Hilton Food Group Plc (HLTFF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning and welcome to Hilton Foods interim results for 2024. I'm Steve Morales, the group chief executive, and I'm presenting today with our chief financial officer, Matt Osborne. This morning, we will share our interim performance compared to last year, review the progress that we're making in the business versus our strategic priorities, and lay out the strength of the platform that we have for our long-term growth. Turning to the numbers, we've had a strong first half to the year, delivering growth across all three areas of volume, revenue and profit on a constant currency basis. At our four-year results, I stood here with a message to focus on driving our core volumes and continuing the progress in our seafood business. I believe these results represent another step forward in delivering on what we said. Our balance sheet continues to strengthen, and I am pleased to announce an interim dividend of 9.6 pence, an increase of 6.7% on the prior year, and in line with our progressive dividend policy. These interim results have been driven by the strong operational performance across the business and our best place product offer. Our core categories remain attractive and relevant to our customers and their consumers, with our major protein meat notably driving our volume growth over the first six months of the year across all operating regions. The continued progress in the seafood business underpins the profit performance in the UK and Ireland and remains on track to return to pre-2022 profit levels by the end of 2025. Our incremental work to leverage our existing product offer across more countries continues with particular success on coated seafood into New Zealand and slow cooked meats into Ireland. Turning to Canada, we remain on track to start producing for...