Louis Gries
Analyst · Commonwealth Bank. Please go ahead
Thank you, Eileen. Hi everybody. Thanks for joining the call. Matt Marsh and I'll walk through the call our results in a normal way, as Eileen said Q&A at the end and any media questions we might get would be after investor and analyst questions. Matt and I are in Dublin tonight, so the slides will be flipped in Sydney so we’re going to calling out slide numbers. So the first one slide is the cover sheet, slide number two is Page 1 and the disclaimer, Slide number 3 is page disclaimer, Slide 4 is the normal agenda we follow, Slide 5 is cover sheet and Slide 6 starts the overview that I’ll be talking through. So, net sales are only up 3% for the quarter. That’s partly because the U.S. is flatter than it has been this quarter comping against last year than we’ve been experiencing and the other part of the other businesses comp well in local currencies but not back as we brought in the U.S. dollars, so sales up 3%. The operating profit line is kind of the opposite story, that’s up strongly. That’s really driven a lot by the U.S. and just manufacturing efficiencies in some import cost benefits in the U.S. But again, all businesses performed well on the bottom line. Again all the businesses had a higher volumes and higher sales price. The U.S. again below our target and below what we’ve been experiencing and we’ll talk about that some. As I said, the big bottom line comp in the U.S. really drove the large improvement on the bottom line, both for that business and the Group. We came in at a 26.6% EBIT margin in the U.S. business, which is above our, obviously, above our 20% to 25% target. That’s not been usual for the first quarter but we also feel like we’ll operate above that target for the full year. So, we really feel pretty comfortable how the business is operating. And the contribution margin meeting through the better manufacturing performance is likely to carry itself through the year. As we had indicated, we are going to be more active in the share buybacks than we have been, so Matt will cover that in some detail. And we also have talked in the past about our Carole Park capacity startup. That continues to go well. We go to Page 7, gives you the Group’s bottom line financials. Everything up strongly, so very good bottom line results for the quarter, comping against last year’s same quarter. Slide number 8 brings us back to the U.S. Basically the summary on the quarter in the U.S. it was a good quarter. We just need to gain traction on the market side. We indicated going into the year we’ve grown above our market index. Market index, as we normally look at, our PDG, or which is how we perform against the market index. We normally look at a four quarter rolling. We are above our market index. It’s debatable whether it is single quarter came in above the market index. The market wasn’t great, but the 4% volume growth fell short at what our targets were for the quarter. So going to the chart, you see sales 5, volume 4 and average price 1. And we get the average price increase in an unusual way. The market price was up close to 3%, which we’d indicated that our expectation. But the 3% gap knock back in the quarter by both product mix and by foreign exchange, and foreign exchange is mainly between dollar coming off against the U.S. dollar. And we have a reason both positioning Canada now, so that did affect the average prices as is published. Again, EBIT margin up 32%, we’ve been talking for several quarters now, actually it’s been about a year since we started to really gain momentum in manufacturing and that momentum continues. The first quarter comp for the U.S. business on EBIT and the EBIT margin side was a little bit easier because what we’ll see in future quarters is we’re starting to get some of those manufacturing gains last year, where last year’s first quarter didn’t have any of the gains in the results. So, the 32% up on the EBIT line shows where we’re at on manufacturing compared to where we were last year. And it also shows more favorable input cost for pulp and energy, mainly. The Slide 9, just our normal chart. You can see a nice upward trend since fiscal year ’14. We’re pretty much at the top or above the range now for about five quarters. And like I said, we actually feel like we’re going to stay above that 25 for the full year. So, pretty confident about how the business is running. Like, I said our focus would be on top line growth, which brings to the next slide, Page 10. In market index we’re already -- would be up slightly. We’re still trying to figure out the new construction exactly where this year is likely come in on a new construction. As most of you know, we felt we’re going into a year that new construction would be up slightly. I think that’s still our view and hope where it is right now, we haven’t really taken a view, which just obviously not strongly at market we’re operating in. And most of you know we have a good position in the Texas market, which is not up so far this year. So the impact that a lot of you have questions about in previous quarters is, if Texas is in a good market this year, how do our results come out. And I think we’re showing in that, of course the top line [skepticism] a contributor on the top line it’s big enough to dampen that results. But our bottom line result we empowering through even without a good market in Texas and deliver the financials. I am having said that I don’t want anyone to misinterpret my comment that our top line problem is Texas. I think we have a couple of things in play again mostly we’re on the call last quarter we would have indicated we had moved our annual price review up a month, so that the Board could get into the system before the billing season started. So to more the March 1st increase which did bring some of our volume forward from the first quarter this year to fourth quarter last year. And obviously we haven’t asked them how much volume that is, it’s probably turned in about what we thought it would. So that definitely was factored now. What I don’t want to get away from is the reality that we’re working to increase our primary demand growth or our market share gains, or our volumes above market index. So whatever you want to describe it. And I think it’s clear in the business that so far we don’t have question on that lift up that we’re looking for. Now there is no more variance you get in your volume, especially when you’re comp in quarters. I think we have normal variances that’s little bit on the low side this time. But I do think it’s normal variance. Unless you would have seen it impeding comp low this quarter and final slightly positive but not much this quarter. So it’s not like this is a market shift problem, we think it’s a market momentum situation where we’re trying to increase [actually] in the market and so far that hasn’t begun to happen. So again looking at Slide 10, the other thing that would be different this quarter than last quarter are our volume and revenue tick up would be about the same because we only get the 1% price improvement. Assuming that the Canadian dollar starts to stabilize at or near the level in fact I think you will see us come back to more or closer to 3% as we’re talking about. By the way I didn’t expand on the product mix, but part of the product mix price dampening is actually good news because most of you know a sense about this time last year we’ve been focusing in increasing our three interiors backer board business and clearly that's starting to happen as picked up momentum quarter-to-quarter. So this quarter backer, or first quarter backer was much better than last quarter backer it was actually higher mix of our sales. Page 11 just a price chart is the exact for that period of time in 12 and 15 where we can get off track with some of our tactical pricing. The price stories still a pretty good story and like I said we don’t think the 1% improvement on last year we saw in the quarter will play out in the full year we think will be present at 3%. Asia Pac business obviously operate in a good market, all of the increases in housing meeting in the medium density that you’ve seen in Australia doesn't necessarily play to our strengths but we're still on a good market in Asia Pac that goes for the Philippines and New Zealand as well in local currency -- I’d say 15% volume of plant 5% price. Of course in U.S. dollars EBIT doesn’t look good but Australian dollars it does, a point I think it fills the top line that there is no leverage against top-line and the only thing I want to point out is they don’t get the same input cost benefits the U.S. does because they buy pulp in U.S. dollars they get benefit and plants our improvement trend line like the U.S. not quite a steep of the slope but also they’re going to start up at Carole Park. You got your start up dollars and there quarterly result as well. We think we are about three quarters away through those start up dollars like I said the start up is going well. So it’s been a very positive result for the Australian business but is largely is Q1 results. So I hand it over to Matthew for financial results.