Treatt H2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
December 4, 2024

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

All right. Good morning, everybody. Welcome. Welcome to my first results presentation. It's my pleasure to stand here today to present, along with Ryan, the 2024 results.

Operator

Just to give you a bit of an intro to me, so I'm 6 months into TREAT. And you can probably tell from my accent that I'm not from around these parts, right? So I'm originally from Belfast over Northern Ireland. And as you probably know, I spent 27 years at Croda. And during my time at Croda, I lived half of it in Yorkshire.

Operator

And so people tell me I do have a bit of a Yorkshire twang and then half of it in New Jersey in the U. S. So and again, I have been told that I've got a bit of a U. S./New Jersey twang as well. So and it was quite funny.

Operator

In America, the Americans all thought I was from Australia. So yes, so that's me. And today, I'm joined by Ryan Governor, I think a lot of you know already. And Ryan and I have been working together for the last 6 months. And Ryan's a big rugby fan, as you would imagine, coming from South Africa.

Operator

And coming from Ireland, I'm a big rugby fan as well. So we have good banter in the office and particularly over the last few weeks during the autumn internationals. Okay. So before Ryan and I take you through the results, I'd like to give you my first impressions of Treat, what I could tell from the outside and what I've seen firsthand over the last 6 months being in the business. And then Ryan will summarize the 2024 performance and walk you through the financials, including our guidance for 2025.

Operator

And then I'll come back and talk a little more about how I see our strategy evolving and some of the opportunities

Speaker 1

ahead.

Operator

So listen, it's an exciting time to have taken the reins of this innovative company. It was clear from the outside. And based on my knowledge of this space, the treat has delivered impressive growth over the last decade and is a global leader in its field. And since joining, I'm pleased to say that my expectations about the business have been confirmed. We have an outstanding reputation in our industry, both as a pioneer in developing products and as a partner to some of the world's leading brands.

Operator

The strength of these long standing relationships with key customers speaks volumes about our credibility in the market. We are really good at what we do, particularly with our top 10 customers, and we need to do more of that with more customers. Whilst immersing myself in the business, it has become clear that a commitment to quality and innovation is at the heart of everything that we do at Treat. I've been really impressed by how the team is leveraging technology to lead in some exciting niches, such as sugar reduction, top flavor notes, clean labeling, natural claims. These are all powered by our industry leading separation and purification technology, which allow us to provide our customers with products that meet the highest quality standards, with a BRC AA quality rating across both our manufacturing sites.

Operator

We have secure and diversified supply chains and state of the art facilities, which provide the capacity and house the expertise, which will enable us to unlock further growth. So I've arrived at the right time. This is a well invested business. No big CapEx required in the medium- to long term. The balance sheet is healthy.

Operator

The future investment is more incremental OpEx as we expand customer reach and some skill set. And I'll come on to that a little bit later in the presentation. The company has a warm, friendly and inclusive culture, and it really is great to be joining such an open, capable and collaborative team. And I'd like to thank Ryan and all of my new colleagues at TREAT for the really warm welcome they've given me over the last 6 months. TREAT is also committed to making a positive impact on the environment and for its stakeholders more broadly.

Operator

This is absolutely vital to TREAT because it's vital to our customers. We're investing in the sustainability program that is working towards full transparency and traceability of our raw materials, something consumers are asking for more and more. We have a really strong platform to grow, and we're very well positioned in our markets to expand our offer and to accelerate the development of the business, particularly into more premium spaces where our technology is a fit and we can expand our margins. At Treat, we don't just keep up with fast growing markets. We actually set the pace.

Operator

And it's already very rewarding to be part of a team that thrives on excellence and forward thinking strategies. Treat has made excellent progress with its strategy to date. And I now want to build on that success and extend our reach in both products and geographies, evolving our strategy to expand on what we're already doing and moving faster into premium markets. And again, I'll come back and talk a bit more about that later. I am really pleased with the brilliant performance in the second half of twenty twenty four and the solid set of results that Ryan will now take everybody through.

Operator

Thanks.

Speaker 1

So good morning, everybody. Good to see everybody again this morning. I think it's interesting, Dave mentioned rugby earlier. I think I'm certainly smiling a lot more than most at this time of year. Yes, so I think if anything, hopefully, the reflection of my rugby team is a reflection of how we've performed at Treat in 2024.

Speaker 1

So yes, I think, Dave, you joined about 6 months ago. I think it's been a great 6 months with Dave. Actually, Dave started him and I started working together prior to that, thinking about how we're going to shape the business over the next 4 to 5 years. And it's been an enjoyable 6 months. I look forward to what we do over the next 4 to 5 years together in TREAT.

Speaker 1

If I think about 2024, it's really been a year of 2 halves. The first half was a bit softer than where we thought it would come out and we had a really strong performance and good momentum going into half 2. But I think before I get into all the details of that, and I know some of my colleagues have dialed into this, I just want to say thank you to everybody at TREAT. Without their leadership, both at the leadership team level but all 375 colleagues of TREAT, there is no way that we'd be able to deliver these results. The passion year.

Speaker 1

When I look over to the performance, we delivered record sales of $153,000,000 in 20.24. We had strong heritage,

Operator

China

Speaker 1

and tea growth. At the interims, we said it will be half too weighted, and we delivered growth of 14% at constant currency in the second half. During the course of 2024, we saw the resilience of this beverage market that we deal in. Order patterns started to normalize, and this was following a period of industry destocking for the last 18 months. I think the great news during this time is that we saw customer innovation pickup.

Speaker 1

And when you see customer innovation activity pickup, this starts to lead to new business wins. And we saw some of that wins in premium and in China in the year. I'm particularly excited because in March September, we had record months. On average, we sold about £20,000,000 in each of those months. And what that gives you is an understanding of the scale of this business.

Speaker 1

With a stronger order book, it tells you where we could go over the next 4 to 5 years. We had double digit profit growth in the year, going from £17,300,000 to £19,100,000 And pleasingly, the business continued to generate strong cash flows. We expect to see those further cash generation in 2025 and beyond. I thought I'd just take a step back and think about the strategy that we spoke about last December and what we've done over the last 12 months. So last year, when I stood up here, we spoke about 3 things.

Speaker 1

We spoke about growing organically through growing our heritage business, our premium business and our new markets. And I'm proud of what we've achieved in a relatively short space of time over the last year. Within heritage, citrus remains a core for us at Treat. We've got a century more than a century of experience here. And for many of our top 10 customers, we deal with the largest beverage brands in the world.

Speaker 1

Last year, we had to focus on diversifying our supply chain and also innovating some cost effective natural alternatives, especially in the citrus space. In synthetic aroma, we prioritize on expanding our reach. We increased customer roadshows with our manufacturing partners, Endeavour Specialty Chemicals. Our focus in the premium segment is about growing margins. Our customers there want those natural, better for you, low calorie ingredients.

Speaker 1

Some of these products in the year that did really well for us were black tea, passion fruit and watermelon. And in the year, we enhanced the selling model. So I spoke to you about this at the interims. The key for us is not to talk to procurement folk. The key for us is to make sure that we have a better selling model where we are able to talk to flavorists at our customers because ultimately, the flavorists make those decisions.

Speaker 1

But this is just the start, and Dave will pick on some of that later as to how we can enhance it. We were able to innovate at pace in the year, which was excellent. We won new business in both tea in North America as well as in sugar reduction with some of our largest FMCG customers. I'm quite proud because this is an example of treat at its best. When we work at pace, we were able to take a tea launch from ideation to launch in just 3 months, but we need to do more of that going forward.

Speaker 1

And we're also making good progress on a $600,000 investment in our pilot equipment in North America, which will more which will allow us to more than triple the amount of premium product trials. So the more trials we do, the more chance of us winning new business. In new markets, our China team is led by Steve Fan. Steve is focused on winning new business with local beverage and foodservice brands, And they did well in 2024. When I visited China in last December, I think the feedback from customers was really clear that for us to grow our China business and for us to be taken seriously in the country, we needed a facility that was going to match that ambition, a facility that was going to allow us to accelerate growth and accelerate customer collaboration.

Speaker 1

So the idea of the Shanghai Innovation Center was born at that time, and I'm therefore delighted that the Board has approved the new state of the art investment in the country. However, we only anticipate to spend in the region of £1,000,000 and this will form part of our normalized capital spend. We also launched a new range of TreatZest, which is a value added citrus product. We've got 4 products now that we've launched in the year, which are orange, lemon, lime and distilled lime. The initial customer feedback has been excellent, and we expect and anticipate growth in this in future years.

Speaker 1

So to wrap up the strategy wins in the year, our focus was implementing a plan that was going to set us up for both the short term and the medium term growth. And later, Dave will share with you how we're evolving this plan for the future. So a strong set of financial results with a particularly pleasing performance in the second half. I think I'll go into a bit of detail now, if that's okay. We saw revenue growth in the year of 5.7% in constant currency.

Speaker 1

Approximately half of that was driven by price and the other half with volume growth. This was in line with our expectations in the year. Full year revenue was marginally lower though than guided at the year end update in early October. Unfortunately, we had both hurricanes and port strikes in the U. S, which delayed a large shipment at the end of September.

Speaker 1

Although the shipment left our site it actually left our site on the 24th September, it did not leave the port as planned. That revenue, though, was recognized in October, and so that will form part of Q1 of 2025. We are encouraged by the momentum we saw in the second half of the year, and this allowed us to drive towards that record full year sales performance. Gross margin was within our range of 29.1%. However, I can assure you that half 2 gross margins were over 30%.

Speaker 1

The slight decline year on year was mainly driven by the growth in our lower margin Heritage segment. I'm really pleased with the reduction in admin expenses, and this was despite some higher inflation in 2024. We maintained those strong cost disciplines I spoke to you about before, and we managed our spend wisely. This, therefore, allowed us to deliver record EBITDA. Pleasingly, our net margins also increased to 13%, and this demonstrates our ability to transition towards our medium term targets on net margins.

Speaker 1

And finally, I'm pleased to report that the proposed total dividend increases by 5% for the year to 0.841p per share. This is in line with our Board's progressive dividend policy. Now let's look at the sales performance in

Speaker 2

the

Speaker 1

year. Heritage, which is currently our largest segment and represents almost 70% of the business, This includes things like citrus, synthetic aroma and herb spices and florals. We had excellent growth in heritage in the year, which was up 8%. Within that, synthetic aroma grew by 18%. We saw higher volumes and we saw a normalization of flavor house demand.

Speaker 1

Treat is still a key supplier to these flavor houses in the synthetic aroma space. Citrus grew by 8% in the year, and this was driven by increased volumes mainly to our strategic top 10 customers, the customers that we've had for multiple decades. And we had to put through a price increase as we normally do because of the higher commodity price environment. Some customers also elected to switch to treats cost effective natural substitutes. And this is great for both us and the customers.

Speaker 1

Our key here is that we successfully maintained cash margins whilst they did that. The premium segment includes our higher margin categories. So that's Tea, Fruit and Veg and Health and Wellness. Just to remind everyone, premium has grown by 400% over the last 10 years, which has been a phenomenal growth for us in Treat. That's also helped us to accelerate our overall group margins, and that's why this category is so important for us.

Speaker 1

However, sales in 2024 were only 3% ahead at constant currency. Tea was good in the year, but this was offset by slower consumer demand in fruit and vegetable flavors. In tea, we had multiple branded iced tea wins in North America, And some of those examples I explained earlier came to fruition. Most of that, I will say, there was only 1 during the year, so we haven't seen the 12 month effect of that coming through yet. The good news is we've got many customer projects underway.

Speaker 1

We've got a good and strong and healthy pipeline in premium, and we expect some of that to convert into next year to continue that growth momentum we've seen over the last decade. In new markets, we've seen a decline of 13% with revenue of $14,000,000 There's lots of moving parts in new markets. China was excellent. Coffee was pausing as we previously guided. I think if I go into coffee and a little bit more, I said before coffee is still a nascent category for us.

Speaker 1

In 2024, as I called out in the half year, we lost volume, and this was low margin volume in ready to drink coffee in a large U. S. Wholesaler. That said, our coffee quality remains excellent. We deliver a premium coffee product.

Speaker 1

We've got excellent capacity in North America, between $8,000,000 $10,000,000 worth of sales capacity, and we're encouraged by a robust coffee pipeline. We expect some of that to convert in 2025. If I move on to China, positively, China has grown by 20% in the year. We continue to get new business wins. We've won with large national beverage brands, large foodservice brands and also large local Chinese flavor houses.

Speaker 1

Our newest win in one of the beverage brands is a Blood Orange bottled water. Chinese consumers also like flavored coffee, and we sell some of our orange and perfume lemon to some of these largest coffee foodservice customers. So in summary, I am proud of the sales performance in the year, and we remain excited by the growth we see in future years. I wanted to share with you a half one, half two split because I think when we were here at the interims, we all recognized that sales in the first half of the year was challenging, but much of this was down to industry destocking. And you will remember at the time at the interims, I said that in order to deliver more than £80,000,000 worth of sales, we needed to do 3 things well.

Speaker 1

We needed to convert the existing order book. We needed to deliver our normalized pattern of recurring spot business that we haven't treat. And finally, for any gaps that we had, and we did have a gap, we needed to convert the pipeline of opportunities. So I'm proud to stand here today to say that we delivered on all three of those. And this resulted in delivering record half two sales as well as record half two profits.

Speaker 1

On admin expenses, our teams have done a fantastic job, and much of this has got to do with the people in TREAT. We reduced admin expenses by 7% in 2024, despite the higher inflationary environment. But the journey started a few years ago, actually. We needed to reduce admin expenses, and we needed to continue to see some of that coming through in future years. We're starting to see the benefits of those good disciplines now in 2024.

Speaker 1

At that point, we had around 4 20 people in TREAT. At the start of this year, that reduced to 365 people. And during the year, we've added 9 people in the business, mainly for commercial strategic hires. We added something like 125 years of flavor experience from both large and midsize flavor businesses. We established teams that were going to be closer to customers.

Speaker 1

It's important for us that we don't just sell from where we're based, but we sell from where those customers are. We now have salespeople in France, soon to be in Germany and across all major hubs in North America. They are predominantly focused on growing our higher margin premium business. So when looking at net debt, so I remember joining TREAT in 'twenty two, and our net debt at the time was £30,500,000 I think it's a great place where we are today with a low net debt position at the end of the year, and that shows you the extent to which TREAT can generate cash in a short space of time. We've gone from almost €30,000,000 of cash down to €700,000 of debt.

Speaker 1

This was driven by good working capital discipline and normalized capital spending. This mainly, this allows us to then drive our profits into cash. We also saw in 2024, inventory decreased by 17%. Mainly, this was a reduction in inventory volume as supply chains normalized. Capital expenditure was £5,700,000 in the year, the 2nd year of normalized capital levels.

Speaker 1

However, we have prioritized fast returning CapEx projects that's focused on driving innovation and driving capability in the business. And as we've said before and as David said earlier, we have well invested facilities globally. We've also got bank loans in both the U. K. And the U.

Speaker 1

S. That's approximately got £44,000,000 of headroom. That said, I expect and look forward to us being in a cash positive position next year. We plan to make the most out of our OpEx to drive the top line. However, moving into net cash gives us the flexibility in the future that allows us to invest in the business.

Speaker 1

We are able to hold strategic longer term inventory for customers, and I think that's quite key especially in our heritage space. Investing in capital projects that's going to drive growth and innovation and finally, it also gives us some balance sheet flexibility to invest in the future, too. So moving over to 2025 guidance. We expect in 2025 to grow sales by 5% to 7%, in line with industry growth rates. Gross margin will be similar to 2024 at 28% to 30%.

Speaker 1

We would normally feel more confident at this time to increase our gross margins. However, we still forecast high citrus raw material prices in the year. We expect to invest in admin costs in the new leadership team, in sales, marketing and innovation. The net effect of that will be £1,000,000 of extra spend. And we expect a continued improvement in net margins with sales growth greater than the investment in the cost base.

Speaker 1

We also expect the net debt position to be between $3,000,000 $5,000,000 of cash. Our medium term targets remain unchanged. Net operating margins at 15% and return on capital employed between 15% 20%. So to sum up, I think we had a great 2024. We showed some strong performance, and we had record half to sales and profits.

Speaker 1

We remain confident in delivering 2025 and further growth. However, that said, I think what you're going to hear next from Dave makes me more excited to look at our evolved plan and the opportunity to scale this wonderful business. I'll hand back to you, Dave.

Operator

Thanks, Ryan. So I knew this was a great business and the last 6 months has reconfirmed that. And I think since joining, my focus has been on trying to understand how we can move even faster into more premium markets. We have a really good pipeline that's commercializing. And of course, in this space, it takes longer for products to come to market, which is why we need to focus on accelerating our development in this space.

Operator

I'd like to start by summarizing a little bit about what Treat is really great at. We supply flavor ingredients across the beverage market, but not all of the business is in beverages. The global beverage market is large and diverse. And within that are some fast growing technology led high value categories. And TREAT is innovation driven with a broad product portfolio applicable across much of the beverage industry and beyond.

Operator

Our leadership in quality is one reason why our customers buy from us. They trust us. It is fully invested with capacity to grow. And as you know, significant capital was deployed a few years ago to move Treat's U. K.

Operator

Operations from a very old facility to a state of the art facility at Skyliner Way in Bury St Edmunds, where significant capacity was invested for future growth. And that investment is now complete. So we are all set up for the future. The IP in this business is in our know how and our very talented team of knowledgeable employees, many of whom are long time treat employees. It has a terrific culture, one of teamwork, low ego, can do spirit, curiosity and togetherness.

Operator

And the new facility that we have now in Skyliner Way brings everybody under one roof that helps unite our people and our culture. So I've been handed a really good platform, and we're going to keep doing what we're doing really well. But we are going to do a few things a little differently. The foundations of Treat are, of course, in its heritage business. And today, our heritage business is approximately twothree of Treat, with the other third predominantly being in premium categories.

Operator

And my vision is, over time, to flip that, so that 2 thirds of our business is in premium, whilst, of course, still growing and building our successful heritage business that's so important to us. To do that, we need to double down our focus on accelerating our premium business, where we can expand our margins through our innovative technologies. And to enable this, we will need to expand our current capabilities and approach to our customers and types of customers. I'll come on to more on that later. We will become much more customer centric as an organization.

Operator

Our customers will be at the heart of everything we do. All employees at TREAT will know what role they play in ensuring we are satisfying our customers and giving them a memorable experience working with us. So I see 3 key enablers to help us evolve the business to become a more premium supplier with, of course, a solid heritage business at its core. Number 1, we will look to expand our reach and get closer to our customers. Secondly, we will broaden our focus into these more higher value categories.

Operator

And thirdly, we will look to offer a much more differentiated service model. And I'd like to talk to each of these 3 in turn. In terms of expanding our reach, I said before that the business is very much Europe and U. S. A.

Operator

Centric, and it's been very successful there. Historically, we have serviced our customers on Mainland Europe from the U. K. But as Ryan alluded to earlier, we're changing that now, and we're moving sales roles into Europe to be closer to our customers. Asia is the largest beverage market globally, and it's growing at a faster rate than the U.

Operator

S. And Europe markets. As you can see on the slide, Treat does 20% of sales in Asia today through our fast growing but still small Chinese business and some sales through a distribution agreement in Japan as well as direct shipping to some of our global accounts. But there are unexplored opportunities. In Southeast Asia, for example, Indonesia is a huge beverage market.

Operator

India, where we know there is a growing beverage market. So to start, we intend to seek distributor agreements with key partners that can develop a position for treat and our technologies in these geographies. And actually, we're already on with that now. We're in discussions with a number of possible partners. These are great markets and offer a real opportunity for us to create a platform for growth over the next 2 to 3 years.

Operator

And we can replicate our success in the U. S. And Europe. And of course, we have the capacity now just to get on with it. So given that 2 thirds of Treat's business is within heritage, it's of no surprise that we are heavily indexed into the carbonated soft drinks and juice markets, as the left of this slide shows.

Operator

And of course, the carbonated soft drinks market is large but also is very competitive and has lower growth rates than other areas. Serving this market requires strong account management and a tactical selling approach. The right side of this slide shows many of the other faster growth premium categories within the beverage market that are more attractive given they are technology hungry due to formulation challenges to deliver the claims and also consumer compliance. Sports energy drinks, for example, protein drinks, flavored enhanced waters, alcohol free alternatives, ready to drink alcoholic beverages, coffees, to name a few. In these categories, whilst we have an existing presence today, we have a real opportunity to grow by utilizing our premium technologies that meet some of these consumer trends and compliance targets.

Operator

And this will require a new approach to how we sell. We will need to turn to much more developmental selling. Given the nature of the business today, our customer relationships, although very strong, I call it they're often 1 dimensional, our sales team talking to the procurement team. To excel at development selling, we need to move to more, what I call, 5 dimensional relationships with our customers, where you have R and D talking to R and D, marketing talking to marketing, operations talking to operations, the CEO talking to the senior management within our customers. Then we can develop true partnerships with our customers where they turn to us to help them solve problems and develop together.

Operator

That is how we create value and sticky business. And I've done this before, and it works. As alluded to earlier, our customer base needs to evolve as well. We are heavily indexed, obviously, with the large FMCG beverage companies as well as flavor houses. But I think where we are under indexed today is with midsize and smaller FMCG companies and their brands.

Operator

The model traditionally in Tree has been to serve them through the flavor houses, which has worked well. However, we need to engage with these companies directly, giving us insights into their needs firsthand and help us develop that true partnership with the decision makers. We anticipate some investment in new capabilities and skill sets to develop our offering and position here. But to be honest, it's incremental OpEx in a few people. And again, this will help us develop stickier relationships, bring us more pricing power as well as, ultimately, a greater share of our customers' wallets.

Operator

The market here is fragmenting as well, with many new entrants that don't have any in house expertise, and they're looking for partners like Treat to help them get to market. One way to win is by delighting our customers through a best in class service model and experience. I'm a true believer that speed, efficiency and reliability in this market equals differentiation, and differentiation equals growth. And we are moving now to a more decentralized organizational structure to help us. We have to be quick and agile.

Operator

Our customers are moving quickly, and we have to move even faster. In order for us to do this, we're looking to standardize our internal ways of working and reduce complexity from the business, hangover from TREAT in the past trying to be all things to all men, which has served the business really well to get it where it is today. We are moving our sales teams much closer to our customers in the U. S. And in Europe, giving us much better customer intimacy.

Operator

Local R and D teams will focus on developing new products aligned with local trends and customer needs. We are developing strategic account growth plans with our top accounts, and we're actually going to be aligning them with our customers, that true partnership. And again, I know this works. I've done it before. At Croda, this is the model that we used, and it worked really well.

Operator

So to bring this to a close, this is a really good set of results, and we are in a strong position to grow from here. 2025 has started in line with expectations, And we know it's not till Q2 that we start to see the volumes coming through. We really do have a lot to be excited about as we refresh our strategy by globalizing our business to drive revenue, accelerating into premium markets to drive margins and expanding our customer base to deliver sustainable and consistent mid single digit revenue and high single digit profit growth. I'm looking forward to working with Ryan and the talented TREAT team in an exciting next chapter for TREAT. So I think we'll stop there and we'll open it up for questions.

Operator

Thank you.

Speaker 2

Morning, both. It's Andrew from Peel Hunt. Thank you for taking my questions. First one, if I can, is just on the trends you're seeing in North America. Premium, you've called out as being a little weak.

Speaker 2

But if you wonder if you could give us a bit more detail on what exactly you're seeing, where that weakness is and how long you sort of think you might last. But also, I know you mentioned a sort of a new bit of CapEx going in for premium in North America. I wonder if how that plays into that too. Second question on China. Again, putting down some CapEx there for the first time.

Speaker 2

How sort of how does that change the profile of the business there? And I guess sort of how, if at all, has your sort of understanding of the opportunity there changed? Yes, just give us a bit more color there would be great.

Operator

Maybe the first one will do the second one.

Speaker 1

Okay. Yes, thanks for that, Andrew. Yes, I appreciate that. So yes, absolutely, as I said before, I think 3% growth in constant currency is not where we wanted it to be in premium in the current year. And we've got lots of opportunities in the pipeline for next year.

Speaker 1

North America is where we predominantly sell the premium categories. These are at times, premium margin is way higher than where your average margin in the business is, and we like that because that helps the overall margins. The trick with premium is to do more product trials. So this leads into your question around CapEx. We'd be probably one of the first 2 to 3 people in the world to put this piece of equipment in our site.

Speaker 1

But what it allows us to do is scale the amount of trials, because when you bring a customer to site, what you want them to do is co collaborate with them, get their trials done quickly, and that allows them then to make decisions quicker, coming back to the question on pace. So that's why the 2 lead hand in hand. I think some of the softness we've seen over the last year, it's not been in tea. Actually, if anything, it's been a sum of tea in North America. It's been in the fruit and veg area.

Speaker 1

And some of that is consumers down trading, some of that is a little bit of uncertainty in the market, but we expect that to rebound. We've seen 400% growth over the last 10 years. We expect some of that growth to come back.

Speaker 2

Great.

Operator

Thanks. Yes. And on China,

Speaker 1

I mean,

Operator

I think the CapEx that we're spending in China to create this customer innovation center is absolutely the right thing to do because and it sends a message to the industry that we are serious a serious player in China in this space and that we are in China for China, which is important as well. So not only are we going to be developing some products for the Chinese market, we're going to be looking to work with partners to help us scale that as well, again, in China for China. And having that capability gives us the credibility of the marketplace there.

Speaker 2

Great. And if I can ask a sort of cheeky follow-up on that China. You mentioned, Dave, your vision of flipping the heritage premium weighting in the business. How much does China play a part in that rebalancing with your I won't hold you to it, but sort of thought process?

Operator

I mean, it's just part of the mix. Again, I think there's a big there's a huge FMCG customer base in China that we need to go at. And that FMCG customer base will be targeting our premium technologies. That's it. And I think it's just part of the strategy to grow the premium space, whether it's China, whether it's U.

Operator

S, whether it's Europe. Developing our relationships with those FMCG companies is going to be key.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 1

I think, Andrew, if I could just add on to that. I think so Dave and I, we were out there a few months ago. And all of the customers we met, we showed them the premium products rather than the heritage. Now in China, we've won over the last 5 to 10 years because of heritage. We're starting to shift that away now into we do heritage well and we're well known for that in the country.

Speaker 1

What we want to do now is more of the premium products. And it's some of the tastings that were there were really great.

Speaker 3

Hannah Alderman from Berenberg. Just another question on the rebase of that mix that you envisage. What would the gross margin look like for the business if you could rebase that premium heritage, that mix?

Speaker 1

Yes. So I think what we've seen so if you take TREAT 8 to 10 years back, we were in the low 20s. We've gotten to the 30s and we're sort of sticking in the high 20s. Now I think when citrus oil prices normalized, you think 30% is a fairly normal gross margin for us. We want to accelerate that though, right?

Speaker 1

So if I'm if we're going to go towards 15% of net margins and get the return on capital that we're speaking of, that has to get to the mid-30s. And that's what you'll start to see over the next 4 to 5 years is as you rebalance the portfolio to do more premium, you'll get that incremental percent every, I don't know, 12 months, 18 months or so towards the 35% range.

Speaker 3

And then just a couple of questions on the guidance that you hopefully provided, if that's all right. So just on the top line growth, you mentioned that this year you had like half price, half volume. Just when were those price increases put in? And would these a driver of the revenue growth for this year? And how significant will these be going forward into FY 'twenty five?

Speaker 3

And then also on the net operating margin, you obviously got some expansion expected there year on year. What do you expect to be the key driver of that? Like, is it the mix? Or is it some further cost saving initiatives on top of the module you delivered? Yes.

Speaker 1

Okay. So if we go price increase first. So we did a big price program last year, so in 2023. That's where we actually got a huge benefit of price because we did that across the board and we actually felt we were too late at that point post the downgrade. What we did this year was more tactical price increase.

Speaker 1

So we have the ability we've got quite dynamic pricing models in TREAT. So we have the ability to pass on raw material commodity prices fairly dynamically to customers, right? So we've been doing that through the year. As the citrus prices have remained high, we've passed some of that on. I think just the only thing I'd mention in the current year, though, it was really important to support customers with some of those alternatives that I spoke about, the natural alternatives.

Speaker 1

That gives the customer a price reduction, and we try our best to maintain our cash margins doing that. So again, that may be a little bit dilutive on percentage margins, but it maintains the cash margin. Net margins, I think I see it as 3 levers, right? You've got to drive good sales growth at the right margins. So good sales growth in the premium segments will drive gross margins.

Speaker 1

We've also got sites that have got capacity in it. So if we start to utilize some of that capacity, as we've done in 2024, we start to utilize some of that capacity, you get the benefit of that. And then finally, I don't think it's cutting costs, I think it's maintaining an appropriate cost base. You pull those 3 levers and we do it well and sustainably, that will get your net margins towards the 15%

Operator

mark.

Speaker 4

Charlie Bentley from Jefferies. So just you talked to just the pace and kind of the cadence of 2025 and kind of acceleration in Q2. I mean, I appreciate Q1 is a smaller quarter. Just kind of any comments on what you're seeing. You talked about more innovation coming through from customers.

Speaker 4

Customers are desperate for volume growth. They need to drive volumes, can't really push pricings. Just is that how is that intensifying? And how do you see those trends accelerating into 'twenty five? Like anything you could talk about for kind of new launch activity in Q1 and stuff like that?

Speaker 4

That would be very, very helpful. And then secondly, I mean, obviously, you said talked about utilizing the capacities on Skyliner and in the U. S. And kind of thinking about distribution. I mean, I guess, could you talk about utilization rates in Skyline Away and just kind of what kind of the excess spare capacity would be and therefore the potential incremental volumes?

Speaker 4

And then finally, just on the cash point. I mean, obviously, very low net debt, net cash next year. You've talked you've obviously got increment you've got spare capacity in that we talked about. You've been done a lot of working capital reduction. So like I guess the question is, it would feel like you've also talked basically just about growth investments.

Speaker 4

So like what is there really to do that's very, very tangible versus kind of potentially considering further shareholder returns?

Operator

Okay. I'll take the capacity one, if you want. So as I alluded to in the presentation, so we have we're in this great, great position with having lots of free capacity, both in the U. K. And in the U.

Operator

S. I think in Skyline Way, we've got roughly 50% capacity utilization at the moment. So plenty of headroom to grow. And we're looking to fill that as best we can without compromising our margins. So we're being as competitive as we can be on some of the heritage business whilst trying to execute the pipeline on some of the premium business as well.

Operator

So that's ongoing. And in the U. S, we have roughly 30% headroom on capacity as well. So we're in a great position where expanding our reach, looking to bring in more customers, looking to get into different geographies, we have the capacity to support that, which is a great position to be in.

Speaker 1

Yes. So I think if I your first question was around launch activity in Q1. I think we're in line with our expectations. We expect to deliver the growth that we've put on to there for 2025. Q1 is going well.

Speaker 1

The key with Q1 is all about contract negotiation. That's the real key. Between October December, what we want to try and drive is that January contracts that start, we want to drive the activity on that, and that's going exactly how we expect it to be. I think we look at the pipeline, instance, in treat all the time. So this is the premium pipeline, for instance.

Speaker 1

We've got dozens of projects in the pipeline. A couple of examples, hibiscus teas or peach flavored top notes. Those are some of dozens of examples of stuff that we've got in the pipeline. Usually what's in the pipeline, we work quite hard and quite quickly to try and accelerate that into launch. And the key for us would be those launches that happen between January and sort of the start of spring, because most of those launches then are for the summer months.

Speaker 1

So that would be key for us, and it's always key for us in TREAT anyway, Charlie. So we feel good about that in 'twenty five.

Speaker 4

And just that stepped up year on year. So I guess like how you feel about that now versus 12 months ago?

Speaker 1

Certainly, yes, a vast difference in the increase in customer activity. I've just given you two examples, for instance, that we have in Europe and North America, but there's many more examples like that in Japan or in other parts of Asia or even in China. And then your last question around cash. So I think shareholder returns are never off the table for us. It's not a priority for us right now, but it's never off the table.

Speaker 1

It's something that we as a board discuss all the time. We're not yet in net cash and we need to get there 1st. So strategic inventory, absolutely. And I think if you remember from a few years ago, that was quite important for us to secure longer term contracts. And I'd be looking to our sales team to do more of that.

Speaker 1

If we can hold some strategic inventory to secure longer term contracts, that would be fantastic for us. And then driving those innovative CapExes, I think, is really important. These are CapEx that's going to either allow us to get more technical ability or speed up into the premium space and we'll continue to do that. Dave and I are really conscious on our CapEx spend. We want CapEx that return under 3 years, and that's good for us.

Speaker 5

Matthew Webb from Investec. You set out some very exciting growth possibilities and opportunities there and also given the bit of guidance on where the gross margin potentially could go, if that growth is premium led. I suppose my question is whether, given that there is also sort of a medium term opportunity to get that operating margin above that 15% target. And if so, whether we should see that as more of a medium- to long term objective given that presumably there will be a reasonable amount of OpEx going into try and sort of affect that faster growth? That's the first question.

Speaker 5

And then the second question, you set out various opportunities there in terms of by geography, in terms of pushing more premium or different categories moving outside the top 10. I just want to understand exactly whether these are effectively separate or connected. So for example, is there a big opportunity to sell more different categories and more premium products to the top 10? Or is that more of an opportunity outside the top 10 existing clients, if you see what

Speaker 1

I mean?

Operator

Well, I can take that one first and then Ron, you can come back on the first point. But yes, I mean, I think if you look at the top 10, and I mentioned on the slide, we're heavily indexed in carbonated soft drinks, but the top 10 do a huge range of different brands that maybe we are less we're under indexed in. So I think through having a more strategic global account management approach, we can target brands within the top 10 with our premium technologies and really start to drive those premium technologies into the top 10. But then, of course, as well, casting the net wider, looking at the as the fragmentation comes into this industry, the midsize, the small size FMCG companies driving the premium technologies there as well. And of course, the flavor houses.

Operator

I mean, the flavor we are selling premium technologies into the flavor houses as well. They're still a very important core part of our customer base. But I think having that more strategic lens on by brand at the top accounts will help us drive premium there, absolutely.

Speaker 2

So I

Speaker 1

think on the first question, I think as I said, I was in the 'twenty five guidance, we expect to self fund some of this OpEx, and we expect to invest for all the stuff we're trying to do in 'twenty five, there'll be an element of self funding and an element of spending. I think I've said a net £1,000,000 spend. So we are it's really important we do that. So we invest in the right areas. And I've always said that, right?

Speaker 1

This is not about just investing for the sake of it. We want to invest to drive sales growth. And the areas that need to be invested to drive sales growth is where we'll probably put our money first. And that's really important because that's going to accelerate the chance of getting the revenue growth. So I if I could directly answer that, I don't see a case where the OpEx investment is going to be significant at the start to drive margin growth in the future.

Speaker 1

I think we'll be moving along towards the 15% targets over the medium term.

Speaker 5

Got it. Thanks very much.

Speaker 6

Cathal Kenny from Davy. A couple of questions from my side. Just a quick follow-up on the margin question. Clearly, you've set out your ambitions for more a more customer centric model, more innovation around premium, more regions, maybe quicker to market, greater exposure to direct and indirect. Had you considered maybe a greater step up in the OpEx investment to get you there maybe quicker while giving up a little bit of margin?

Speaker 6

That's the first question. You may have answered that indirectly in the last one, right? Second one is, David, you didn't mention technology digital customer insights within the treat organization, just interested in your take on that. There are my 2 questions, I'll come back with a follow-up.

Speaker 1

Yes. So if I go on the first one, I think I answered some of that in the last. But however, I think let's just be a bit more specific. So if you take Asia as a place we want to go next and go into a distribution model into that, that's a low cost approach to enter a territory. We still do 20% of sales today within Asia.

Speaker 1

Some of that's China, Japan and then the rest of Asia through the flavor houses. We think we could do a low cost approach to enter a new market to ensure that we could drive sales in there. But the approach is with a distributor that's got capabilities on labs in various countries. And I think we've been very considered as to where to spend the extra OpEx. We've obviously since Dave joined the business, we've obviously debated internally do we spend more early to try and drive better returns.

Speaker 1

And we've taken the approach that we've always taken, which is spend in the right areas, make sure that it's appropriate for what you do and see those returns quickly to try and drive that top line. Yes.

Operator

Yes. It's a good question in terms of digital and insights and technology. So you'll have seen that we've announced a new organizational structure a few weeks ago, which is going to a more regional structure. Within that, we are putting regional marketing teams in place that are going to be very much looking at insights at a local level, at a local customer level, so that we get better insights into what trends and customer needs are much more locally. We're also looking at long term innovation, which is something that we treatment hasn't done so much in the past, looking at the next 3 to 5 years.

Operator

What are the sort of the transformational technologies that we ought to be thinking about now to bring into the business in the long term? So we have a headcount now that's going to be focused on that, scouting the market globally. We're looking at technologies coming to universities, looking just to partner with very small companies to do trials, understanding what new innovation and technologies are out there that could potentially be worth bringing into the business or not in the future for TREAT. So does that answer your question?

Speaker 6

Just a follow-up on the 50% of the business is with flavor houses. How easy would it be to kind of capture some more value from that and going direct yourselves? And are you ultimately agnostic to growth by channel, between the indirect and direct?

Operator

I think we're agnostic to channel. I mean, I think the nice thing about going direct is we're talking to the decision makers. That's not to say that we're going to sell to them direct because a lot of these FMCG companies don't have the capability in house to make flavors, right? So they're always going to need flavor houses. What we want to do is take the technology directly to the FMCG company, the decision makers, and sell them on our technologies versus kind of routing it through the flavor houses.

Operator

You have more control going direct to the FMCG companies and promoting our products directly. But of course, a lot of them don't have in house flavor capability. So that will then ultimately end up through the flavor houses. So they're both 2 very important customer segments for us, and we will look to grow with both.

Speaker 1

And we don't have, Karl, we don't have any the variance in margin is insignificant between the two sectors.

Speaker 4

Sorry, can I just ask just one more just on Citrus? And I mean, obviously, like we're going through a pretty significant cycle. It's I mean, you talked about pricing into next year. I mean just talk to what you're expecting and the kind of growth contribution you're expecting of the 5% to 7% from that. And then just kind of any thoughts about like long term historical precedents for when we've seen that cycle soften and what that would imply from a growth perspective?

Speaker 4

I mean, in terms of giving back pricing, potential volume to demands and softening and kind of just thinking about how when we would see if and when we would see a kind of pricing cycle turn in citrus, if it ever happens, would be helpful. Yes.

Speaker 1

No, no, I think Charlie, it's a good question. Citrus is where we've got all of our sort of traditional expertise in the business and something we're well known for. We also have the ability to price up and price down based on where that raw material prices are. The key for us in Citrus is cash margins rather than percentage margin. And I think it's important in the up cycle and it's important in the down cycle.

Speaker 1

And that's what our teams do really well at. And actually in the current year, give or take a few £100,000 we were bang on last year in terms of being in line with that in terms of cash margins. We expect to maintain that level of discipline despite prices going up and down. I think if you look at TREAT over the last 10 years, about 4 or 5 years ago, we saw that delinking between when prices started to move, whether there was up or down, the profits of TREAT continued to grow and that's because the premium growth started to come through at that point. So maintaining that ability to grow premium whilst we see some volatility in the citrus prices and then maintaining cash margin is the key for us overall, because what we want to deliver is sustainable growth rather than any lumpiness.

Speaker 1

Will prices come down? I don't know. Today, if I give you an example, in the markets, orange prices are up, but lemon prices are almost at record lows. So even within the portfolio of citrus, for us, there is a balancing effect in there. If prices come down, we will obviously support our customers, but we'll also maintain our cash margins.

Operator

Yes, exactly.

Speaker 4

And just thoughts on 25% and contribution and so on and so forth?

Speaker 1

Yes. I think, Jia, your question on how much of the 5% to 7% will be I mean, heritage is 70% of our business today, so I expect at least half of that will be within that heritage space in terms of the growth. I expect premium should grow at a greater rate than it's grown in prior years. And so we should see a more beneficial effect from premium. But of the 5% to 7%, I'd say half is coming from heritage.

Speaker 1

Citrus prices, especially orange, we expect that to remain high for the next 12 months. And it's been high for the last 18. So there's no change in the environment there.

Speaker 7

A couple of questions online. First from Setu Sharda from Barclays. Your premium segment categories growth has stalled a bit in the last 2 years. Are you seeing competitive pressure in this category? And do you need any more investment in R and D and infrastructure to compete in a consolidating sector?

Operator

Sector? There's always competition, right? There's always competition. And again, it goes back to my previous point. In our premium space, we need to get the conversation going with the decision makers.

Operator

And that is going to be something that's really key as we move forward. We fully invested now in our sales team in North America, for example. So now we have a sales team that's closer to customers across the U. S, closer to all of our major customers, closer to all the major FMCG accounts. And we're going to be taking a much more proactive approach to making sure we're driving our premium business into those accounts.

Operator

So it is competitive, but we have some great technologies that nobody else can make. And that's something that's really key. So it's not of course, we need to continue to evolve what we've got. And of course, we need to do that. But from my mind, it's more of we need to just do things a little differently in terms of how we promote what we've got to our customer base.

Speaker 7

And does that involve extra investment? Or is that sort of an OpEx thing?

Operator

It's minimal OpEx, to be honest. I mean, I think it's about repointing the organization a little differently versus putting in a pile of extra headcount or extra cost. It's just about doing things a little smarter and a little differently to try and repoint ourselves and reposition ourselves at these key decision makers within that FMCG segment.

Speaker 7

And the second one also from Setu. In the interview section of your R and S today, you've outlined a desired push into new geographies and markets. Can you give us some more color on the scope of the potential reinvestments to achieve this? And will this require a margin reset? So it's a similar question to the first, really.

Speaker 7

Yes.

Operator

I mean, I don't think so. And I think, as I said, our priority in terms of expanding geographies is Asia. And how are we going to do that? We're going to look at distribution. And we are currently in discussions with a number of partners that will develop us a position in some of those key fast growing Asian markets quickly.

Operator

And that's really low cost. But bringing on good distribution is low cost. It's low risk. So that's how we're going to start to develop a position. Long term, who knows?

Operator

Long term, we may go to a direct selling model. That's not for now. We want to just start to develop a position in that geography and see how we go. And it's going to be low cost through some really good distribution partners that are focused on developmental selling.

Speaker 7

And there's a question in from Alex Sweet of Sweet Stocks. He rather nicely says hello. The growth in your major customer is impressive. Could you provide any color on how you've grown this account? How diverse is it by products and regions?

Speaker 7

And is your is the FY 'twenty four level sustainable?

Speaker 1

Yes. Thank you. I think the growth in our top 10 customers has been good in the current year as well. Our top customer or our top 3, they sell across various categories for us in Treat or various segments, be that heritage, premium and even some of them in the new markets segment that we have. So we quite like to get a spread of wallet share.

Speaker 1

And it's important that we're not just selling an over index in a particular space with those customers. And we a lot of our business is repeatable, Tim. So we want to make sure that, that continues into 2025.

Operator

If I can just make a point as well. I think in Treat, we underplay a little bit our quality. And all these big brands are buying from us because they trust us. And we are supplying some of these world leading brands. They need ingredient suppliers that they can trust.

Operator

And as I mentioned in my presentation, I am hugely impressed at the quality standards that we have here at TREAT. And I think that's one of the reasons why we grow with these big guys is because we are a trusted supplier, and we have that level of quality that they can rely on.

Speaker 7

There's one last question. You outlined your first impressions from outside and how they were confirmed after 6 months in the business. What has been the biggest surprise for you on arriving at TREAT?

Operator

That's a good question. To be honest, I mean, I think the biggest surprise to me over the last 6 months is that I think, if I can use this word, I think the business is a little bit shy, right? And what I mean by that is it's got so much going for it. And yet I think it lacks a bit of confidence about shouting from the rooftops about who we are and what we stand for and what great products and technologies and quality standards that we have in the business. And so I think as we move forward, we will definitely be turning the volume up on our promotional activities and really making a big play to the industry about who we are and what we do and what we stand for because we should have a lot more confidence in the business in terms of what we do because we are selling into some of the world's leading brands, and we are a trusted supplier in doing that.

Operator

So

Speaker 7

that's all from online. Any closing remarks, up to you.

Operator

Well, listen, thank you. Thank you for coming today. I hope everybody found that useful. And we are very excited about the future of this business. And as I say, this is not revolution.

Operator

This is evolution. And as I mentioned, there's 3 things that we are going to do things a little bit differently. But this is not rocket science. This is it's about refocusing a little bit, and I think it will make a huge difference to moving this business forward in the future. Thank you.

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Treatt H2 2024
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