Graham Leaming
All right, Tim says it's close enough to 10:00, we'll get underway. Good morning.
Thanks for joining this presentation on Skellerup's FY 26 results. As most of you will know, I'm Graham Leaming, the CEO, and with me is Tim Runnalls, our CFO.
As per normal, Tim and I will provide an overview of the business, and then we'll take questions at the conclusion of the presentation. Please keep your microphones on mute.
Chris Gibson from ASB, I can see you're live at the moment, if you wouldn't mind muting, thank you. When we get to question time, what we'll do is if you can either raise your virtual hand or use the chat function to alert us that you've got a question.
Right, I'll move to slide two. As the trends on the graphs on this page demonstrate, we continue to achieve sustained revenue and earnings growth alongside excellent returns on investment.
Over the past 7 years, compound annual revenue growth has been 7%, and compound annualized normalized net profit after tax, or NPAT, growth stands at 12%. Over this period, we've continued to focus on precision-engineered products for high-performance and conformance applications.
We consider this fundamental focus provides us with ample opportunity. We're investing in market development to ensure we understand needs and to grow our reach, and in technical capability to translate opportunity into products, and in our manufacturing platform to productively deliver the growth.
The timing of our investments in people and equipment continues to be robustly considered, planned, and supported to maximize the likelihood and speed of success and maintain excellent returns on capital invested. As shown on the graph there, in FY 26, our ROIC was almost 25%.
We'll move to slide three. Focusing now on FY 26, a very good year for us measured by both the financial outcomes and the progress we've made investing in future growth.
Firstly, the numbers: normalized EBIT was up 14% on the prior comparative period, which was the prior record. As the graph shows over the past 7 years, as we typically do, we're reporting our compound annual growth rate, and that's sitting at 11%.
Revenue growth was realized in all markets, most notably the US, and across a broad range of applications we're focused on. Gross margins improved as we overcame the impact of tariffs, and in the second half, raw material availability and cost increases arising from the conflict in the Middle East.
Normalized EBIT excludes a $4.8 million non-recurring gain that Tim will cover more on later. Operating cash flow also a record at $83.6 million, reflecting both record earnings and a lesser investment in working capital in FY 26 than we made in the prior year when we were building up inventories in anticipation of US tariffs.
These financial results mean we've increased the full-year dividend to an aggregate of $0.30 per share, up 18% on the prior comparative period, commensurate with the increase in net profit after tax. Importantly, in-market, we've established a direct presence for our dairy consumables in China.
That'll enable us to grow in a substantial market. Also, we talked about last year how we were establishing a converting and distribution facility in the Netherlands for our marine foam market.
That's well established now, and it provides a platform not only for that business, but also to sell more of our products in continental Europe. We've also continued to invest in our product development capability and our manufacturing platform, most notably at our largest facility in Wigram.
I'll go into more detail at a divisional level shortly, but first, Tim will provide more detail on the group financials and the key drivers of the growth in group NPAT for FY 26. Tim.
Tim Runnalls
Thanks, Graham. Turning to the 7-year financials, and apologies that some of this is a bit repetitive.
Revenue is a record and up 10% on the prior year, or up 8% in constant currency terms. The increase is broad-based, with growth in the industrial division of 9% and the agri division of 13%.
Foreign exchange rates were favorable throughout the year, with the impact being a tailwind revenue of approximately $10 million or 3%. Oh, I'll put it off.
Gross margin is up 1 percentage point from the prior year at 44%. Growth in both the industrial and agri division showing improvements on the comparative period through a combination of price increases, cost-out, inventory management initiatives, and product and market mix.
Indirect costs were up $7.7 million or 10% on the prior year, spread evenly with a mix of impact of the New Zealand dollar on translation, investments in people with headcount up 4%, as well as an increase in incentive costs and a necessary increase in property, marketing, and travel and related costs resulting from an increase in service to customers and markets. Overall, this meant normalized EBIT was up $11.2 million.
I note Skellerup has a fairly strong natural hedge, but we also hedge our underlying net currency exposures. This means that the revenue tailwind I mentioned earlier of circa $10 million at the EBIT line was relatively neutral.
Talking briefly to the concept of normalized EBIT, and to ensure comparability with prior years and appropriately evaluate underlying business performance, we've reported underlying or non-GAAP EBIT in FY 26. We've included a full reconciliation between the GAAP and non-GAAP measures at the end of this presentation and in the annual report.
The largest non-recurring item was a net insurance gain resulting to a fire which occurred in one of our two continuous vulcanization, or CV, lines in Wigram in August 2025. For context, the revenue earned from products made on these two lines is around $9 million, less than 3% of group revenue.
We were able to restart operations on the second line promptly at an increased capacity and have not suffered any loss of customers or sales as a result. We expect to have the new line installed and commissioned by the end of FY 27.
The net insurance gain recorded in FY 26 is approximately $6.3 million. Partly offsetting this gain is a $1.1 million impairment loss on a right-of-use lease asset that was surplus to requirements and could not be commercially sublet for a viable rental.
The lease was assumed as part of the acquisition of a business in 2019, and the lease ends within the next 12 months. Lastly, a small asset transfer was made to a manufacturing partner in Vietnam to address a historical importation issue.
The net pretax gain of $4.8 million is excluded from our normalized EBIT of $89.3 million. Moving to finance costs, these were lower again by $800,000 through a combination of lower market interest rates and a lower average level of net debt.
The tax expense reflects an effective tax rate of 25.5%, down 1 percentage point on the prior year, and is reflective of the proportion of earnings earned outside of New Zealand, particularly in the US, which attract a lower statutory rate of tax. The relatively lower finance costs and effective tax rate mean we're reporting an 18% improvement in normalized NPAT to $64.2 million.
GAAP or reported NPAT is up 24% to $67.7 million.
I've been to feel a bit cold, really. Shh.
Tim Runnalls
Again, as a reminder, if you wouldn't mind... I'm going.
Why? ...muting your microphones, please.
Graham Leaming
Can you do that on there?
Tim Runnalls
We'll just pause for a moment to see if we can mute this gentleman's phone. If you're listening, the telephone number 64 278 41199, could you please mute your phone or your microphone?
We'll continue. We'll continue.
As Graham mentioned, dividend per share up 18% in line with the increase in after-tax earnings, a 92% payout ratio in line with the prior year and with the group's dividend policy. Operating cash flow was up 26% on the prior year, driven by the higher after-tax earnings and a relatively lower investment in working capital, as mentioned previously.
In FY 26, we funded capital expenditure of $15.1 million to continue to invest in the business for future growth, as well as a record dividend payout to shareholders of $52 million. As a result, our net debt has continued to reduce by $10.4 million on the prior year, and is less than $2 million at 30 June 2026, or less than 1% of total assets.
Moving to slide five and the earnings bridge. As we mentioned, the growth in the industrial division was broad-based.
We continue to see growth in earnings from the key potable water and wastewater applications, particularly growth in infrastructural pipe sealing and tapware products in the US, new pipe sealing and smart metering solutions in Australia, and continued market and product expansion for vacuum systems in the US. Roofing and construction demand was driven strongly by growth in demand in the Australian and Asian markets, and a continued strong presence in solar applications in the UK.
Pleasingly, we've seen returning growth for Ultralon marine foam products in the US, particularly in OEM channels, which drives the sport and leisure growth. All other industrial applications, with the exception of automotive, have shown growth over the prior year.
Demand for dairy consumables remained strong throughout the year, particularly in international markets. Change in incoterms with a key customer at the start of the year provided a one-time boost to earnings of approximately 1%.
Growth with existing and new customers has contributed positively. Expansion into new markets has commenced.
Graham will touch more on this later. Footwear result was flat against the prior year as higher volumes and revenues were neutralized by higher raw material costs.
FY 26 corporate cost was slightly above the prior year, but remained well controlled at less than 2% of group revenue. I've spoken briefly to the FX movement, with the pretax revaluation and hedging losses above the prior year impacting unfavorably on the outcome by $1.2 million post-tax.
I've previously touched on the favorable changes in interest and tax, with the outcome being the 18% increase in normalized NPAT for the year. Graham will now cover off some more detail on our key markets and applications.
Graham Leaming
Thanks, Tim. Moving to slide six, this shows revenue by geographic market and highlights the international business that Skellerup is, with more than 80% of our revenue generated from sales in international markets or outside of New Zealand in FY 26.
All markets increased absolute revenue during the past year, with the fastest growth achieved in North America, Asia, and the UK and Ireland. North America edged up another percentage point in FY 26 to contribute 38% of group revenue: potable water, wastewater, dairy, sport and leisure were the notable contributors.
New Zealand remains the next largest market. Whilst down 1 percentage point in share, absolute revenue was up $3.7 million or 5% on the PCP, primarily from increased sales into the dairy sector.
European revenue share was down a percentage point as growth from dairy was partially offset by lower sales into industrial applications, particularly automotive. Australian market shows being down a percentage point, but that really is in the rounding.
It went from 12.5% to 12.4%. Like New Zealand, absolute revenue was up $4.3 million or 9% on the PCP from increased sales into potable water and wastewater applications and a recovery in the roofing and construction space.
As noted earlier on, Asian revenue share increased, with growth from sales into roofing, construction, and dairy. UK and Ireland share also increased for the same reasons: growth in sales in roofing, construction, in particular solar, and in dairy.
Moving now to slide seven, which provides revenue cut the alternative way by market application. Two largest application areas, dairy and water, contributed a greater than average share to the increase in group revenue.
All other applications, with the exception of automotive and health and hygiene, maintained relative share. Automotive was down due to the slowdown in Europe.
Health and hygiene was impacted by a customer supply chain change in the first half of the year. That customer was back at normal operating levels in the second half of the year.
Now moving on to slide eight, and a bit more of a focus on the industrial division. FY 26 was our sixth successive year of industrial division EBIT growth, and over this period, the compound annual growth rate has been 14%.
Potable water and wastewater was the most significant contributor. In potable water, our share into US ductile iron pipe grew, reflecting the quality and reliability of our supply.
Demand for products into US tapware customers recovered on the PCP, and as Tim noted, sales of check valves into smart metering applications in Australia are building. In wastewater, sales in Australia were strong, with growing use of plastic pipe and waste applications.
In the US, and to a lesser extent, Australia and Europe, we continue to win share with our vacuum systems solutions. Our team do an excellent job with continual product enhancements, delivering high-quality product at industry-best lead times.
Roofing and construction is the second largest application area for the industrial division. Growth continued in the UK, albeit not as rapidly as in the preceding 2 years.
Asian demand increased. Australasian sales increased a little, but the US was slower than planned as we delayed some new product launches due to tariff uncertainties.
Health and hygiene was down slightly due to the first half, as I noted, when our largest customer suspended delivery whilst it made changes to its assembly operations. We continue to realize growth in what we term industrial control applications, particularly in the US, where our products are used to control air and gases in a range of applications: HVAC, appliances, etc.
Freight and tariff costs were higher, but the margin impact was mitigated by price improvements, cost reductions, and new product introductions. We'll move to slide nine, and some discussion on agri.
FY 26, our second successive year of agri division EBIT growth, an increase of 12% over PCP, but notably in constant currency terms, the increase was 16% at the EBIT level. As Tim noted earlier, whilst revenue was boosted by a weaker New Zealand dollar, a natural hedge and hedging arrangements negated this at EBIT level.
Just as a reminder, the agri division comprises our dairy and footwear businesses. Dairy contributes approximately 80% of the revenue, and footwear 20% of the agri division revenue.
The main driver of the growth in the agri division results in FY 26 was increased sales of dairy consumables into international markets, and international sales now comprise 70% of the dairy group revenue. Sales in New Zealand, though, were also up and increased 11% on PCP.
The growth came from sales of new and existing products and came from both OEM customers and our own branded products. Those of you familiar will recognize the brands of Cawthron, maybe less so, Evolution and Reflex, and more recently, Thriver.
Growth across the portfolio of OEM customers and our own branded products. The investment we've been making in modernizing and boosting our manufacturing capacity, most notably in Wigram, meant we efficiently and effectively delivered the increased demand.
In fact, we've continued to operate some older equipment that we had anticipated beginning to phase out to meet that demand. Footwear earnings were flat in '26.
Higher sales of specialty footwear in the US were offset by anticipated higher material costs, freight and tariff costs. Sales in New Zealand, which comprise 65% of footwear revenue, were relatively flat.
Moving now to slide 10, Tim's just going to cover off an update on ESG matters.
Tim Runnalls
Thanks, Graham. Skellerup's continued to report under the New Zealand Climate-related Disclosures, or CRD, regime.
This has included the development of a further four emissions reduction plans for our major manufacturing and distribution sites during the year, bringing 63% of our scope 1 and 2 emissions under such plans. We remain on track with these plans and are implementing commercially viable emission reduction initiatives across the group, with several of these completed or underway.
The measurement of greenhouse gas emissions continues to be an onerous task, particularly scope 3 emissions. However, with investments and better utilization of our systems, we've made meaningful progress in streamlining this process.
We continue to drive efficiency in this process to reduce the burden of this on our teams where this makes good commercial sense. Positively, our scope 1 and 2 emissions continue to reduce relative to growth in activity of the group.
These have reduced a further 14% on FY 25. Whilst we endeavor to reduce our consumption, it should be pointed out that these emissions are largely determined by the electricity grids in the countries in which we operate, and we're therefore somewhat unable to control the outcome.
Pleasingly, in FY 26, we've also seen a successful trial of a used dairy rubberware recovery scheme in the North Island of New Zealand. The trial, carried out in conjunction with Agrecovery, has proven successful and is moving forward into a commercialization phase, which will see used dairy rubberware diverted to be used as a feedstock for heat production in the production of cement.
On the social side, very clear goals exist around health and safety, which is zero harm. We continue to maintain good processes, culture, and focus across the group.
Our total injury rate shows that we must continue to get better as we continue to suffer both medically treated injuries and lost-time injuries. Working arrangement flexibility continues to be a lever in retaining and attracting talent to Skellerup.
The premise of this is that arrangements need to work for the business and for the employee. On the board, the board remains unchanged and is a highly valued mix of excellent skills, experience, and tenure.
Graham will now provide a future view of the group. Graham.
Graham Leaming
Looking ahead to FY 27 and beyond, there's no change in our fundamental business strategy and model. We continue to see this as scalable and a platform to deliver ongoing growth.
In that regard, we remain focused on precision-engineered products for demanding applications. The opportunities we have in the markets and application areas we are focused on, where we have conviction we can overcome the impact of economic cycles, although, of course, we're not completely immune to these.
We've been investing in maintaining our expertise and our fundamental strengths of over- and co-molding polymers with other materials. The technical capability to perform these functions, including integrating more of these to give a higher-value solution and proposition for customers, we continue to build those teams.
As I touched on earlier, we've been investing in manufacturing modernization and capacity in our facilities. An important thing I wanted to stress also is investing in our market presence.
More than half of our people are based in international markets, and we're carefully expanding our teams in the markets where strong. The gating factor for us in terms of making the decision to add more personnel in is often ensuring our leaders and teams can support them to ensure and accelerate their success and roles.
We're selling technical products, and it's not just a case of having another body to rock up into a customer and offer that solution to a customer. We're also expanding our presence in markets where previously our direct presence has been smaller, including China and Europe.
For example, in the dairy space, we've set up our own small team in China now to capitalize on the opportunities we see there, and we're looking at adding some further personnel in Europe in that regard. Just a reminder, our business is a mix of OEM customers, where we supply key products and components of brand, but also branded products.
For OEM customers, we're focusing on deepening our relationship with existing customers and widening our reach with new customers in the application areas where we have strength. For branded products, we're privileged to have some long-established and well-regarded brands, which provide us with the opportunity to carefully leverage for growth.
You can see some images at the bottom of the page here, and some of those may be familiar to you. On the left-hand side, there is a product, as I look at it, that we call the battleship, which is going onto tile roofs in the UK.
We've just launched that product, and that provides a really effective way for, particularly around solar installations, for cable entry into the application. Alongside that is a check cartridge that we released or began to manufacture this year for a large OEM customer in the US.
Cleverly is provided to them inside a sleeve that you can see in the image there to make for an easy installation as both a new product, but also as a replacement product in heating and water control behind the wall in the US for large residential and commercial buildings. Alongside that's the Thriver, which is our calf-feeding teat that we launched in FY 24, FY 20, FY 25.
In FY 26, the results went to plan and we've doubled our revenue from sales of that product, both into domestic and international markets. We continue to see significant opportunity for this product range because the nature of the product differs by the markets that we sell it into.
It's a slightly different product in the US, and again, opportunities to customize that for the European market. In the middle there, we have the first of our shingle roof Dektite products that we've launched in the last quarter of FY 26, which will provide good opportunity for us going forward.
Then alongside that, you see a milking liner that's just been launched into the US market loaded in a recyclable shell. Alongside that, a pretty technical-looking product that is supplied into the US to an OEM customer that's used as a seal in gas regulation.
On the far right-hand side, you see the meadow boots that we recently launched during the final quarter of FY 26. That's our first foray, if you like, into the lifestyle market in New Zealand.
That's been a successful launch for us. We've just taken delivery of further products, because naturally, when you launch a new product to the market, you enter cautiously and don't build too much inventory in advance.
We probably should have built a little bit more, so that product's gone well for us in the New Zealand market, and we will launch that into the UK in the autumn this year, northern hemisphere autumn. Realizing growth, as is evidenced from discussions we've had in the past and what I've just noted there, and maintaining our increasing share depends on consistent, high-quality, and delivery.
It's a pretty easy to understand concept and arguably harder to differentiate with. Something that was really notable to me through our business planning sessions this year was our leaders attributed to some extent the growth of our business being linked to these simple and critical business essentials: consistent quality, reliable delivery, and we'll not lose sight of this.
Ultimately, to pinch a phrase of one of our directors, growth comes from people and products. We have a very good team, and we're developing and manufacturing very good products, and we'll continue to invest in doing this well.
Move to slide 12, just to close. A question I was asked a few years ago was how people should think about Skellerup growth prospects and was GDP growth plus some delta a way to think about that.
I thought it was helpful just to show this graph shows the increase in our EBIT through the past 7 years, FY 20 to FY 26, mapped against GDP growth for our key markets, and shows that our EBIT growth on a cumulative basis is well ahead of GDP growth over that period. We're focused on continuing to design and manufacture great products to deliver excellent returns for shareholders.
Thanks for listening. We'll take some questions.
As Tim noted earlier on, in the presentation, there are some additional slides which will give you some better context around the results. Tim, over to you.
Who are we going to go with first?
Tim Runnalls
I think Rob had his hand up first pretty much as soon as he joined the call, maybe, Rob, if you want to unmute your mic and go ahead.
Thanks, guys. Morning.
Congratulations to both of you and the wider team on what's a really good result.
Tim Runnalls
Thank you.
First question is on revenue growth. It looks to me like the constant currency year-on-year revenue growth was about 7% in the first half and that maybe accelerated to something around 9% in the second half.
Could we talk about the drivers of that acceleration and how sustainable it is?
Graham Leaming
Yeah. In the first half of the year, Rob, you'll remember that the agri result was in part boosted by a change in incoterms.
The agri revenue was the fastest growing division in the first half. In the second half, we had a stronger contribution from the industrial division.
So 7%, 9% are pretty similar rates of growth. If you look at our revenue growth over a reasonable period of time there, over a 7-year period, we've been at around about a compound annual growth rate of 7%.
For the preceding 7 years, it's clear that the industrial division has grown at a faster rate than agri. As we've highlighted in the last couple of presentations, in fact, with the portfolio of products and customers we have in the agri business now, that there's an opportunity to grow that at a faster rate going forward than what we have historically.
It's always difficult to sort of put a number on it. I think probably the best way to characterize it is we've talked about this goal of maintaining our compound annual growth rates for earnings of around that sort of 11% to 12%, and we talked about how we would need to have a slightly bigger contribution from revenue going forward to achieve that.
I think that's one of the things we've achieved in this year.
No, that's great. I guess what I was highlighting, as you say, they're similar numbers, but it's pleasing to see an acceleration, and hopefully bodes well for the year ahead.
Graham Leaming
I think, too, we've highlighted in there the demand across the board in the industrial division has been strong. Potable water, wastewater, and that's both existing products and new products, our foam products into the sport and leisure sector, roofing construction.
We actually had a revenue reduction in the North American market for roofing construction in FY 26, which is the first time in a number of years. We would expect to certainly reverse that trend in FY 27.
Maybe put another way, are you seeing things slow down in FY 27 to date, or it's pretty similar to the second half?
Graham Leaming
Early days. Six weeks into it, but no, it's trading as we would expect.
For example, in the dairy sector, there's a seasonal high in New Zealand, which runs through that sort of May, June, July period, we're seeing normal tapering off there. We continue to see strong demand in our North American markets and international markets across both dairy and in industrial applications.
We're seeing things pretty steady as she goes in that regard, no material change.
Cool, that's awesome. Apologies, it cut out a little bit when you guys were talking about, there was this fire in Wigram.
I think you said you had a few lines down in FY 26. Is it right for my takeaway to be that there might be a boost to the growth in FY 27 from those lines coming back online, or is that not really a big deal?
No.
Tim Runnalls
No, not at all, Rob. We ran two identical lines, and we used to run product down each.
Those lines used to run for roughly 3 days a week, mix of products, etc. Both lines were down for a period.
We didn't lose any orders at all. We managed to meet all customer orders through FY 26, and we're now running full noise on the single line until the replacement line arrives in FY 27.
We don't see any revenue growth of that product line at all. We lost nothing in FY 26, and outside of organic, normal growth,
Graham Leaming
yeah,
Tim Runnalls
we don't expect to see a sort of catch-up of demand per se.
Graham Leaming
I think there was an interruption for a short period, and frankly, our people did a superb job to get operating again on the alternate line and essentially run that line at a higher intensity and maintain all the business. It wasn't a dip in revenue that will be offset and recovered in FY 27.
All other things being equal, it would be similar, not withstanding always targeting opportunities to grow, obviously.
Got it. Could you just give a high-level overview of your assumptions for the impact of tariffs and refunds in FY 27?
In
Tim Runnalls
FY 27, so as we've moved on to a 12.5% tariff regime under, I think it's called, Section 103 across all of our markets. That's substantially lower than what we were facing at this time last year.
What we think is through the good work of our teams in-market, both through price increases, cost-out activities, and the launch of new products at better margins, we think the impact of tariffs in FY 27 will effectively be fully offset by the activities that we've taken. On the refund side, yes, we've submitted all our refunds for the IET tariffs under the strangely named CAP portal.
We've started to receive some of those refunds. It's very hard for us to speculate when we'll receive refunds, if we'll receive refunds.
We understand certain of the refunds have been challenged through the courts still. I think it's quite hard for us to speculate what that number is going to be in FY 27.
I think
Graham Leaming
the most important thing, Rob, is okay, the tariffs have just gone up a little bit again, obviously, from 10% to 12.5%, and remembering that on our products manufactured out of China, there were already tariffs from the first Trump term, which went unchanged, we're paying tariff at a much higher rate than 12.5% out of that market. I think the most critical thing is, when we sat here 6 months ago, we said, hey, we made good progress in mitigating the impact of those tariffs, and just after our half-year release, there was a reduction in tariffs.
We enter FY 27 whereby, as Tim said, net-net, we believe the tariffs that have been imposed in terms of where they sit now, we've offset the impact of those with pricing changes and cost reductions.
Pleased to see. Thanks for your time.
I'll slip one more in if I may.
Tim Runnalls
Sure.
Just putting all that together, it sounds like you might be broadly comfortable with FY 27 consensus?
Graham Leaming
FY 27 consensus, yeah, I think that's fine. If we weren't broadly comfortable, we would need to tell you otherwise, yeah, we're broadly comfortable with FY 27 consensus.
Cool, how good. Thank you both for your time.
Graham Leaming
Thanks, Rob.
Tim Runnalls
I think, Rowan, you might be next. Oh.
Sorry, just getting the IT working. Thanks, guys.
Yes, I don't know who put the hand up in what order, but just a couple of...
Graham Leaming
Uh-oh, is it a dispute?
No, there's not. Rob will definitely beat me to it.
I was grappling to find out where the raise button was. Anyway, that's completely off-topic.
Just thinking about next year, can you give us some color on, I guess, new product cadence and range expansions that come through? Obviously, Thriver being a key one there, launching UK, US, Europe, and some of these other Evolution and Reflex, etc., can you just kind of maybe give us when they are expected to drop and the kind of level of sales that maybe we should be thinking about for those?
Graham Leaming
I think I guess a couple of ways. As always with Skellerup, you need to break it down a little bit.
From a dairy point of view, we've talked for some time about the launching of milking liners preloaded in a shell. Throughout FY 26, we sold a silicon liner that came preloaded in a shell.
That's not a significant contributor, but in the latter part of the year, in the final quarter, we began to, if you like, soft-launch a rubber liner, what we call RST, plus liner in a shell. The reason we've been slow with entrance into market is making sure we've got enough product to support the demand.
I think Tim said to me earlier on today there was about $3/4 million worth of sales in FY 26 that came from liners preloaded in a shell as another way that we're participating in the market. We'd expect that to grow pretty strongly in FY 27.
That will cannibalize some of our pure liner sales, but incrementally, we expect some growth here. It's mainly focused on the US market.
We have grown sales into the European market. We've traditionally really had a primary focus on OEM customers over there, but we see the opportunity to sell more of our own branded products into the European market, and that's under the likes of the Reflex brand that I highlighted there.
That's a more mature brand in our portfolio. Then the Thriver product, obviously, we've had that product in the New Zealand market for a couple of years now.
We're running trials in North America, and the feedback is excellent. It always seems to take a little bit longer than perhaps you might think for trials to conclude, and so we're really ready to push with that product more substantially in the US now.
Again, now that we've finalized those trials and have a well-performing product, we need to build up our tooling capability to make more volume. Good prospects for us to, I think, sustain the improving trend and growth through the agri business through the dairy side of things.
We highlighted from a footwear point of view that we've launched our first lifestyle product in the New Zealand market. That'll take some time to build share, and we also see good opportunity for that in the northern hemisphere, with an initial focus on the UK.
Then we're putting a little bit more time into international markets for footwear because we think there's good opportunity for us there. We've actually appointed a sales manager in the US to take a lead on that, and we've had some people in-market in South America.
That'll take time to build, and we hope that when we talk at half year, we'll be able to talk about prospects for some improving growth from footwear in the second half of the year. On the industrial side, it continues to be a lot of our business, as is OEM-based, we continue to have good opportunities with customers to maintain this sort of cadence of revenue growth that we've had.
We're pretty pleased with some of the product innovations that we've launched in the US and the UK to give a bit of an impetus to growth in the roofing construction sectors in those markets.
The US roofing project that you had underway, is that still planned to be launched?
Graham Leaming
What I was referring to there, Rowan, the discussion was, we had a couple of things we'd planned to launch, a range of shingle roof Dektites, we had traditionally stayed away from the shingle roof market, but we had a couple of customers that were very keen for us to develop a range for that market. When tariffs were jumping around pretty wildly, we proceeded with caution to make sure that we're going to be able to launch a product and generate good margins out of it.
Basically what that meant was that we pushed out the launch of that product till very late in FY 26. As you've heard recently, we've secured orders, which are beginning to come through for that product from one large customer in Q2 of FY 27.
We have some other products that we are pretty well developed with in the US market now as well, which we plan to launch during the year, I think that can provide a good stream of growth for us over the coming 2 to 3 years.
Thanks for that color. Then just looking at the exit run rates on margins, you talked about record production volumes and new equipment in agri, but your kind of margins were similar to last year, I think you made 10 basis points out of record volumes.
Can you just kind of give us some color around why maybe those margins weren't as strong as maybe they could have been given the volume increase?
Graham Leaming
Two factors. Obviously, agri is a combination of dairy and footwear, our margins were lower in footwear in the year we've just completed because we had to have higher raw material costs.
We knew that was coming. We'd anticipated that.
Then on the dairy side, of course, we've had some pretty substantial increases in raw material costs. A lot of our dairy products utilize synthetic rubbers and a bunch of other materials, and prices rose pretty steeply for those as the Middle Eastern crisis began to impact.
Our primary focus was making sure that we could source all the materials that we need, and the team did a tremendous job there. When I was speaking to Dean in April, we had some concerns over where we might be in the sort of June, July period, and there was a bit of tightness there with a couple of materials a few times, but we're in much better shape now.
The work we've done to secure alternative lines and having the capability to rapidly reformulate, and frankly, some of the supply lines that were constrained have restarted, for example, in Korea. We did see some increased raw material costs impacting that business.
Yes, we can obviously look to pass that on with price, but those things never happen in exactly the same sort of linear fashion. We've been investing pretty heavily in our development resource, both from a technical point of view and in-market.
I mentioned we've assembled a small team in China to give greater emphasis into that market. It takes a little bit of time to translate into contributing that amount of earnings commensurate with what we ordinarily do.
Then likewise for industrial, it looks pretty strong step-up in the second half. The first half, I think, was 20.5% at EBIT and 22.5% in the second half.
Is that sustainable? Cuz that's been more linear, historically, agri's kind of been a bit seasonal, first half, second half.
This is one that's kind of linearly growing. Is there anything in near that's one-off as well?
Like currency or something like that?
Graham Leaming
There's a little bit of currency benefit in the industrial division results for the second half, yes, because the Kiwi dollar weakened, and our hedging is really tagged towards the agri division because that's where our largest net exposure is. There's a little bit of currency helping the industrial division in the second half.
In general, there's always a question of what's your product mix like. We have some products that generate higher margins than others, there's a little bit of mix going on in there as well.
Then frankly, I think we did a good job, not me, but our team did a good job with the speed at which we're able to implement pricing changes and were able to manage around our cost increases in the industrial division. I think the EBIT percentage we achieved for the full year is probably representative of where maybe you should anchor your expectations going forward.
Cool. Thanks.
Then last one, sorry, taking a bit of time here, but balance sheet's got zero debt effectively. Can you just give us some color on CapEx?
Do we still need to maintain this higher level given we've got a line to rebuild with insurance proceeds? Also, was there any suggestion of maybe a small special dividend given the headroom you've got and the cash generation you're making?
Graham Leaming
No, we didn't give any consideration to a small special dividend. Of course, our retention rate is at 40% because a greater proportion of our earnings increasingly get generated overseas.
We do plan to continue to invest at a rate that's higher than it was 2 or 3 years ago in building and modernizing our manufacturing capacity and in product development for some of our own branded products. The level of CapEx you saw of $15 million for the group in FY 26, at this stage, we anticipate being a little bit lower than that in FY 27, but that's nearer where it was than if you go back 4 or 5 years when maybe we were at less than $10 million.
It's going to be closer to $15 million than it is to $10 million. Then, we continue to be alert to opportunities for acquisitions.
We continue to evaluate the merits of expanding our manufacturing capability in-market, particularly the US, but we're proceeding with the caution you'd expect us to do so in that regard. Hopefully that answers your question.
Yeah. Plenty.
Thank you. I'll let someone else have a
Graham Leaming
go. It was Adrian.
Adrian, yep. If you want to unmute yourself, Adrian.
Oh, g'day guys. How you going?
Sorry, I couldn't work out how to raise my hand.
Graham Leaming
It's okay. We saw your comment in the chat.
Oh, okay. No worries.
Hey, the question I've got is just when you enter your annual planning cycles, how many years of duration do you sort of have conviction in the required growth rates that you have been achieving before you have to start sort of coloring in either additional activities or stuff to sort of bridge any gaps?
Graham Leaming
It's a difficult one to answer in some respects. Our emphasis in our planning cycles is on kind of a 3-year view forward.
It kind of is different across all of the businesses. The strongest emphasis is always on what you can see, but in terms of a direction, if you think about the agri business, for example, on the dairy side, we've been clear that we've got multiple, I guess, vectors and opportunities for growth.
We've taken a stronger presence in-market in China, for example. They produce as much milk as New Zealand does, but our share of the China market is substantially smaller than what it is in New Zealand via our OEM customers and our own branded products.
When we think about how do we sustain growth, we've got plenty of opportunity from investing more in market access. We see further down the line opportunity in other emerging markets where there's massive amounts of milk being produced, likes of India and Pakistan, for example.
To answer your question, we're not sort of searching around to say, hey, what else can we get to kind of sustain the growth rates that we've got. As I said, one use case example is the dairy.
We see ample opportunity with markets, and we see ample opportunity with farmers increasingly focused on productivity and being able to measure that, producing products that deliver better outcomes, producing more integrated products. We've started with a liner in the shell.
You've heard us talk about cluster developments and what have you as well. A product extension and a market extension from dairy as an example.
From an industrial point of view, if we kind of maybe focus on the two biggest areas, potable/wastewater and roofing construction, we see strong opportunities for us in North America with some of the product initiatives that I talked about previously here with Rowan and with Rob. On the potable water space, it's interesting.
It was actually 2 years ago in our business planning session. We have a really strong market share with a couple of customers, for example, in pipe and in tapware, but there's a bunch of other customers in those applications where we don't have any position.
That's an obvious area of opportunity for us to focus on without having to go and dabble into other applications where we don't already have an understanding. We've put a little more resource into that team so that we can have the opportunity of both going deeper with those existing customers and work to try and gain a position with customers we don't currently have in the applications where we have a strong understanding of the needs.
Okay. If I was to summarize all that, would it be fair to say that you've got reasonably high conviction on a 3-year cycle and at the required rates that the market's expecting, and if you tracked back over the last 7 years which you've provided in your presentation, would the track record support that?
If you went back 3 years and looked at your forecast, then would it be pretty close there? Accepting that the world furies a lot year-to-year and in your markets, but is it just to give us a sense of your process?
Graham Leaming
Track record over the past couple of years has been pretty good in terms of realizing what we've set ourselves the target of. It's interesting when people plan their businesses over a 3-year term, once they get out to those later periods, their quantification sometimes, some are a little more cautious and some are a little more optimistic.
Certainly, the realization of our near-term plans has been pretty good. I think increasingly the detail around our medium-term plans in terms of what we're going to do and ensuring we resource it is good.
Quantifying it's always a little bit harder. If it's a project by project basis, you tend to get into more detail for it then.
To answer your question, our delivery against our plans has been pretty good over the past couple of years, which is one of the reasons why we have conviction that we can continue to sustain the sort of compound rates of earnings that we have. We've highlighted we think we can accelerate what that is over a longer period of time with agri, which traditionally had a slower trajectory of earnings growth than industrial.
No, that's good. Can you just, I guess, particularly in agri, as you sort of, I guess, entering into a slightly different channel against your OEM supply with your branded stuff, can you just give us a little bit more detail how you're doing that or how you sort of cautiously kind of testing that and sort of supporting it with evidence?
Graham Leaming
I think in North America, we've got the dual channel like we have for a long time, with our own branded products and with OEMs. The important point is with our own branded products is making sure what we're pushing into the market is something that's differentiated and brings a different value equation rather than perhaps if you go back 10 years, a lot of our branded products looked pretty similar and a copy-type product of OEM customers.
Certainly our product development for our own branded products is focused on higher-value, higher-productivity products, which means we can much more comfortably operate in-market alongside our OEM customers, because they don't perceive that we're out there copying their IP and putting a Skellerup label on it to compete with their products. It's important that our development focuses on differentiated products.
Okay. Good.
Thank you, guys.
Graham Leaming
Thanks, Adrian.
Tim Runnalls
Thanks, Adrian.
Graham Leaming
Further?
Tim Runnalls
I have not seen any other hands raised or questions in the chat. We've probably got another 5 minutes or so to run if anyone else has any questions.
Otherwise, we might wrap it up.
Graham Leaming
I think we'll leave it there. Thanks, everyone, for joining.
Appreciate your time. We'll look forward to talking again soon.
We're very pleased with the result for the year, and in particular, the contribution of the Skellerup people across the world. Thank you very much.
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