KAP Limited (KAP) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the KAP results presentation for the year-end 30 June 2026. So the agenda we're going to cover today is similar or exactly the same as what we normally do. So I'm not going to spend time on that. So if we go to the operational review, I think important message I want to say is that throughout the last year, I've been now basically 1 year in, as the CEO of KAP. But throughout the last year, consistently talking to shareholders and also at the results presentation, we made the commentary to say that this is not going to be taking us 1 year or 2 years. It's going to take us probably 3 to 5 years to improve the returns and also to get to our targeted returns that we want to achieve. So I think this is the first year that we present in that journey that we're on. And I think FY '26, the execution and the focus established in the group created good momentum, but there's still more work that's required, and we'll outline that as we go through the presentation. So we remain focused on our strategic items and everything that is in our control and in management control, we focus on that execution. And the expectations between us and the divisions and also the expectations within the divisions on what we need to achieve is clear and we're well aligned. So in spite of a challenging trading environment and trading conditions in the financial year and also the supply chain disruptions caused by the Middle East conflict, in spite of all of that, we improved our profitability. We improved our cash generation. We improved our returns, and that's all supported by disciplined execution across the whole of the group. In that period, we continue to focus on our customers. We continue to focus on costs. We continue to focus on asset optimization. We managed our working capital strictly, and we were also very disciplined in terms of capital allocation. PG Bison, Safripol, Unitrans and Feltex all contributed to this improved performance with Sleep Group and Optix results lower. Positive for us and a pleasing result is that we committed to the market or we guided to the market that our target is we want to reduce our net debt by ZAR 500 million, and we managed to achieve to reduce our net debt by ZAR 1.1 billion. So all in all, if you stand back and you reflect, a pleasing set of results underpinned by disciplined execution and focus from our management teams. So if we go more into the detail of every division, we start with PG Bison. At the center of this financial year, just to remind, we came out of a period in FY '26, we just commissioned the new MDF line. We went through a year where we tested the line and we haven't been able to sell all the volume. So our target was, #1, to fill the line to full capacity and also to stay aligned to our strategy of increased value-added sales. And in this financial year, I'm pleased to announce that we've sold the full utilization of that new MDF line. And we've also made good internal process optimizations, specifically in our value-add production lines to allow us to increase our production and also plant efficiencies. You would remember that we previously said that we had capacity in terms of our value-added lines and that we've ordered a new line, but that will take time to install. So the work that the team has done to increase the value-add capacity was very positive. That resulted in panel sales volumes increased 13%, primary market volumes increasing 9% and then value-added sales increased 7%. Revenue increased 15%, operating profit 30%. That was primarily driven by the higher sales volume, supported by production volumes, and that resulted in increased margin and increased return on capital employed. So what's the outlook or the actions that we focus on in PG Bison? I mentioned the new value-add MFB line that we're going to install. That will give us extra roughly 40% upgrading capacity that will be installed in H2 '27. And that's to drive our strategy of focus on selling upgraded product at higher margins. We also continuously focus and this opportunity for us is to reallocate sales from lower-margin spot export sales that we've done, specifically in raw MDF to fill the plant into more higher-value export regions. But saying that, we want to focus on maintaining our total volume while we're shifting into those markets. The team is also focused on or continue focusing on efficiencies, cost savings to keep us competitive in the market. So if you look at PG Bison, our strategy and our objectives are clear. We focus on increasing value add. We're getting more capacity on value add in the new year. So that will give us growth into the future. And we're actively focusing on selling into higher-margin markets. So the momentum in PG Bison is accelerating, and we're satisfied with the execution of our plan. Safripol, on the other hand, if you look at Safripol, it's -- you must actually look at Safripol in sort of 2 distinct periods in the year. The first 9 months, we -- and this is what we reported at our half year results. The first 9 months, we continue to see the challenging polymer markets with global oversupply, subdued demand, weak pricing, increased PET imports at below market prices. And I think that we've reported on well at the half year results. The other period that you need to look at is in Q4 after the Middle East related supply chain disruptions, where global polymer markets tightened. There was a supply disruption and global industry margins temporarily increased and that benefit also flowed through to Safripol. Also in that period, we saw less import competition, and that's just highlighting the benefits of having a local producer in the SA market to support our customers in a period of disruption. So if you look at the total sales volume, although it's flat, we've seen an increase in domestic volumes of 4%, and we see a decrease in exports of 15%. Revenue down 6%, and that's mainly on the strength of the rand. Remember, volumes is flat, and that resulted in operating profit up 25%, supported by the recovery in quarter 4. What do we focus on in this division or Safripol? We forecast and we see or we expect that the prices and margins on polymers will ease as supply chains normalize. And in that the long term, the industry remained oversupplied. So we see that normalizing. We don't know to the extent how much and by when, but to get more to a normalized position like it was before the disruptions in the Middle East. And then also the rand strength at the moment and forecasted rand strength will be a headwind for the results going forward. The division is continuing to focus on efficiencies in all their processes, operations, procurement, specifically in the monomers that we import, continuous cost savings and also on the commercial side, we continue to focus on higher-margin polymers. So our main focus going forward is to execute what is in our control. We're satisfied with our strategic focus and management's ability to execute. If you look at Unitrans, and we've been talking about Unitrans performance for some time, but the objective is now clear in this business where we want to build a focused business with improved profitability and returns. So we're pleased with the good progress that we've made in this regard during the year, and it's underpinned by disciplined execution by the management team in Unitrans. The financial or the impacts of that is illustrated in revenues down 7% and operating profit up 41%. And that speaks to our disciplined execution where we walk away from loss-making contracts, low-return work and that we allocate our capital to projects and industries where we can make a decent return. So the 41% operating profit was driven by stronger agricultural, stronger performance in agriculture, petrochemicals and in the food operation, and it's supported by efficiencies and good cost controls, resulting in an improved return operating profit and margin. Petrochemicals, that makes up 33% of revenue in this business. You would remember that we mentioned last year that we're going through a restructure in that division. So the division delivered a strong turnaround following that restructure and also the disposal of the Eswatini petrochemical business. The outlook and focus areas for Unitrans going forward, we relentlessly continue to exit low-return work. We focus on selectively modernize our fleet, and Dries will talk a little bit more about what does that exactly mean because we referred to the catch-up CapEx. We're going to show you some more detail on how we see that rolling out in the future. And we're at a place now in this business where we are going to start aligned with our strategy and our focus and objectives to pursue value-accretive growth. So we maintain our ZAR 700 million medium-term operating profit target. Yes, management is committed, motivated. We're satisfied with the progress to date. There's good momentum building, and we see that momentum to continue into the next year. Feltex, domestic vehicle assembly volumes increased 6% or recovered from the prior year, increased 6%. That resulted in revenue up 14%, operating profit up 63% to ZAR 270 million and return on capital employed above our internal target at 18%. So excellent result from that management team. And that was driven by higher assembly volumes, aftermarket volumes, but mainly items within their control, improved operational efficiencies, good cost control and also the increase from prior year to this year was assisted in the prior year, there was a new model introduction with some change over costs that did not repeat in the current year. The outlook, the focus for Feltex. Assembly volumes is expected to moderate. So that will play or that will impact the profitability into the next year. There's a new LCV model that was introduced in H2 '26 already this year. The team did a great job in terms of implementing that changeover of that model, supplying both the old and the new model. We're not seeing the repeat of the previous large model introduction where we had cost overruns. And then there's also a replacement SUV model planned for the second half of '27. The division continued to focus on localization opportunities, increasing our market share in the vehicle. Continued focus still on efficiencies within our production lines, cost savings, and we're actively working with government to support sector growth and sustainability. So we're satisfied with the focus and the execution and the discipline in the business. Sleep Group. Yes, a little bit more challenging year for Sleep Group, where we saw weak consumer demand or environment, disposable income under pressure, promotion-led buying and also the market buying actually down into lower price points. So the bedding unit sales declined modestly. But fortunately, we had some growth in Namibia and in Botswana, offsetting the weak domestic sales. So if you take that into account, revenue was flat. The bedding decline was also offset by raw material increase or the raw material business increases, and that resulted in operating profit down 26%. So our focus for this division remains the same. It's unchanged. We extended our bedding range that we supply in the prior year, we introduced a premium product, Genessi. So we're into year 2 of that product. It takes time to build the brand. So we continue to put focus on the premium side. We've also entered the entry level, but there's more work that we would like to do on that entry-level side because we see the market is buying down. And we continue to focus on Restonic being our midrange product. Botswana operations will support the growth going forward. It was in for only a period of this year. It will be in for full year next year. And that management team is also continuing to focus on efficiencies within the plant. We've consolidated a lot of functions, new executive structure, not new people, new executive structure, and that will come with efficiencies. We're also focused on cost reductions to keep us competitive in this market. So we're satisfied with the strategy and our initiatives that we follow, and we believe that, that will support growth into the next year. Optix, the main focus for this business throughout this year, and we've said it previously, is the focus on increasing subscriptions and recurring revenue. So we've seen a pleasing, we've seen an increase in subscriptions of 74%. And that also increases recurring revenue and also the momentum we've seen in terms of converting starting to increase specifically leading into quarter 4. So although subscriptions recurring revenue up, we've seen revenue down 10%, and that was due to lower hardware sales. And the operating loss increased due to continued investment in product capacity and the sales pipeline conversion slow, although we've slower than expected, although we've picked up momentum as we went throughout the year. So from an outlook perspective, the full benefits of the restructure, we will see come through in FY '27. And also accelerated sales and recurring revenue start to improve performance, specifically in the last quarter of last year or quarter 4, that flowing now into the full financial year going forward. So we're happy with the strategy. We are confident that we have the right executive team and the ability to execute. And we can see in this business a change in momentum. So that is an update on where we are from all the operations and the focus areas. So now I hand over to Dries to take us through the financial results.

Good morning, everyone. I'm going to start off with an overview of all the key numbers that make up this set of results and quickly run through them. Firstly, revenue culminates in ZAR 29.6 billion, which is stable year-on-year. The EBITDA for the group has improved by 13% to ZAR 3.9 billion. And the operating profit before capital items has improved by 28% to ZAR 2.5 billion. The operating margin also improved by 190 basis points to 8.4%. Headline earnings per share has improved by 88% to ZAR 0.452 per share. However, and I'll touch on it later, after the impairments, we have a loss of ZAR 0.048 per share. The net working capital was up 2% to ZAR 3.3 billion. The cash generation for the group from operations has improved by 30% to ZAR 3.9 billion, and the free cash flow before dividends is ZAR 1.3 billion, an improvement of 178%. Expansion CapEx or capital expenditure was up 2% to ZAR 510 million. Net interest-bearing debt was down pleasingly 14% to ZAR 7 billion and the improved return on capital employed of 280 basis points settled on 11.2% return. Now for the more detailed analysis. The group revenue improved basically to remain flat at ZAR 29.6 billion, but the constituent parts there to focus on is, as Frans outlined, PG Bison growing revenue by ZAR 951 million, mainly as a result of increased sales and production after the commissioning of the plant. Safripol has reduced revenue by ZAR 561 million, mainly as a result of the stronger exchange rate, rand-dollar. Unitrans, as outlined, reduced revenue ZAR 661 million as there was a focus on cleaning up lower return contracts and exiting certain territories. And then we've got Feltex that improved pleasingly ZAR 329 million revenue with small movement in Sleep Group and Optix slightly down, resulting in the ZAR 29.6 billion revenue remaining flat year-on-year. Operating profit, on the other hand, improved pleasingly to ZAR 2.473 billion and the main moving parts there, PG Bison, the stronger revenue translating into ZAR 218 million more operating profit. Safripol, despite the drop in the revenue has improved, as Frans outlined in that last quarter with a strong tailwind by ZAR 128 million profitability year-on-year. Unitrans with the cleanup and the focus and the strategy is starting to bear fruit, ZAR 180 million improvement in operating profit and Feltex delivering a record performance in their historic performances, and they improved by ZAR 104 million. Sleep Group and Optix had more headwinds and their profit reduced by ZAR 42 million and ZAR 52 million, respectively. On the income statement, I'm going to pick up on the operating profit before capital items from the previous slide, ZAR 2.473 billion. The main items to highlight on the income statement is the capital items, which I highlighted earlier. The impairments of ZAR 1.568 billion, which I will also outline in a bit more detail, but you can see the impact on the operating profit after the capital items, they're amounting to ZAR 905 million compared to last year's ZAR 1.1 billion. The net finance cost has reduced by 13%, a nice improvement, mainly as a result of reduced debt as well as lower interest rates. That culminates at the bottom of the income statement to headline earnings, excluding the impairments, up 88% to ZAR 1.133 billion and the headline earnings per share, therefore, also up 88% to ZAR 0.452 per share. The capital items, main items to highlight here is the impairment of goodwill, the first item on the list there, which comes from the Sleep Group, where we impaired the goodwill in that business unit or the cash-generating unit of ZAR 389 million. The intangible assets, as Frans also outlined earlier, in the Safripol environment where the fundamental change in the long-term trajectory as a result of the stronger rand and the overcapacity in the industry, the global supply resulted in a lower return expectation over the long term, and that resulted in the write-off of intangible assets in the Safripol space and basically eliminating all remaining intangible assets at Safripol. The next main item that we impaired was the Optix intangible assets in the Australasia environment where the Lytx supplier relationship contract that was recognized previously was written down by ZAR 122 million. Total capital items written down ZAR 1.568 billion, and most of that relates to the impairments of intangible assets. The tax rate because of the low profit after the impairments, the percentage movements are quite large and [ exposed. ] But again, here, the impairments, mainly the goodwill write-off that carries no deferred tax has an impact on a permanent difference basis, 112.5 percentage points. The tax losses in the group not recognized amounts to 32.9 percentage points or ZAR 123 million gross. And then the tax, that was on the negative side. And on the positive side, we had the government incentives and prior year adjustments that assisted the tax rate at 64.1 percentage points and 10.9%, respectively, and we outlined the rand values on the side. On the balance sheet, the main items to highlight here is the reduction in the intangible assets from ZAR 1.491 billion to ZAR 368 million, mainly talking to the write-down of the, or the impairment of the intangible assets I highlighted earlier. And also the next line, the goodwill impairment, bringing the goodwill number down from ZAR 510 million to ZAR 135 million. The next item I'd like to highlight is the net assets held for sale at ZAR 713 million. And that number is a reallocation of the biological assets, as you can see on the balance sheet, reducing from ZAR 1.6 billion to just over ZAR 1 billion and the number of the biological assets that's reallocated into net assets held for sale relates to the Southern Cape operation, which we've disclosed in previous SENS announcements. What goes with the biological assets, also the property, plant and equipment of ZAR 307 million, which was reallocated out of the PPE, the first line on the balance sheet, and we also have deferred tax liability of ZAR 54 million included in that line. Also pleasingly, slightly lower down on the balance sheet, the net interest-bearing liabilities, the net debt for the group improved from ZAR 8.1 billion to reduced by ZAR 1.13 billion to ZAR 6.976 billion. Net asset value per share amounted now to ZAR 4.86 or [ ZAR 486 ] in total. Net working capital, we managed to maintain the overall investment in working capital flat or almost flat year-on-year with only a ZAR 56 million or 2 percentage points improvement. But the movements inside was quite large. We've got the inventory improving or increasing by ZAR 463 million, mainly PG Bison with anticipated or expected deep-sea exports waiting to leave the shore as well as the planned maintenance shut with a buildup of inventory to cover for that low production period. Also in Safripol, we have the significant increase in the raw material prices, which pushes up the inventory value. On the receivable side, Safripol mainly contributed to the increase there. Overall was ZAR 255 million, but the Safripol increase amounted to ZAR 340 million, mainly also as a result of elevated selling prices driven by the Middle East conflict and the higher impact on the polymer prices. On the payables side, the main moving part there was, again, Safripol with the higher purchase prices of the polymers that played into the supply side. So overall, we have working capital that remained flat after being well managed in all divisions. On the cash flow, main items to highlight here is, firstly, the EBITDA that has improved by ZAR 460 million as well as the less cash invested in working capital of ZAR 343 million, resulting in cash generated from operations improving by ZAR 911 million to ZAR 3.933 billion. Also, the net finance cost paid decreased by ZAR 133 million to only ZAR 850 million. And the cash conversion ratio, therefore, came through very strongly at 101%, where our internal target we set ourselves is 90%. Carrying on with cash flow. The investing activities profiled on this slide shows that the profile was stable year-on-year with ZAR 123 million increase in the overall capital expenditure. The net cash inflow of ZAR 170 million from the disposal of Unitrans petrochemical operations in Eswatini is also profiled in the cash flow as well as the acquisition of Botswana business for the Sleep Group, as Frans outlined earlier. That closes us off with free cash flow before dividends paid that improved by ZAR 859 million year-on-year. If I unpack the investing activities in a bit more detail, the manufacturing capital expenditure was amounted to ZAR 504 million. You can see on the screen the split between investing expansion at least and replacement CapEx. And here, the main item that we've invested in was the MFB plant in PG Bison, which Frans outlined earlier, which expands our value-add capacity. If I move on to the nonmanufacturing capital expenditure, the main item to take note of here is the catch-up CapEx. On the right-hand side of the screen, we've got it in a shaded area where we've been warning for a couple of years now that there's a catch-up CapEx that's required. It came through in '25, some more in '26. ZAR 346 million is also outlined in the orange bar on the stack bars there. And we're also guiding that for '27, '28 and '29, there will be more catch-up CapEx. Historically, we've warned about ZAR 1.3 billion to ZAR 1.5 billion of catch-up CapEx will be required in the Unitrans environment, and that is following the plan. So all things equal to what we anticipated will come through here. And obviously, I would like to outline the ZAR 234 million expansionary CapEx at the top there, where we astutely allocate capital to higher return projects in the Unitrans and contracts in the Unitrans environment. The debt serviceability ratios or treasury activity overall, I've highlighted the net interest-bearing debt coming down to ZAR 6.976 billion. The pleasing result here is that our net debt-to-EBITDA is at 1.8x, where the covenants for the banks require less than 3x, so well within bank covenants. And also pleasingly, at less than the internal target limit that we set ourselves at 2.5x. So we've got net debt to EBITDA well within control there and more reduction anticipated into the more longer-term future. For the foreseeable future, we anticipate it staying at about 1.8x. The EBITDA interest cover at 4.6x, also pleasingly better than our internal target of 4.5x and also well ahead or better than the bank covenant requirement of 3.5x. On the -- expanding further on the treasury activity, we have, if you look on the left-hand side of the bar, the stack bar and graph, you can see that we've got sufficient facilities to have mitigated any refinancing risk for the next 12 months at least. However, what we'd like to point out there is that the maturity profile for the year that lies ahead, the ZAR 1.886 billion is made up in the first half of 2 bonds that we will be settling, ZAR 250 million and ZAR 500 million, respectively, as well as the ZAR 500 million and the ZAR 580 million in the second half, which the final refinancing risk has been mitigated, but we continuously look at how we can refinance through alternative measures in the bond market, which presents opportunities at the moment to reduce our cost of debt. And overall, we anticipate reducing our debt profile for the next 12 months. We will be targeting another ZAR 500 million reduction. And that brings me to a close of the finance overview.

Thank you, Dries. Yes. So if we look at the group outlook and we reflect or look at this financial year, I think it shows the resilience and the focus of our people and what we can achieve if we all aligned to common purpose and common goal in every specific division. It also created good momentum within the divisions and also within the group. And we see that momentum to continue into FY '27 being only year 1 of the longer 3 to 5 years of getting our returns to the required level. However, the operating environment that we're in is expected to remain uncertain and challenging. We don't know what's going to happen in the world. Anything can happen in the Middle East. Also, the higher fuel prices and diesel prices may also impact inflation and also consumer demand. Like I said, in the Safripol focus areas, we expect that the global polymer prices and margins will moderate, the stronger exchange rate forecasted will also be a headwind for Safripol. But we remain clearly focused on our 3 main objectives of improving returns that will support sustainable medium-term growth and that will strengthen our balance sheet flexibility. And the 3 items remain extracting further value from our recent investments being the MDF line in PG Bison, the largest. We've sold full capacity. We have 18% that's in deep-sea exports. We've got the opportunity of more value add in H2, and we're going to focus on getting out of the lower return or lower margin work into higher-margin work. And we also continue to address the areas of underperformance. Unitrans made good progress, like I presented in this financial year. However, it's not where we want it to be, and our target remain the ZAR 700 million. So we will continue to focus and get us to the required returns in Unitrans. And then obviously, Optix still making a loss. We've seen the momentum shift in this financial year, specifically quarter 4 with [indiscernible] coming through. And that momentum we see will continue into the next financial year. We will continue to reduce our net debt. Our target for this year is another ZAR 500 million in FY '27. And the debt reduction is a balance between disciplined investments in replacement, keeping our asset base up to date and renewed. But also, we start to see opportunities, specifically in Unitrans, where we can allocate our capital aligned to our focus areas and our strategy that will be value-accretive growth for the group. So it's a balance between those capital allocations, including debt reduction. So the expectations and the deliverables are clear across the group, clear across between KAP and the divisions and also within the divisions. And we continue to focus on execution and creating value. So just lastly, in closing, we're encouraged by the good progress that we've made in all the divisions. There's absolute focus on returns, improving performance. If you sit in management meetings, everyone consistently refer back to focus areas that we must do to improve returns. That's very pleasing to hear. And we still have a lot of work to do. We know that, and all the teams are aligned, motivated and focused to do that. So before we just go into Q&A, I'd just like to thank all the employees for your hard work during this year. Also all the executives for the commitment that you've shown and your leadership to the Board for your guidance and your support and also shareholders and funders for your support. So thank you very much. Christina, we're into the Q&A.

Thank you, Frans. Thank you, Dries. So we've got 2 questions here on Unitrans, which I'm going to group because they're quite similar. The first one is, are you participating in any new contract bids to offset the exit of low-return activities?

Yes, we are. We're continuously looking at the new opportunities and new work. However, it's not that easy to find good quality work that we can do at a rate and at a return that suits our requirements. But yes, they are, and we're continuously looking at it.