Origin Enterprises Stock

Welcome to the Origin Enterprises plc 2026 Preliminary Results. Just a reminder that this call is being webcast live on the Internet, and the presentation is available to view on the Origin website.

I will now pass over to Sean Coyle, CEO of Origin Enterprises plc. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I'm joined this morning by Colm Purcell, our CFO; TJ Kelly, the Divisional Managing Director of our Living Landscapes business; and Brendan Corcoran, our Head of Investor Relations. We're delighted this morning to be bringing you a very resilient set of operating numbers, particularly given the context of the challenges that the business has faced over the last 12 months. We'll start firstly with the normal safe harbor declaration.

So the business produced an increased overall group operating profit number of just over EUR 100 million, growth in constant currency of just under 3%. We also grew earnings per share in the period in constant currency, although we're slightly behind on a reported basis. And our free cash flow conversion, which Colm will talk to a little bit later on, was strong at almost 90%. The business produced a very balanced performance with challenging operations in a number of markets, which I'll touch on in a second, but growth in Latin America, growth within our Animal Nutrition business, and our Living Landscapes businesses, balanced softer European agricultural markets, particularly in our farmer-facing Agrii businesses in the U.K., in Poland and in Romania.

We continued with our strategic progress on growing the Living Landscapes division, a combination of organic growth and prior year acquisitions saw the Living Landscapes business grow EBIT by 10% on a constant currency basis, roughly 50% coming from each of organic and acquired growth, continuing to broaden the overall earnings base of the group. And our financial position remains strong at year-end. And again, Colm will talk to those metrics later on.

So the breadth of the business and the continued investment in the second core of Living Landscapes has meant that the group has made significant progress over the last 5 years, and we've just concluded our 5-year strategic cycle from '22 to '26 with a very resilient performance and a significant uplift in profit over that cumulative 5-year period versus the prior 5-year period. Some of the challenges and backdrop to what we faced in the last 12 months, with significant drought and difficult cropping conditions across European agriculture. Farm economics remain very challenged, whether it's the cereal sector, whether you're growing oilseeds or indeed in dairy production, profitability on farm is significantly lower this year than it has been in previous years. And that hasn't helped because we've had significant input cost inflation, particularly in fertilizer markets as a result of the conflict in Iran, the Strait of Hormuz and the various impacts that, that's had on global pricing of fertilizers and the impact that we've had on the oil markets generally has all played into a difficult time on farm for our customers.

There continues to be significant sector consolidation and a number of exits in the market, particularly in Poland and Romania. We're seeing competitors go out of business. We're seeing court actions in terms of insolvency proceedings. And in Latin America, we've got a significant number of insolvencies. The overall default rate on bank debt in the Latin American market is now well above 15%. And the previous high for defaults in the sector was running at about 6%. So a huge amount of turmoil within our competitor base and to an extent within our customer base across the Latin American and European markets that we're playing in.

Despite that, though, we're seeing volume growth, continued growth in production and a continued move towards specialty nutrition, biological products and products that are typically at the higher end of the margin scale, particularly in Latin America. Our Living Landscapes business saw continued structural market growth. And as I said earlier on, a combination of organic growth and contribution from acquisitions saw that business grow in 2026.

So we'll touch firstly on agriculture. The overall contribution from agriculture is slightly ahead year-on-year when you include the feed contribution from our associates and joint venture partners. Operating margin slightly down across pretty much all of our businesses with the exception of Latin America, where we saw a small increase in operating margin. And we have had lower profitability from both our Ireland U.K. segment and our Continental European segment, reflecting those challenges on farm and some of the dry conditions, which restricted the need for farmers to apply products, particularly in the latter part of the financial year. So that final quarter, significant dry conditions meant that farmers were not applying product to the extent that they normally would.

Our market share in sustainable agronomy continues to be strong, #1 player in the U.K., #2 in Romania, where we've grown our market share in the last 12 months from 12% to 15%, and we could be growing that far more aggressively, but we're being cautious given the credit market in Romania about the extent to which we want to grow market share there. And #3 in Poland, again, small growth in market share in Poland. We may see that grow a little bit more in FY '27. But again, being cautious, trying to focus on specialty higher-margin products rather than the commodity end of the business.

In Soil Nutrition, the business saw reduced volume, typically our Ireland and U.K. businesses, given the price increases and raw material inflation that we experienced, saw reduced volume of about 10% versus the previous year. And our Brazilian business continues to grow, a top 5 player in Brazil now with a 5% market share. And on the island of Ireland, our Animal Nutrition business continues to have a circa 50% market share. So a strong market position overall.

To get into a little bit more detail on Ireland and U.K., you can see that with the exception of the 2022 year, which was a very unusual year with significant profitability from our fertilizer businesses, given the price inflation that occurred and the shutting off of Russian supply into the European market, we've returned to a pretty mean average across the Ireland and U.K. businesses. And that's despite a very sharp fall in profitability within our Agrii U.K. business. Our agronomy business, despite increased winter activity in the overall winter cropping base, did grow in winter wheat to 1.7 million hectares, and we had an extensive growth in the oilseed rape area last autumn as well. But the dry spring and summer reduced crop development, reduced yields and also resulted in crop protection demand falling quite significantly.

So the tail end in Q4 of the business saw reduced demand. Farm economics, profitability of farmers also controlled, I suppose, the overall spend by farmers, certainly reducing fertilizer spend within the business and within the Agrii business. Our Soil Nutrition business saw a good performance, good procurement and inventory management through the period. CBAM was introduced within the Irish marketplace on the 1st of January this year and will be introduced on the 1st of January in the U.K. So managing supply and managing inventory in that context was hugely important. And there was huge disruption to fertilizer availability, not just that coming from the Gulf, but a number of core raw materials also go from the Gulf to Morocco to produce additional fertilizers and a lot of that was constrained. So managing supply in that kind of dynamic was difficult, but our teams managed it very well.

From an Animal Nutrition perspective, huge demand across the feed businesses. Our associates and joint venture contribution was up significantly in the period, and demand was very strong right through to the end of the year and into the first quarter of this year as a result of fodder shortage, particularly within the Irish marketplace. So there is a need for farmers to continue to supplement feed as a result of the dry weather, and we're experiencing very strong demand and our competitors are experiencing very strong demand as a result of that.

Across Continental Europe, overall volume was up by just under 3%, but there was a real mix in how that volume played out. Within our Polish business, fertilizer and seed volumes were down, but crop protection volumes were up and spend on farm was again constrained by farm profitability. Within Romania, we're seeing a continued move and migration to winter cropping within the Romanian market. Planting spring cropping now with increased instances of dry weather for summer periods means that the crop itself becomes under risk if it hasn't established and rooted properly over the winter period. So we've moved from roughly a 60-40 spring to winter cropping scenario to over 50% now in winter cropping in a Romanian context.

We saw strong volume growth in seed, crop protection and fertilizer all because of those market share gains that I pointed out earlier on and the very challenging situation that a lot of our competitors in the Romanian market are finding themselves in. We have had to take higher credit risk provisions ourselves because of some of the farm economics and some of the challenges of historical debt. But despite that, we are seeing increased growth within our market share, and profit slightly down because of those higher credit risk provisions. We've also launched a couple of additional adjuvant products in the Romanian market for autumn of 2026, which you can see on the bottom of the page there.

And then finally, moving to Latin America within the agriculture businesses. Again, we saw strong growth in constant currency, operating profit was up by about 9%. And for once, we saw the Brazilian Real move in our favor. So operating profit on a reported basis grew by a slightly higher 12.5%. The business is seeing continued growth in all product categories. We had volume growth of 4.3%, and that was broad-based and a pretty much every product category that we were involved in saw growth.

There is significant pressure on the competition and across our customer base. And we did have additional bad debt charges in the Brazilian market included in this operating profit figure. So we would have shown a higher operating profit number had it not been for those bad debt charges, but the business continues to grow very well. And I mentioned the record level of sector bankruptcies earlier on. And again, you can see some of our new product launches on the bottom right-hand side of the page there.

So I'll hand over to TJ, who will run through our Living Landscapes business.

Thank you, Sean. Good morning, everybody. As Sean said, Living Landscapes is now a key pillar of Origin's diversification strategy. We're contributing approximately 20% of group operating profit. And we would say our broad sports, landscapes, and environmental offerings do differentiate us in the market now and provide multiple growth opportunities through both expansion, service development and the longer-term land use trends that we see.

For FY '26, Living Landscapes delivered another strong year, revenue increasing to EUR 199 million and operating profit rising just over 7% to EUR 17.7 million, maintaining a margin of 8.9% with growth driven by a combination of organic performance in part synergy-led and also contributions from prior year acquisitions. Looking at each of the components of the division, Sports performed particularly well despite the challenging dry summer conditions supported by what was strong demand across amenity and sports markets. The successful integration of Elixir and the post year-end acquisition of Linemark International further strengthened our market reach and cross-selling opportunities. Linemark International is our Danish-headquartered international distributor for our Linemark U.K. business. And through that acquisition, it presents us the opportunity to accelerate further our international growth trajectory.

Landscapes was softer than the prior year, which reflected a shorter pre-planting season and reduced activity in some of the categories we serve, although long-term growth fundamentals remain positive. During the year, within the Landscapes businesses, we evolved the operating model moving from a business unit-led structure to a more commercially focused sector and portfolio-led one, therefore, better aligning our sales and marketing functions with our key customers and segments.

Within Environmental, then, we continue to grow strongly through a combination again of both organic and acquisition performance, supported by infrastructure investment and an ever-evolving environmental regulatory backdrop. The post year-end acquisition of Lighthouse Development Consulting further enhances our planning services' capability with a particular focus on the renewables, energy and infrastructure sectors. During the year, we continued investment in our people through selective external recruitment combined with leadership and technical training. And in addition, we have been investing in the implementation of a common ERP and project management solution for our Environmental businesses, again, key to supporting future organic and acquisition growth.

As we look back then over the last 5 years, Living Landscapes has delivered over 200% operating profit growth over that period, establishing itself, as I said, as a significant second pillar of the group with a strong pipeline of organic and acquisition opportunities across Sports, Landscapes, and Environmental sectors, ranging from further distribution growth to potential further manufacturing capabilities being acquired and continuing growing our advisory businesses, we are confident that the division is well positioned to expand further in higher margin and faster-growing markets as we look to the future.

With that, I'll hand over to Colm.

Thanks, TJ, and good morning, everybody. Starting with some of the highlights then on financial performance on Page 14 of the presentation. Overall, we've seen growth in revenue, operating profit and earnings per share on a constant currency basis with the weakness in sterling impacting on the final reported numbers. Group revenue at EUR 2.1 billion is 2.3% ahead of prior year on a constant currency basis. This was largely driven by pricing of 3.1% and again, due primarily to the higher commodity markets that Sean would have touched on earlier, and a 0.7 benefit from our acquisitions. Volumes were 1.5% behind prior year. And as highlighted earlier, again, in the reviews of the different sections and higher input costs relative to output prices impacting on farmer spend in the year.

We grew our wholly owned operating profit for the year by 0.5% on a constant currency to EUR 89.5 million, with growth in our Living Landscapes segment and our LATAM agricultural business, largely offset by our lower performance in the European agricultural businesses. Overall, agriculture operating profit of EUR 71.8 million was 1.2% behind prior year. Living Landscapes had a strong year with operating profit of EUR 17.7 million, representing growth of 10.1% and this was achieved equally through good organic growth and the full year impact of the prior year acquisitions.

Our associates and joint venture results showed strong growth, and that was off the back of a very strong prior year, with share of profit up 23.9%, supported by strong animal feed demand in the year. Our operating margin for the year at 4.2% was down 10 basis points, which was due really to the reduction that we've seen earlier in the agricultural margin as a result of lower operating profits. Margins in our Living Landscapes business remained at 8.9%.

Our overall EPS for the year was EUR 0.5351, which was in line with our Q3 guidance and delivers growth of 0.4% on a constant currency basis. This result again demonstrates the benefits of the diversified nature of the group with strong contributions from Living Landscapes and from our LATAM business, more than offsetting the lower performance in the other markets in what was a challenging year for agriculture across all of our markets.

Looking down at our cash performance and our balance sheet on Page 15. It was a strong year for cash generation with our free cash flow at EUR 43.3 million, representing an 87.7% free cash flow conversion ahead of our 2022 Capital Markets Day target of 80%. Our overall net debt position at the year-end was EUR 77.8 million, which was EUR 7 million higher than last year. This equates to a 0.71x EBITDA and well within our banking covenant position at the end of the year. Overall, our finance costs amounted to EUR 22.6 million in the year, which was an increase of EUR 2.6 million, and that was really driven by a higher average debt level over the year, which was largely driven by a higher working capital investment, which we'll touch on, on the next slide. We also took the opportunity to extend our EUR 440 million revolving credit facility in the year with maturity now in 2031.

Our working capital outflow in the year amounted to EUR 26.4 million. And over the year, as I touched on there, we had an increase in our average working capital investment and consequently, our average debt. Working capital investment was largely driven by the higher pricing of inventory as a result of the increase in commodity pricing, but also some early inventory purchase in advance of CBAM implementation in the EU on the 1st of January and to mitigate some of the supply challenges that we saw as a result of the conflict in the Middle East. This investment ensured that our customers avoided any supply interruption during the key application windows. We also made payments in the year of EUR 5.1 million relating to previously withheld amounts due to sanctioned parties, which now closes off all those previously withheld supplier balances.

Overall, our ROCE for the year at 10.9% is below our target of 12% to 15% and the key driver being the higher average working capital over the year as discussed. As when we look at our ROCE, we look at ROCE using an average working capital for the year as opposed to our year-end position. FY '26 then, as Sean touched on, was the final year of our 5-year strategy cycle as previously presented at our 2022 Capital Markets Day. And I'm happy to report that we beat our operating profit target with total operating profit over the 5 years of EUR 474 million against our target of EUR 415 million. And this represents growth in the 5-year profits of 44% against our previous 5 years.

Our free cash flow delivery was also strong with total free cash generation of EUR 324 million, which was in line with our ambitious target back in 2022. We continue to pursue a disciplined approach to capital allocation with balance across investing in growth and returning cash to our shareholders. Achievement of our cash generation target over this 5-year period has allowed us to invest to deliver on our promise to shareholders with the completion of the EUR 80 million share buyback program and average annual dividend payout ratio above 35%. In total, we've returned EUR 172 million to shareholders over the period, which is approximately 40% of our market capitalization today.

Strong cash generation has allowed us to invest EUR 99 million in our diversification strategy, which does include final payments in respect of our LATAM agricultural business, which we acquired in 2018, but also to support the organic growth in our Living Landscapes business with selective M&A, and this has allowed us to grow the contribution from Living Landscapes from 7.4% of operating profit in 2022 to just under 20% in FY 2026. We've also invested in the organic growth of the business with EUR 124 million spent over the 5-year period to expand our capacity and our capability across the regions, invest in research and development, health and safety and in technology for the future with investments in a new ERP platform in Ireland and the U.K. and in expanding our digital capabilities to customers.

We're well positioned to support the future growth of the business. However, with increased working capital demands and a higher interest rate environment, we continue to monitor capital allocation and continue to focus on managing our working capital. We will update our capital allocation strategy and new 5-year ambitions at our Capital Markets Day on November 17. Finally, for our shareholders in the current year, we're proposing a final dividend of EUR 0.1415, which will bring our full year dividend to EUR 0.1730, which is in line with last year and above the 35% payout ratio that we outlined at the last Capital Markets Day.

I'll now hand back to Sean.

Thanks, Colm. So from a strategic perspective, I think what you can see there is that the business has really moved to a different level compared to where it operated at from the previous 5-year period. The average group operating profit over the last 5 years, including contribution from the joint venture businesses, has been at over EUR 100 million on average across the period. And that compares very favorably to an average of about EUR 70 million over the previous 5-year period. The low point for total group operating profit in this 5-year period was EUR 89 million, which was the high point in the previous 5-year period. So we've produced more consistent, higher average profitability in this 5-year period.

Living Landscapes now represents 20% of the group operating profit and at a higher margin and lower capital employed level, increasing Living Landscapes' contribution to overall group operating profit can only be positive for the dynamics financially within the group. The Ireland U.K. businesses are a smaller, more consistent profit contributor within the overall picture. And CEE, LATAM, and our Living Landscapes businesses provide greater balance overall to the portfolio of assets that we have. And we're extremely well invested now. So the business has invested significantly in plant, in facilities. Just in the last 12 months, we bought additional land beside our 2 Brazilian production facilities and our main Polish manufacturing facility to allow for additional expansion. We've invested in research. We've invested in our digital tools and solutions, invested in biological manufacturing capability from an organic perspective with our first investment in Brazil, and we continue to invest in nature-based solutions.

The markets are continuing to evolve, though, and the complexity that our landowners and our customers are seeing is increasing the value of the specialist knowledge, the product and the services that we're offering. And we're beginning to tie together solutions from various parts of our businesses. So recent examples of that, for example, are where golf courses are now building irrigation lagoons to try and wean themselves off dependency on local natural water supplies from water authorities. We're involved in the construction of those lagoons, bringing together our OAS teams, our digital teams who can provide advice on the best location for those lagoons and the construction of the lagoons ourselves using our Keystone Habitats business and some of the products that are involved in that.

There are plenty of examples now of us beginning to tie together the solutions and capabilities that we have across the group, which will drive additional synergies as the business continues to grow. We're well positioned for the next phase of growth, continue to have strong and leading market share positions. And as we mentioned earlier on, we are seeing continued challenges from the competition in the market going out of business, which essentially means that there's a migration to quality and a migration to some of the larger players within the competitive dynamic. We continue to push for technical differentiation of product. So whether that's higher-margin products within our BAM portfolio, differentiated seed offerings, differentiated crop protection offerings, controlled release fertilizers and higher quality blended nutrient fertilizers that essentially replace the lost nutrients in the soil rather than just applying straight nitrogen to grow a crop. The business is very much focused on differentiating ourselves from our competition through higher value add.

We continue to scale our Living Landscapes business through both organic growth, integration at the back end and driving for commercial synergies between the businesses after we've acquired them. And we're continuing to identify pockets of services and pockets of solutions where complementary M&A will add value to the overall Living Landscapes business. So the next 5 years will be about converting that growth into value, continuing to grow our cash generation, continuing to see enhanced returns. We should have lower CapEx over the coming 5 years given our heavy investment in ERP and facilities over the last 5 years and continuing to drive capital efficiency across the group.

So our Capital Markets Day in Craven Cottage on the 17th of November, will speak to strategy, some of the growth opportunities that we see out ahead, our overall financial ambitions for the group and how we intend to allocate capital over the coming 5-year period.

So to summarize, our FY '26 performance has demonstrated the strength, the diversity of the group and the capability of all of the management team, and I must thank all of the management team who have delivered a very strong result in what have been very challenging circumstances, both from a supply perspective and in terms of the challenges that we're facing on farm. Our 5-year operating profit ambition has been exceeded significantly, and we've overdelivered in that regard. We continue to generate strong cash, which is supporting our investment in the business and shareholder returns at an overall level. And we believe the platform that we have right now is very well invested for the next phase of value creation for shareholders and for the group as a whole.

So we look forward to seeing investors, if not on the Capital Markets Day on the 17th of November on the road over the next few days, and we continue to be happy to engage with investors and explain our story to them. And hopefully, we're beginning to show and evidence that the management team that are in place now are delivering on the commitments given around the '22 Capital Markets Day.

So that concludes our call.

[Operator Instructions]

The next question comes from Patrick Higgins from Goodbody.

One question on Agrii, please, and then maybe one on Living Landscapes, if that's okay. Firstly, just on Agrii. Obviously, we've seen a much improved kind of output price backdrop since the year-end, which obviously should be supportive, but it has to be balanced against still kind of elevated input cost environment. So just interested to hear how you're -- how we should think about farming -- farmer sentiment across your key regions, I guess, versus this time last year at the start of [ this ]. And have you seen any kind of notable differences in planting intentions across the regions for the year ahead? And that's Agrii.

And then on the Living Landscapes, how should we think about the pace? And obviously, you have the CMD coming up, so maybe you'll hold fire until then. But how should we think about the M&A activity over the next kind of 12, 24 months ahead, given your comments on the strength of the pipeline? And have you seen any changes in valuation expectations, either kind of bolt-on acquisitions or larger kind of platform opportunities that you might be looking at across Continental Europe?

Thanks, Patrick. I'll take the agriculture one and maybe TJ will answer the Living Landscapes one. So yes, I mean, you're right, farm sentiment has improved over the back end of the summer. The return of rain was important and harvest was concluded pretty early right around our businesses, and the lift in wheat prices, oilseed prices generally has been a positive. And I would say farm sentiment is improving and has improved significantly in the early part of this year. Not really seeing any change in planting at this point in time. We do expect in the U.K. a bigger overall oilseed rape area because oilseed rape was one of the crops that performed very well last year despite the very dry conditions.

So a continued return back to a higher oilseed rape planted area, which is a positive for us. Winter wheat, we think will probably be in line, maybe slightly ahead of last year in the U.K. And the indications are at this early stage that Poland and Romania will continue to move towards greater winter cropping. We mentioned that dynamic earlier on and the kind of trend over the last 3, 4 years has been higher levels of autumn/winter planting and lower levels of spring planting in those markets. Brazil, I understand the soy area is expected to be about 3% or 4% higher than last year. And again, soy prices have moved upwards. So farm sentiment in Brazil is improving. And finally, then from an animal feed perspective, while dairy prices have been lower over the last 12 months, we did see dairy prices begin to tick up as the summer went on and as the year went on. And it looks like the short-term trend will be slightly upwards, although not at the higher levels seen at the end of 2025 calendar year.

So broadly speaking, I would say that the -- where fertilizer prices have landed, where raw material prices have landed, that's driving to an extent, a lift in commodity prices from a grain and oilseed perspective and perhaps from a milk perspective and the risk of El Niño, the risk of reduced cropping, the actual outturns for summer '26 harvest. The French maize area, I think, was 42% lower year-on-year. So there has been significant deterioration in harvest outcomes as a result of the very dry conditions experienced last winter. And that's underpinning and supporting higher prices in grain markets for the coming year. So sentiment is improving, I would say, Patrick.

Does that cover all of the agricultural part of the question? You mightn't have mic on. So TJ, go ahead, sorry, with the Living Landscapes part.

Sure. Thanks, Patrick. Again, as you will know, kind of predicting with any degree of certainty, the timing on M&A is difficult just by virtue and nature of the M&A processes themselves. That said, what I would say is that our M&A hopper is active. We have moved into various stages of diligence across a number of businesses. I would say in terms of the kind of profile of those businesses, we have been looking at the smaller scale ones. We're also looking at some larger ticket ones. So smaller being in the EUR 1 million to EUR 5 million EBITDA range and the larger being north of EUR 5 million EBITDA range.

So I would say a healthy hopper progressing well, but I won't be predicting the timing because that is just not a predictable piece, but certainly confident and, I would say, in a healthy shape relative to the last number of months. In terms of multiple expectations, I would say, again, break it between the smaller ticket acquisitions where it's typically owner-managed, family-owned type of businesses where multiple expectations there would have remained relatively consistent, I would say, over the years. Even as you get into the larger businesses, I would say, over the last kind of 12, 18 months, multiple expectations haven't increased. We would see them as generally have been flat to maybe softening in some cases, and that's possibly in part due to interest rate movements and increases.

But yes, nothing significantly different, I would say, in terms of overall multiple expectations over the last 12 to 18 months, I would have said.

The next question comes from Adam Tomlinson from Berenberg.

Hopefully, you can hear me okay.

Yes, we can, Adam.

Great. Okay. Great. Three questions, if I can. Just on -- in the U.K. and Ireland and other territories for that matter, you spoke a little bit about some improvement in farming sentiment. But I'm just interested in any color you can give on the consolidation trend you're seeing within your customers and maybe how that's impacting you and how you think that plays out? That's the first question.

The second question was just on the Living Landscapes division. Just delving into the detail a little bit there. You mentioned the sports area, delivering a good performance despite tough markets. I'm just wondering, is that perhaps an area where adverse or challenging weather conditions perhaps allow you to step in a bit more and help people out? Does that give a bit of counterbalance in terms of performance?

And then just third question is just on cash management. So strong net debt position for the year-end ahead of what we were expecting despite some working outflow. I'm just wondering how to think about working capital perhaps in the year ahead and just from a modeling perspective? That's the third question.

Thanks, Adam. Colm, do you want to go ahead first?

Yes. Yes. Look, the year-end finished very strong, probably ahead of our expectations, to be honest, given some of the markets were quite challenged, as we touched on earlier on, as regards farmer affordability and spend patterns in the year. So we had a very strong cash collection in July, which would typically be our strongest month for cash collection anyway, but probably ahead of our expectations. And certainly, our net debt position was good at the end of the year.

Looking forward to next year, it's difficult to predict. But I think when you look at where prices are right now as regards to raw materials, and we've got CBAM coming in, in the U.K. with some of the timing around year-end, we probably will see a small outflow next year in working capital. But as I said earlier on, that's an area that we're looking on to manage over the year. And really, it's looking at the average over the year and how we can contain that and manage that effectively, particularly with interest rates likely to rise over the coming year or 18 months.

Thanks, Colm. From a consolidation or customer perspective on the agriculture side, some of the challenges that the U.K. farmer is facing, I suppose, was the inheritance tax issue. So there are certainly moves to exit farming via sale rather than transition farming from generation to generation. That's around the edges. Really, what we're seeing though is more consolidation in Continental Europe and also in Latin America. So a lot of the smaller distributors, regional distributors in Romania, in Poland and to a certain extent in Latin America going out of business or using credit arrangements and creditor arrangements, sorry, court-ordered arrangements to wind up their businesses.

So really a flight to quality from a distributor perspective seems to be to what we're seeing. So minor consolidation, I would say, at farm level, although that's a feature always in this business and has been for the last 20 years, continued farm consolidation, but really more opportunity within our competitor space to win business and grow market share because competitors are significantly challenged. I think we're the only distributor of agrochemicals in the U.K. who made a profit in the last 12 months. So that will give you some indication of the level of challenge that's been experienced by our competitors in the U.K.

And Adam, just regarding your question on sports business, yes, clearly, the very dry, arid conditions over the summer negatively impact the kind of absorption characteristics for nutrition products onto the soil for herbicides and pesticides. That said, what we do see is that it presents opportunity around our irrigation solutions and also on certain product ranges such as wetting agents. But net-net, that very dry period is a negative for the business. But what we do see is that as we entered the early autumn period, there's a lot of recovery work that starts to happen, whether it's golf courses, football pitches, cricket grounds, et cetera. And we see a real bounce in activity through September when conditions start to improve.

So certainly, we do see recovery, and we will see recovery over the coming month or so as ground staff look to renovate pitches that have been damaged over the winter period. So that's just the nature of the business, I suppose. But net, as I said, a challenge when it's very dry, but recovering well over early autumn.

[Operator Instructions]

The next question comes from Rania Balaghi from TP ICAP.

I hope you're hearing well. I have 3. The first one is on what you can disclose in your outlook maybe for the next semester?

The second one would be on the recent integration of Living Landscapes acquisitions. Should we expect them to be relatively straightforward? Or are there any maybe key challenges investors should be aware of?

And the third one is on Brazil and its credit risk and bad debt provision. How are you managing them? Are there any more information you can give the next fiscal year?

Okay. Well, on outlook, typically, Rania, we don't give outlook in the business until our Q3 trading update, which is, I suppose, in June time frame, and that's because 90% of our profit is weighted towards the second half of the year. What I can say now is that the trading for the first 6 weeks of this year has been in line with our expectations. So one of the happy things about ending a challenging year that we've just come from is that we get on the flywheel and start all over again when the new agricultural year comes around and the new planting season begins.

So happy to say that early seed sales, early sales of fertilizer and early sales across our living landscapes businesses have been strong in the first 6 weeks of the year. So we're happy with that -- how that's happening. But typically, we don't give an outlook until very late in the year. We are comfortable with the range of analyst expectations that are out there, but I suppose we don't give an outlook at this point of the year.

And regarding your question on integration of acquisitions, we break them into 2 components broadly. I mentioned in the environmental businesses, we are putting in a new ERP solution across those businesses and also a new project management solution. And again, that's to support both the organic growth and also future acquisition onboarding as well so that we have a common platform and set of solutions there. We already have that to an extent across our distribution businesses in Sports and Landscapes, but that also is evolving. We're continuing to invest behind our IT infrastructure in those businesses as well, again, for the same reasons of supporting ongoing organic growth, but also to create that platform for future acquisitions.

I also mentioned that within the Landscapes businesses, we have gone through an operating model change. So migrating the businesses from more BU-led structure to more of a commercially led structure that better aligns with our customers and segments. And that's, I guess, that's an ongoing focus to ensure that the organizational and operating model design of the business is best fit for future growth and meeting ultimately customers' needs and demands as we look out into the future.

I think in terms of challenges around integration, I would say culture is particularly for M&A and new business onboarding, managing the cultural integration, cultural alignment, protecting the culture of those businesses that we've acquired because typically, we've been acquiring small -- the owner-managed smaller businesses in some cases that have a particular unique culture that has made them attractive for the workforce and has made them attractive for their customers ultimately. So it's ensuring that in whatever integration work that we do that we're very conscious and aware of the importance of the local cultural dynamics and operating norms in each of those businesses and to the extent possible, protecting those as we grow the businesses.

And yes, just in respect of credit risk, I didn't hear all the question. It broke up a little bit, but maybe just to talk to how we approach credit risk in general. I guess the 2 most challenging markets, I guess, are Romania and Brazil. As Sean mentioned earlier on, the level of bankruptcies and court protections and restructurings in 2025 calendar year was the highest year on record. Our approach in that market is we have a high level of credit insurance, and we also engage in guarantees and in some cases, mortgages to protect our credit that we advance in that market, which means that although we would have taken a higher provision relative to last year compared to some of our peers, it's obviously pretty minimal.

It gives us a lot of protection as we sell on credit in that market. Romania has gone through probably a difficult 3 years following 2 years of consecutive droughts, putting a lot of pressure on farmers and ability to spend and to pay their bills at the end of the harvest. Definitely, we've seen improvement over the last 12 months in that market. And as I touched on, our credit -- our collections in July were very strong in that market. However, the previous years and collection of older debt, we took a position in the year to provide for the majority of that. If you remember 2 years ago, there was an intervention by the government, which stopped companies like ourselves chasing down debt for a period of 6 months to give farmers some relief.

So it has been challenging to collect and to go after that older debt. So that's why we had that kind of spike in the year to really protect us against the older amounts. But certainly, the market has improved, but our approach in that market is similar and that we'll look to use guarantees and mortgages as best we can to try and protect ourselves against recoverability of debtors. And I'd say, outside of that, our approach is similar, and we've got a strong record on cash collection when it comes to receivables.

The next question comes from Cathal Kenny from Davy.

A couple of questions from my side. Firstly, on CBAM coming into the U.K. at the start of '27. Just interested in your thoughts there, particularly around inventory management ahead of that with regard to fertilizer.

Same question, Living Landscapes on the service side. Interested to hear your thoughts, TJ, just on your visibility around the business pipeline as you look into the year ahead?

And third question is the repeatability of the performance at the after-tax level for joint ventures, very good performance this year. Just interested to know how you think that will perform in the year ahead.

Thanks, Cathal. Colm, do you want to do CBAM?

Sure. Yes, in respect to CBAM, I guess they were kind of 12 months after the European implementation. So it comes in on the 1st of January of 2027. Hard to predict as regards what that will mean. Our expectation is there probably will be some more inventory purchased pre-Christmas or pre-January. But again, it comes back to affordability and credit off the back of a challenging year. That will influence, I guess, the volumes of fertilizer that we see being bought before CBAM comes in. We're in a good inventory position. It's a different market over there. So there isn't the same capability to bring in large quantities of inventory, but we'll certainly be looking to demand profiles there and managing that over the months ahead.

TJ, do you want to touch on?

Sure. Yes, as regards to the advisory businesses, generally, what we see in terms of pipeline and we manage those businesses based on forward-looking pipeline, pipeline is generally in good shape across the businesses going into the kind of the later autumn period. And certain businesses have different seasonal components to them, but generally positive. I did mention or I mentioned in the press release that we had some challenges on in the renewable space in the U.K. with the timing of award and consent around grid applications. So that slowed performance in one of our businesses, Neo, down to some extent last year, but confident that, that's picking back up again as we enter the late autumn period.

So overall, I would say, in reasonably good shape. We announced also kind of that just after the end of the year, we acquired Lighthouse Consulting, which is in the planning area. And we've also got a couple of other acquisitions in the hopper potentially around areas such as landscape architecture. And the more of those gateway type services that we get access to, that's really our strategy is by accessing gateway services, we open up the portfolio of broader services that we offer to clients as well and indeed, across into potentially the product solutions as well.

So certainly, very pleased that we got the Lighthouse acquisition done, and I would say, confident as we look out into the future around the opportunity that, that presents us and some of the other M&A prospects that are coming down at us as well over the coming months, hopefully. So yes, I think overall, on the advisory businesses, we're confident and optimistic about the year ahead.

Okay. And the final part of your question, Cathal, there was in relation to the repeatability of the joint venture figure. I would say that it probably is not going to be consistently coming in at that level. There may be some one-off years, which allow the business to deliver that level of return. But certainly, if we're looking at an average for the next 5 years, it will be at a lower level than the performance this year because with the drought conditions, it simply was a very, very, very strong year from a feed perspective. And I would say both the Hall's and the Thompsons' joint venture businesses were well positioned in terms of being able to take advantage of that.

As you know, we had a fire there probably 4 years ago at this stage and completely refurbished our Ringaskiddy facility. There was a significant investment that went into our Belfast facility. So the kind of industrial-scale throughput that we can put through our production facilities, whether it's on grain distribution or manufacturing of feed, is now at a higher level. So when there are bursts in demand, Hall is probably better positioned than any other competitor in the market who's typically working through a flat store model rather than heavily automated stores. That opportunity is generally taken by Hall when we have very strong close-in bursts in demand.

Very helpful.

Sorry, there is one question which has come in online there from Akhil Patel from Shore.

So with Romania moving more towards winter cropping, is that an opportunity for a volume and margin perspective for your products?

I mean the answer to that question is potentially, yes. We do obviously sell winter wheat and oilseed rape, which are the 2 main winter crops in the Romanian market. And as we know from our explanation of cropping in the past, the longer that the crop is in the ground, typically the more the farmer will spend on it. So it typically needs more applications of products through the season. It typically needs more servicing, and therefore, that represents an opportunity.

Maize, which this crop is potentially replacing, so winter wheat and oilseed rape would typically replace a maize crop, is not that profitable a crop from a Romanian perspective. So I think, yes, it represents opportunity for us, and that's good news. And anything that makes our farmer more stable and more profitable is good news for Agrii, particularly in the Romanian market as well. So yes, I think, generally speaking, we would be happier with more winter cropping than spring cropping in the Romanian market.

We have no more questions on the line. So I hand the conference back to Sean Coyle to conclude today's call.

Great. Well, look, thanks very much, everybody, for joining the call today. I hope you got some insight into the performance for the year. As I said earlier, we look forward to seeing you on the road over the next few days or at our Capital Markets Day in Craven Cottage on November 17, if we don't see you over the coming days. Thank you for joining.

That concludes our conference call for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Origin Enterprises plc Interim Results 2026. Just a reminder that this call is being webcast live on the Internet and the presentation is available to view on the Origin website.

I will now pass over to Sean Coyle, CEO of Origin Enterprises plc. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you and good morning, everybody. Welcome to the first half trading results performance for 2026. I'm joined this morning by my colleagues: Colm Purcell, our CFO; TJ Kelly, the Managing Director of our Living Landscapes business; and Brendan Corcoran, who's our Head of Investor Relations.

The trading performance in the first half of the year we're describing really as solid or robust and we've had a good outcome from the perspective of agriculture trading when placed in the context of seeing what our competition are doing around us. We're having significant reductions in profitability from competitors in the U.K. and Poland and a significant number of distributor competitors in Brazil and in Romania placed themselves into administration, in some cases into liquidation or significant restructuring.

The performance of the business in the first half has been strong. We had Agriculture profitability decline by 1% with increases in performance in an Ireland, U.K. context and in Latin America and a decline in operating profit performance within our Continental European business. And our Living Landscapes business showed strong growth in the first half led by Sports and Landscapes together with growth in our Environmental business supported by the benefit of acquisitions that we made in the second half of last year.

Overall, group operating profit grew from EUR 17.2 million to EUR 17.4 million. We continue to see a strong balance sheet with our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio increasing fractionally on this time last year at 2.44x compared to a covenant level of 3.5x. We've extended our sustainability-linked RCF funding by a year. And we've announced an interim dividend consistent with prior years at EUR 0.0315, consistent with a long number of years payout from an interim dividend perspective.

From an operating point of view, we did see an increase in inventory towards the back end of the year, which impacted working capital. And that was principally as a result of increase in fertilizer pricing; an increase in the level of fertilizer holding to support our entry into CBAM, which is a carbon tax introduced on European fertilizers over the course of the next few years that will increase; and an increase in feed stock values as well associated with volume increases in that business.

We'll see our current Chairman, Gary Britton, retire today. And our new Chair, John Hennessey, joined as Chair designate on the 1st of January and will step into the Chair role as of tomorrow. We'd like to thank Gary for all of his contributions and support over a long number of years.

From a portfolio point of view, despite the fact that we had no acquisitions in the period, we did see continued extension of our Living Landscapes product and service offering and continued use of scale and opportunity across the Living Landscapes business to drive additional revenue and cost synergies, which TJ will speak to a little bit later on. So for those of you who don't know our operations. We're split across Agriculture and Living Landscapes.

Our sustainable agronomy businesses in the U.K., Poland and Romania are on-farm businesses using the best advice, technical capability to inform on-farm performance and give product recommendations. Our soil nutrition businesses in Ireland, U.K. and Brazil are more B2B businesses where we're dealing with other distributors, merchants and co-ops. And our animal nutrition joint venture businesses are the largest feed grain importer into the island of Ireland and we also have Northern Ireland's largest feed manufacturing capability.

On the Living Landscape side of the house, our Sports business is involved in the agronomy of sports turf and sports pitches and supplies a range of products and services into that industry. Our Landscapes business supplies a range of green products and green services into the landscaping sector. And our Environmental businesses have the largest ecological consulting practice touching off biodiversity net gain, touching off a range of services into major developers right across the U.K. So we're a Top 10 player in that regard as well.

And essentially, it's about the sustainable use of land; driving long-term impact on land use, delivering expertise and enriching land use in the best possible way for both farmers and other users of land right across the group. So very quickly we'll touch on 3 of the operating businesses in the Agriculture segment and then TJ will bring you through the Living Landscapes businesses. Within Ireland, U.K., profitability was slightly better than last year with a EUR 900,000 loss compared to a EUR 1.2 million loss in the previous year, a EUR 300,000 improvement and reasonably consistent with the performance and trading in previous years as you can see from the graph on the left-hand side.

Running through the individual businesses very quickly. There was volume growth overall led really by fertilizer demand and feed demand. And overall, U.K. winter cropping is improved on the previous year with a larger oilseed rape area and a larger winter wheat area so a bigger crop to service, which is always positive from an Origin perspective. The earnings are always weighted more towards the second half of the year and that will remain the case here. Looking at the individual businesses.

Our sustainable agronomy business saw a revenue increase of 1.5% supported by fertilizer demand and underlying raw material price moves. The winter wheat area about 4% bigger year-on-year and crop establishment at this point of the year is satisfactory. We did have a significant amount of rainfall and that has led to crop growth, but probably not a lot of activity taking place on farm because of the high level of rain. So plenty of work to be done as land conditions dry out over the coming weeks and months. And thankfully, the outlook from a weather perspective is good for the next few weeks so we should see a significant ramp-up in activity on farm over the next few weeks.

Output price levels continue to be challenging from a farm perspective and this will be consistent I suppose across our Continental European businesses and our Latin American business in terms of a demand driver over the second half of the year. So there is some concern that farmers are trying to manage their input costs relative to output costs. We will of course be advising in relation to the best product to use and trying to promote yield as much as possible because despite the fact that grain prices and oilseed prices may be that little bit lower, yield maximization is the key to maintain profitability on farm.

And therefore, promoting the best technical range of products that the farmer can possibly use will continue to be important. From a soil nutrition perspective, across both our U.K. and Irish businesses, we saw good preseason volumes. Pricing has remained quite firm on the back of tighter raw material supply and also higher gas prices driving increased prices. And maybe if we comment very quickly on recent developments. There is a significant proportion of world fertilizer produced in the Gulf region and that has driven up gas prices very significantly in the last 24 hours and will drive up fertilizer prices quite significantly over the course of the next month or 2.

So we are reasonably well stocked and have a reasonable order book matching that stock position in both Ireland and U.K. and no real short position or long position to speak of in those businesses. So we'll concentrate on continuing to move the order book that we have out to the co-op and merchant level over the coming month or 2 and we'll wait for the markets to settle down and see where we go to from a market perspective. But certainly, prices have remained pretty robust over the first half of the year and we would expect fertilizer pricing to increase over the course of the second half of the year.

And we, on the animal nutrition side, have had significant volume uplifts. Obviously the challenging weather from an Ireland, U.K. perspective and strong output prices in the protein area. So beef pricing, milk pricing in the first half of the year and other poultry, egg and pork prices have been a good supporter of driving volume in that business. Milk prices have weakened in recent months and we are expecting demand to soften in the second half of the year as a result of those weaker milk prices, but the trading in first half of the year has been strong and generally protein prices will be reasonably supportive of strong volume in H2.

In our Continental European businesses, again a reasonable performance when set in the context of significant bankruptcies and restructurings across both Romania and Poland from the competition set and in particular, some intervention by the Romanian government in cash collection at the tail end of the previous years. The tail end of calendar 2024 proved to be not helpful in terms of collecting debt. Essentially what the Romanian government did at that point in time was place a prohibition on anybody in the ag input supply chain putting pressure on debt collection or enforcing debt collection for about a 6-month period at the back end of calendar 2024 and it really has made the industry see some challenging outcomes as a result.

So despite our warnings to the Romanian government and the industry warnings to Romanian government at the time, it certainly has had an impact on our competitors. We have taken an increased bad debt charge as a result of that in the first half of this year and that has been an impact on the profit performance in the business in the current period. Our Polish business saw a reasonable trading performance. Fertilizer volumes were that bit weaker as farmers didn't commit to early fertilizer purchases and perhaps were expecting prices to drop. But as we've seen, they've actually strengthened so purchasing yet to be done in the Polish market.

And generally speaking, trading other than the bad debt charge and fertilizer volumes in Poland has been reasonably robust and we've been happy with trading. We've also launched some new products in our FoliQ range and the first range of biostimulant products being produced in our production facility in Alexandro. So you can see those new products and packaging there on the right-hand side of the page. And trading outlook for the second half of the year I think is reasonably robust. Winter cropping has been strong and the overall planted areas in these markets and soil moisture levels in these markets are strong.

So we are expecting a rebound in trading in the second half of the year compared to the performance in H1. And finally, from an Agriculture perspective, trading in our Latin American businesses has also been strong and we saw reasonable growth in profit in the first half, which as you know, is the key trading period in the Latin American business. So operating profit up by 5% to EUR 11.3 million. Strong growth in Controlled Release Fertilizer and biologicals and less success I suppose in our specialty product areas where we saw some volume decline in the first half.

But overall, profitability has grown quite well and overall volumes have done well in that business. And again that is set in the context of a large range of competitors and distributors into whom we sell experiencing Chapter 11s and restructurings over the last 12 to 18 months. I think we're now coming close to the bottom of the cycle there and we'll begin to see an uplift over the second half of this year and into the first half of next year, which is positive. So we are looking forward to continued recovery in that business.

But for us to have come through the last 2 years trading in Brazil with low grain prices, low soil prices and the farmer and a lot of distributors going through a lot of pain fiscally and continue to produce good growing profitability in those circumstances, I think has been very encouraging and it's a credit to the way the team have managed their customer base down there. We've had a very cautious approach to selling and being selective about the types of customers that we're dealing with and the amount of credit that we're putting into the market and the business has done very well in growing profit in those circumstances.

So I'll hand over to TJ, who will run through the performance of the Living Landscapes business.

Thanks, Sean. Living Landscapes delivered a good performance in H1 with operating profit up 8.3% driven by early season organic growth in our distribution, Sports and Landscapes businesses with the Environmental businesses also delivering year-on-year growth primarily underpinned by the benefit of acquisitions with a modest decline in underlying like-for-like performance within the environmental businesses driven by largely timing on key projects, which I'll come back to in a moment. That said, overall demand and our pipeline of activity across the Living Landscapes portfolio has remained robust and we are optimistic about performance as we enter the important second half of the year.

We also continue to have a very active M&A pipeline. As we continue to further integrate the businesses in the portfolio, we continue to focus on driving commercial synergies in the form of cross-selling and operational synergies again as a highly efficient form of growth for us across the portfolio. Within each of the segments within living Landscapes then. Sports had a good performance in the period really benefited from a strong early season start. As you might recall, it was a pretty dry summer last year and there was quite a bit of focus on surface recovery generally for sports in the early autumn period and we benefited from that during our Q1 and early Q2 period in the season.

Landscapes also had a good performance in H1 and that was despite what have been somewhat challenging tree planting conditions, in particular given the weather we've had over the last few months. That said, the landscaping sector performance has generally been solid. And across the Landscapes businesses, we continue to work on enhancing our operating model there. You'll have seen some evidence of that across social media. As we seek to better integrate the offerings that we have within Landscapes to better serve our customers with end-to-end solutions and that's really been delivered through a better integrated selling approach.

Within our Environmental businesses then, as I said, overall pleased with activity levels. We had some pockets of very strong growth and then a couple of sectors such as in the renewable space where the timing of grid applications in the U.K. and certain large infrastructure projects were hit by delays and we were impacted as a result of the flow-through of revenue and earnings in H1 as a result of those delays. Overall though, we remain confident about performance in the environmental businesses.

And given these were timing delays, the commitment in terms of spend is still there to those infrastructure projects and across the renewable space and we see that just picking up again through the second half of the year. So overall, remain confident and optimistic about performance across the division as we look into H2.

With that, I'll hand it over to Colm, who's going to cover the financial review.

Great. Thanks, TJ, and good morning, everyone. Starting with some of the highlights on H1 financial performance on Page 14 of the presentation. Group revenue at EUR 852.6 million is 2.5% ahead of last year or 5.1% on a constant currency basis. Excluding crop marketing, we saw 4.3% increase in revenue compared to last year. This was driven by a 2.3% volume increase with Agriculture and Living Landscapes showing positive organic growth in the half, a 4% positive pricing impact largely driven by fertilizer pricing, a 1% benefit from our acquisitions and then partially offset by a 3% negative foreign exchange impact, which was mostly sterling in the first half of the year.

Overall, operating profit for the period at EUR 15.1 million represents a 1.3% increase on prior year. And overall, this first half growth driven by Living Landscapes with operating profit up 8.3%. Agriculture marginally behind prior year with growth in Ireland and the U.K. and LatAm offset by the reduced performance in our Continental Europe businesses. Our associates and joint venture results showed good growth in the period on the back of a strong prior year number supported by strong demand for animal feed.

Our finance cost for the period at EUR 11.3 million represents an increase of EUR 1.3 million year-on-year. The increase largely from an increased average level of debt in the first half, which was driven by the increases in working capital. The increased investment in working capital due to higher levels of inventory buildup prior to the implementation of CBAM, some volume-related seasonal increases and some slower collection of receivables in certain markets.

Our overall adjusted EPS for the first half was EUR 0.0455 compared to EUR 0.0517 in the prior year with the higher operating profit being offset by the higher finance costs. As in prior year, the underlying earnings of the group are weighted to the second half. However, the H1 performance has been solid and the business is well positioned supported by selective investment in working capital as we enter into the key operating period of the year.

We recorded an exceptional charge after tax in the period of EUR 3.7 million with the main element of the cost being in respect of payments to suppliers where historical trade payables have previously been suspended in accordance with the international sanctions following the commencement of the war in the Ukraine. We have just over EUR 5 million to pay in respect of these legacy sanction impacted payables.

Looking at our balance sheet then at the end of H1 on Page 15. Our overall net debt position at the end of the half was EUR 283.5 million, which was at 2.44x our EBITDA and well within our banking covenant position. As noted earlier, the increase in net debt primarily driven by the increase in working capital. From a facilities perspective, we extended the maturity on our EUR 440 million revolver credit facility to 2031 with the option to extend by another year. Our balance sheet remains strong and well positioned to support further investment in the business through organic and through M&A investment.

I'll now hand back to Sean.

Thanks, Colm. So very quickly just remaining strategic focus for 2026 as we approach the end of our 5-year strategic cycle. We do have a Capital Markets Day in the tail end of this year, which I'll speak to a little bit later on. But we continue to work on optimization of the agricultural core. And I think focusing on bringing that working capital level back in over the second half of the year, improving return on capital employed will be hugely important as the kind of surplus stock that we had at the back end of the first half comes through the system and moves through the system.

Continuing to flex operations from a people perspective and from a service perspective will continue to be important. And as you know, we had a restructuring of our agri business in FY '25, a restructuring of some people and capability in our digital business also in 2025 in order to more tailor the operation to the ongoing gross margin availability. And we will continue to look at operations and look at businesses on a case-by-case basis to keep the workforce flexible as we move through future years.

We're continuing to invest strongly in people and invest in our team and 40 of our senior leaders have now gone through a global leadership development program or are in the process of going through a global leadership development program. And a further 200 or so have gone through change management courses and sales management courses to try and improve our sales and managerial capability across the organization. So recruiting, hiring and retaining the best talent possible is hugely important.

And when you see the performance of competition around us, I think it's testament to the strength of leadership that we have right down through the businesses. Within our Living Landscapes core, it is still the intention to exit FY '26 with a 30% run rate of profitability in our Living Landscapes business and we'll certainly see organically the business grow to over 20% as a result of the growth in the business. But the intention is to acquire additional profit over the course of the second half of the year so that we exit 2026 with about a 30% run rate of profit in Living Landscapes.

We want to broaden the portfolio of businesses and portfolio of services and products that we're offering across the Living Landscapes business. And TJ spoke to earlier on some of the opportunity that we've had there to take services and products that we have in parts of our Living Landscapes businesses and bring them to additional businesses within the group. And finally then, we are organically attempting to grow our businesses into Western Europe with the recruitment of additional headcount selling cross-border into Western Europe from our U.K. businesses.

For many years have been successfully selling our line marking paint, our PB Kent specialty fertilizer into Western Europe. And we're beginning to grow the balance of the product range into Western Europe over the course of the next few years with additional resource and headcount dedicated to that. But also looking at the possibility of acquiring in those markets as well. And from I suppose a big picture perspective, the intent is to continue to improve our product mix.

And as you've seen with the additional biological products in both Latin America and in Continental Europe continuing to move and migrate to products that will continue to improve yield and improve the sustainability of the Agriculture operations. We're continuing to invest in our digital capability and the current major project underway is integrating with the Telus Farm Management Information Systems. And Telus have bought the 2 biggest players in the U.K. operating farm management systems. So getting full integration between our systems and those capabilities will drive additional data and information, which we'd hope to have access to.

And in addition to that, we've launched recently with Lakeland and Tirlan here in the Irish market and expansion of our digital capabilities in Ireland as well. So that's been important. And we continue to drive standardization in ERP across the group. As many of you will know, we spent considerable amount of money over the last 3 or 4 years rolling out Dynamics 365 to our larger Ireland and U.K. businesses and that's beginning to get rolled out to some of the smaller U.K. and Ireland businesses.

We will have a new ERP deployed in our Latin American business on the 1st of April. And our Polish and Romanian businesses will probably change ERP over the course of the next 2 to 3 years. So we're in the process of planning for that. And in addition to those changes, we're also building new project management capability across our environmental businesses, which will give us better visibility on product pipeline, staff utilization and generally allow those teams to manage their businesses in a better way and get better cost utilization of staff and capability across the businesses. And that rollout is beginning as we speak as well.

So a significant investment in project management capability across our consulting businesses, which will really provide a platform for us then to add more project management businesses and consulting businesses on to that platform. So that's positive news. We're certainly on track to exceed our cumulative FY '22 to '26 targets as set out at the Capital Markets Day and we will exceed those by the end of the year. So just to summarize. The Agriculture businesses have been trading broadly in line with where we would want them to.

We're well set for a good second half of the year with the planted area in good shape and crops looking to be in good shape as well. And the order books in our soil nutrition businesses and animal nutrition businesses are strong for the second half. Certainly, there is a little bit of concern about on-farm sentiment and the challenges that low crop and grain prices mean for the arable sector. But on the side of protein and, generally speaking, the drivers of our animal nutrition businesses, pricing remains strong.

And we'd have questions as to whether we're at the bottom of the cycle on the grain pricing side and oilseed pricing side at this point. And certainly, the level of disruption that we're seeing now to oil prices and to gas prices in general will probably drive greater demand for sustainable fuels, which come from some of those crops. On the Living Landscape side, again a solid performance with strong growth across Sports and Landscapes and growth in our Environmental business supported by prior year acquisitions. And good work underway to continue to integrate those businesses behind the scenes and drive some synergies, both commercially and operationally in those businesses.

And as Colm touched on earlier on, our balance sheet is at its usual kind of 2.4x, 2.5x at the half year. So our balance sheet's in a reasonable position to drive any growth and acquisition activity that we want to do in the second half. CapEx will certainly be lower over the coming years over the medium term and the business will see reduced capital investments as a result of the conclusion of our ERP investments. And most of our investment in production capability in Romania and Poland, across our Brazilian businesses has now been concluded. So there isn't a significant amount of additional production capability spend that we will incur in future years.

We do expect to see diversification continuing to support less volatility in earnings. And I suppose at the start of the 2022 to '26 cycle, the intent of growing Living Landscapes and building out that platform was to reduce earnings volatility in the business. Continuing to grow the business positively from an organic perspective so we are investing in people and capability across our agricultural businesses. And we are not I suppose looking away from any M&A activity that might deepen and broaden our presence in certain markets.

So if certain assets come up for sale in the U.K. or in Romania or Poland or Brazil from a distressed asset perspective that we might add to our existing businesses and put them under our existing strong capable management teams, we're open to acquiring agricultural assets on top of the organic growth that we're delivering. As we mentioned earlier on, the intent is to have a Capital Markets Day more than likely in London on the 17th of November and that will set out our capital allocation plans and the kind of ambition that we have for the business over the coming 5 years.

So that's it. I mean we're reasonably pleased with how trading has gone in the first half of the year, still a lot to do. As always with Origin, most of the profitability in the group comes in the second half of the year and we look forward to coming back to investors with our Q3 trading update and giving guidance on outlook for the full year.

So Tibu, we'll open it up to questions now if that's okay and we'll see what questions are there for us. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Patrick Higgins from Goodbody.

Couple of questions of mine if that's okay. Maybe just firstly on the soil nutrition business like really helpful color there in terms of positioning for the short term, which sounds positive given your proactive management ahead of CBAM. But maybe just beyond that and probably tough to call at this point, but just interested to hear your thoughts on how things develop from here given the developments in the Middle East and the recent move in gas prices. How do you see demand developing particularly I guess given where farmer sentiment currently is and how prices currently are? That's my first question.

Second one is just on the Living Landscapes business. TJ, maybe you could just talk us through the drivers of the phasing of the environmental kind of volumes into H2? What kind of causes that to push into H2 and what gives you the confidence of it actually flowing through in the half? And then final one, just again on Living Landscapes. Plenty of color there in terms of targets to grow out that business. But maybe specifically on H2, you could give us a bit of an update in terms of the pipeline in terms of size of deals, locations, sectors, et cetera?

Okay. Patrick, maybe I'll just take the soil nutrition one and hand over to TJ then. So yes, certainly I would say for the next kind of 6 to 8 weeks we have reasonable stocking positions in place and a reasonable order book in place. I mean we would have commitments at this stage from most of the merchants and co-ops to volumes for the next kind of 6 to 8 weeks as we traditionally would have been coming into the peak application period in any case. So the order book and existing volumes are reasonably well matched at this stage.

As you know, beyond that, it's very difficult to tell. The spot market is moving around quite considerably. I think at some points yesterday, we were EUR 40 to EUR 50 per tonne up on most of the major fertilizer raw materials. 50% of the world's urea, 35% of global fertilizer comes from the Gulf area and if there is a long conflict or a prolonged conflict in that area, it will force prices up generally. We've seen the same with CBAM.

As CBAM has been introduced on non-European producers of fertilizers, European producers have moved their pricing up and are taking advantage of the carbon tax on product coming from outside the EU into the EU to move their prices upwards, their raw material prices upwards follows. So we continue to source from probably 20 countries on fertilizer and we'll be hunting around for the best available pricing and product generally with good relationships and supply relationships with many players.

So we are, as you know, not a primary manufacturer in this space. We're a trader who is simply bringing in the product, matching a book of demand and a raw material supply line with each other and will continue to move through the season as it progresses and watch out for those volatile periods and certainly not overcommit to purchasing material unless there's a solid book of demand there to be matched against it. So that is effectively how we will move through the rest of the season. But we're in reasonable shape, I would say, for product and supply over the course of the next 6 to 8 weeks.

And there's already a stock of that product at merchant level and at co-op level right through the U.K. and Ireland. So obviously whatever they have on hand will need to be sold through and exhausted as well. So it's a combination of supply sources and current inventory that will move through the system. And certainly there's not likely to be a shortage in the next 6 to 8 weeks. But beyond that, it will be difficult to tell where volumes will move to.

Patrick, just regarding the curves on Living Landscape. The environmental performance, underlying kind of performance as I said, overall we had growth driven by the impact of acquisitions. The underlying softness was driven by a couple of areas. As you know, our Neo Environmental business for example is heavily exposed to the renewable sector and the dynamic there. With that, the grid application window that closed in November time frame resulted in quite bit of activity in kind of the early part of our year in Q1.

But since the grid application window has closed, it's been quiet. As those applications get approved, there will be a next round of activity as those grid applications get awarded and we're back I guess with clients then taking on the next phase of activity. But what it's created is a slight gap in terms of just activity levels in the Neo business since November, December; but we expect that and we see that picking up through March and April.

So again that gives us a degree of confidence that again ultimately spend across the renewable sector in the U.K. is not going to -- isn't softening. It's just a timing piece with how that grid application process worked and the impact to us as part of the supply chain there. The other dynamic we've seen is certain large infrastructure projects, particularly in Ireland, have been subject to planning delays and that's impacted some of the timing of revenue flow-through with [indiscernible] in H1. But again, similar dynamics to the renewable space.

We don't see any softening in the government's commitment to capital infrastructure spend. It is really just the timing delays really planning related again as we probably all be familiar with or certainly heard about in the media. But again we see that rightsizing and the timing of that is already starting to pick up that we can see through March and into early April. As regards general confidence in H2 I think across our Sports and Landscapes portfolio, we have quite a high degree of recurring revenue in those businesses anyhow. So that naturally gives us a degree of confidence combined with the line of sight we have in our order books into H2.

And I think the other piece that we've been really working diligently on is stitching together the offerings across all our businesses in a more joined up way and that starts with the advisory services we offer through Environmental right through the product delivery services that we have across our Sports and Landscapes businesses and really engaging the customer in a more holistic way to ensure we get the value and benefit of the full portfolio that we offer across the business. And that's been a work in progress.

I mean again as you acquire relatively small businesses and roll them up together, that is part of the opportunity clearly for us is to leverage those selling synergies and leverage the operational synergies at the back end. But I would say overall, a good degree of confidence in the second half by virtue of the nature of our current customer base and the opportunity to cross-sell and upsell, which we are doing right across the portfolio now, Patrick.

The next question comes from Cathal Kenny from Davy.

A couple of questions from my side. Firstly, Sean, just on Brazil. If there was a recovery in the market, where would we see that impact the P&L? Is it primarily on the pricing side or would you expect to pick up in volume as well? Second question is relating to M&A. In your prepared remarks, Sean, you mentioned that you're open for business perhaps around assets in traditional geographies such as U.K., Romania, Poland and perhaps Brazil. Just wondering are you seeing some deal flow around some distressed assets in those markets already? And finally, on Living Landscapes, just are we seeing some benefit come through from the integration of the platforms from a synergistic perspective perhaps on the cost line or maybe there's a little bit of revenue to flow as well? They are my 3 questions.

Okay. On Brazil, I'd expect it both to be volume and price. But it's been a very competitive market from a specialty product perspective in Brazil. A quick example is there's a business called [indiscernible] down there, which is European-owned and we're making very significant profits in the Brazilian market. They're a specialty product producer and have moved to being loss-making in Brazil over the course of the last 12 months. So from a pricing perspective, specialty niche product areas have been quite aggressive and the competition for shelf space has been aggressive.

Now we've been quite cautious in chasing volumes. A significant probably 60% of our sales in Brazil are insured and we would have good personal guarantees and other types of crop security of our sales in a Brazilian context, which gives us comfort in relation to who we're selling to and what we're selling down there. And I would say others have not been as judicious about who they're prepared to sell to. So that's the benefit of a very strong local team on the ground who are being managed perhaps in a more European or traditional way than the traditional inputs providers down there.

So it's been challenging from a price perspective. Volumes in P&N, physiological and nutrition, products over the last 12 months have been down as a result of that high level of competitiveness. But we have made the decision to retain the brand value and hold pricing reasonably firm in the context of what has been a challenging market and there's been a little bit of price dumping going on from some of the competition in the race to get cash and it's difficult to legislate for. As you saw back in 2015 and 2016 in a U.K. context what competitors will do when the market is particularly challenged when they need to get cash in.

And that's certainly proven to be the case in Brazil over the last 12 months. So we can't always legislate for what the competition will do in any of our markets. But I would say that if the market picks up in Brazil and we do expect that it will, we will have both a positive volume impact. As the farm profitability improves and farm dynamics improve, farmers will be more willing to spend on products, but we would also expect that pricing and margin will hold up reasonably well. And margin has been held at a good level in Brazil over the last 6 months despite some of the little bit of softness that we've seen in volumes in certain categories of product.

In relation to deal flow in the agricultural space, nothing has happened in Brazil. There's been almost no transactions or M&A activity in Brazil over the course of the last couple of years and very limited in any of our other markets. Ireland and U.K., we're seeing almost no deal activity and we may see some over the next while. And certainly we have a view that further consolidation will be a driver of a strong agricultural industry over the course of the next few years and that the market continues to change. Profitability in farming in the U.K. continues to be challenged as evidenced by Minette Batters' report to Defra.

And my understanding is that the CMA are reasonably open to bigger combinations taking place. So in order to continue to have a healthy and thriving agricultural inputs business, servicing a farm enterprise business that continues to see challenges; we would expect consolidation both at the input side of the house, but also on farm as well to drive some efficiency and that's the reality of what's needed in the sector. Poland and Romania, as we've discussed in the past call, we're not aggressively looking for targets in those markets.

If I add up the total turnover of the businesses that have gone out of business or are going through financial restructurings in Romania for example, it's a pretty considerable something in the region of RON 3.3 billion of turnover, right? So that is a very considerable turnover of 11 distributors who are either going through solvency, bankruptcy or what's called an early restructuring to prevent the business going out of business. And that's the kind of turnover of businesses in the Romanian market. That's potentially up for grabs, right?

But just like in Brazil, we need to be cautious about growing market share aggressively, dealing with farm customers who are robust and have a strong balance sheet and who can prove an evidence to us that they're capable of trading well out into the future. There have always only been 1 or 2 distributors in Poland or in Romania who are like-minded to us in terms of their approach to technical selling rather than just moving boxes and doing commodity product as part of their sales process.

So there's certainly 1 or 2 in Poland and in Romania that if we got our hands on them would be great, but we're not going to buy just box shifting commodity players for volume at low margin. It's not a business that we're interested in acquiring. So there will be opportunity to grow market share organically in both of those markets. But at this point in time, I wouldn't see any immediate assets coming available for sale in Poland or Romania that we'd like to acquire. TJ, the Landscapes question?

Sure. Yes, absolutely, we are seeing the impact of the integration of the various platforms. Our target internally at least is that between 8% to 10% of our EBIT will come from synergies, a combination of revenue and operation, but primarily revenue. And even on a year-to-date basis in the half year albeit it's obviously the smaller end of the overall performance in the full year, we are up at 10% of synergy generation across the portfolio and that's doing things as basic as replacing third-party granulated fertilizer with our own PV-10 product.

It's improving the cross-selling infrastructure and capabilities in selling British hardwood trees through our Greentech tree ancillary products business. It's leveraging the footprint of our warehousing infrastructure. It's leveraging supply chain costs in areas such as pallets and logistics. So some very basic and obvious things. But nonetheless, when you've got individual stand-alone businesses that have been acquired, that is all part of the opportunity, as I said earlier, in terms of driving that integration and driving those synergies.

So pleased with progress to date, but absolutely more opportunity in front of us and that's really a large part of our focus, as I said, in addition to the M&A pipeline and hopper and we're excited about the opportunities, I would say, as we look out ahead.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Michele Mombelli from TPICAP.

I just wanted to ask 2 simple questions after all these points, which has been raised and answered. I wanted to ask first, what do you think about the organic growth of the Living Landscapes division, if you have a target number in your mind? And the second question maybe is a little bit more general. Given the importance of the Ukraine country in agriculture in general, I wanted to ask what do you foresee for your business if there will be a concession of the most eastern part of Ukraine to Russia and the war will end in regards of your business. So these 2 points from my side.

Okay. Well, Michele, the Ukrainian business was closed down in 2024 so we no longer have operations there. So at the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, we moved to cash sales only and over the course of the next couple of years, we shrunk the balance sheet and then closed the operation in 2024 and don't have any ambitions in the short term at least to reopen operations there. Now that might change if they get their house in order and join the EU, but I would see that as being a long-term prospect and certainly not something that we would expect to see in the next few years. TJ, organic growth in Living Landscapes.

Yes. I think it's probably reasonable to assume that mid- to high single-digit organic growth certainly should be achievable. And that does fit across the different parts of the portfolio, Living Landscapes and the Environmental business, given we've established a reasonable scale in terms of our overall headcount in those businesses still in growth. Still been adding heads to those businesses generally notwithstanding my comments earlier about the couple of challenges we've had in H1. Fundamentally, growth prospects and opportunity is still very, very strong. And we continue to recruit and hire headcount at a reasonably good rate.

So I think growth for the Environmental business at kind of a late single to early double-digit growth rate is probably reasonable in Sports and Landscapes given that they're in the product distribution space delivering at a mid-single-digit rate, kind of a 5% to 7% rate is again reasonable I think for that portfolio of businesses. But as I said earlier, I think opportunity to drive more organic growth as we look out over the next kind of 3-year horizon or so by virtue of a greater ability to cross-sell and leverage the scale of the businesses in due course. But to summarize, I think a mid- to high single-digit organic growth rate is reasonable to look at on a portfolio basis across Living Landscapes.

Okay. I don't think we have any additional questions on the line. Nothing else coming in there? No. Okay. So thank you very much, everybody. We look forward to seeing you out on the road over the next few days. And if you could please save your calendar date for 17th of November, we look forward to seeing you in London for the Capital Markets Day. So thank you very much for joining us this morning. Bye-bye.

That concludes our conference call for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines.