Croda International Plc (CRDA) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

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Replay transcript excerpt

WEBVTT 00:00:00.031 -- 00:00:05.581 Good morning, everyone. Great to see so many of you here at the London Stock Exchange. 00:00:05.581 -- 00:00:08.807 Welcome to all of you who've joined us virtually as well. 00:00:08.807 -- 00:00:14.016 I'm here with Anthony Fitzpatrick, our interim CFO, and we'll both run through our respective 00:00:14.016 -- 00:00:17.403 sections of the presentation set out on this slide. 00:00:17.403 -- 00:00:22.070 And as soon as we've done that, we'll be very happy to take your questions. 00:00:22.070 -- 00:00:26.061 So it's been another transitional year for Crota, following two exceptionally strong 00:00:26.061 -- 00:00:28.708 years in 21 and 22. 00:00:28.708 -- 00:00:33.520 Sales growth was weaker than we'd hoped, but proactive actions to reduce cost and drive 00:00:33.520 -- 00:00:38.253 efficiency enabled us to deliver profits in line with expectations. 00:00:38.253 -- 00:00:43.440 Overall, this performance is still a far cry from where we want to be. 00:00:43.440 -- 00:00:47.565 And we've continued to take further steps to strengthen the business by making Crota 00:00:47.565 -- 00:00:52.631 more focused and more efficient. So I'll start with a summary of the results and talk 00:00:52.631 -- 00:00:56.757 about constant currency changes to give you a better understanding of the underlying 00:00:56.757 -- 00:01:01.805 trends. Group sales were down 1% or up 2%, excluding 00:01:01.805 -- 00:01:05.629 the 48 million of covered lipid sales in the prior year. 00:01:05.629 -- 00:01:10.875 Sales volumes started to recover and increased demand for innovation helped 00:01:10.875 -- 00:01:15.380 sales of new and protected products to grow by 6%. 00:01:15.380 -- 00:01:20.585 The adjusted operating margin was down year on year, with 2023 having benefi...