MCBRF (MCBRF) Q4 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

All right. Good morning, everybody. We're just going to wait a few seconds to let everybody get safely on because there's a lot of interest. So just bear with us for half a minute. Right. Let's get going. We're very pleased to welcome McBride back. And as you know, they've just released the full year results for the period to the end of June, and it's been a very, very busy but a very successful year, which I'll let our guests go through in detail. Just a couple of points of admin. [Operator Instructions] The slide deck that the boys are talking to is already publicly available. It's on the McBride Investor Relations page, along with a lot of other useful material. And finally, at the end of the presentation, when we close the webinar, participants will see a very brief feedback form. And certainly, the company will be very grateful if you could spend just 1 minute sharing your thoughts on that. Right. We're very pleased to be joined by CFO, Mark Strickland, again; and CEO, Chris Smith. And I'm now going to pass over to you, Chris, to start the presentation.

So good morning all, and thank you very much for joining this presentation this morning. Our format today will follow the agenda that we're showing on this page here. I'm going to cover off the headlines and update on our business progress, including the latest on market data. And then Mark will take you through a more detailed look at our financials before I summarize our outlook. And of course, we then, as we said -- as Andy said, we move on to questions. So just moving on to the headlines header here. Before I perhaps move on to the detailed slides, I would like to comment that the last 12 months has been hugely positive for the future of the group with a successful first go-live on our major SAP IT systems rollout and all the work we've completed leading up to the recent 2 growth announcements. The impact on our full year earnings from the rapid inflation that we saw in quarter 4 as a result of the Middle East crisis that perhaps has slightly taken off the shine -- has taken the shine off a year of really strong strategic delivery. I can only compliment and be super proud of the entire McBride team, which has continued to perform exceptionally well, delivering on our midterm ambitions whilst also coping with all that's been thrown at them in what is a very volatile world at this moment. As you'll hear through the presentation, the McBride offer continues to be compelling for retailers and for consumers and our size, scale and capabilities increasingly capturing the attention of branded businesses who wish to step away from manufacturing and variabilize the cost of their supply chains. So on to the main headlines. Overall, the group has reported a resilient set of financial results against the backdrop of very difficult and uncertain trading in the latter part of the second 6 months. Without the fourth quarter profit hit as a result of the timing lag between pricing recovery from customers and the impact of raw material cost rises, the business was on track to report a third consecutive full year of profitability in line with our strategic ambitions. The group responded well to the significant inflation shock that emerged immediately following the start of the crisis in March. Using learnings from the inflationary period 4 years ago, the group was rapid in its response, both of estimating forward costs, but also tactics and techniques to best interact with our customers, explaining the need for price rises. At the interims in February, we indicated some positive momentum on volumes as a result of contract wins across most of our divisions. As a result of the inevitable difficult conversations with customers around price rises, we saw delays and slowdowns in the rate of these new product launches, subject to progress of ongoing price conversations, however, we would expect most of those should start up in this next first half year of the new financial year. As you will see shortly, the latest market data indicates private label penetration in household products continuing to progress, reaching all-time highs for the 12 months to June 2026. In the early months of the new financial year, while probably still a bit early to call, we do see certain signals of further private label push from a number of retailers given expected inflation pressures for consumers. A lot has happened since the financial year closed in June with the group starting to deliver on its strategic intent to expand the group's footprint through inorganic growth. We completed the previously announced acquisition of the specialist tableting business, Eurotab, on the 1st of July. And in August, we announced a transformative arrangement with Vestacy, which will see material contract manufacturing growth for the group. At the interims, we outlined our balanced approach to capital allocation. We have, in this last financial year, allocated GBP 18 million on a variety of benefits to shareholders, covering dividends, share buybacks and share purchases to prevent future dilution. The combination of this considered approach, resilient financials and the 2 growth projects recently announced has seen the share price rise over 60% since this time last year. I'm now going to move on to an update on our strategic progress, some more detail on the recently announced growth projects as well as divisional performance updates. Our 2024 Capital Markets Day clearly set out a series of headlines for the group. I'm pleased to report good progress against all of these targets in the second year -- second full year post the Capital Markets Day. In terms of growth, whilst the past year was slightly behind the target overall, our compound growth rate over the last 3 years is over 3% and ahead of our target. Profitability levels slipped in quarter 4, as I mentioned already. And as a result, our 2026 EBITDA margins ended lower than our ambition, but we remain committed to the 10% target. The transformation program and the recent deals announced will help on this journey. Debt levels are in good shape, and that's after deploying GBP 18 million in shareholder returns. We will see this debt ratio rise a little in the next year as a result of the acquisition and the Vestacy agreement. ROCE has slipped slightly, mostly as a result of higher investment returns -- sorry, higher investment levels, but remains nicely ahead of our midterm targets. As you will hear later, our transformation agenda continues to make progress with over GBP 10 million of additional benefits this past year and on track for the cumulative GBP 50 million by the end of FY '28. The business and the Board are super focused on delivering these strategic ambitions for McBride and its shareholders and stakeholders, and we remain confident in our strategic direction to deliver on these targets in the midterm. So I'm going to move on now to talk about the first of our 2 recently announced growth projects. We informed the market about the proposed acquisition of the Eurotab Group back in April, and it was pleasing that the transaction completed just after the year-end on the 1st of July. The Eurotab Group comprises 3 well-invested manufacturing locations, 2 of which are in France and the third is in Turkey. The product ranges are all hard tablet-formats covering 3 categories. The biggest volumes are in auto-dishwash tablets, very similar to the ranges that McBride supply already, with the other 2 categories, new ones, for the group, namely disinfection tablets, which -- such as bleach tablets and the other is humidity absorption blocks. It is expected that Eurotab will add circa EUR 65 million of top line to McBride this current financial year. Net consideration finished a little lower than we originally expected at EUR 32.8 million with a multiple on acquisition of 4.6x and is forecast to fall to 3.1x post synergies. The acquisition presents a series of strategic advantages. First, it provides additional auto-dishwash tablet capacity, especially in the all-in-one category, providing the Unit Dosing division with opportunity to load balance its output from its existing 2 factories, optimizing product costs as well as service reliability. Extending our market reach into Turkey is an exciting prospect with good relationships at Eurotab Turkey with a large -- with a number of the large major retailers in the Turkish market. In addition, the 2 new categories will provide opportunity for growth using our extensive network of customers and geographies. There are strong synergy opportunities such as raw material buying, production efficiencies, including from investment back to automation alongside overhead simplification. We expect this to be accretive to earnings per share and profitability from day 1 with opportunity through synergies and optimization to support the group's ambition to raise overall margins towards the 10% EBITDA level. Moving on to the second recent announcement which concerns a new long-term agreement with Vestacy. For those of you who don't know, Vestacy is the new name for the former Essential Homes business of Reckitt Benckiser, which was divested in 2025. Our agreement, which is for between 5 and 8 years, will see the majority of Vestacy's European production in the hands of McBride. Our compelling proposition was centered on the range of geographic locations in the McBride manufacturing network, our scale and quality of operations alongside the raft of services that McBride can provide to Vestacy in the future, such as product development, distribution and purchasing. This deal will, at maturity, grow our revenues by an estimated GBP 170 million by the second half of financial year 2028 and will take the group's ratio of contract manufacturing beyond the 25% strategic ambition we outlined in our 2024 Capital Markets Day. The agreement requires McBride to produce a material increase in volumes, some 180 million units per year requiring a significant level of capital expenditure, the majority of which is being funded by Vestacy, with McBride spending approximately GBP 17 million over the next 3 years to cover project costs, separation and integration and some limited amount of capital. As part of this deal, McBride -- sorry, part of this deal, McBride will acquire 2 former Reckitt now Vestacy factories for a nominal consideration, expanding our footprint on the Iberian Peninsula with the addition of a site at Granollers near Barcelona and Porto Alto in Portugal. This transformational agreement is a further proof point of McBride's world-class capability with a significant scale of our operations bringing value to major brand owners. I'm going to move on now to the market situation overall and the progress of private label within this market. Our latest market data analysis, which, as a reminder, only covers the top 5 economies of Europe, but for which we use as a proxy for the total market, shows further progress in private label share. In the year, the total market was actually flat with private label outperforming brands yet again and raising private label share in volume terms by 1 percentage point to 36.7% at June '26. Interestingly, across the last 3 -- sorry interestingly, across the last 3 years, the total market has grown around 3.3%, in line with our long-term assumptions. But in that time, brands have been flat with private label driving all the market growth and private label share rising 2.5 percentage points to the 36.7% share I just mentioned. Across the countries, we see France, Germany and Spain maintaining consistent private label growth year-over-year and the U.K. after a dip in '24 and '25, recovering this last year with private label share back to where it was in 2023. In category terms, we see all categories gaining in private label over the past 12 months and with the exception of dish, branded volumes down between 1% and 2%. Over the past 3 years, market share for private label has grown most strongly in dish, which is now up to 44.6% by volume share, some 3 percentage points higher than 3 years ago. Digging deeper into the data at customer level, we see quite some varied performances. Our biggest customer, which is Aldi, has only seen moderate volume growth over the past 3 years and in fact, for us, lower volumes last year. On the other hand, Lidl, a smaller customer for McBride, has seen growth over the past 3 years of 20%. Hence, overall, the outlook for the market seems favorable, and our estimates over the last 3 years have played out in total, albeit at a customer level with some varied performance. I mentioned earlier, it is still too early probably to call. However, there are some signals of private label focus from a number of retailers across many markets in light of the continued consumer inflation pressure. I'm now going to move on just to discuss briefly each of the divisions. And first, I will talk about our liquids business, which is our biggest division with over 55% of the group's sales. It has not been an easy year for the Liquids division as a result of an active competitive landscape with margin pressures throughout the first half year from a significant level of customer tenders. Additionally, of course, margins were under further strain with the inflation surge for raw materials, packaging and freight in the fourth quarter. The impact of this recent inflation is most impactful for us in this division. Volumes were slightly down in the year, mostly actually from some of our own branded products, which have been weaker than we expected with private label and contract manufacturing volumes broadly flat. Like all other divisions, intense discussions with customers in Q4 concerning price rises led to stop shipments and new launches being delayed, impacting sales volumes in the last 2 months. That being said, the business has a good win-loss ratio in tender activity, and we expect launches to support growth in the new financial year. The division has continued, of course, to be active with its operational focus, both in terms of productivity, smart capital expenditures, supporting efficiencies, new product formats and sustainability and operational discipline. It's particularly pleasing to report excellent safety performance improvement with accident levels over 50% lower in the factories. The post year-end announcement of the partnership agreement with Vestacy will benefit primarily the Liquids division, with 90% or so of the volumes awarded in liquid formats. This will drive significant growth for the division and over EUR 40 million of investment in capacity scheduled across its plants across the next 2 years, including the newly acquired sites in Spain and Portugal. For our Unit Dosing division, overall volumes for the business were down over 2% despite actually growth in private label, in line with the wider market. Contract volumes, in particular, were weak across a range of different customers and countries. Profitability picked up and improved year-over-year as a result of strong discipline around its costs, improved factory performances and an improved mix. Our new soft pod for auto dish has launched well in the last 12 months, and we've continued to allocate capital to increase capacity in this growing category. Like all the businesses in the group, the Middle East crisis drove inflation for the Unit Dosing division with prompt action on pricing recovery against the backdrop of the usual competitive tension, but especially in the capsules market where currently there's excess levels of capacity. As I mentioned earlier, we have now completed the Eurotab acquisition, which is an entirely Unit Dosing business, and the division is busy with its integration activities. This acquisition brings a step-up in scale for the division, adding around 25% more revenues. And once synergies land, we should see growing profitability levels, enhancing the overall Unit Dosing performance. The Powders division recorded good volume growth, primarily in the second half year on the back of new business wins and good run rate volumes, especially in Germany. Against the market backdrop of declining volumes in the branded space, private label volumes have remained resilient with the value for money proposition resonating well with consumers. 40% of this -- of the division's revenues are actually from contract manufacturing, which is relatively flat through the year with effort and focus on format changes and new formulations ready for the new financial year. Our profitability in this division did reduce slightly in the year, mostly as a result of the weak first half and the momentum into the second half looking good and strong. Moving on to our 2 smaller divisions. And first, the aerosols business, which had a fantastic year with really strong volume growth, 13% up in private label and just over 10% in contract manufacturing. The business exited the year with volumes on an annual basis in excess of the 100 million cans target that we set the business 2 years ago and some 50% up on where it was 3 years ago. This was supported by significant investment in capacity, which completed during the year. Run rates in the early part of the new year are now in excess of 100 million cans, and we look to see the business now stabilize and drive profit margin ratio improvement in the coming years. The Asia business saw good growth in its top line in value terms, albeit in volume terms, has reported lower volumes, mainly as a result of distorting volume measure in the Vietnam business with underlying growth closer to 5%. This was driven by strong performance in Australia, including the launch of our first household ranges manufactured in Malaysia and stronger demand for local customers in the Malaysian market. The business continues to be active to drive further growth from its excellent platform at the Kuala Lumpur facility, supported by recent international quality accreditations. So that concludes my overall business progress update. I'm now going to hand over to Mark, who will show how all this manifests in our financials.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased that yesterday, we reported a resilient set of results for the financial year ended 30th of June 2026. So let's have a look at the financial highlights. Looking at the financial year at a headline level, I'll come on to more detail in subsequent slides. Revenues are up GBP 7.7 million or 0.8%. However, on a constant currency basis, they reduced GBP 17.3 million or 1.8%. As a business, we continue to closely analyze forward-looking raw material and packaging trends, adjusting sales margins as appropriate. However, the impacts of the Middle East crisis were felt in the final quarter of the financial year, meaning that adjusted operating profit of GBP 59 million was GBP 7.1 million less than last year. Earnings per share showed a slight reduction year-on-year of 0.5p per share, driven by an earnings reduction of 1.2p per share and offset by the normalization of taxation rates and ForEx. As Chris says, we have delivered some GBP 18 million of shareholder returns in the year, an increase of GBP 15.6 million year-on-year. And over the last 4 years, we progressively strengthened our balance sheet through cash generation and debt reduction. This has given the business a great platform for the recent business investments we have seen. For 2026, we had a modest increase in net debt, mainly driven by the timing of certain creditor payments right at the end of the year, which accounted for GBP 9.9 million of the increase, the rest predominantly being as a result of the shareholder returns that I've just mentioned. I now need to touch on the external market dynamics and volatility. We all find ourselves in a very difficult situation as a result of the Middle East crisis. And indeed, inflation accelerated in the final quarter of the financial year. I think we have all personally been impacted to some degree, the most visible indicator being the fuel prices, which today have reached record levels. In McBride's case and to add a little context, we experienced an inflationary impact on our raw materials and packaging of some 12.2% in 2 months. So the speed of increase was far greater than that of the 2021, '22 inflationary period when that level of increase happened over 12 months, accepting that the previous inflationary period ultimately peaked at significantly more than the 12% in total. We estimate that the impact of the war was circa GBP 6 million on the financial year, which would have meant an adjusted operating profit of circa GBP 65 million. We've already been out to customers and achieved price increases. However, given that the conflict is clearly more prolonged than originally envisaged, we are continuing to have that dialogue. Moving to transformation. The business has now cumulatively delivered GBP 15.3 million in net benefits and remains on target to deliver the GBP 50 million of net benefit by financial year 2028. In respect of the SAP implementation, the global template has been proved and the project has moved on to delivering Wave 2 in quarter 4 of financial year 2027. Additionally, it should be noted that we -- the implementation is increasingly moving from a specific project to more business-as-usual rollout site by site, and that is currently anticipated to be the modus operandum for the site implementations post Wave 2. The service excellence project completed in September 2025 and has delivered real value -- real benefits, sorry. However, in the final quarter of the year, service was impacted by certain retailers' reaction to the requested price increases. The commercial excellence program completed in December 2025, and it is estimated that the project has contributed GBP 3.8 million of net benefit to the 2026 financial year. Finally, productivity excellence has delivered GBP 6.5 million of benefits with OEE efficiencies delivering slightly more than 2% improvement. So looking at the income statement in a little bit more detail. And for all your technical experts, here is a slide that is absolutely full of numbers that you can analyze at your leisure. In brief, what is this slide saying? Well, looking at the income statement on the left-hand side, sales up -- sorry, at actual rates on the left-hand side, sales up GBP 7.7 million. Cost of sales rose GBP 5.3 million. Distribution costs increased GBP 2.2 million and administration costs rose GBP 7.3 million. The FX impact on the total distribution and administration costs of GBP 9.5 million was GBP 7.2 million. So the total underlying increase was actually only GBP 2.3 million, and I will come back to that later in the presentation. On the other hand, the right-hand side of this chart looks at group and divisional performance on both an actual and constant currency basis. Chris has covered the individuals in far greater detail earlier in his presentation. So I'll not dwell on this slide, but just to reiterate the point that, as you can see, both actual -- at actual and constant currency, our Liquids division has been hardest impacted in the 2026 financial year, both in terms of revenues and adjusted operating profit. So now let's look at costs. For most of financial year 2026, input costs were broadly flat. But as this slide illustrates, there was the previously mentioned significant pickup in the final quarter arising from the Middle East conflict. Given the current situation and the underlying rhetoric between the 2 sides, we are not anticipating a quick resolution. Therefore, looking forward to us, it is impossible to say where input costs might go in the coming months. Indeed, it seems to change weekly. So as you can imagine, we are keeping a very close watching brief. It is also worth pointing out that underlying inflation is still relatively significant across all geographies, albeit at lower rates than over the last few years. Hence, McBride's continuing focus on margin management has been key to the delivery of the financial year 2026 result and will continue to be so in 2027. Coming back to overheads. As I said, whilst distribution and admin costs increased by GBP 9.5 million, ForEx accounted for GBP 7.2 million of this. So excluding ForEx, distribution costs fell GBP 0.3 million, whilst administration costs increased by some GBP 2.6 million, primarily due to recalculations of the expected cost of long-term incentive plans to be in line with the higher share price and also Software-as-a-Service, which effectively moves costs from depreciation into running costs. And that is particularly as Wave 1 of our S/4 implementation went live in November. Looking at other financials. Interest paid reduced to GBP 7.3 million in the financial year. Please note that the P&L finance charge of GBP 10.2 million also includes such things as pension finance costs, GBP 1.2 million, the cost of the 1-year RCF extension, GBP 600,000 and variously amortization of facility fees, lease interest, et cetera. We currently expect the P&L charge to increase to GBP 13 million in 2027 as a result of the Eurotab acquisition and also some initial resourcing for the Vestacy deal, both of which will increase our core debt. Exceptional costs totaled GBP 7.6 million, the main constituents being disruption costs arising from the SAP S/4 Wave 1 implementation, the Eurotab acquisition costs, costs incurred in investigating and delivering the Vestacy deal and an increase in the Estaimpuis environmental provision, which we reassess as and when required. In 2027, exceptional costs are expected to increase to some GBP 12 million as the McBride project team is increasingly stood up to deliver the capacity increases required to meet the Vestacy contract requirements. Taxation in the year returned to more normalized levels with an effective tax rate of 25%. CapEx was GBP 31.2 million in year as the business continued to invest both behind the ERP implementation and midterm growth. For the forthcoming years, it is expected that CapEx will remain at these levels as the spend on ERP is progressively replaced with expenditure on plant and machinery. The IAS 19 pension deficit decreased to GBP 18.1 million from GBP 23 million, mainly due to the GBP 5.7 million of deficit reduction contributions paid by the group. The U.K. scheme is closed to new members and future accrual. And in terms of the outcome of the NTL versus Virgin Media case, no additional liabilities are now expected. Finally, the next triennial valuation is due at the 31st of March 2027. Just for completeness, the group has other post-employment benefit obligations outside the U.K. that amounted to GBP 1.8 million last year, GBP 1.9 million. Net debt. So net debt increased to GBP 122.8 million for the reasons outlined earlier. The key points on this slide to note are that cash was high at year-end, and that was in anticipation of paying for Eurotab. The first 1-year extension of the RCF was exercised in November 2025, extending the RCF to November 2029. We expect to exercise the second extension in November 2026, which will then extend the RCF to November 2030. Finally, we'll see that liquidity remains very healthy at GBP 167.6 million. Moving on to shareholder returns. In 2026 -- financial year '26, a dividend of 3p per share was paid. I'm pleased today to announce that the Board is recommending a 3.1p per share dividend for the 2026 financial year just ended, obviously subject to approval at the forthcoming Annual General Meeting. As an aside, we appear to be becoming increasingly attractive as a mixed proposition share, comprising capital appreciation combined with income. In summary, the hard work of the last 4 years in rebuilding the company's balance sheet, combined with the balanced capital allocation policy has now allowed us to both increase near-term shareholder returns whilst also investing in the midterm future via our internal capital investment and also through the Eurotab acquisition and the Vestacy strategic partnership. Thank you, and I will now pass you back to Chris.

Thank you, Mark. I'm now just going to move on to summarize our outlook. So look, managing short-term margin pressures feels like it will continue for most businesses in the coming months and maybe even longer. We remain resolute on minimizing the impact of rising costs and passing the minimum level of price rises to our customers. We expect that further price rises will be required in light of recent developments and we remain vigilant and agile in adapting in such volatile times. Despite the near term being so difficult to manage and predict, the business continues to pursue a range of longer-term strategic projects. SAP Wave 2 is lining up for our next go-live early in 2027, and we're well underway with the integration activities at Eurotab. Activity to support the Vestacy agreement is building as we plan for the separation and integration of the 2 new sites, which we expect to take over in February '27. And we have now started the capital ordering process for that new capacity for long lead time equipment. The first 2 months of the year have seen volumes in line with our expectations. And as mentioned earlier, some possible early signs of extra pull for private label products in certain markets. We have seen before that in periods of inflation and uncertainty, private label performs well in our markets. So thank you for listening to that. That was our formal presentation done. And I think, Andy, we will now move to questions.

Thank you very much, Gentlemen. Very, very clear. And just a reminder, we've got a number of questions already. [Operator Instructions] A number of them about the transactions that you have been able to conclude. And the first one, quite a logical one. Have you had to increase your in-house team size for executing these corporate deals?

A great question. We are increasing it. We've been -- we have -- through the project, I guess, initiation and conclusion of the agreements, we've obviously brought extra people in to help. We've got a firm project team established now. We're recruiting to a limited level. We're not talking hundreds of people but certainly from project delivery, yes, we will increase the size of the organization to deliver that. That was part of the cost that Mark mentioned will be an exceptional next year. And of course, once capacity is live, in the relevant locations, we'll be recruiting operators and management grade people, of course, to manage that new activity, again, all within the business plan.

Great. Another, I suppose, obvious question. Can I ask how long you had been pursuing the Eurotab and Vestacy deals? And were they signed in competition with other potential buyers or partners?

So -- so I'll pick that one up. So Eurotab, we initially kicked the project off in November 2024 when we reached out to LBO, who are a private equity company who owned Eurotab. So that one took quite a number of years. With regard to the Vestacy agreement, I remember we proactively, so myself and Peter Ingelse who's MD of Liquids, reached out to Advent because we believe they were in prime position to sort of win the bid for Vestacy. And we reached out probably 18 months ago on that. saying, look, we would like to help them out. Ultimately, Peter then reached out again probably 6, 7 months ago and said, look, we have an innovative way potentially to help you out. So it was our idea as to how the deal was structured. And certainly, Vestacy was noncompetitive. Eurotab, they did reach out to other potential purchasers. However, we were, I think, always in pole position on that one. And we continue to keep a dialogue with a number of people within the industry. It's our job to network. And should anything else come available, we should -- hopefully, people will pick up the phone to us.

That's a very nice [ segue ] to the next question, Mark. Thank you for that. And these are obviously both significant deals in the context of McBride's size, 2 in a 3-month period. Is your success and your size going to make the possibility of other large deals a little more likely than it has been in the past? And I think everybody recognizes you have to have a willing vendor to get the transaction.

Well, look, I'd like to think so. Look, we've been resolute in remaining focused in the household space in Europe, building. We recognize the importance of scale. We recognize the importance of distribution of manufacturing across the markets, and look in a world of increasing regulation and increasing pressures, of course, rightly so for sustainable products. We believe that scale matters and I believe we can offer a compelling proposition to many brand owners and retailers alike to provide further opportunity for growth for us and to support them in their ambitions to grow their own businesses. So yes, I think the scale -- the increasing size of it will be helpful for future targets.

I think also we just have to prove ourselves as well with what we've done. So we do -- we still have to deliver on the Eurotab. We've still got a lot of work to deliver Vestacy. But these things come -- you've got to take advantage when they come along.

Good. And perhaps last one on the 2 deals? Do you expect the Eurotab acquisition and the Vestacy contracts to be shareholder value accretive as opposed to just earnings per share enhancing?

Well, I think, look, we've seen a little bit of, I would say, positive momentum in the share price as a result of the announcements of those deals, perhaps the growth of the share price is in excess of the amount of EPS accretion that we would get. So that would imply some form of re-rating. I think the model that we've set up and the sticking to our strategy and delivering on the scale, I think it provides that opportunity for further enhancement for shareholder value, yes.

Yes. And would you say that these 2 transactions were strategically important to protect your position? Or were they actually structured bolt-ons to deliver enhanced growth prospects or indeed a combination of the 2?

I would say it's a combination of the 2, yes. I mean the Vestacy transaction is part of our mission to grow contract manufacturing in our total portfolio, bringing all that scale and expertise to brand owners. I think on the Eurotab acquisition, this is about building on our strength in that category, providing us some optionality around platform for manufacturing and bringing some great technology that we get from -- the acquisition. So I think it's a combination of both, but we remain resolute in this household space, yes.

Great. Perhaps one for you, Mark. Can you give a little more detail, if possible, on the impacts of the cost increases in the fourth quarter? How much they affected the overall full year results? And would you be able to say what the EBITDA margin was during the fourth quarter? Or is that something you're ...

Yes. So, no, it's a good question. Implied that we probably would have been around GBP 65 million EBITDA. Had we not had the impact of cost rises in the fourth quarter, and we've delivered GBP 59 million. So the mathematics there is GBP 6 million. We don't really disclose margins into month or whatever. There's a lot of people watch these videos. So we have to be a little bit careful what we say to the audience. But it definitely impacted, but we've been back out to the customers and we need to get back to normalized margins.

I think the important message on that was the speed with which we responded, the quality of our I would say, information flows and predictions to customers to support the need for pricing, the amount we bought back, of course, with suppliers. And we proved the model of being able to recover pricing and margins in a shorter window than we were able to do 4 years ago as a result of the changes we made in the way we interact with our contractual terms with customers. So I think that -- but there's always a lag -- you're always going to have some form of lag in principle, it reverses if it ever comes down on the way down. But a strong cooperative -- cooperation of our customers has been the proof of the pudding in the revised model.

Great. We've got a couple of questions about capacity. Can you give an indication of how much capacity there is within the group at the moment? And obviously, there's a lot of investments and a lot of demand coming through, but how much would you say is free at the moment?

It's really -- I mean it's so varied across -- by product categories and by location. So we don't really quote a single figure because it will be meaningless in total. But look, in principle, you don't -- you can't really run half full factories in private label. Your margins are tight. You need to be efficient and effective and utilize your capacity as fully as you can. We have many plants that are 24/7 across the network. We have other plants that are maybe on shorter shift patterns, for example. So there's always space. But look, we have physical land space that we can -- and as we discovered -- as we'll see in the Vestacy transaction, we will be exiting bits of warehouses that are existing in our factories, placing those outside and filling floor space with equipment to sit alongside existing equipment. So as long as you invest in machinery and whatever then, look, we've definitely got capacity to grow further.

Good. And then looking forward, specifically with the Vestacy partnership, can you provide a little more color on the capacity deployment across your existing European manufacturing network that will be required to cope with the increased volumes?

Well, so as I said in my presentation, the volume growth is significant. We'll be distributing that amongst a number of locations in the existing McBride network and amongst the new ones we've acquired as part of this deal. So we're bolting capacity into the territories where the end markets are most located. So, we will be putting equipment into one of our Belgium facilities -- well, both Belgium facilities, but particularly the Ieper factory. We're putting some into Italy and then minor installation -- changes in U.K. and in -- I think, in France as well as the other Belgium plant. So I think a number of our locations will take investment to support this growth targeted around where those categories are best produced and where those geographic markets are best served. That was a key attraction of the transaction was that we have a well-located set of operations and factories that are better suited to local -- presence in local markets.

Good. And a question, could you just clarify -- you got a very favorable deal with the amounts of capital funding you're putting into the Vestacy transaction. But who owns the GBP 34 million worth of equipment that will be funded by Vestacy?

That, we do. Yes.

That's a short and positive answer. Now a slightly strategic question. Someone wishing to play devil's advocate that some people might say that being a manufacturer of own brand or private label products is not consistent with being a contract manufacturer. Is there a danger of McBride becoming a jack of all trades and master of none, which ends with an exclamation mark rather than the question mark.

Well, look, I think it's a great question, actually, and it's something that we thought long and hard about. I think -- look, I think against the backdrop of, as I said, regulation, sustainability drives, products have -- it gives us a bit of hedging, I guess, I suppose, for midterms. So if we see branded volumes recovering, we would see growth in our branded supply to offset anything we saw negatively on private label and a bit the other way, of course. But look, we're not the whole market. So we will never be in line -- we're never moving exactly with the entire market. We have different customers, different retailers and different brand owners that we supply and we're careful about who we try to work with. So we don't believe -- I think the jack of all trades, but would be perhaps if we extend it into other categories beyond household and try to -- as we were, by the way, 9, 10 years ago, when we had a personal care operation, which was conflicting a little bit. We felt distracting on our mission to be a strong household player. So we're trying to stick to the knitting in the sense of sticking into household. So we're not -- we're not -- the jack of all trades is, yes, we're trying to cover the whole market, but it's only the household market.

Right. A question on the, no doubt, sensitive subject of price negotiations with customers. And it is what alternatives do your clients have if they do not like the proposed price rise?

Well, I think -- I mean, yes, look, it's always difficult as a scale of ease of conversation which starts with difficult and moves to incredibly difficult. And so that's just the nature of all negotiations. I think it's -- there are options, right? I mean, if it's really just a short-term material hit, we would look to just recover in price through a surcharge or through a short-term supplement to the pricing that we've already agreed. I think it becomes longer term and pricing doesn't move on the shelf that is then we can reformulate where that takes time. We could possibly resize bottles, which is typically what you would see in the branded space, a very quick way to recover margins to have smaller bottle sizes, but it looks the same and you charge the same on the shelf. That's typically what private label doesn't want to do. But these are options that we can do. We can -- there's quite a lot of levers, but some of them take a bit longer than a pure price. So it does depend on our view on the outlook of these higher prices. and the appetite of retailers to take price and move it on. And also, look, I think the appetite for price rises from retailers in their own ranges, of course, because of their own ranges we're always talking about here. will depend a bit on what the branders do on their shelf pricing. And we haven't seen much movement, I would say, up through June, July, but we have started to see signals of some of those rise, that makes the backdrop a bit easier potentially.

And I think a difficult question here to be precise on. But do you need to see further price inflation from this point before you have to raise prices again, and another way of looking at that is, is there a potential risk of a profitability lag such as the one that you have experienced in recent months?

Yes, I think that's a really good observation. Look, I think the uncertainty is moving weekly and daily, really, I think. And so we're trying to be agile. We try to be fast moving with information flows to our customers. But yes, look, I think we said in our statement, we will be going for further prices based on what we now hear around the conflict and how long that's going to last. Everyone's seen the oil price, the oil price is not the main -- it's a barometer of, I would say, sentiment around tensions in that region, in particular, and beyond, and therefore, the impact on to trading sort of certainty. Whilst the oil price stays at the $100 to $110 range, we will have no choice but to go back with customers, and we're already on that pathway.

Okay. I'll try and make another link there from moving on from the crude price. We have a question the rise in raw commodities like oil that affects your input cost is always well publicized. Can you say a little bit more about the -- from what you're hearing from your suppliers about the extent of the damage to production facilities and pipe networks in the Middle East that presumably will take months, if not years, to repair when and if the Irani situation gets concluded?

Yes. It's a really good question, too. We had varying -- you can read a lot about this, of course, in the chemical press, whatever, but it has been substantial. I think I saw an estimate somewhere between $50 billion and $70 billion of investment needed to recover to where it was before. That's before maybe some of these more recent attacks. I haven't seen a latest update on that. But it is substantial, and we're talking many years to recover. If they -- if even actually some of that investment goes to the Middle East, there's some -- because a lot of, I would say, investment in Europe in chemical production and downstream refining and so forth has shifted out and investment in Europe has been low. It's moved to the Middle East, whether this sort of tension in this region, which may be prolonged, would see some of that investment flow back to Europe. There's some talk around that, which will be helpful to us, of course, in the midterm. But yes, it's big. It's substantial. But look, since March, we've seen I would say, supply-demand situations moving a bit all over. We see more U.S. material coming in. We see people moving away from certain products and choosing others. So it's a totally dynamic space, as you would imagine, and so we spend a lot of time and a lot of resource really trying to grill and analyze what we think is going to happen because that's our credibility in the face of customers, helping them understand the direction this is going.

Great. Thank you. Lots of questions. I won't call it the new McBride, but there has been a year or 15 months of substantial change. We have a question here. You quite understandably referenced in detail group and product progress against the Capital Markets Day targets. Given the significant change in group scale and structure since that event, are some of these targets in need of an update or being refreshed?

Again, a very good question. It is something we are considering internally as to when the right time is because our Capital Markets Day was March '24. So we are considering whether we need to do a new Capital Markets Day in the next 12 months or so.

Good to hear. What we got here. Also a question around the your increased scale. Has there been any change in the identity of your major clients, let's say, the top 5 by volumes? Or are you doing more with existing clients, and that's where the growth is coming from?

No. Look, I think our customer profile is relatively stable. We don't tend to lose customers or win brand new from Vestacy, of course, recently and some that's coming in with Eurotab. But in most cases, our top 10 customers are pretty consistent, I would say, over the last few years, and we see ups and downs in those from time to time, SKUs get moved around between competition and us. So no, we're in good shape with a good raft of high-quality customers, and it's relatively stable.

Good. And another question again on the scale, I suppose. Are you comfortable that senior management is of sufficient scale and depth to cope with the increased burden of work and volume and profits that you've taken on?

Yes, I am.

Another nice, short, and sensible answer.

I need them to -- yes, we have a very strong team, and I'm very confident.

Excellent. I think just time for a last one. It is early days since the Eurotab transaction closed. But have you found anything unexpected, either good or bad since you've got under the bonnet? And can you just talk a little bit more about the cross-selling opportunities and also give some perspective about the scale of opportunity in the Turkish market itself?

Mark, do you want to talk about?

Yes. I mean in terms of the acquisition, there is nothing that we didn't know about. So there's no surprises. I think that the team in Eurotab is really, really good. Sometimes when you buy a business, the business being bought a little bit begrudgingly. Having said that, Eurotab are absolutely not in that bracket. They are hugely positive. They are really good and want to make this a success, and we have welcomed them with open arms into the McBride team. So I've been really pleasantly surprised by, I'd say, their enthusiasm and their ability, which is really positive.

And look, on cross-selling, I suppose the Turkish market is an interesting place. It's a big economy, of course. It's new to us. I think the existing ranges that Eurotab produced in Turkey for that market need updating. That's one of the things we are working on already. We will seed that market from our European operations in the short term to try to grow our presence across more than just auto dishwash with those customers. And then as those volumes grow, we would look to then invest in the right way into that location. So yes, I think it's obviously, we've had good conversations already with some of the retailers. I think they're quite encouraged by the fact that a private label expert has really taken on this business. And yes, it will take some time, but we have some -- I think the scale is not going to be 10% of the group, but it will be material to the Eurotab, Turkey operations, yes.

Well, I think a good positive note on which to end. I'd like to thank our audience for a very wide range of interesting questions. I would remind you if you could just hold on for 1 minute after this closes and complete the feedback form. That would be appreciated. And for those of you who want a bit more perspective about what this all means in terms of future forecasts, I would recommend, of course, the Equity Development note by Caroline Gulliver, which went out yesterday and retains a fair value of 265p for McBride's shares. They've had very nice 61% rise in the last 12 months, but perhaps there was a little bit more to go for. And of course, our thanks go to Chris and Mark for making the time to talk us through all of this. And for being very, very busy in recent months. And I think a little holiday is deserved by at least one of you two, someone else can mind the shop. So thank you very much, gentlemen.

Thank you all.

Thank you all for being here. Thank you.