Origin Enterprises Stock

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.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Origin Enterprises plc Preliminary Results Call 2025. 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. Welcome to the 2025 preliminary results call. I'm joined this morning by my colleagues, 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 to announce a strong set of results this morning. And really, these set of numbers are showcasing the 2 key strengths in the Origin model, the resilient nature of our agriculture business and strong cash generation coming from the agriculture business and the fantastic growth opportunity within our Living Landscapes business.

You can see in the boxes on the top right of the page, the Agriculture business grew by 2.5% in the period, pretty much driven by a strong recovery in the performance of our Ireland, U.K. businesses. And our Living Landscapes business grew by almost 40%, about 1/3 of that coming from organic growth and roughly 2/3 coming from the acquisitions that we had in the period, plus a couple of acquisitions, which we're not reporting for a full year period in 2024. A number of our metrics have improved, and Colm will touch on those a little bit later on. And the business continues to see growth in strategic outlook from the point of view of additional leadership strengthening within the business. We've commissioned a new glasshouse facility within our Throws Farm research center, which will accelerate our investment in innovative products and the innovative products that we bring to market, particularly biologicals. And we continue to see expansion of the products and services that we have within our Living Landscapes portfolio.

Our Chair, Gary Britton, has informed the Board that he will step down as Chairman before the 2026 AGM, and the search for his successor is in process.

We redesigned our brand and I suppose, reorganized the reporting of the business into Agriculture and Living Landscapes last year, and we continue to report on this basis in the current financial year. And I think it gives a better picture of the nature of the businesses that we are operating in and gives better visibility to investors on the breakdown of profitability across the group, the growth dynamic within the group, the increased diversification and the market opportunity in the group, and we'll see a little bit more of that later on.

From an ESG perspective, some of the highlights for 2025. We continued the movement and migration of our agricultural businesses towards green-listed solutions. And apart from our fertilizer business, which has had carbon ratings on all of our fertilizers now for a number of years, the expansion of our BAM portfolio and the biologicals, adjuvants and micronutrients portfolio, which is a key part of the transition to new products. We have also, in recent years, delivered sustainable ratings on all of our seeds and within our crop protection portfolio, ratings from a sustainability perspective on crop protection as well. So we continue to allow our Agronomy teams select the best products and best outcomes as well as practicing integrated pest management and all of the preferred practices from an agronomic perspective.

We had a 26% in our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions since 2019. Unfortunately, that number is slightly higher than last year's number because of an increase in volume, particularly within our PB Kent operation, which is a gas-powered plant, but we do intend to try and migrate to alternative fuel sources within that business in the coming years and continue on the trajectory of hitting our 2032 science-based target metrics and commitments.

Our employee engagement score continues to be strong within the period at 81%. And unfortunately, our accidents and reportable incidents rate increased to 10.7 from 4.2. There is a significant increase in reporting, awareness and culture from a health and safety point of view across the group. So we are certainly getting very strong visibility now right out into all of our businesses around health and safety. And with no particular concerns about the increased reporting level, although clearly, we would like to see a better number at the end of each year.

So within each of our agricultural businesses, I'll go into a little bit of detail now and just explain some of the dynamics within the individual reporting units. So across Ireland and U.K., we had a strong recovery in planted area, particularly in U.K. autumn planting, which, as you know, is a key driver of the applications and agronomy results within the financial year. And we saw a significant improvement in the reported profit from our Agri U.K. operating business. Despite the fact that the spring was dry and that, I suppose, drove limited amount of spending over the spring period as pest and disease prevalence was not all that high, the business saw a significant jump in operating profit. And our agronomists were helping growers manage their input spend carefully with targeted applications. And that, in particular, was relevant because of the falling grain and oilseed prices through the year. And that can be a challenge for our farm customers and the amount of spending that they have on inputs can change as a result of end market pricing.

The soil nutrition businesses saw very strong demand and certainly strong market share growth as well. And we saw the business with a well-positioned order book and good stock management through the period, which meant that we saw certainly growth in market share and the businesses delivered a good result. And our Animal Nutrition businesses also saw very strong volume growth in the period, underpinned really by strong customer demand because of high end prices in all of the key markets, dairy, beef, poultry, pork and egg prices, all really delivering strong demand at a customer level and that pulling through feed demand for the businesses, both in our feed importation business and in our joint venture businesses. And so we're very happy with the outcome in those businesses. And it's certainly prevailing in the first half of the current year, although we're not going to forecast any prices for the year as a whole. So we're certainly seeing that initial demand being strong in the first half of 2026.

Within our Continental European businesses, profit was slightly down. The Continental European business really was characterized by differing outcomes across the 2 geographies. The Polish market had strong growth in profitability and strong growth in volume. And although our Romanian business also saw strong growth in volume, there was a migration towards a cheaper product set and a more economical product set for the farmer because of the economics on farm and the ability of the Romanian farmer to spend following 2 successive years of drought in the 2023 and 2024 reporting periods left the Romanian farmer really with a poor balance sheet and an inability to spend significantly on crop inputs as a result. The team did very well, though, and we did see strong growth. And the market, I would say, is characterized by poor collections, although not necessarily in our own business and a little bit of a chaotic distributor base and supplier base in the Romanian market as a result of the collection dynamics within that market.

Our Latin American business reported like-for-like profit in line with last year on a constant currency basis. Unfortunately, the depreciation of the Brazilian real meant that, that resulted in a decline in profit in line with the currency depreciation of about 14%. And the business saw strong volume growth, close to 12% although the price pressure within the market and the challenges in the market did mean that margins saw some squeeze with margins falling from 11.6% to 10.1% in the period. We've had a number of competitors, a number of distributors and a number of players at farm level use the Chapter 11 process to cram down debt and use legal restructurings to cram down debt. And while the impact on us directly was reasonably small, we did have to constrain sales in a number of cases. We did have to watch our relationships with a number of our retail distributors and farm distributors in order to guard against significant bad debt.

So the business really has performed very resiliently in the context of what is ongoing in Brazil. And you will know that a couple of the listed entities at an ag retail level have seen collapses in their share price over the last couple of years. And I suppose a comparable biologicals player in the same place has also seen a significant contraction in its share price. So we're very happy with the operating results in Brazil and the team there have managed very well through what has been a very challenging period.

So I'll hand over to TJ now to bring you through the performance of the Living Landscapes business.

Thanks, Sean. As Sean mentioned earlier, as we've split the business into Agriculture and Living Landscapes, these pages are intended to give a little bit more color and context on the component elements of Living Landscapes, our Sports business, our Landscapes business and our Environmental business. And this year is intended to give you a sense of the customer and end-use segments that we play into across each of those businesses.

Looking at trading overall, Living Landscapes delivered a strong year of growth in FY '25, contributing 18.4% of group operating profit at EUR 16.6 million. That compares to 14.2% of the group operating profits in '24, and that's all relative to our ambition to finish FY '26 at an annualized 30% of group operating profit. The increase in OP in the year reflected good organic growth at approximately 11% in the segment and earnings from acquisitions at about 20% with some marginal currency benefit giving an overall growth of 39% in operating profit. Our margins improved by 90 basis points to 8.9%, really driven by an improved mix of the higher-margin Environmental businesses and the continued focus on revenue and buying synergy extraction across the businesses within the portfolio.

Looking at the businesses individually then, the -- as a general comment, the Landscapes business benefited from a strong start to the season with good planting and on-site conditions back in autumn '24 this time last year. combined with what was a strong spring season this year, so good conditions in early spring, which really helped carry the business through what was a challenging summer from a drought perspective. And as we look forward then into autumn this year, we've seen a solid start to the year this year with a good mix of moisture and warm conditions, allowing a lot of what was planned maintenance to get underway, some of which would have been deferred from the summer, especially in the sports area. And generally, we're seeing strong demand across the Environmental businesses over last year and into the early part of the season.

During the year then, in addition to our focus on integration and synergy realization, we further strengthened our management team with the appointment of 2 managing directors for both our Sports and Landscapes businesses, which enhanced the leadership capability further alongside our existing Managing Director for the Environmental businesses. We continue to see strong momentum behind the Living Landscapes structural growth drivers, which again affords us the opportunity to build out our services and product offerings across the portfolio. Demand is strong for high-quality advice in the sports turf and amenity space in the U.K., for example, and we're building our resources to better exploit that know-how and capability further across Mainland Europe, where we have a relatively small but growing presence, but whereas very similar growth drivers exist to the U.K. market.

Looking then at biodiversity net gain obligations and legislation such as the EU Nature Restoration Act, we see continued strong demand for Environmental, Landscapes services and solutions and continue to further exploit organic growth opportunities, both in the U.K. and assess opportunities for further inorganic growth, both in the U.K. and Europe. In addition, we continue to focus on incorporating biological and eco-friendly products into our portfolio, not just in the Living Landscapes portfolio, but also, of course, in our Agricultural portfolio, given the fundamental role that those products will play in the long-term protection of natural capital and the importance of the protection of that natural capital for sustainable longer-term economic activity and growth.

With that, I'll hand it back to Colm.

Good morning, everyone. So starting with some of the highlights on financial performance on Page 16 of the presentation. As you'll see, it was a strong year for our financial performance with positive growth across all of our financial KPIs. Group revenue of EUR 2.1 billion is 2.7% ahead of prior year on a constant currency basis, largely driven by a 2.3% volume growth and 0.9% benefit from acquisitions. Pricing was relatively constant in the year with a negative 0.5% impact overall for the year. We grew our wholly owned operating profit for the year by 8.7% constant currency to EUR 90 million with growth across both of our segments, Agriculture and Living Landscapes.

Agriculture delivered good growth in the year with operating profit of 4.1%, primarily driven by the strong recovery in our U.K. and Ireland region. And Living Landscapes had a strong year as TJ just outlined, with growth of 36.3%. Our associates and joint ventures results showed strong growth in the year as well, largely continued high demand for animal feed supported by the high output pricing that we see for dairy, beef and poultry. And overall, group operating profit with the inclusion of our associates and joint ventures delivered 10.1% growth to EUR 99 million for the year.

Our operating margin for the year at 4.3% was up 20 basis points, highlighting the improved agricultural performance in the Ireland U.K. region, offsetting the reduced margin in CE and LATAM and the higher contribution of the higher-margin in Living Landscapes business. Our overall EPS for the year was EUR 0.5421, which is ahead of our Q3 guidance following a strong Q4 performance and delivers growth of 12.8% or 14.4% on a constant currency basis. This growth demonstrates the benefits of the diversified nature of the group with strong contributions from Living Landscapes and Ireland U.K. agriculture more than offsetting the challenges in other markets and particularly Romania and Brazil.

Looking at our cash performance then on Page 17. It was also a strong year for cash generation with our free cash flow at EUR 60.8 million, representing a free cash flow conversion of 117.9% and ahead of our Capital Markets Day target of 80%. This was in spite of making additional payments of EUR 23.5 million in respect of previously withheld amounts due to sanctioned parties. We now have just over EUR 5.7 million left to pay in respect of these, if you remember, of an original amount of around EUR 70 million. So we're nearly complete on those payments.

The strong cash generation in the year allowed us to invest EUR 22.8 million into strategic capital expenditure, invest nearly EUR 18 million on our 6 new additions to the Living Landscapes portfolio and returned just under EUR 20 million to our shareholders through dividends and the balance of our EUR 20 million share buyback program, which commenced in the prior year. Our strategic capital expenditure was down from EUR 34 million in the prior year, and we expect this to reduce further in FY '26 as we've now largely completed the U.K. and Ireland ERP rollout and a number of other specific projects like our new state-of-the-art glasshouse facility in our R&D center at Throws Farm.

Our overall net debt position at the end of the year was EUR 70.8 million, which was down EUR 0.9 million on last year. This equates to just under 0.6x of our EBITDA and well within our banking covenant position at the end of the year. The decrease in net debt largely due to lower working capital outflows and the higher profits as we noted earlier. Overall, our finance costs amounted to just under EUR 20 million for the year, an increase of EUR 1.4 million on the prior year as a result of a higher average debt over the full year. And overall, our ROCE for the year at 12% is back to our target of 12.5%. So this is up 80 basis points on the prior year, largely driven by our improved profitability that we've seen.

From a facilities perspective, we completed the refinancing of a new EUR 440 million revolver facility in the first half, an increase of EUR 40 million on the prior year, all now maturing in FY '30 with the option to extend for a further 2 years. So we are well positioned now to support the future growth of the business. However, with higher interest rate environment, we continue to monitor capital allocation and continue to focus on working capital management.

Just turning then to Page 18 and looking at our capital allocation since the start of our current strategy period in 2022, as I said, we continue to pursue a disciplined approach to capital allocation with balance across investing in growth and returning cash to our shareholders. Cash generation and working capital discipline has been good over the period, which has resulted in an average free cash flow conversion of 110%, again, compared to our target of 80% that we set out at our Capital Markets Day. This has allowed us to invest EUR 102 million into organic growth of our business to expand our capacity and our capability across the regions to invest in R&D, to invest in our health and safety and in the technology for the future with investments in a new ERP platform and expanding our additional capabilities to our customers.

We've also invested over EUR 93 million in our diversification strategy, which includes the final payments in respect of our LATAM Brazil business and expanding our Living Landscapes business from 7.4% of operating profit back in '22 to just over 18.4% in FY '25. We've also returned over EUR 162 million to our shareholders through the completion of the EUR 80 million buyback program outlined at the 2022 Capital Markets Day and through our annual dividends and this equates to about 40% of our current market capitalization. For our shareholders, we're proposing a final dividend of EUR 0.1415 which will bring our full year dividend to EUR 0.173, which represents a 3% increase on FY '24 and above the 35% payout ratio that we outlined at the Capital Markets Day.

Finally, then, to give an overview of our progress against the Capital Markets Day targets, we're 80% of the way through the 5-year program to 2026 and as you'll see against the operating profit target, we're now 93% delivered and against our free cash flow target, we're 86% delivered. As noted earlier, we also closed out on the final EUR 20 million share buyback program in early September, delivering in the Capital Markets Day commitment of EUR 80 million. So very much on track to deliver and exceed our Capital Markets Day ambition.

I'll hand back to Sean.

Thanks, Colm. So the focus for the upcoming 12 months really is to continue with the optimization of the agriculture businesses and in particular, the financial discipline around working capital and return on capital employed will continue to prevail. I would call out 2 markets in particular there, which have been challenging in that regard. Brazil and Romania are certainly 2 markets where we would have the greatest concern about the collectibility of debt, although we're very well provided and provisioned and the teams are doing a great job there. But keeping that focus hugely important within the business.

We continue to flex individual businesses across the group and adjust services and adjust capabilities to try and enhance returns. And we had to do a small level of restructuring within our Brazilian business last year when it became clear that the margin pressure that the business was under -- was going to lead to a worse outcome than budgeted. So we reduced some headcount in the business in the autumn. We similarly conducted reviews of our digital business and our Agri U.K. business the previous year. So we will adjust headcount and adjust services to try and enhance returns for the group as a whole.

Alongside that, we are continuing to invest in growing our capabilities within the organization, retaining key talent within the organization and recruiting new talent to come in from the outside. And we've seen some appointments in the business over the last 12 months to try and grow the team, but we're also investing in 40 individuals who are undergoing a global leadership development program to try and grow talent from inside the organization.

From a Living Landscapes perspective, the ambition is still to exit the 2026 year with a 30% run rate of profit in our Living Landscapes business and the mix will improve next year organically as some of the acquisitions that we had in the current year are in place for a full year. But in addition to that, then we do expect a slightly faster organic growth rate from our Living Landscapes businesses relative to the agriculture businesses. And I think the outcome for the current financial year at 18.5% probably would have been a little bit higher as a proportion of our overall profitability, had it not been for the stunning performance of a couple of our agricultural businesses in the last quarter. So we're still happy to take profit from our agricultural businesses when it's generated.

The portfolio within Living Landscapes continues to be examined for cross-sell, upsell opportunities and the capability of selling more of the portfolio across existing businesses. So as we delve deeper at a product level into each of the businesses that we have acquired, we're seeing opportunities to bring some of the product portfolio across into other businesses that we own and combining the back office opportunity, and combining the procurement opportunity around those and getting some synergies. And we have recruited 2 heads now to bring our export business up into Western Europe, and we're also looking at acquiring businesses in Western Europe from a distribution and manufacturing perspective. So the line marking paint that we manufacture is already exported from the U.K. to multiples of markets in Europe, North America and Australasia and we're looking at growing that.

We already sell a number of our products from PB Kent into other markets. and we'll also sell some of our OAS product range into other markets via third-party distributors, and we may be looking at the opportunity to acquire in that space as well. So we will continue to expand the offering into Western Europe and develop some additional markets there.

And finally then, we're going to continue enhancing the foundations for a further level of growth. And as Colm mentioned, really the strategic CapEx across the organization is tapering off now, but we will continue to try and utilize the capability that we've built in our FoliQ plant, in our Timisoara bottling plant in South America across all of our fertilizer businesses to continue to improve the product mix within the organization and grow product sales within all of those business units. And we're continuing to move towards a more sustainable range of products across each of our businesses over time. And the regulatory challenges on agriculture are not going to go away, but it's hugely important that we continue to change the product mix to more sustainable product offerings over time.

Our digital tools continue to be enhanced, and we are building additional capabilities within the digital tools and the big plan for the next 12 months is to integrate our digital capability into the Telus farm management information systems. Telus is a Canadian digital organization, and they have acquired the 2 major farm management systems on farm in the U.K. and are rolling out a new system over the course of the next 12 months, and our digital capability will be completely integrated into that will allow for a seamless flow of propping information and applications between the Telus system and our digital tools.

And finally, then, now that we finalized the rollout of the ERP within our bigger businesses, we really want to try and drive insights from those tools. So using the information within them to further drive cross-selling and upselling opportunities. and beginning to roll out the ERP system across some of our smaller businesses in Ireland, U.K. and doing upgrades within our European and Latin American business over the next 12 months, although they'll be less costly because they're less complex compared to the deployment of Dynamics 365 within our core businesses.

So to summarize, I'm very pleased with the earnings growth in the period. Earnings per share up by almost 13% and our group operating profit up to EUR 99 million, which is the second highest year of profitability that we've seen in the group, only bettered by the really unusual fertilizer profit year that we had in 2022. We continue to see a broadening of the earnings base, which is leading to more stability in earnings predictability, which is good news from our perspective. And the Living Landscapes business having grown by close to 40%, now represents 18.5% of group earnings. This business generates significant cash and returns every year, a lot of which goes back to shareholders in terms of share buybacks and deployment via dividend, and we're pleased to do that. But the capability of this business to continue to back itself and reinvest in itself is fantastic because of the cash generation capability within the business.

And the organization is seeing strengthened Board and business leadership which I think is going to drive another level of organic growth within the business. And we continue to invest in the innovation and R&D and technical capability to support future growth. So over the next 12 months, really, we want to maintain our disciplined approach to capital allocation and continuing to drive shareholder returns. While we are likely to see a lower CapEx level in the medium term, really, we're -- key for us over the next 12 months, I think, will be driving down the average debt level in the group. So I know there'll probably be a question or 2 on share buybacks when we go to the questions at the end of this session. But the interest bill that we have as an organization is high, and we would prefer to see slightly lower level of average debt within the business to try and bring down that interest cost for the organization as a whole.

There will be some incremental investment in what is margin accretive organic growth and M&A growth. And you can see the impact of that in the Living Landscapes growth this year and the effect that it has on the operating margin for the group as a whole. The diversification is certainly supporting our lower earnings volatility. And the challenging weather year that we had in 2024 or indeed any challenging weather now that we see around the group, whether it's in South America or 2 years of consecutive drought in Romania, the impact of such weather events now is much minimized compared to the challenging reporting periods that we had in 2016 and 2020.

We continue to broaden our offering within the emerging nature economy and the legislation in that regard in both the U.K. and Europe continues to drive incremental investment within the living landscapes sector. So getting exposure to that from our perspective continues to be important. And it's our ambition before the end of the current fiscal year 2026 to set out a new 5-year strategic ambition for the organization at some point at a Capital Markets Day in the next 12 months. So that will be the intention.

So with that, we'll turn to questions. Thank you very much to the team here presenting alongside me, but also to all of our staff across the group who have contributed to what is a really good set of results in 2025.

So you have to bear with us. We have a combination of online questions, which are coming through in text format on the screen. And I think we also have some questions perhaps coming through over the phone as well. So the instructions for people who are phoning to ask a question.

[Operator Instructions]

I can see 2 questions.

The next question comes from Matthew Abraham from Berenberg.

First of which just relates to Living Landscapes. Just wondering if you can give some color on which markets you expect to be the primary drivers of growth across FY '26?

Yes, I think there is still opportunity for organic growth in our core markets in the U.K. across each of the 3 of sports landscapes and the environmental businesses. And again, as we said, we've acquired 5 businesses in that portfolio in environmental through the year. So certainly, we'll see the full year impact of that come through in '26 and organic growth. And the organic growth piece is not just in terms of revenue and looking at where we take more market share of wallet across our existing portfolio of customers across the 3 businesses within Living Landscapes, but it's also opportunities for buying synergies and leveraging the scale of the organization that we have. I think in terms of -- beyond that, the markets where we would see further growth, I mean the Western European developed economies typically where we have some presence with our sports portfolio, as Sean mentioned, our line marking business and our granulated fertilizer offerings as well as our Origin Amenity Solutions offerings.

We see opportunity, and that's reflected in us putting more investment on the ground there with additional market development sales resources to exploit those markets. So Western European economies typically kind of follow similar structural growth drivers as we see in the U.K. So that would be a primary area of focus organically, but also looking at M&A opportunities, both distribution and manufacturing. And beyond that then, we have presence in Australia, across Asia and across into North America with relatively small footprints that being said, but still opportunity for further growth. I think one of the things that we're seeing and learning is that the provenance of U.K. agronomic advice and sports tarp advice is quite strong, and that's an area that we seek to leverage both with service and products across those markets.

Great. And then just one more relates to Romania. I'm just wondering if you can put color on outlook expectations for '26 given the differences in dynamics across both of those jurisdictions.

Yes. I mean we typically don't give guidance until quite late in the fiscal year, given the challenges of predicting the year from an agronomic perspective. So the first time at which we get any real color on outlook will be our November statement. And we generally give good guidance on the level of winter planting in the U.K. context at that point in time, and you'll have a good sense of how trading has been in our Latin American business, which is more geared towards the first half of the year. But really, the weather and spring challenges are obviously a big impact on the outcome for trading for the year as a whole. So what I can say is the significant drops in profit that maybe we have seen in previous years like 2016 and 2020 are certainly not going to be at levels even in a very challenging weather year that we might have seen in those particular years. And I suppose over a 5-year time horizon, the predictability of the business will become much improved.

So there are always going to be intra-year impacts from weather on the operating profit performance of this business. But the trajectory, as Colm has shown in the '22 to '26 outcomes relative to the predictions made in '22 is upwards. And I think if we take a 5-year bubble of profit for the subsequent 5-year period, we'd be confident that there is further growth to come in the operating profit performance of the business on a cumulative 5-year basis, but there is always going to be some intra-year volatility in the Origin business. So there's growth there. there is significant cash flow and free cash flow within the business that generates good return for shareholders, but there can always be intra-year volatility in earnings as a result of the weather challenges that we might experience in any 1 year.

The next question comes from Fintan Ryan from Goodbody.

Fintan Ryan here from Goodbody. Two questions from me, please. Firstly, just with regards to your Living Landscapes business, I appreciate there's still some M&A to be completed to get to that 30% profit run rate by the end of FY '26. But as we sit here today with the deals done so far, what do you reckon will be the sort of the outturn of profit mix from Living Landscapes for FY '26? And how much more do you need to do to contribute in terms of incremental M&A to get towards that 30% target by the end of FY '26?

And then secondly, just on the Brazilian market. I appreciate there's been a lot of moving parts and challenging for some of the retailer distributors...

Good morning Fintan. It's TJ here. I'll take the first...Sorry we have...

I was just asking a second question on Brazil. What visibility you have on any sort of improvement in sentiment on the ground there and given capacity as well in the industry?

Yes. Maybe I'll take the Brazilian question first, and then TJ, you can come back to your expected growth for Living Landscapes organically. The Brazil market is, I would say, still in an element of flux. I think largely the stock at a retail level and the stock at a distributor level has walked through the system now but a number of players are still going through board processes in relation to reorganization of themselves and cramming down debt. So Lavoro is the most recent of those. It's a listed entity, and they have come to an arrangement with a lot of their creditors to pay back debt in full over a longer-term period. But some of the creditors who are not inside that arrangement will see their debt significantly down as a result. So we're amongst the group that have agreed to take payment over the 5-year period that is part of the court arrange scheme. We had significantly reduced our trading with Lavoro in the run into this court process because we were aware that they were challenged and perhaps might seek to go through a scheme of this nature.

So I'm not sure that we can tell how many more organizations in Brazil are going to go through this type of process. But I do know that we keep a very close eye on our Brazilian debtor book that we're receiving regular payments from many of the debtors that we have there and that we have [ Coface ] insurance on almost 50% of our debtor book in the Brazilian market as well as guarantees from another 45% of the debtor book. So we got personal guarantees or guarantees over land or other instruments, which will allow us to collect the debt from those types of players. So it's a well-controlled debtor book. It's a well-controlled business from the point of view of the risk profile of the business that we do down there. I don't know when the pain in Brazil will end. But certainly, the retail channel stock levels have come down appreciably. The other dynamic, I would say, is grain prices, soy prices and oilseed prices generally are at lower levels than they have been for the last couple of years.

So while the output price dynamic is challenged, the capacity to spend on inputs and the price pressure on inputs will probably continue to be a feature of the Brazilian market for some time to come. And I think that's a feature in predicting outcomes for 2026 as well even in a European context. Our farmers not going to be that inclined to spend on fertilizer, which is at elevated prices because of the fertilizer supply situation in circumstances where wheat and corn prices are much reduced compared to where they were a couple of years ago. So the supply-demand imbalance between output prices and input prices, I would say, is not in perfect harmony. And that can cause some level of volume attrition or as we've spoken about in previous years, farmers applying nitrogen only and taking what's called a P&K holiday and not necessarily applying the more complex fertilizers and NPKs as a result of higher fertilizer prices. So nothing that we're overly concerned about, but that is a feature of the equilibrium of the markets at the moment, I would say, Fintan.

Fintan, on your organic growth M&A question, I mean, we'd look in '26, we'd look for the proportion of [indiscernible] on an organic kind of growth basis to be about 20% to 21% of operating profit. And obviously, that leaves a gap then to the kind of exit rate of about 30% annualized by the end of the year. So that's the kind of scale of the M&A type of opportunity to be filled. I mean the M&A hopper, we're active, as I'm sure you can imagine, but the pace and timing of delivery and execution of any of those potential targets is a variable thing. So we continue to, as I said, focus on embedding kind of what is a new management team across the businesses driving those kind of organic growth opportunities, but also been very active on the M&A piece.

But as I say, it's just -- it's a variable piece in terms of the timing. And ultimately, what's critical here is discipline around the M&A process, which we've shown over the years. So it's about getting the right asset that's the right strategic fit with the right management capability, and that will be -- continue to be the focus. So those targets are out there, obviously, as some direction and overarching perspective in terms of where we want to get to. But ultimately, we will maintain discipline in the process around the M&A hopper.

[Operator Instructions]

The next question comes from Cathal Kenny from Davy.

Two questions from my side. Firstly, on working capital, good progress in the last financial year. Just interested to know what's the quantum of opportunity to lower working capital intensity over the next 2 years? That's my first question. Second question then is on inventory within the supply chain in U.K. and Ireland for fertilizer. Perhaps you could provide some color on that both at farm gate and the distributor work.

Sorry, Cathal, just give me the second part of the question there.

Second question related to color on the levels of inventory within the fert supply chain in the U.K. and Ireland, both at the farm gate and distributor level, yes.

Yes. No, I would say on the kind of inventory on farm, it's de minimis. So the fertilizer price has been out of line with grain prices now probably since March or April. And I would imagine that whatever fertilizer farmers had acquired in a U.K. context, it has been applied and there's not a lot of fertilizer on farm. So grain prices have been declining and troughing since March, April. And with wheat now at kind of GBP 167 a tonne in the U.K., we're probably 5% or 10% away from what's an optimal level for kind of spending on fertilizer. Our fertilizer book in the U.K. is in reasonable shape. I would say the order book in the U.K. is slightly stronger than it was this time last year. And conversely, the order book in an Irish context is slightly weaker than it was this time last year. Again, I would say there's limited fertilizer in retail or co-op level in Ireland. And really, farmers are probably going to wait until harvest is complete before committing to significant additional fertilizer volumes.

As you know, Cathal, Ireland is closed for fertilizer application between the middle of September and the end of January. So we wouldn't expect much business to be done in the autumn in an Irish context. And while fertilizer sales continue in a U.K. context through the autumn, as I said earlier on, the book is stronger than it was this time last year. And what we had in the spring last year was a very frantic season for fertilizer in a U.K. context because farmers hadn't committed to autumn purchases. And that commitment is there this year compared to last year. So that's good.

So maybe, Colm, do you want to take the question on opportunities to reduce working capital?

Yes. I suppose what I'd say on working capital is it's something that's looked at on a daily basis. Obviously, it's the biggest driver of our net debt over the year and obviously financing the cycle through the process, particularly on the agricultural side. As we see more Living Landscapes companies come into the group, obviously, they're less capital intensive and have less of a working capital need. Obviously, on the agricultural side, those cycles are inherent in the business. So we're not going to see too much change there. Where I will see the opportunities probably in the markets we called out earlier on in relation to Brazil and into Romania and probably Romania in particular, there'll be an opportunity. They've had a good harvest this year, we would hope over the next 12 months to see stronger collections and particularly more timely collections in Romania, which would give us some additional working capital relief there.

There's a question online about the M&A pipeline. So the question is, can you give us some color on the M&A pipeline, which I'm happy to take.

So we've -- in the pipeline at the moment, we've got a number of different assets, some European-based, some U.K.-based, some in the manufacturing space for products that we supply ourselves and some manufacturing products that we see as an opportunity to expand our portfolio with. And taking position manufacturing obviously gives you access to the manufacturing IP does, of course, bring working capital and slightly more capital intensity to it. But the counterbalance is the IP that it brings and also access to potential further distribution networks and capabilities that would allow us to upsell and cross-sell from our existing portfolio of products. So I suppose assessing those both Mainland Europe, U.K. and also looking at some distribution businesses across the European markets.

We already have European partners and distributors. And I suppose the opportunity, as I mentioned earlier, as we put more resource on the ground ourselves to look at that organic growth but also with it presents opportunity to acquire value-add distribution capability across some of those markets. So we're, I suppose, in the midst of kind of working through those assets that are in the hopper, some of them are at kind of early stage of progression, some of them slightly more advanced. And scale, I suppose, is the other question that we would -- you typically would get asked and the scale of the assets can range from the relatively small single million euro EBITDA range up to the much more significant double-digit million euro EBITDA assets and targets. So we've still got quite a broad range, I would say, in the hopper and as I said, various stages of progression with them.

Thanks, TJ. Okay. We don't seem to have any further questions. We'll maybe give it one second just in case there's anybody else who wants to come in. No? Okay.

All right. Thank you very much, everybody, for attending this morning's conference call, and we look forward to seeing you on the road over the next few days or catching up once we're back from the road show. So thank you very much for attending.

Thank you.

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