Associated British Foods plc (ABF) Q2 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

My microphone apparently is live. Look, thank you all very much for coming in. We believe there's something else going on in London, or so Chris's taxi driver said. So we're very pleased to see you here at anyone's online as well. Thank you for joining us for this review of ABF's interim results. for the 24 weeks ending the 1st of March 2025. I really am delighted to be joined by Joanna here, Joanna Edwards, who's our Interim Finance Director. Joanna has been ABF's Group Financial Controller since 2020. She knows the whole of ABF extremely well. as only I think a finance controller really can. She has very strong relationships with finance directors across the group. She's also, and I won't spare her blushes, she's a class act. She will be an excellent interim CFO and she'll be giving her detailed review of our financial results shortly. I've also invited Owen to join us this morning, not to put Joanna right or to support me in particular, but to give you his early perspectives on what he's seeing at Primark that he's now running and also some idea of what he's up to. And I hope, again, that he reassures you that life goes on and perhaps there are even added benefits. Let me briefly go through our results for this half year. Sales were in line with last year, but group adjusted operating profits were down 10% and adjusted earnings were down 8%. These figures mask a number of moving parts inevitably and a mix of performance across the businesses. I can't pretend that I'm anything but really disappointed with the results of sugar, which made an operating loss in the first half. The rest of the businesses, though, did deliver a robust performance with good profit growth. and strong margin delivery in retail, grocery and ingredients. We've kept our interim dividend in li...