The audio is from an interim results call for Anpario (H1 2026). Let's carefully verify the speakers: 1.

Richard (CEO/speaker starting): "Welcome to Anpario's interim results for the first half year of 2026. Marc will run through the numbers..."

He hands over to Mark. Speaker 1 is Richard.

2. Mark (CFO/Finance): "Okay, thanks everyone for joining.

As Richard said, we've got the agenda there..." 3.

Then back to Richard: "Thank you, Mark. Yes, if you can just move along..."

4. Q&A starts: Richard reads questions / answers, Mark answers finance questions.

5. At the end, Richard says: "And I'll hand back to, Charles?"

6. Charles / Operator: "Perfect.

Thank you Richard and Mark for updating investors today. Could please ask investors not to close the session as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback on behalf of the management team of Anpario PLC.

We would like to thank you for attending today's presentation and good..." (Charles/Operator).

Richard (Richard Edwards / CEO) - we can label "Richard:" or "Richard Edwards:" (since on call only "Richard" and "Mark" are stated by name, rule says: "begin each speaking turn with the speaker's name and role when they are stated on the call (e.g. "John Smith (CFO):").

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- Clean and accurate. Welcome to Anpario's interim results for the first half year of 2026.

Mark will run through the numbers initially, and then I will sort of go through some of the regional performances. I'm sure there'll be a lot of interest in some of what we said about Asia, mycotoxin binders.

Then I'll finish off with a little bit on sort of innovation, product development, and the outlook. Hopefully we'll have time for some questions towards the end once we've finished the point presentation.

Marc, over to you then. Let's get it underway.

Okay. Thanks everyone for joining.

As Richard said, we've got the agenda there. I'll walk through the finance section, and then Richard will take over for the regional performance and the innovation and development.

I'm sure you've seen the key highlights there, I'll skip through to the first slide in my section. Just walking through the P&L.

Revenue increased 7% in the period to £24.3 million, coming on the back of a couple of years where we've achieved higher growth than that, both organically and inorganically, thanks for the contribution from Bio-Vet. It's still a really positive movement.

We target high single-digit growth on a long-term basis, knowing that some years will be better and some years are going to be challenges. That's come through in terms of the segmental performance.

We've had India, Middle East, and Africa performing extremely well, up 56%, continuing a trend that's been going for a number of years in that region. Its overall contribution to the group has significantly increased over that period, and they've had a broad-based performance across existing and new territories that they've opened up in the period.

The Americas have been up 7% as well, a lot that weighted towards performance in the US, benefiting from some changes we've made in the management structure following that Bio-Vet acquisition and the team that we've acquired as part of that process. In Europe, the growth has been a bit more flat, with some up and downs in that territory.

Then Asia, as we talked about in the report, down 7% down 9%, but that was mostly due to weak toxin binders. Actually, if you exclude the toxin binder performance in Asia, then Asia would have been up 7%, and there's some specifics that Richard can talk to later in the presentation around that.

We highlighted in the analysis, in the statements for the interim report, that the remaining toxin binder sales in Asia are 3%, so that there's not a huge amount of additional sales that could potentially be lost there. That being said, toxin binders are an important category for us.

We believe we've got a very good product. We just need to work on that a bit more in Asia.

There's some specific pressures in that territory there. The rest of the range is doing well.

In particular, sort of leading product brands: Orego-Stim, pHorce, Optomega, Maxxim, and as well the Bio-Vet range, which there's a few product brands in there. They represent 8 80% of the sales mix and grew at a rate of 17% over the period, just showing the growth in what is our highest price, most premium, and typically highest-margin products in the range that we sell.

Gross profits have been impacted by headwinds, sort of when we announced the full-year results, that was just after the outbreak of the conflict with Iran. That has had some challenges.

There were some initial costs and sustained costs. There's a slide shortly which I can talk through that.

Same on administrative expenses. We've got a slide coming up, but, in short, admin costs were up 2%.

However, if you exclude some non-recurring fees we incurred during the period, then they're actually down 3%, which has helped overall profitability improve. We've got adjusted EBITDA up 22% in the period.

That's followed through to the diluted adjusted EPS, up 30%. We did the share buyback during the period.

When we got to the end of June, we'd completed £2.1 million out of the total £3 million program. That program was completed in July.

There's no benefit of that yet in terms of earnings per share. We'll get a half-year benefit because it's time-weighted by the end of the year, and then a full-year impact for next year.

In terms of the dividend, then continued to increase that by 6% to 3.8% 3.8 pence to be paid in November. We're getting close to 20 years now of successive dividend increases.

Obviously we've got the buyback as well as a way to return cash to shareholders, and that could take up an increasing importance in our capital allocation policy moving forward. Moving on to gross profits and margins.

Just want to draw out really what's been going on since 2022, which is when we had that drop in gross margins. It's been steadily increasing through that period.

Obviously, at the beginning of last year, the first half of last year, we got to 51.4%. Really, as a business, we're targeting being above 50%.

That's not to say we're trying to achieve to get to 55%. We're conscious that we want to drive overall profitability.

If we've got the ability to drive volume with sharper pencils, then we will do that and go after business. Really, 50% is where we target running the business.

There's been competing pressures in this period. As I said, initially we had some higher costs for the orders that were on the water at the time.

We didn't have to do this, but we felt it was right for the customers in the Middle East that we suffered the costs of getting the product to its final destination. I think that was probably about £50,000 hit of doing that.

That's obviously gone down really well because following that, all the increased logistics costs that we've had in the area and elsewhere are passed on to our customers due to the terms of our contracts. That's not affected demand for our products in the area, obviously, with that 56% growth as we've talked about.

It does mean that we are having an increased level of logistics charge in terms of revenue, and obviously we charge that at cost. There's no extra gross profit on a higher revenue basis, which does have a slight negative impact on margins.

We've also had other cost pressures. There's been inbound logistics surcharges because of energy prices.

We've also had some inflation, medium inflation on a number of products that have an energy component to their cost base, and in particular the acid-based eubiotic range, which was one of the major issues that we had in 2022. It's important to draw out some differences between what's happened now and what's been happening in the past.

Firstly, acid-based eubiotics are a much smaller percentage of the overall business, representing only around 20% of group sales now, whereas they were probably close to 40% back in 2022. At the same time, although there was an energy cost impact on those inputs, those acid inputs, majority of the prices were already increasing because of supply shocks.

Two of the world's largest suppliers had called force majeure events, one because of a fire at their plant. There was already a supply shock in the market and significantly elevated prices.

The higher energy costs really just elevated that to a slightly higher level and made it persist. We're not operating under the same conditions we had before.

At the same time, as well, we've got, as I said, acid-based eubiotics are a smaller portion of the business. The area of the business that has been growing alongside the acquisition of the Bio-Vet range is the more premium, high-priced, and also higher margin products.

We've had kind of competing headwinds and tailwinds both on a long-term basis and in this current period, which have meant that actually we've maintained gross margins at a similar rate to the end of last year. That's where we see it moving forward.

As I said, we're targeting 50% gross margin. We can see that there's competing pressures.

There's obviously higher energy costs. We can see the prices of oil have gone up further today.

That could have an impact. We've also reacted with price rises towards the end of the first half of the year.

The base case for us as a business is to maintain those margins as we move forward. Moving on to admin expenses.

As I said at the beginning, overall admin expenses up 2%, but 3% down excluding those non-recurring professional fees. One of the major reductions has been foreign exchange.

In the prior period, we had some foreign exchange losses, and we've had some gains in this period. That's a full swing of £0.5 million, reducing the variances between the period.

Then, in terms of legal and professional fees, they're the other area that we've been saving. That's the benefit of both some in-house resource that's really coming to the fore and being quite effective in reducing the amount of expense we're going out to external advisors.

At the same time, there's an aspect of that which is increasing use of AI. To give an example of that, it's not to say that we're not using professional advisors in the same way that we did in the past, but we're going better prepared, so that instead of if there's a matter, having to ask, "What do we need to know?

Tell us all about it," then we can go more prepared, understanding what we expect the situation to be and really asking people to check what we believe to be true. That's helping reduce the amount of spend that we've got on legal and professional fees.

A number of other expenditures are relatively flat. You can see that 0.

less than £0.0 million of an increase across a handful of other costs. Then we've got people costs.

Again, within there, there's competing movements. We've got an overall increase of 6%.

Within that, employment costs have actually increased 12%. We've had a number of areas around the group where we've been increasing our resource base, such as in the Americas, building out the platform at those operations in Bio-Vet, but also in places like Latin America.

We've had people that have come on board where we used to operate through distributor there, we've now taken on direct sales in those markets, and taking on some of the staff that used to work for our distributor. Again, increasing admin costs, but as a benefit we're getting a higher revenue and higher profits on those now direct sales.

We've had some increases as we expand in the group, and also some inflationary elements to that increase in employment costs. Offsetting that, we've had two very fantastic years, and this first half has been very strong.

Nonetheless, it's required a slightly lower level of bonus accruals at the end of the period. Really, the majority of bonuses are paid out on full-year profit performance, it's one of the reasons why we do have some contingency.

If there's a slightly weaker performance in the second half, then some of that bonus cost will come off as a counterbalance. Then moving further through my presentation then, in terms of cash flow, obviously an increase in operating cash flow before working capital changes, up to £4.5 million.

Then we've had absorption in the period of £3.1 million, mostly timing-related impacts in regards to receivables and payables. There's nothing structurally I would necessarily point to that I would say there's something on that would not unwind and be on a long-term basis.

We've had slightly longer receivables days, again, really just timing impacts. There's a range of different sales we make around the world, some on smaller and higher days, credit days, and really it's just a case of the profile at the end of the six-month period.

Nothing structurally. There's been good cash collection through Q3, and so nothing fundamentally to point out there.

Then in terms of payables, then it's kind of a factor of just the spending patterns that we've had and then also lower accruals in terms of things like those bonuses. In terms of capital expenditure, then it remains low within the business.

If you've been following us for a number of years, you know there was a period when we had a higher R&D and higher sort of tangible CapEx on things like the plant automation. There's been a bit of an increase in this period up to £0.4 million, but really the outlook over the next few years is really for CapEx to remain at a similar level as it has been both this year and last year.

Then obviously we've had the outflow of £2.1 million in the period for the share buyback, out with we would have grown cash in the period. Nonetheless, finished the period with £11 million and then looking to continue to grow that as we conclude the rest of this year.

That's the end of my section. Obviously be very happy to answer any questions that get raised at the end of the presentation.

Over to Richard.

Thank you, Marc. If you can just move on.

Just looking at in in in summary and overview across the segmental the four segments that we do, obviously Asia was disappointing, down 9%. Middle East had a good performance as has the Americas, and particularly sort of the US.

Then Europe was sort of there or thereabouts, slightly down, just pitched in the middle. Marc, if we just move, I think it's Asia, isn't it, the first slide.

A bit more detail on Asia. There's a couple of trend there's a couple of things happening in Asia.

Firstly, as we highlighted, sort of the Middle East region with high energy costs. Generally, the Asia region is a net importer of energy, they have got high energy costs, which will be impacting the producers.

There is some also a bit more raw material price starting increasing inflation. That might actually increase a bit more with the El Niño effect.

They're getting they're getting impacted, the producers, sort of energy. If you look at, I show that the region that did the best or the country that did well is Malaysia.

It's not without design that they have got good oil and gas supplies. Of course, they they control their energy costs in terms of the consumer and producer.

It's not surprising, and I'm pretty similar Australia, actually. It's not surprising that those countries are doing doing better given the energy outlook at the moment.

The other impact, and and possibly even bigger on Asia, is China. China is now a net exporter of pork and chicken.

That's never really happened before. It's always had to import itself in terms of additional pork, particularly from the US, and chicken from other places around the world.

Since African swine fever, they have really industrialized and improved a lot of their biosecurity. I think taken production of piglets from 15 piglets a year per sow up to nearly 30 or something.

They are actually producing more than what they consume. That their economy is a little bit weak as well, they're probably not consuming as much as maybe they would would if it was going gangbusters.

They're starting to export around Asia to some of their nearest markets, like Vietnam, Philippines, Korea, and places. That is obviously putting a bit of pressure or some pressure on the local producers in that in those countries in in terms of their selling price.

We so we're we're sort of as Marc said, if we didn't if it wasn't for the toxin binder decline, we would have been ahead in Asia. Toxin binders in Asia, because of the humidity and the conditions, and they tend to go for buy the cheaper grain and use the cheaper grain, which is has more toxins in.

Toxin binder is is is really in every ton of every feed there. In in places like the US, Europe, it's really only put in if there's if if we're identifying that there's going to be a toxin issue, and it's going to be a raised level of toxin issues.

We'd then say, "Well, we'll put it in to overcome that particular issue on for that period of time." In Asia, they put it in all the time.

It's a little bit more commoditized product. There's, yeah, there are, a lot of people going after that market.

I think in this at the beginning of the year, we did have quite a big customer from that we've had over the past few years that was all based on price. We we weren't going to go down to the level of the pricing that was that people were competing with.

Some of that so that business sort of was lost, did hit our toxin binder business. It you can find pockets where you can charge a bit more of a premium price for a better product, but the products that are going in there on price are, would be very simple, straightforward products, not as good as ours and probably don't even work.

It may be that some of these customers find actually they've they've had a performance issue because the amount of toxins that they've got in there. Some of that business, could it come back?

You've really got to look for the less price-sensitive customer and try and get an added-value and product in, such as ours. We can compete, at a lower price, but we but the prices that wants some of the prices we've seen are just ridiculously low.

Certainly one one price we think that the supplier will not be making any money. We're not going to go into That's not where we where we compete on that.

I think cuz there is a bit of a question of, how much is toxin binder as a component of the Asia sales. It's I think it's left at 3%.

It is a it is an area we still want to the, develop and grow grow in toxin binders, but more at the premium end. There's probably a bit of work on that to do in terms of differentiation, marketing differentiation, and communication, but also finding those less price-sensitive customers.

If I just quickly, go over to somewhere like Mexico, we know there's some opportunities in Mexico at better for better-priced products. That's an example.

It does just depend. As as I say, Asia would be, as a rule of thumb, a bit mad on on on on low-value sort of toxin binders there.

All is not lost. If you Mark, just go back, because we have Red稻lite, and I can speak a bit more about this later, but Anpro and Red稻lite in this market are two opportunities.

Anpro is basically the new fat emulsifier product, it helps you to get more energy out of out of fats, which will go into the the formulation. Given that the way that we feel that the raw material price is going up, they're probably going to start specifying more sort of fat into the into the diet, and Anpro can help leverage that and get and and help them get more energy out of that, or the animal get more energy out of it by emulsifying those fats.

Something like Anpro is is a product that we're going to push in that region, and that, we've already started to sell it into the Middle East. We feel Asia is, given the conditions, is a good opportunity.

Red稻lite, again, is basically a powdered mineral that is a natural insecticide that people are starting to move away, I think I've mentioned, from the chemical treatment of insecticide in the grain stores and in the poultry sheds, and also fumigation: A, because of health and safety reasons, but, B, they're not being as effective. We are seeing where the insects like beetles, weevils are actually able to overcome the the treatment of by chemical means of an insecticide.

I think in, in the easy case, it they it basically anesthetizes the insect, and after a number of hours or a couple of days, and the insect's up again and moving around and stuff. Red稻lite doesn't do that.

Uses a physical, more mechanical way of killing the killing the insect by blocking the pores so it can't produce its waxy-coated surface, which keeps it hydrated. The the insect basically dehydrates, and that's it.

It's dead, gone, permanently terminated. Red稻lite is what we're finding as well, not only, obviously safer, more effective, and it's more cost-effective as well.

One of the one of the things that we're currently doing is working with an engineering company actually in the Philippines as an application method so we can blow Red稻lite in as these grain stores are filled up, as the grain goes in and corn goes in, and and and get that dispersion. That's something we're sort of just working on and developing that that that that capability.

We feel that, it's not only it started in the Philippines where we noticed this trend away from chemical means, or customers asking for this. It's now, we're now working on this in Thailand and and it will it will roll across Asia.

Again, another product that we we've got the team working on that can counter, the pressures at the moment on on on mycotoxin binders. Hopefully that sort of explains what's going on in Asia.

If we go to Americas, Marc. Look, Americas is doing doing well, particularly, in the US with some of the Bio-Vet side.

We've seen some good good opportunities. We're really pleased with what's going on with the Bio-Vet products, and particularly, again, their more added-value areas, such as Rumen-Aider and and QuadriCal.

The what we we did have, it was sort of mentioned there, we did have a little bit of suffering in Mexico as we moved over from away from the distribution model into going direct. There was, I think one of the we had two distributors in that region, one that tended that was based in Mexico, but tended to look after Central America, places like Panama, Honduras, Ecuador, Colombia, and then the other one that was more just focused on Mexico.

The the similar time last year, the Mexican the Mexican-focused one also said they didn't want to continue with our products. They've been a distributor for quite a long time.

A number of years ago, they were bought out by an Indian pharmaceutical company, an antibiotic company. The, the remit has finally come down to them to say that, they only want to be focusing on pharmaceutical and antibiotics.

It suited us because they were really only doing sort of one product that they've been doing for years and weren't doing any more of it. They sold all of their stock, at the beginning of the year and and pushed all that through.

When we picked up the business, and there was a little bit of dislocation, a bit of bit of disruption, that has sort of slowed down or impacted in in the first half. We're really sort of back on track, and we are starting to win some new business actually, and quite a sizable business, in in in Mexico.

We're also recruiting a sales manager to support Mexico as a as a single country, whilst the team that came over from our distributors looking after Central America, they're now come on, they're all employed, as Marc said, sort of tackling, places like Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, and and those other regions. This opens up a broader range of products that we can sell in there.

It allows us to supply direct. It allows us to, manage that price-volume sort of balance of, actually, if we're a little bit more competitive because we haven't got a distributor margin, can we get more volume?

Really, one one of the areas that we we think should be good for growing Orego-Stim, because the incumbent distributors did not really push it. It was probably a too complex product in terms of gut health and and microbiology that they they they tended to focus more on organic acids, which had been their history, and and toxin binders.

We we feel there's there's opportunities up in that area. Brazil, we need to it's only it's declined a little bit at a slow pace.

We feel we're at the bottom of that. We've made some management changes, and a new sort of commercial strategy is being implemented into that region.

Quite hopeful that we can start to rebuild, but it'll be beginning it'll be next year before we see any major sort of improvement in Brazil. A new management team in there, refocus sort of strategy, and there's a good opportunity to get the Bio-Vet products into Brazil into the ruminant sector.

I think, Marc, we

Yep. Europe.

If we just look, Europe's just a bit 2% drop, but we did There are some countries, and particularly the UK, where we're having a good, strong sort of performance there. Just I did I'll pick up this question when I cuz I did sort of flick through and I saw that about the changes with ABF selling their monogastric feed mills.

We feel this'll be positive for us because the they those mills are being sold to sort of owner-managed, family-owned companies, some of the some of them like Lloyds Animal Feeds that we already supply. Breaking those down to these owner-managed and and family-owned businesses sort of makes it easier for us to get in there and sell rather than trying to sell to a committee, which you tend to get in some of these big organizations that are very slow to make a decision.

You you also get, within a big organization, you may have a manager or nutritionist, and they change every so often. Sometimes when you've got the business, that's fine, but a new person may come in and said, "Oh, well, I've got a relationship with a different supplier," or, "I want to change from, phytogenic to an organic acid or probiotic."

It tends to be more stable with and more relationship-driven with the family-owned. We feel that there is an opportunity that with with them breaking up the and selling off these feed mills.

That's in the UK. There's a lot, and we will be resourcing up a little bit of that to try and target that that business.

Then the others are just, certain areas where maybe they've dropped some business behind, or they've or they've slowed down. Spain, I think I mentioned before, again, was a distributor disruption issue, and we need to get sort of back in there and pick up on on those on those customers and and drive forward.

Hopefully with the distributor out the way, we can be more being competitive on price shouldn't be an issue. It's just a case of building building those relationships.

We've got a guy down there who's based in Spain and looking at Italy and various other places, so. We're not with Europe, there's still there's still plenty to go at.

It is a bit more difficult when you're trying to do when you when you're when you're based in the UK, you've got the English Channel or the North Sea, and there's 27 different languages on that. We are looking at how we can organize more effectively in in Europe.

I think just switch on to the star performer, Middle East. Things are good for Middle East producers.

First off, they want to be self-sufficient, and and they're very much focused on food security. There's a lot of investment going into into their production systems.

They are buying, they they haven't had any issue, possibly like Asia, which is the other side of the coin if you if you look at things, haven't had as much issue in terms of, higher energy costs because they're sat on oil and gas, but also raw materials. They are buying, a lot of the raw materials that are coming out of Ukraine, terms of corn, soy, and things, coming out of Ukraine and Russia, then that's going into the Middle East, and those prices are are are are are are very, very competitive because and and will continue to be, because Ukraine and Russia got all the water, all the rain that we didn't get during the summer, they got bumper harvests.

I think they're up, I don't know, 15, 16% in terms of harvest for wheat and corn. We we expect Middle East to, still be strong.

The other side of that is, how they the they would have imported frozen sort of chicken from Brazil and places, but because of the ports and disruption at some of those ports, then that's not that's not getting in as much. Their own producers are having a good time, and and hopefully, excuse the pun, making hay while while the sun shines out there.

That's that's one of the reasons why we had some good performance there. India is obviously helped in terms of it's it's a new, emerging market in terms of agriculture, and and for us we've had some good good business there with our partner.

There's still quite a, yeah, a few opportunities. There's still a lot of opportunity within India over, for over the future.

A couple of new territories like Bahrain and and Sudan where we've just started to supply in there. The good thing on Middle East is we have now finally got first sales of QuadriCal, the Bio-Vet calcium bolus.

It took us a bit of time to get registration and just to and also, it's not only registration, sometimes it's things like, "What do we put on the labels? What are we claiming on the labels?

Will this pass the local regulations?" and stuff.

It's also part of that. We then hope that we get QuadriCal first, sales before the end of the year, we hope, in Saudi Arabia.

Also, just slipping into Vietnam, there is some trial work. There there's a big farm using testing QuadriCal over there.

We we like the Middle East at the moment, and India is is doing well. That's I think that I don't think there's much more to say on the regions, but there may be some questions coming out that we can answer, pick up at the end.

I sort of mentioned about Anpro. We we did have first and repeat orders in the Middle Eastern markets, and a number of other markets around that we feel that product should should do well.

It may take a little bit of time, but, as I say, hopefully the demand, and people will will give us their ear in in the Asia region, because they're going to have to get more out of their the the ration for the animal in in a more cost-effective way, and something like Anpro can help that. QuadriCal, I'd mentioned, I don't need to go through that.

The we've had the further stuff on Orego-Stim and Orego-Stim Plus across sort of multiple species. There is, we are doing we are looking at we're doing quite well in the organic side of dairy.

We we were always in the US, we've always been selling sort of the egg and poultry side into organic. We're now getting, a lot of interest and and hopefully increasing demand from the organic side into dairy, and potentially into beef.

The beef market is not is is another opportunity into the US, and so Orego-Stim has, a lot to go at out there. I think there's there is sort of trial work, and and I think a few months ago we were so we were in, what was it, beef or an organic place out where the medication on the calves and the mortalities was way down after they'd used Orego-Stim.

There's still there's still trial work sort of going on in there, but hopefully sales will follow on from that. Red稻lite, as I say, hope for continued market adoption.

We have been getting sales in the first half into into the Philippines, and, as I say, we're we're people are evaluating and looking at it elsewhere in in that region. The the heat stress.

Obviously, we've had a really hot summer, some more than others, and particularly in Europe when you see sort of temperatures of 40 40°C, you wouldn't have we wouldn't have ordinarily looked at, yeah, there's a there's a heat stress problem for dairy dairy cattle, cattle in general, and can we develop a product? This was a a combination development from Bio-Vet and Anpario, and it's a combination of plant extracts.

It's currently being trialed or is on a few commercial farms in in Wisconsin. The results, touch wood, are looking good, that, yeah, is helping to reduce stress in the animal.

They're not panting as much. When they take this product, it also makes them drink more.

If they drink more, they're cooling down, but also they're going to be producing more milk, which is obviously important in terms of yield. This product we feel is, a real a real potential opportunity.

I don't think there's anything quite like it in the market. It's it's certainly, after this year, it's become more of an issue, heat stress.

Actually, I was having lunch, when was it, last last Thursday in London, with a big integrator from Bangladesh who who does supply to the dairy feed market, their customers. Without us even prompting and saying we had this product, he says, "Yeah, one of the issues we've got over over there is heat stress.

Have you got anything for heat stress?" This product, is is There's more markets to go at with this market in terms of geographically, because the way the temperatures have gone in the last 10 years into the summer, you wouldn't necessarily thought, "Well, could it be sold in France and Germany and places like that, and even the UK?"

Now we think it it potentially has got a much wider market, both geographically and in terms of seasonality all year round, because you have obviously Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere markets. We are so we're quite so we yeah, the big the the hopefully the big benefit of that we'll start to see next year in the Northern Hemisphere as we run into the summer.

We're just finishing I'll be over at the end of September in Wisconsin, and able to sort of catch up on how those trials have gone. It could be we start getting out into other areas around the world with that product.

That also links in with, I think we did mention in in the innovation side, that we're sponsoring a PhD. The guy the PhD candidate works for us anyway.

He's in aquaculture, supports our aquaculture business around the world, and he's doing it at Plymouth University based on, Orego-Stim going into formulations to try and reduce the heat stress in the fish, shrimp, what have you, are going to be impacted by because of global warming temperature in the in in the water is going to start impacting performance and production in in the aquaculture market. It is going to be it's going to be a theme moving forward in in terms of looking at productivity and sustainability and overcoming heat stress.

Something that we feel benefits Anpario, actually. I think, Marc, just quickly on to the outlook.

Softer start, two words that can crash your share price, which when we wrote them, we didn't think think they would have that impact. We did think that maybe it would reduce, would be a little bit negative.

It all it is is in the first two, July Well, firstly, go back a year. Quarter one Quarter three was our best month ever.

It was very strong. Quarter three this year is against a strong comparator.

July and August were a little weaker, softer, as we said, than we than we had anticipated. We're not sure.

Some of this, obviously we've seen this this impact in Asia. Some of it might just be the summer lull, and the heat, and the World Cup, or whatever.

We were a bit a bit cautious because we just thought it's gone on for two months. We're still ahead of last year, the end of August, and September is looking, it's better and stronger.

We had a very, very good September last year, that was £5 million. I don't We don't expect to hit £5 million, but we want to get, some way to that.

We just felt put that caution out. Given what's going on in the Middle East, that's probably only got a little bit worse over the weekend, and and how that some of that is impacting Asia, then we just felt we'd put a cautionary note out.

Other areas like the Middle East, funnily enough, are doing well, Americas, the UK. We're hoping that our geographic diversity will compensate, and some of the business initiatives and the pipeline that we're driving through will will sort of compensate for the weak areas like Asia.

We feel that sales will be a bit softer, but what we've done in terms of, the analyst is still putting in the same profitability for the years we forecast. If we had to, if we felt it was a at this stage it was a profit warning, we'd have to go out and say we're not going to hit the profits.

As Marc said, in terms like bonuses, lower bonuses and some of the costs, we think will, should compensate. We don't know here from here on in what's going to happen in terms of fuel costs, energy costs, and things that that's happening in the in the Middle East, how that will impact the rest of global global GDP.

As I said, it was a softer start, we felt it was right to telegraph that. We don't We don't, at the half year, normally say where that, about the meet expectations, because we tend to do that in January, particularly, that's what we've what we've done traditionally.

We tend to give stronger indication in January after we've had the year-end, because we can have because we're shipping abroad, even though we might have manufactured the product in December, sent it to the port, it's on the quayside, if it doesn't go across the rail, gets onto a ship, then that sale falls into the following year. A few years ago, we had £1 million worth of sales where that happened, which is a £0.5 million of profit.

We never traditionally, we we've never sort of historically indicated, that we are going to meet expectations or be in line or whatever at this stage. We have to wait till later on in the year and and normally January because of that cut-off.

We have obviously spoken to the analysts and said, "This is what we feel in terms of, where the sales are going at the moment, given the softer start, and how that would impact through to bottom." They've done their numbers, and they've obviously worked out where they are.

As I say, we feel, still optimistic. There is some difficult macro conditions.

We've got these new territories, certainly Latin America or Central America, where we've now going direct. We've got commenced our sales through our Turkish subsidiary.

We did have a Turkish distributor, which is still doing business there, but we set up a specific or we we already had a subsidiary, but we've now enacted it, and we are acting as an importer, a sort of agent, and then appointing resellers and sub-distributors that will be that will be given a particular product market, or species market, or geographic market. This allows us to optimize Turkey as as a country.

It's all it's big, in terms of agricultural output, but it's it's on a number of different levels, and that's why we felt we needed to set up this or organize the subsidiary in this way as an importer. We take, additional margin because we're doing that.

We can sell the full range, whereas we're if we'd have gone through traditional distribution route, we wouldn't necessarily have have had that access for all our products into that market. Further projects to support growth in India, and, as I say, some of these new product developments like Phytocool, the Red稻lite product, hopefully will will help to, yeah, support support growth and and the business going forward.

I think, the long in long term, no, nothing's we don't feel anything has changed. We have a set of products where the market is moving towards us: they're environmentally friendly, natural, sustainable, very effective.

We've now, put down more sort of sales channels where we're in control. We're going to the end user or the sub-distributors within that country, and and we, we can drive that over over a period of time to go continue to create, long-term shareholder value.

I think that sort of wraps that up in terms of the formal presentation. If we can go to Ah.

Go to the questions. I've just seen some questions that were on there have gone off, I presume I've answered them.

I'm shoot I'm assuming I have. The the first one is saying from Peter W, "Would you say you're guiding more conservatively than usual, even if trading is going well so far?"

I wouldn't say any more than usual. I'd say we would always we have in the past guided a bit more conservatively.

Over the past two years, we probably haven't, because we could see the growth, and there was quite a settled, well, in this world, there was quite a settled environment in terms of geopolitics until, the Iran war started kicking off. In that period between start of the Ukraine war and when energy prices went up and then down, it was, it was easy for us to we we could see the growth very strong in the first or nine months of the year, we we probably guided up, and we did upgrade a number of times.

I wouldn't say we're guiding more conservatively than usual. I'd say when we guide conservatively, we've done that, we've done that before.

It's it's, as I say, the first two months just gave us a little bit of a check, and the visibility going forward is is can be quite difficult for us to know, because we don't see orders. We're not a SaaS computer company where we've got annual ARR, annual recurring revenue, and we're not a contract job where we know what contracts are going forward.

I would say we're guiding fairly and realistically more than anything, and but I do hope it is conservative by the end of the year and that we've busted those numbers and and burnt them. At the moment, we're take what we've said in the guidance as as where we feel we are and and what the analysts are saying.

Next one, Mark, this might be for you.

Happy to do this. No problem.

I think we point out that those leading brands represented 80% of the sales mix. The question, just for everybody, is, "Why did 17% growth in the leading brands translate to only 7% group growth?"

Yeah, 80% grew at 17%, and then we had the toxin binders in Asia, which obviously declined enough to turn Asia from a positive to a negative. Then there was a small basket of other products which declined at a slight rate, I think negative 3%.

It's really just the mix. The toxin binder movement, to be clear, is quite significant.

We did have quite a lot of toxin binder sales into Asia. They tended to be lower margin, but it was a high revenue base.

That's the profile of what's happened in terms of that mix. The toxin binder, we do, as I said, we think we've got a great product there, and potentially we need to work on the position of it in Asia where it's a fundamentally different market for toxin binders.

Out with that Asia performance, toxin binders did grow marginally. The products that have been doing fantastically well are those higher-premium products that are the market leaders, we feel, in their various different segments.

Hopefully that answers that question.

Marc, I think yours is the next one as well.

Okay. The next question, "There was quite a lot of variation in the ratio of profit before tax and sales to external customers across your four geographic segments in the operating segments note four.

The Americas have had the lowest margin and Europe the highest. Can you give us some background into this?"

I think it's fair to say the Americas, there's contrasting parts of that, in the sense that the Americas obviously growing fantastically well. It's a high-margin area for us compared to some of the other segments in terms of gross margins.

At the same time, there's generally a higher level of resource cost. People just naturally are more expensive to employ in places like the US.

Also now, particularly with having Bio-Vet on board, there's a production site there, there's an administrative team, there's a location. They're resources that aren't necessarily the same elsewhere.

If you look at how we report our operating segments, we've got Asia, Americas, India, Middle East, and Africa as one group, and then Europe as well. Then we've got the central costs.

The central costs really is everything that's the background architecture of the business. The operating segments are really traditionally just the commercial, front-end sales parts of the business.

If we have a subsidiary in a particular area, say, for example, in Asia, then we've got a number of subsidiaries. Because that directly associated, then it gets allocated into that segment.

What we don't do is take the central costs that we have, the technical team, finance team, etc., and apportion across the different segments. Where you have Americas that have their own, it's the largest server operations we have outside of the UK, then there's a higher cost base.

As we've been talking about, we have been doing things to invest in the platform there, building out the infrastructure within the Americas. That has already paid off in terms of the revenue performance, but we reckon that'll continue to drive performance in the coming years.

Expect that to increase. Where we have Europe, for example, the European sales team is not actually that large, and we're not reallocating in IT costs, etc., into it.

They've only got one entity, the Irish entity. Then the resource that specifically dedicated only to Europe between the relatively small sales team and only having one actual subsidiary entity dedicated to it, then it becomes a sort of lower administrative cost base.

It depends on the dynamics. Hopefully that's answered the question.

The next question in

Can you hear me? I just want to

head,

yeah. The next question, do you want to answer that, or will I?

Yeah, "In this half-year report, you mentioned toxins in the Asia section several times, and I can see no reference to toxins at all in the full-year report. Want to make sure I understand the significance of toxins in Asia."

I think we've highlighted that it's 3% for this period, as in H1 2026. Then the toxin binder sales in Asia were 3% of the group, and Asia was roughly a third of the entire group, it's about 9% of Asia specifically.

We don't expect this to happen, but if we lost all toxin binder sales in Asia, that would be a potential 3% hit to the group top line. Obviously, that's not a situation we expect to occur.

As I said, we think we've got a great product, and we're going to look to stop building that back and pushing it, and position it right so that people understand the value that our product does bring over these sort of lower-priced commodity and lower-efficacy alternatives that have been switched to. Richard, I think the next one's for you, but I think you've answered it to a degree already on Red稻lite.

Yeah. No, we see certainly in Asia where this change and move is happening.

Obviously, because of the humid, hot conditions, and that they have more weevils and beetles and red mite issues probably than some other places around the world. No, we had this product for 20, 30 years.

It's basically a mineral, it's quite a simple product that we have a supplier that produces it with us. We have had it for a while.

It's just that the market is now moving towards us. We have got the odd customers use it for 20 years for various things.

It's just, as I say, the change in efficacy with chemical and fumigation, and the health and safety and the cost of those, is making people look at the alternative solution. The key bit will be also this mechanical innovation that we're doing in terms of applying it into the grain stores.

That is a big opportunity for us. We do see, yeah, a good future for Red稻lite.

It's early days, but we are selling quite a lot of things to the Philippines, aren't we, Marc? Or we have done over the last

Yeah. Sales of Red稻lite have been growing, yeah.

The feedback is positive, you know. We're getting good, positive feedback.

The is "Is there any reason for there being no mention of aquaculture in the interim statement?" Actually, we did I did mention I think I did mention aquaculture in terms of heat stress, it was in there.

There's nothing in terms of the trading. It's going I'd like it to go faster.

We are there's there's one of our products, Orego-Stim Forte, is being used in hatcheries. We want to try and get it into the grow-out ponds.

It's it is quite an expensive product, although we have done some work on concentrating that up so that it it will become a more cost-effective product. We think that then that could be used in the grow-out ponds more cost-effectively.

Sometimes when you move from with from hatcheries into, where it's a bit more controlled condition, into ponds out in the, countryside, the you don't always get the results consistently. We found this with Aquatice, and we've and I think with Orego-Stim Forte we've found this as well.

It it's still there's still, opportunities. Brazil, there's actually quite a, a good opportunity.

I think it's catfish in the US in the United States, down Louisiana and those those sorts of Southern states, that I think I think it's Orego-Stim 2+ 2 Plus 2x Plus is is being trialed there. No, there is stuff going on.

It's just not there was just other bigger bigger things that we sort sort of wrote wrote about in the in the interim report. We don't always report on everything on every bit of thing each report.

It's only if there's probably some bigger news that we feel is going to feed through, or it's worth mentioning or not.

I'll take this next one then, Richard.

Patrick

asks, "Capital allocation, are you considering a further buyback in light of the lower share price and a recently curtailed M&A opportunity?" Obviously, I can't say anything because it'd be price-sensitive, but what I can say is that kind of mentioned a little bit before, the priority for us is to be looking at acquisitions like Bio-Vet, because they've worked fantastically well.

However, the number of Bio-Vets out there are low. Richard in particular, and myself supporting him, that is an active strain of work at all times, and has been for a number of years, there's no surprise there.

In the absence of that, we haven't got as much CapEx requirements, as I said. We're going to look to continue to grow the dividend because we've had near 20 years of successive dividend growth.

I think it's fair to say that, yes, buybacks have been well-received by most investors, pretty much overwhelmingly very supportive of the buyback. That's very much been noted by the board, and I think it's been moved forward in terms of capital allocation and returns to shareholders, and it could well play a feature again.

Just moving to the next one. "Has there been any change in consensus earnings expectations for '26-'27 that you mentioned at the time of the June AGM?"

I'll answer this one. As Richard said, we do talk a bit more explicitly when we are doing the trading updates in January and June, because we have a lot firmer ground on which to operate.

In June, we said we're ahead of sales and profit expectations, which as you've seen from the results has absolutely been the case. In terms of the outlook for 2026 and 2027, then there's been no change to profitability in any of the consensus expectations.

There's just been a slight reduction in revenue. The next question will help answer why that's the case.

Effectively, the analysts have seen the announcement we've said about a softer start, and have interpreted that as a trim to revenue, but confident still on the overall profit expectations. No change on profit, slight reduction in revenue.

The next question I'll take again. This is in regards to the bonus, and just clarity on that, and what's been happening both compared to the previous period and into the second half.

Just to be clear, we've had some very fantastic years, and this first half of 2026 has been a little bit softer in terms of revenue growth. We've got two elements of our bonus program: a revenue element for the sales team, and for the rest of staff and management it's profit-based.

We've seen, just in the first six months, a slightly lower requirement for a bonus accrual compared to the first half of last year. One of the reasons that we think we've got increased confidence in case of a weaker continuation of performance is that those bonus accruals are paid out on an annual basis, and so if we're not hitting the right levels of profit that we need to, then that bonus cost will come out of the P&L, and as such act as contingency for the overall full-year results.

Hopefully that explains that in a little bit more clearer manner. Richard, probably this one for you.

Yeah. "Any progress" It's slow on on this.

The the multinational supplier, even though they're talking to a lot of buyers across Europe, they they, they they are going to these big organizations where it's take, can take long, long discussions. I think it's this week they are with our regional manager.

They're meeting a number of companies that they've having discussions with at what's called SPACE, which is in the Is it Brittany? Near Nantes and Rennes.

There's a big French agricultural sort of European agri exhibition and stuff and show. They and and our guys are there with this the the distribution company talking to end end customers, some of the cooperatives in France and some of the big producers, about certain And they're they're on they are now down to some sort of specific projects and stuff.

Touch wood, hopefully we hope something will come out of that, but it has been slower than we'd expected. It doesn't stop us, trying to doing anything in Europe, quite quite frankly, because we can sort of still go direct on some of the main products, but it it's it's it's been slower than what I'd have, what we'd hoped.

They it's, I suppose I'm not they're not surprised. I think they're a little bit surprised that it these big organizations that we're selling to take ages to make a decision and to change and to switch over and things.

They've found that. We'll know I'll get more feedback after this exhibition.

We'll sort of review at the end of the year to see if that's the right structure. We are looking at sort of how we how we Should we restructure the way that we look at Europe and start putting more people down in some of these countries and stuff?

There is there is some work going on within the company on on that, but. Hopefully, as I say, this this distribution, multinational supply, they're a big company, they've got the contacts into the buyers.

They need to sort of work with some of the nutritionists, and that's where we're supporting them on. We'll know, by the end of the year how we're going to review and see how that's gone.

A bit slower on progress than I would have hoped. In terms of "Any acquisitions planned?"

If there was, we can't really say, but there's Yeah, I can say there's sort of nothing imminent at the moment. There's one or two we're having light conversations with, but there's, people are a bit, slow to make a decision to move forward with doing anything.

In a lot of cases, they want to improve their profits so they can get the valuation that they want in their heads. We have to sort of wait till till they've gone through that process.

There's there's there's nothing at the moment. We've got plenty to go at in terms of selling Bio-Vet products internationally and pushing our, our organic growth and our implementing our organic strategy in terms of sales channels and things.

Hopefully that's answered that one. In terms of the "£400,000 non-recurring professional fees," that was, yeah, look, it was it was a transaction that didn't go ahead in the end, and so fees were incurred.

That's really all I can say about that. I could just need to point you just to what we've said in the statement, but that was aborted and stopped, and so we incurred those, and and nothing's gone ahead.

Bill H: "There has been an upsurge in overseas takeover activity in UK small-cap sector. Given your current lowly share rating, do you feel vulnerable to an unwarranted takeover overture?"

We're getting on with the day job, basically. The share price is, yeah, it's It is very frustrating, because I think Marc worked out we're below 7 times EBITDA, and, some of the deals that have gone through at, 12 times EBITDA in our sector.

We do we do we we do sort of feel vulnerable, but there's there's there's regulatory process to go through. Hopefully people will see that mismatch, and we'll, yeah, investors or fund managers will buy into the stock and think, "Well, this is a good price," and sit there and and close that gap.

We I don't I don't feel particularly vulnerable, because we we can always argue where, where the business is going, what it is, but there may be people out there that are looking at us, private equity. Think just to

Just to clarify as well, just on the the 7 times EBITDA, I think sometimes people don't realize how cheap we are, because you have to take remove the JSOP shares and only add add them back to the to the amount they're dilutive. Then obviously we have the cash on the balance sheet as well.

I think once you make those adjustments, then, yeah, we do look cheap. It makes, from an acquisition perspective, in terms of us going out, it makes it difficult as well, because, there's there's deals going through at sort of 12 12 times EBITDA, and and we're down, currently at just around 7.

It makes it earnings dilutive for some of those deals that we're we're looking at.

Okay. Hopefully that sort of answered that.

Pat K: "How is super El Niño expected to impact revenues, or costs, or both?" It doesn't necessarily impact us directly, but it does indirectly, as you've probably alluded to that.

Basically, Asia will suffer because generally it will suffer because the rice harvest will be down. There's more wet I think over there, rain that will go over there, Asia will suffer.

Then on the other side, the Americas will benefit. I think we've seen Brazil and Argentina have some very good harvests, some very strong harvests.

We just feel, and this is the reason why we are geographically diversified, or try to maintain that and build on that, as well as species diversified and product diversified, is because you do get these effects. Super El Niño, we have had the El Niños before, we've had super El Niños before, but it gets where it impacts one area, like we think Asia will get more impacted this time, the Americas will be fine.

We've already had good harvests in Ukraine and Russia. It may impact our revenues in certain regions, but hopefully that will get compensated elsewhere.

I can't see it impacting our costs. It's really the impact on the producer and how their profitability is going and that.

All in all, we don't feel it's anything to worry about. If it is impacted, it's a short-term impact, and we move on.

Hopefully people are investing in this for the future in the longer term, and not just each year and trying to trade El Niño. Don't try and trade our stocks based on El Niño.

There's probably better things to trade on with El Niño, like the prediction markets, isn't it? Hopefully, that sort of answered that question.

I think that seems to be the last question. Just to thank everyone for your attending and listening.

Hopefully we've given you a fair sort of reflection of where we are and where we feel we're going. I know there was that softer-start sort of comment, but we feel confident we can keep driving the business forward and developing it.

Just you are our shareholders, thank you for continued support in the company, and we'll keep trying to do our best. I'll hand back to, is it Charles?

Perfect. Thank you, Richard and Marc, for updating investors today.

Could please ask investors not to close the session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback on behalf of the management team of Anpario plc. We would like to thank you for attending today's presentation and good afternoon.