Right, good morning, everybody. We're just going to wait a few seconds to let everybody get safely on, because there's a lot of interest, so just bear with us for half a minute. Right, let's get going. We're very pleased to welcome McBride back, and as you know, they've just released their full year results for the period to the end of June, and it's been a very very busy but a very successful year which i'll let our guests go through in detail just a couple of points of admin if you're not familiar with with zoom the presenters will be taking questions after they've gone through the formal presentation and you can just submit that through the the q and a button the slide deck that the boys are talking to is already publicly available it's on the McBride investor relations page along with a lot of other useful material and finally at the end of the presentation when we close the webinar participants will see a very brief feedback form and certainly the company will be very grateful if you could spend just one minute sharing your thoughts on that right we're very pleased to be joined by CFO Mark Strickland again and CEO Chris Smith and I'm now going to pass over to you Chris to start the presentation good morning all and thank
you very much for joining this presentation this morning our format today will follow the agenda we're showing on this page here I'm going to cover off the headlines and update on our business progress including the latest on market data and then Mark will take you through a more detailed look at our financials before I summarize our outlook and of course we then as we said as Andy said we move on to questions so I'm just moving on to the headlines header here before I perhaps move on to the detailed slides I would like to comment that the last 12 months has been hugely positive for the future of the group with a successful first go-live and our major SAP IT systems rollout and all the work we've completed leading up to the recent two growth announcements. The impact on our full-year earnings from the rapid inflation that we saw in quarter four as a result of the Middle East crisis that perhaps has slightly taken off the shine, has taken the shine off a year of really strong strategic delivery. I can only compliment and be super proud of the entire McBride team which has continued to perform exceptionally well, delivering on our mid-term ambitions whilst also coping with all that's been thrown at them in what is a very volatile world at this moment. As you'll hear through the presentation, the McBride offer continues to be compelling for retailers and for consumers and our size, scale and capabilities increasingly catching the attention of branded businesses who wish to step away from manufacturing and variabilise the cost of their supply chains. To the main headlines, overall the group has reported a resilient set of financial results against the backdrop of very difficult and uncertain trading in the latter part of the second six months. Without the fourth quarter profit hit as a result of the timing lag between pricing recovery from customers and the impact of raw material cost rises, the business was on track to report a third consecutive full year of profitability in line with our strategic ambitions. The group responded well to the significant inflation shock that emerged immediately following the start of the crisis in March. Using learnings from the inflationary period four years ago, the group was rapid in its response, both of estimating forward costs, but also tactics and techniques to best interact with our customers, explaining the need for price rises. At the interim in February, we indicated some positive momentum on volumes as a result of contract wins across most of our divisions. As a result of the inevitable difficult conversations with customers around price rises, we saw delays and slowdowns in the rate of these new product launches. Subject to progress of ongoing price conversations, however, we would expect most of those should start up in this next first half year of the new financial year. As you'll see shortly, the latest market data indicates private label penetration in household products continuing to progress, reaching all-time highs for the 12 months to June 2026. In the early months of the new financial year, while probably still a bit early to call, we do see certain signals of further private label push from a number of retailers given expected inflation pressures for consumers. A lot has happened since the financial year closed in June, with the group starting to deliver on its strategic intent to expand the group's footprint through inorganic growth. We completed the previously announced acquisition of the specialist tableting business Eurotabs on the 1st of July and in August we announced a transformative arrangement with Vestasy which will see material contract manufacturing growth for the group. At the interim we outlined our balanced approach to capital allocation. We have in this last financial year allocated £18 million on a variety of benefits to shareholders covering dividends, share buybacks and share purchases to prevent future dilution. The combination of this considered approach, resilient financials and the two growth projects recently announced have seen the share price rise over 60% since this time last year. I'm now going to move on to an update on our strategic progress. Some more detail on the recently announced growth projects as well as divisional performance updates. Our 2024 Capital Markets Day clearly set out a series of headlines for the group. I'm pleased to report good progress against all of these targets in the second year, second full year, post the Capital Markets Day. In terms of growth, whilst the past year was slightly behind the target overall, our compound growth rate over the last three years is over 3% and ahead of our target. Profitability levels slipped in quarter four, as I mentioned already, and as a result, our 2026 EBITDA margins ended lower than our ambition, but we remain committed to the 10% target. The transformation programme and the recent deals announced will help on this journey. Debt levels are in good shape, and that's after deploying £18 million in Shellwater returns. We will see this debt ratio rise a little in the next year as a result of the acquisition and the Vestersea agreement. Rocky has slipped slightly, mostly as a result of higher investment levels, but remains nicely ahead of our mid-term targets. As you will hear later, our transformation agenda continues to make progress with over £10 million of additional benefits this past year, and on track for the cumulative £50 million by the end of FY28. The business and the board are super focused on delivering the strategic ambitions for McBride and its shareholders and stakeholders, and we remain confident in our strategic direction to deliver on these targets in the midterm. So I'm going to move on now to talk about the first of our two recently announced growth projects. We informed the market about the proposed acquisition of the Eurotab Group back in April, and it was pleasing that the transaction completed just after the year end on the 1st of July. The Eurotab group comprises three well-invested manufacturing locations, two of which are in France and the third is in Turkey. The product ranges are all hard tablet formats, covering three categories. The biggest volumes are in auto-dishwash tablets, very similar to the ranges the McBride supply already, with the other two categories new ones for the group, namely disinfection tablets, such as bleach tablets, and the other is humidity absorption blocks. It is expected that Eurotab will add circa €65 million of top line to Mubry this current financial year. Net consideration finished a little lower than we originally expected at €32.8 million, with a multiple on acquisition at 4.6 times, and is forecast to fall to 3.1 times post-synergy. The acquisition presents a series of strategic advantages. First, it provides additional auto-dishwash tablet capacity, especially in the all-in-one category, providing the unit dosing division with opportunity to load balance its output from its existing two factories, optimising product costs as well as service reliability. Extending our market reach into Turkey is an exciting prospect, with good relationships at Eurotab Turkey with a number of the large major retailers in the Turkish market. In addition, the two new categories will provide opportunity for growth using our extensive network of customers and geographies. There are strong synergy opportunities such as raw material buying, production efficiencies, including from investment backed automation, alongside overhead simplification. We expect this to be accretive to earnings per share and profitability from day one, with opportunity through synergies and optimisation to support the group's ambition to raise overall margins towards the 10% EBITDA level. Moving on to the second recent announcement, which concerns a new long-term agreement with Vestacy. For those of you who don't know, Vestacy is the new name for the former essential homes business of Reckitt Benckisa, which was divested in 2025. Our agreement, which for between five and eight years will see the majority of VestaC's European production in the hands of McBride. Our compelling proposition was centred on the range of geographic locations in the McBride manufacturing network, our scale and quality of operations, alongside the raster services that McBride can provide to VestaC in the future, such as product development, distribution and purchasing. This deal will, at maturity, grow our revenues by an estimated £170 million by the second half of financial year 2028, and will take the group's ratio of contract manufacturing beyond the 25% strategic ambition we outlined in our 2024 capital market stay. The agreement requires McBride to produce a material increase in volume, some 180 million units per year, requiring a significant level of capital expenditure, the majority of which is being funded by Vestasi, with McBride spending approximately £17 million over the next three years to cover project costs, separation and integration, and some limited amount of capital. As part of this deal, McBride will acquire two former Requet, now Vestasi, factories for a nominal consideration, expanding our footprint on the Iberian Peninsula, with the addition of a site at Granola's near Barcelona and Porto Alto in Portugal. This transformational agreement is a further proof point that McBride's world-class capability with a significant scale of our operations bringing value to major brand owners. I'm going to move on now to the market situation overall and the progress of private label within this market. Our latest market data analysis, which as a reminder, only covers the top five economies of Europe, but for which we use as a proxy for the total market, shows further progress in private label share. In the year, the total market was actually flat, with private label outperforming brands yet again, and raising private label share in volume terms by one percentage point to 36.7% at June 26. Interestingly, across the last three years, the total market has has grown around 3.3%, in line with our long-term assumptions. But in that time, brands have been flat, with private label driving all the market growth, and private label share rising 2.5 percentage points to the 36.7% share I just mentioned. Across the countries, we see France, Germany and Spain maintaining consistent private label growth year over year, and the UK, after a dip in 24 and 25, recovering this last year with private label share back to where it was in 2023. In category terms, we see all categories gading in private label over the past 12 months, and with the exception of DISH, branded volumes down between 1% and 2%. Over the past three years, market share for private label has grown most strongly in DISH, which is now up to 44.6% by volume share, some three percentage points higher than three years ago. Digging deeper into the data at customer level, we see quite some varied performances. Our biggest customer, which is Aldi, has only seen moderate volume growth over the past three years and in fact for us lower volumes last year. On the other hand, Lidl, a smaller customer from McBride, has seen growth over the past three years of 20%. Hence, overall, the outlook for the market seems favourable and our estimates over the last three years have played out in total, level, albeit at a customer level with some varied performance. I mentioned earlier it is still too early probably to call, however there are some signals of private-label focus from a number of retailers across many markets in light of the continued consumer inflation pressure. I am now going to move on just to discuss briefly each of the divisions and first I will talk about our liquids business. It is our biggest division with over 55% of the group sales. It has not been an easy year for the Liquids Division as a result of an active competitive landscape with margin pressures throughout the first half year from a significant level of customer tenders. Additionally, of course, margins were under further strain with the inflation surge for raw materials, packaging and freight in the fourth quarter. The impact of this recent inflation is most impactful for us in this division. Volumes are slightly down in the year, mostly actually from some of our own branded products, which have been weaker than we expected, with private label and contract manufacturing volumes broadly flat. Like all other divisions, intense discussions with customers in Q4 concerning price rises led to stop shipments and new launches being delayed, impacting sales volumes in the last few months. That being said, the business has a good win-loss ratio in tender activity and we expect launches to support growth in the new financial year the division has continued of course to be active with its operational focus both in terms of productivity smart capital expenditures supporting efficiencies new product formats and sustainability and operational discipline it's particularly pleasing to report excellent safety and performance improvement with accident levels over 50 percent lower in the factories the posterior end announcement of the partnership agreement with Vestacy will benefit primarily the liquids division, with 90% or so of the volumes awarded in liquid formats. This will drive significant growth for the division and over €40 million of investment in capacity scheduled across its plants across the next two years, including the newly acquired sites in Spain and Portugal. For our unit dosing division, overall volumes for the business were down over 2%, despite actually growth in private label in line with a wider market. Contract volumes in particular were weak across a range of different customers and countries. Profitability picked up and improved year over year as a result of strong discipline around its costs, improved factory performances and improved mix. Our new soft pod for Autodish has launched well in the last 12 months and we've continued to allocate capital to increased capacity in this growing category. Like all the businesses in the group, the Middle East crisis drove inflation for the unit dosing division with prompt action on pricing recovery against the backdrop of the usual competitive tension, but especially in the capsules market where currently there's excess levels of capacity. As I mentioned earlier, we have now completed the Eurotap acquisition, which is an entirely unit dosing business, and the division is busy with its integration activities. Its acquisition brings a step up in scale for the division, adding around 25% more revenue And once synergies land, we should see growing profitability levels, enhancing the overall unit dosing performance. The Powerless division recorded good volume growth, primarily in the second half year on the back of new business wins and good run rate volumes, especially in Germany. Against the market backdrop of declining volumes in the branded space, private label volumes have remained resilient, with the value for money proposition resonating well with consumers. 40% of the division's revenues are actually from contract manufacturing, which is relatively flat through the year, with effort and focus on format changes and new formulations ready for the new financial year. Our profitability in this division did reduce slightly in the year, mostly as a result of the weak first half and the momentum into the second half looking good and strong. Moving on to our two smaller divisions, and first the aerosols business which had a fantastic year with really strong volume growth, 13% up in private label and just over 10% in contract manufacturing. The business exited the year with volumes on an annual basis in excess of the 100 million cans target that we set the business two years ago and some 50% up on where it was three years ago. This was supported by significant investment in capacity which completed during the year. Run rates in the early part of the new year are now in excess of 100 million cans, and we look to see the business now stabilise and drive profit margin ratio improvement in the coming years. The Asia business saw good growth in its top line in value terms, albeit in volume terms as reported lower volumes, mainly as a result of a distorting volume measure in the Vietnam business with underlying growth closer to 5%. This was driven by strong performance in Australia, including the launch of our first household ranges manufactured in Malaysia and stronger demand for local customers in the Malaysian market. The business continues to be active to drive further growth from its excellent platform at the Kuala Lumpur facility, supported by recent international quality accreditations. So that concludes my overall business progress update. I'm now going to hand over to Mark, who will show how all this manifests in our financials.
Thank you Chris and good morning everyone. I'm pleased that yesterday we reported a resilient set of results for the financial year ended 30th of June 2026. So let's have a look at the financial highlights. Looking at the financial year at a headline level, I'll come on to more detail in subsequent slides. Revenues are up 7.7 million pounds or 0.8%. However, on a constant currency basis, they reduced £17.3 million, or 1.8%. As a business, we continue to closely analyse forward-looking raw material and packaging trends, adjusting sales margins as appropriate. However, the impacts of the Middle East crisis were felt in the final quarter of the financial year, meaning that adjusted operating profit at £59 million was £7.1 million less than last year. Earnings per share showed a slight reduction year-on-year of 0.5 pence per share, driven by an earnings reduction of 1.2 pence per share and offset by the normalisation of taxation rates and forex. As Chris says, we have delivered some £18 million of shareholder returns in the year, an increase of £15.6 million year-on-year. And over the last four years, we've progressively strengthened our balance sheet through cash generation and debt reduction. This has given the business a great platform for the recent business investments we have seen. For 2026, we had a modest increase in net debt, mainly driven by the timing of certain creditor payments right at the end of the year, which accounted for £9.9 million of the increase, the rest predominantly being as a result of the shareholder returns that I have just mentioned. I now need to touch on the external market dynamics and volatility. We all find ourselves in a very difficult situation as a result of the Middle East crisis, and indeed inflation accelerated in the final quarter of the financial year. I think we have all personally been impacted to some degree, the most visible indicator being the fuel prices, which today have reached record levels. In McBride's case, and to add a little context, we experienced an inflationary impact on our raw materials and packaging of some 12.2% in two months. So the speed of increase was far greater than that of the 2021-22 inflationary period, when that level of increase happened over 12 months, accepting that the previous inflationary period ultimately peaked at significantly more than the 12% in total. We estimate that the impact of the war was circa £6 million on the financial year, which would have meant an adjusted operating profit of circa £65 million. We've already been out to customers and achieved price increases. However, given that the conflict is clearly more prolonged than originally envisaged, we are continuing to have that dialogue. Moving to transformation. The business has now cumulatively delivered £15.3 million in net benefits and remains on target to deliver the £50 million of net benefit by financial year 2028. In respect of this SAP implementation, the global template has been approved and the project has moved on to delivering Wave 2 in Q4 of financial year 2027. Additionally, it should be noted that the implementation is increasingly moving from a specific project to more of business as usual rollout site by site, and that is currently anticipated to be the modus operandum for the site implementations post wave 2. The Service Excellence Project completed in September 2025 and has delivered real benefits, however in the final quarter of the year, service was impacted by certain retailers' reaction to the requested price increases. The Commercial Excellence Programme completed in December 2025, and it is estimated that the project has contributed £3.8 million of net benefit to the 2026 financial year. Finally, Productivity Excellence has delivered £6.5 million of benefits, with OEE efficiencies delivering slightly more than 2% improvement. So looking at the income statements in a little bit more detail, and for all you technical experts, here is a slide that is absolutely full of numbers that you can analyse at your leisure. In brief, what is this slide saying? Well, looking at the income statement on the left-hand side, sales up, sorry, at actual rates on the left-hand side, sales up £7.7 million, cost of sales rose £5.3 million, distribution costs increased £2.2 million, and administration costs rose £7.3 million. The FX impact on the total distribution and administration costs of £9.5 million was £7.2 million, so the total underlying increase was actually only £2.3 million, and I will come back to that later in the presentation. On the other hand, the right-hand side of this chart looks at group and divisional performance on both an actual and constant currency basis. Chris has covered the individuals in far greater detail earlier in his presentation, so I'll not dwell on this slide, but just to reiterate the point that, as you can see, both at actual and constant currency, our liquids division has been hardest impacted in the 2026 financial year, both in terms of revenues and adjusted operating profit. So now let's look at costs. For most of financial year 2026, input costs were broadly flat. But as this slide illustrates, there was the previously mentioned significant pickup in the final quarter arising from the Middle East conflict. Given the current situation and the underlying rhetoric between the two sides, we are not not anticipating a quick resolution. Therefore, looking forward to us, it is impossible to say where input costs might go in the coming months. Indeed, it seems to change weekly, so as you can imagine, we are keeping a very close watching brief. It is also worth pointing out that underlying inflation is still relatively significant across all geographies, albeit at lower rates than over the last few years. Hence McBride's continuing focus on margin management has been key to the delivery of the financial year 2076 result and will continue to be so in 2027. Coming back to overheads, as I said, whilst distribution and admin costs increased by £9.5 million, Forex accounted for £7.2 million of this. So, excluding Forex, distribution costs fell £0.3 million, whilst administration costs increased by some £2.6 million, primarily due to recalculations of the expected cost of long-term incentive plans, to align with the higher share price, and also software as a service, which effectively moves costs from depreciation into running costs. And that is particular to the way one of our S4 implementation went live in November. Looking at other financials, interest paid reduced to £7.3 million in the financial year. Please note that the P&L finance charge of £10.2 million also includes such things as pension finance costs, £1.2 million, the cost of the one-year RCF extension, £600,000, and variously amortisation of facility fees, lease interest, etc. We currently expect the P&L charge to increase to £13 million in 2027 as a result of the Eurotab's acquisition and also some initial resourcing for the Vestacy deal, both of which will increase our core debt. Exceptional costs totaled £7.6 million, the main constituents being disruption costs arising from the SAP S4 Wave 1 implementation, the Eurotabs acquisition costs, costs incurred in investigating and delivering the Vestity deal, and an increase in the Etampouille environmental provision, which we reassess as and when required. In 2027, exceptional costs are expected to increase to some £12 million, as the McBride project team is increasingly stood up to deliver the capacity increases required to meet the Vestancy contract requirements. Taxation in the year returns more normalised levels with an effective tax rate of 25%. CapEx was £31.2 million in-year as the business continued to invest both behind the ERP implementation and mid-term growth. For the forthcoming years, it is expected that CapEx will remain at these levels, as the spend on ERP is progressively replaced with expenditure on plants and machinery. The IAS-19 pension deficit decreased to £18.1 million from £23 million, mainly due to the £5.7 million of deficit reduction contributions paid by the group. The UK scheme is close to new members and future accrual, and in terms of the outcome of the NTL versus Virgin Media case, no additional liabilities are now expected. Finally, the next tri-annual valuation is due at the 31st of March, 2027. Just for completeness, the group has other post-employment benefit obligations outside the UK that amounted to £1.8 million last year, £1.9 million. Net debt. So, net debt increased to £122.8 million for the reason outlined earlier. The key points on this slide to note are that cash was high at year-end, and that was in anticipation of paying for Eurotabs. The first one-year extension of the RCF was exercised in November 2025, extending the RCF to November 2029. We expect to exercise the second extension in November 2026, which will then extend the RCF to November 2030. Finally, we will see that liquidity remains very healthy at £167.6 million. Moving on to shareholder returns. In 2026, financial year 26, a dividend of 3 pence per share was paid. I am pleased today to announce that the Board is recommending a 3.1 pence per share dividend for the 2026 financial year just ended. obviously subject to approval at the forthcoming annual general meeting. As an aside, we appear to be becoming increasingly attractive as a mixed proposition share, comprising capital appreciation combined with income. In summary, the hard work of the last four years in rebuilding the company's balance sheet, combined with the balanced capital allocation policy, has now allowed us to both increase near-term shareholder returns whilst also investing in the mid-term future via our internal capital investment and also through the Eurotabs acquisition and the Vestacy Strategic Partnership. Thank you, and I will now pass you back to Chris.
Thank you, Mark. I'm now just going to move on to summarise our outlook. So, look, managing short-term margin pressures business feels like it will continue for most businesses in the coming months and maybe even longer. We remain resolute on minimising the impact of rising costs and passing the minimum level of price rises to our customers. We expect that further price rises will be required in light of recent developments and will remain vigilant and agile in adapting in such volatile times. Despite the near-term being so difficult to manage and predict, the business continues to pursue a range of longer-term strategic projects. SAP Wave 2 is lining up for our next go-live early in 2027, and we're well underway with the integration activities at Eurotab. Activity to support the Vestity Agreement is building as we plan for the separation and integration the two new sites which we expect to take over in February 27 and we've now started the capital ordering process for that new capacity for long lead time equipment. The first two months of the year have seen volumes in line with our expectations and as mentioned earlier some possible early signs of extra pull for private label products in certain markets.
We have seen before that in periods of inflation and uncertainty privately will perform as well in our markets so thank you for listening to that that was our formal presentation done and I think Andy we will now move to questions very very clear and just a reminder we've got a number of questions already please use Q&A tab to input them a number of them about the transactions that you have been able to conclude and the first one quite a logical one have you had to increase your in-house team size for executing these corporate deals a great
question and we are increasing it we've been that we have through the project I guess initiation and conclusion of the agreements we've obviously brought extra people in to help and we've got a firm project team established now we're recruiting to a limited level we're not talking hundreds of people but certainly from project delivery yes we will increase the size of the organization to deliver that that's part of a cost that Mark mentioned will be an exceptional next year and of course once capacity is live in the relevant locations we'll be recruiting operators and management grade people of course to manage that new activity again all within the business plan right another
I suppose obvious question, can I ask how long you had been pursuing the Eurotab and Vestalcy deals, and were they signed in competition with other potential buyers or partners?
So, I'll pick that one up. So, Eurotabs, we initially kicked the project off in November 2024, when we reached out to LBO, who are a private equity company who owned Eurotabs. So that one took quite a number of years. With regard to the Vestacy Agreement, I remember we proactively, so myself and Peter Inglesay, who's MD of liquids, reached out to Advent because we believe they were in prime position to sort of win the bid for Vestacy. And we reached out probably 18 months ago on that, saying, look, we would like to help them out. Ultimately, Peter then reached out again probably six, seven months ago and said, look, we have an innovative way potentially to help you out. So it was our idea as to how the deal was structured. And certainly Bestity was non-competitive. With Eurotabs, they did reach out to other potential purchasers. However, we were, I think, always in pole position on that one. And, you know, we continue to keep a dialogue with a number of people within the industry. It's our job to network. And should anything else come available, we should, you know, hopefully people will pick up the phone to us.
That's a very nice secretive of the next question, Mark. thank you for that and these are obviously both significant deals in the context of McBride size you know two in a three-month period is your success in your size going to make the possibility of other large deals a little more likely than it has been in the past and I think everybody recognizes you have to have a willing vendor to to get the transaction well I like to think so I we've been resolute in remaining focused in the household space in Europe building you know we recognize the importance of scale we recognize the importance of distribution of manufacturing
across the markets and look in the world of increasing regulation and increasing pressures of course rightly so for sustainable products you know we believe that scale matters and I believe We can offer a compelling proposition to many brand owners and retailers alike to provide further opportunity for growth for us and to support them in their ambitions to grow their own businesses. So, yes, I think the scale, the increasing size of it will be helpful for future targets, yeah.
I think also we just have to prove ourselves as well with what we've done.
So, you know, we still have to deliver on the Eurotabs. we've still got a lot of work to deliver best to see but you know these things come up you've got to take advantage when they come along it and perhaps later on the the two deals do you expect the euro tab acquisition and the bestie contracts to be shareholder value accretive as opposed to just earnings per share enhancing well i think that we've seen a little bit of i would say positive momentum in the share price as a result of the announcements of those deals perhaps the growth of the share price is in excess of the amount of EPS secretion that we would
get so that would imply some form of re-rating. I think the model that we set up and the sticking to our strategy and delivering on the scale I think it provides that opportunity for further enhancement for shareholder value yes.
And would you say that these two transactions were strategically important to protect your position or were they actually structured bolt-ons to deliver enhanced growth prospects or indeed a combination of the two?
I would say it's a combination of the two, yeah. I mean the Vestacy transaction is part of our mission to grow contract manufacturing in our total portfolio bringing all that scale and expertise to brand owners I think on the Eurotab acquisition this is about building on our strength in that category providing us some optionality around platform for manufacturing and bringing some great technology that we get from that acquisition I think it's a combination of both but we remain resolutely in this household space Great, perhaps one for you, Mark.
Can you give a little more detail, if possible, on the impacts of the cost increases in the fourth quarter, how much they affected the overall full year results, and would you be able to say what the EBITDA margin was during the fourth quarter, or is that something you're...
Yeah, so no, it's a good question. It implies that we probably would have been around 65 million EBITDA had we not had the impact of cost rises in the fourth quarter and we delivered 59 so the mathematics there is six. We don't really disclose margin margins into month or whatever.
There's a lot of people watch these videos so we have to be a little bit careful what we say and to the audience but yeah it definitely impacted but we've been back out to the customers and we need to get back to normal normalized margins I think the important message on that was the speed with which we responded the quality of our I would say information flows and predictions to customers to support the need for pricing the amount we fought back of course with suppliers and you know we proved the model of being able to recover pricing and margins in a shorter window than we were able to do four years ago as a result of the changes we've made in the way we interact with our contractual terms with customers so so I think that but there's always a lag you're always going to have some form of lag in principle it reverses on if it ever comes down all the way down but you know a strong cooperative of cooperation with our customers has been, you know, the proof of the pudding in the revised model.
We've got a couple of questions about capacity. Can you give an indication of how much capacity there is within the group at the moment? And obviously there's a lot of investment and a lot of demand coming through, but how much would you say is free at the moment?
It's a really, I mean, it's so varied across by product categories and by location. So we don't really quote a single figure because it would be meaningless in total. But look, in principle, you can't really run half full factories in private label. You know, your margins are tight. You need to be efficient and effective and utilize your capacity as fully as you can. We have many plants that are 24-7 across the network. we have other plants that are maybe on shorter shift patterns for example so there's always space but look we have physical land space that we can and as we discovered you know as we'll see in the Vestersea transaction we will be you know exiting bits of warehouses that are existing in our factories out you know placing those outside and filling floor space with equipment to sit alongside existing equipment so you know as long as you invest in machinery and you know and whatever then look we've definitely got capacity to go further good and then looking forward specifically with the divestancy partnership can you provide a little more color on the capacity deployment across your existing european manufacturing network that will be required to cope with the increased volumes well so as i said in my uh in my presentation the volume growth is significant We will be distributing that amongst a number of locations in the existing McBride network and amongst the new ones we've acquired as part of this deal. So we are, you know, we're bolting the capacity into the territories where the end markets are most located. So we will be putting equipment into one of our Belgian facilities, well, both Belgian facilities, but particularly the IFA factory. We're putting some into Italy and minor installation changes in UK. and in I think in France as well as the other Belgian plants. So I think you know a number of our locations will take investment to support this growth targeted around where those categories are best produced and where those geographic markets are best served. That was a key attraction of the transaction was that we have a well-located set of operations and factories that are better are suited to local, you know, presence in local markets.
And then a question, can you just clarify, you've got a very favourable deal of the amount of capital funding you're putting into the Vestacy transaction, but who owns the £34 million worth of equipment that will be funded by Vestacy? We do. a short and positive answer now a slightly strategic question someone wishing to play devil's advocate some people might say that being a manufacturer of own brand or private label products is not consistent with being a contract manufacturer is there a danger of McBride becoming a jack of all trades and master of none which ends with an exclamation mark rather than a question mark.
Well, look, I think it's a great question, actually, and it's something that we've thought long and hard about. I think against the backdrop of, you know, as I said, regulation, sustainability drives, you know, products, you know, it gives us a bit of hedging, I suppose, for the midterms. So if we see branded volumes recovering, you know, we would see growth in our branded supply to offset anything we saw negatively on private label and a bit the other way of course but look we're not the whole market so we will never be in like we're never moving exactly with the entire market we have different customers different different retailers and different brand owners that we supply and we're careful about who we try to work with so we don't believe it I think I think the jack of all trades bit would be perhaps if we extended into other categories beyond household and try to as we were by the way nine ten years ago when we had a personal care operation which was conflicting a little bit we felt and distracting on our mission to be a strong
household player so we're trying to stick to the knitting in the sense of sticking into household so we're not we're not you know the jack-of-all-trades yes we're trying to cover the whole market but it's only the household market right a question on the no doubt sensitive subject of price negotiations with customers, and it is, what alternatives do your clients have if they do not like the proposed price rise?
Well, I think, I mean, yeah, look, it's always difficult, you know, and there's a scale of ease of conversation, which starts at difficult and moves to incredibly difficult. So that's just the nature of all negotiations. I think it's, there are options, right? mean if it's really just a short term material here we would look to just recover in price through a surcharge or through a short term you know supplement to the pricing that we've already agreed I think if it becomes longer term and pricing doesn't move on the shelf that is then you know we can reformulate but that takes time we could possibly resize bottles which is typically what you would see in the branded space a very quick way to recover margin is to have smaller bottle sizes but it looks the same and you charge the same on the shelf that's typically what private label doesn't want to do but these are options that we can we can do we can you know there's quite there's quite a lot of levers but some of them take a bit longer than a pure price so you know it does depend on our view on the outlook of these higher prices and the appetite of retailers to take price and move it on and also look I think the appetite for price rises from retailers in their own ranges of course this is their own ranges we're always talking about here So it will depend a bit on what the branders do on their shelf pricing and we haven't seen much movement I would say up through June, July but we have started to see signals of some of those rise. That makes the backdrop a bit easier potentially.
And I think a difficult question here to be precise on but do you need to see further price inflation from this point before you have to raise prices again? And another way of looking at that is, is there a potential risk of a profitability lag, such as the one that you have experienced in recent months?
Yes, I think that's a really good observation that I think the uncertainty, you know, is moving weekly and daily, really, I think. And so we're trying to be agile, we're trying to be fast moving with information flows to our customers. But yeah, I think we've said in our statement we will be going for further prices based on what we now hear around the conflict and how long that's going to last. Everyone's seen the oil price. The oil price is not the main – it's a barometer of, I would say, sentiment around tensions in that region in particular and beyond, and therefore the impact onto trading sort of certainty.
And whilst the oil price stays at the 100 to 110 range, we will have no choice but to go back with customers and we're already on that on that pathway okay I'll try and make another link there from moving on from the the crude price we have a question the rise in raw commodities like oil that affect your input costs is always well publicized can you say a little bit more about the from what you're hearing from your suppliers about the extent of the damage to production facilities and pipe networks in the Middle East that presumably will take months if not years to repair when and if the the Iranian situation gets concluded?
Yeah it's a really good question too we had varying you know we can read a lot about this of course in the in the chemical press or whatever but it has been substantial I think I saw an essay at 1750 and 70 billion dollars of investment needed to recover to where it was before and that's before maybe some of these more recent attacks I haven't seen a latest update on that but it is substantial and we're talking many years to recover if even actually some of that investment goes to the Middle East there's some you know because a lot of I would say investment in Europe in chemical production and downstream refining and so forth has shifted out and investment in Europe has been low it's moved to the Middle East whether there's sort of tension in this region, which may be prolonged, would see some of that investment flow back to Europe. There's some talk around that, which will be helpful to us, of course, in the midterm. But yeah, it's big, it's substantial. But look, you know, since March, we've seen, I would say, supply-demand situations moving a bit all over. You know, we see more US material coming in. We see people moving away from certain products and choosing others. So, you know, it's a totally dynamic space, as you would imagine. And so, you know, we spend a lot of time and a lot of resource really trying to grill and analyze what we think is going to happen because that is that's our credibility in the face of customers helping them understand the direction this is going.
Thank you that's the question I would call it the new McBride but there has been a year or 15 months of substantial change and we have a question here you quite understand as we reference in detail group and product progress against the capital markets day targets given the significant change in group scale and structure since that event are some of these targets in need of an update or being refreshed again very very good question and it is something we are considering internally as to when the right time is because our capital markets day was
March 24, so we are considering whether we need to do a new capital markets day in the next 12 months or so.
Good to hear. What have we got here? Also a question around your increased scale. Has there been any change in the identity of your major clients, let's say the top five by volumes, or are you doing more with existing clients, and that's where the growth is coming from.
No, look, I think our customer profile is relatively stable. We don't tend to lose customers or win brand new, apart from Vestacy, of course, recently, and some coming in with Eurotab. But in most cases, our top 10 customers are pretty consistent, I would say, over the last few years, and we see ups and downs in those from time to time, you know, SKUs get moved around between competition and us. So, no, we're in good shape with a good raft of high quality customers and it's relatively stable, yeah.
Thank you. And another question again on the scale, I suppose. Are you comfortable that senior management is of sufficient scale and depth to cope with the increased burden of work and volume and profits that you've taken on. Yes, I am. Another nice, short and sensible answer.
We have a very strong team and I'm very confident here.
Excellent. I think just time for a last one. It is early days since your tab transaction closed, but have you found anything unexpected either good or bad since you've got under the bonnet and can you just talk a little bit more about the cost-selling opportunities and also give some perspective about the scale of opportunity in the Turkish market itself you want to talk about yeah I mean in terms of the acquisition there is nothing that we didn't know about so there's no surprises.
I think the team in Eurotabs is really, really good. Sometimes when you buy a business, the business being bought a little bit begrudgingly. Having said that, Eurotabs are absolutely not in that bracket. They are hugely positive. They are really good and want to make this a success. And we have welcomed them open arms into the McBride team so I've been really pleasantly surprised by their enthusiasm and their ability which is really positive.
And look on the cross-selling I suppose that you know the Turkish market is is an interesting place it's a big economy of course it's new to us I think the existing ranges that Europe have produced in Turkey for that market need updating that's one of the things we are working on already we will seed that market from our European operations in the short term to try to grow our presence across more than just auto dishwash with those customers and then as those volumes grow we would look to then invest in the right way into that location.
So yeah I think we've had good conversations already with some of the retailers I think they're quite encouraged by the fact that the private level expert has really taken on this business and yeah it will take some time but we have some you know I think the scale is not going to be 10% of the group but it will be material to the Eurotab Turkey operations yeah I think a good positive note on which to end I'd like to thank our audience for a very wide range of interesting questions I would remind you if you just hold on for one minute after this closes and complete the feedback form that would be appreciated and for those of you who want a bit more perspective about what this all means in terms of future forecasts I would recommend of course the equity development note by Caroline Gulliver which went out yesterday and retains a fair value of 265 pounds for McBride's shares they've had another nice 61% rise in the last 12 months but perhaps there was a bit more to go for and of course our thanks go to chris and mark for making the time to talk us through all of this and for being very very busy in recent months and i think a little holiday is deserved by at least one of you two someone else can buy the shop so thank you very much gentlemen thank you thank you all thank you thank you
