at year-end the prior year. Current debt profile is that it will basically all be paid down by the end or shortly after the end of the 2027 financial year. Back to you, Pieter. Thank you very much, Tiaan. Looking at our specific segments that we operate within, we can clearly see that our well-diversified business, where we compete in many different categories has put us in a very good strategic position with regards to selling these different products to different markets and also to different consumers. After specifically the difficult COVID period, we again saw the importance of having a diversified product portfolio. If you look at our segmental revenue, as Matt mentioned, 19% of our revenue is linked to our international business, our regional business, being the rest of it, split between Long-life Foods and Fresh Foods, which are very consistent to the prior year. If you look at our diversified brand portfolio that I've made mention, the acquisition that we've made and commented on specifically the Today business is well integrated. If you look at the Pie & Pastry category, it's a good category for us and a category where we're doing extremely well and supports our strategy of having a diversified brand portfolio. Private label stays a very important part of our business and is of high strategic importance. We've increased our group private label contribution to 51% against the prior year of 50%. The reason for that is the higher growth in the international revenue relative to regional. As you all know, our international business is mostly close to 100% private label. What is very important for our customers in that specific category is the high quality, specifically peaches that we grow in the South African market. That obviously ensures that we will keep those, that business in the market. We also do value-added fruit cups, specifically into the Americas, which obviously support that strategy. We look at load shedding, the specific importance of this slide is to highlight again the impact that load shedding has had on many areas of our business. Sometimes people think about load shedding just with regards to electricity, I think important to manage the whole value chain within the constraints of load shedding. We also need to work with your customers and your suppliers, which we see as business partners. I think we're well equipped to handle higher stages of load shedding. I've made some comments on specifically what we've done with our investment. I think the fact that we started with the investment seven years ago really supported us in these difficult times. From a cost impact perspective, obviously ZAR 2 million average weekly diesel cost for operating these generators, it doesn't end there. We've got additional generator servicing, maintenance and parts, and also we invested ZAR 60 million on new and replacement generators in 2023. We will also do further investments in 2024 to ensure that we're proactive in this regard. Very important part also is the whole renewable energy solutions that we're focusing on, where we've got solar power used to supplement electricity supplies, where we've got several installations already operating. A further couple of them planned and then also some new plan for 2024. They're all facilitated through PPAs, power purchase agreements, and not funded through capital invest. This is a couple of pics on some solar installations. If I then move on to the regional performance, as Matt mentioned previously, our strategy obviously was to recover the price inflation. Very important in this category is to ensure that we price our products correctly in the market. I think we did a good job to get the balance right between price, volume, and margin, focusing also heavily on operational efficiencies. Which we think are going to be SKU rationalizations, logistic efficiencies like backhauling, procurement discussions with suppliers to ensure that we get just-in-time supply, obviously taken also by using our group synergies, that's available to procure at better pricing. If you look at our revenue increase by 9.5%. In total, Long-life Foods, 8.2%, Fresh Foods 11.8%, the most important one for us is the excellent progress that we made on our operating profit margin by increasing it from 6.3%- 8.9%, moving very close to our target of 10%. Main drivers of revenue, as Tiaan has also made mention, decline in volumes, the price inflation was the reason for the increase in the revenue. Look at some of these specific categories that we operate within. You would recall that we continue to focus on specifically on fruit juice and dry goods versus spices business as growth engines for our business. Excellent revenue growth through market share gains were achieved in the fruit juice category, it was the main driver of the revenue growth in Long-life Foods. I think also very important for us is the integrated pulps and purees business, where we manufacture the pulps and purees for our juice plant and also for our baby food plant. That vertical integration, the strategy around that really worked exceptionally well in the COVID period, where we had consistent supply of raw materials with limited interruption, and also currently where we can put a huge lid on costs and ensure that we've got a competitive advantage, specifically supported by that integrated pulps and purees business of ours. canned fruit and vegetables still stays a challenging category for us, with high raw material and packaging costs, and we clearly need relief on cost as packaging specifically becomes extremely expensive in this category. Obviously also huge pressure on raw materials with climate change, not only in South Africa, but internationally, where we see in different weather patterns. We continue to see some pressure on volumes in canned goods and also some, the weak consumer demand, as well as some competitive activity. With regards to canned meat, I think a good improvement on our profitability from recovery of high meat input cost and stronger sales growth. We've invested in new equipment, which will be operational in 2024. Herbs and spices, we continue to make good progress there. Good market share growth. We continue to drive revenue growth within that category. If you look at ready meals, a resilient performance in a constrained consumer environment. I think most important is the resilient customer base that we've got with sustained profitability. One of our star performance, our pie category, where we had strong volume and margin re-recovery. We foresee to that there is some good opportunity for us with some good growth prospects available. Turnaround supported by successful integration of the Today business and where we store the Today margin in line with the rest of the pies. With regards to Africa, it's a challenging environment currently, specifically due to the cost to trade there. The specific cost I would like to make mention is distribution costs, which put pressure on profitability. Our sales of our Long-life Foods into Africa grew by 6.7%. It accounts currently for 12.5% of additional Long-life sales. We still see it as a good growth opportunity, but we need to ensure that it's a profitable. Our profitability needs to improve. If you look at market shares, I think most important to say that we've maintained our market share positions in all the categories, although we struggled with negative volume growth. I think if you look at the last three months, the latest information that we've got that we doing better than the market, although we also had some operational challenges due to raw packing, packaging supply, specifically related to load shedding. I think important that we maintained our market share, and we haven't seen any material changes there. You then look at the brand shares, I think obviously important for us there is to continue to focus on our juices and herbs and spices category where we continue to see some share. Obviously there's a lot of new competitors also entering in different categories, but I think our competitive advantage is that we really execute well in trade, and obviously with the juice and herbs and spices increases in brand shares. From a product innovation perspective, in a constrained consumer environment, you need to be incredibly strategic with regards to launching new products. It still continues to be a very important part of our business and will drive some of our future growth. You see some extensions in the Heinz range, some Today packaging upgrade, launching of some new products under the Rhodes brand, and also some new packaging formats. From a private label perspective, also some new products that we've launched for Woolworths, for Shoprite, as well as for Pick n Pay, everywhere we have got big market shares. If I look at our international segment, I think a really good performance. Moving, getting to our operating profit margin target of the 10.4%, exceeding that by 0.4%. I think very important strategically, going forward, we still feel extremely confident that we can make that 10% operating margin through the cycle. We will continue to diversify our revenue into different market segments. Our pricing is obviously critical in that market. We have seen also increases in cost in the international market, which gives us good confidence that our pricing will stay firm. Obviously, we need to, in this business, ensure that we pack the optimal volumes to ensure that we've got a continued focus on our working capital. Also I think important is currently we see good demand for the, for industrial pricing. That for demand of the products and the pricing stays firm, which mean that that part of our business also is currently performing well. We're not worried about the volume declines that we experience as we packed more products in the prior year due to the grape crop failure that we've spoken about. We've just normalized our volumes again. If we look at the trading environment, obviously a big tailwind from a currency perspective, where the rand weakened 14.4% against trade and currencies, which resulted in a revenue uplift of ZAR 92 million. I made comment of the industrial products, which continues, demand continues to be strong and good pricing, where we've really done well. Made comment of the production levels that has normalized. We will continue to increase pineapple production following the completion of the development of our new plantations, where we will reach full capacity in 2024. Also critical in our business is our control and managing of our capital. Returns obviously is very important to us. We will continue to stay tight on managing capital spend. Keep a close focus on ensure that we maintain our facilities, which is critically important to continue to drive our operational efficiencies. We are very proud of our plan. Obviously looking at when we decide to spend CapEx, we are very strict on the returns that we expect. We planned capital investment of ZAR 280 million for the financial year of 2023, of which capacity expansion plays a big role with regards to ready meals specifically. It's more efficiency gains that we continue to achieve. In our fruit juice factory, we're gonna spend on equipment which will drive our growth. Our meat products facility, which will be a combination of efficiency gains and growth that we foresee in the protein category. Eswatini, we also will continue with the expansion of our pineapple plantations, that will ensure that we continue our growth in that part of our business. We will continue, as I made mention, to replace and to buy some new generators, to focus on business continuity. Just a couple of comments on the outlook. We foresee the trading environment to continue to stay challenging, but we're confident that we can continue to strive towards making progress to our medium-term targets that we've set ourselves. Some comments on the regional business. We will maintain our focus on price and volume management to continue to strengthen margins. Price inflation to continue with the weakening exchange rate and global input cost pressures. The constrained consumer will continue to put pressure on volumes. On the international side, pricing and demand for canned fruit and our industrial products, we expect that to maintain. Although we will ship lower volumes, as production reduced to historic levels. If we then just look at our medium-term targets, where I think we've really made excellent progress. We will continue to drive revenue by focusing on growth categories of fruit juice, Dry goods, pineapples, and pies. We will strengthen our regional margin by maintaining that balance between price and volume. I made mention of we need to be priced correctly. I think we've got fantastic, high-quality products priced at a competitive price. We would continue to maintain our 10% international margin through the cycle. We'll continue to focus on improving our return on equity, which will be supported by strengthened cost management, recovering of cost increases, and improve our regional margin to get to 10%. Our efficient cash flow management to reduce interest charge would be a focus area for us as well. Thank you. I would like Tiaan myself would answer any questions that is posted. Thanks, Pieter. The first questions come from Sean Holmes from Nedbank, and I'll ask them as four separate questions. Sean says, "I know you highlighted that you spend around ZAR 2 million weekly for diesel costs. Is this equal to a stage six load shedding? What would be the incremental cost if we move to higher stages, for example, stage eight? Thank you for that question. That would probably be in the region of five to six. My first quick comment would be probably about a 10% increase in additional cost. Dependent on obviously which stage we go towards. I think the important one there is the cost is one thing, and that's in our business. I think most important what we need to ensure that we must manage the whole value chain, and that includes from a supplier to a customer perspective. That will probably be our cost. The next question from Sean: What has been the cost push increase you experienced across the raw materials and packaging costs, and how well are you hedged for the next six months given the current rand levels? Yeah. I think, From a cost push perspective, anything from 5%-12.5%, dependent on which specific raw packaging material you talk about. We operate in such a vast, many categories. That probably is anything from 5%-12.5%. Maybe, Tiaan, any comment from your side? Yeah. On the international side, we've got a hedge of about equal to, say, of expected revenue in the second half to 30% of that. Right. The third question from Sean is: In the international business, how much do you expect price inflation and the weakening of the Rand to offset lower volumes in H2? I think not an easy, not an easy one to answer. We feel confident that we will keep to that operating margin of the 10%, as we've made mention through the cycle. I think it will cover for a, for a big chunk of the, of the, less volumes that we, that we will ship in the next six months. Tiaan, have you got anything to add? Yeah. It will. With the Rand as at the moment, there's probably more upside. Volumes, we say it will come down, and that's really over a 12-month period relative to last year. It will go back to probably the same levels that we had up until 2021 on an annual basis. There's always a very big movement in the spread over the two halves within any financial year. That's why we always guide that we manage it over the 12-month period. You know, a month like March, for example, we had very good shipments and that can really swing it either way. There's a question from Ray Stain, for Tiaan. By how much do you expect inventory to reduce in H2, and what is your liquidity headroom? Well, we've got. In terms of the last bit of the question, we've got lots of headroom. In terms of the stock, we expect it to come down to relatively speaking, the same levels, as what it was in 2022 relative. If you wanna express it as a ratio relative to turnover, it should be in the same ballpark. Thanks, Tiaan. A question from Vikhyat Sharma at RMB Morgan Stanley. Vik asks whether the regional segment margin improvement seems to been driven by a recovery in the pie category. How sustainable is this recovery, and does the H2 2022 base also being depressed for the pie category? Overall sustainability of the regional segment margin in the light of guided volume pressure and further price increases that Rhodes is planning or perhaps put through to recover cost pressures in H2 2023? Yeah. Thank you, Vik. I think you're correct to say that the pies did play a big role in our regional margin expansion, and we're very confident that we have managed to increase the pricing to where it should be and where we're very comfortable with the current margins that we achieve. If you look at the category per se, in. We've got between pies and pastries in top-end retail, in that business, we've got a 50% market share. I think with us being the market leader in those categories, I think we're quite confident that we can keep those margins intact for the years to come. Obviously, the pies is a very competitive category, but I think we now nicely diversified where we've gained this. Where we bought the Today business with a market share specifically in top-end retail where we a national supplier in the pies and pastries category. We're confident, Vik, that we will continue to have those margins. From a regional perspective, I think there will be further price increases. I mean, the current exchange rate and also increased international commodity prices will necessitate more price increases. We'll need to go to the market with increases in the next two months to ensure that we recover those costs. We're quite confident that we will be able to get those increases through in the marketplace. Obviously, as I made mention. We will keep a close look on the whole price volume margin combination. Thanks, Pieter. A question from Marie Moore at Aylward & Co. He says the impact of currency on revenue was ZAR 92 million. What was the impact on operating profit? Says, with volumes down, how did you manage factory under recoveries? Yeah, I think the We could see the recovery in the margin with regards to that. If you look at the current top line that we've got and the ZAR 700 million in the international business, you can see obviously it had a big impact on the margin. Tiaan, I don't know whether you've got a specific number or a guideline for us, but I think it's not that easy to calculate it. Yeah, that's the one comment. Just before Tiaan answers that one, with regards to how did we recover cost in the business with regards to a decline in volume. Obviously, that you need to ensure that you get something back with regards to operational efficiencies. We really worked hard on it, on operational efficiencies. I've also made mention in our CapEx program that we have invested in certain facilities to get better efficiencies with regards to the equipment that we've invested in. Tiaan, I don't know whether you've got a comment on the- On the, on the- On the margin one. ... impact of the currency in the past, it's still relevant. We've guided that any changes in the top line as a result of Forex changes, 40% of that plus minus will go to the bottom line. Particularly in this first half, that would have been the case. There's another question from Sean at Nedbank. He says, noted the significant decline in canned pineapples. Is this a result of smaller peers coming into the market or other major players? Also, are you realizing significant cost savings to offset some of the volume declines in this category as a result of the CapEx investment and advantage of the vertical integration? Yeah. If you look at the pineapple category per se, I think important to understand that the biggest chunk, probably 85% of our pineapples are being exported, where we've got the facility in Eswatini. It is relatively a small category in the South African market. We have recently seen a new competitor that entered the market. Although they're not, they don't pack the product themselves. It's been product that's been co-packed. We've seen some new entrants in the market. By far the biggest chunk of our pineapple canned products are being exported into the international market. Thanks, Pieter. A question from Chris Logan at Opportune Investments. Says, thanks for the presentation. RFG has derated markedly from a price to NAV of over four to the current 0.7, despite targeting a big improvement in returns. Do you ever see yourself in a position of sufficient liquidity to buy your shares back? Yeah, we have discussed share buybacks, but obviously as we currently see, there's not a lot of liquidity currently in the business. We have discussed it internally. At this stage, obviously it's always something that is on the agenda to look at. At this stage, we have decided against it. Tiaan, any comments from your side? Yeah. It is true. One of the factors which brought us to the decision not to do it is the liquidity within the business. I agree at current share price it's probably a very good in-investment. The problem, other problem is the liquidity in the share itself. By buying back shares, we just gonna aggravate that situation. Something significant should change in our shareholder base before that liquidity in the share is addressed. We, like I said, we don't wanna aggravate the situation. Thank you. There's a question from Promit Mukherjee at Reuters. Are you also seeing problems of water supply and transportation along with load shedding? continues the question, are there challenges in export due to Transnet, and could you quantify this impact? You mentioned climate change having an impact, can you elaborate and quantify? Yeah. I think if you look at the question with regards to load shedding, obviously as I might mentioned, water supply is very much part of load shedding, as specifically from a municipality perspective. There are certain areas that we obviously very much dependent on the supply of water, where in certain cases we had to truck in water. Obviously you can only continue to do that in a, in a very short period. It's difficult for that to be sustainable. Yes, we've seen that. We have also invested in some of our facilities in water tanks or reservoirs, where we will be able to cover ourselves for two days. Obviously if it becomes longer periods, yes, you are incorrect. It will be, there will be more pressure on the system. From a Transnet perspective, I think, as we've seen, the ports are currently fully operational. We are managing to get our products out. I think, obviously there is weather patterns that plays a role when the ports are wind bound. At this stage, we're doing quite well with regards to getting our export products out. I think also important to note is there's also some of our big suppliers, mentioning one being the canners, do get tin plate from overseas. Obviously there's also pressure on them to be able to ensure that they get their products timeously in to be able to manufacture those cans. That will be my comment in that regard. I think there was a last one also, Graham, the last question that you asked. Oh, the one on ESG, on climate change. Yes, I might comment on climate change. We see weather patterns change, obviously we need to stay close to those from an agricultural perspective to exactly understand what the impact on the specific raw materials being fruit and vegetables are. We do stay close to that. We also do a lot of work to ensure that we do not get these raw materials from only one or two or three suppliers. We try to broaden our supply base to ensure that we mitigate that risk to the best of our ability. Also, there's certain products that we can also import. Thanks, Pieter. There are no further questions coming through on the webcast. If anybody does have any questions, they're welcome to contact us via the contact details on the RFG Investor Relations page. That's it for right now. Thank you very much. Appreciate the attendance.