Hilton Food Group Plc (HLTFF) Q2 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning everybody and welcome to Hills and Foods interim results for 2025. I'm Steve Morrell, Group Chief Executive and I'm joined today by our Chief Financial Officer, Matt Osborne. I'd like to start with an overview of our performance for the period, which has seen us continue to deliver a solid performance and strong strategic progress despite some operating challenges in the market. Over this first half, we've delivered another robust set of numbers, progressing volumes, revenue and profit. Volumes are up 2.5% and this reflects both the relevance of our core ranges and our ability to adapt to market dynamics. Our return on capital employed remains robust at 20.8% and improvement of 0.6 percentage points compared to half one in 2024. and earnings per share increased by 5 percentage points, reaching 26.5 pence. Revenues grew strongly, up 10.4%, demonstrating both the scale of our business and the strength of our customer partnerships. Profit before tax was also up by 3%, to 33.6 million. Our balance sheet remains strong, with net debt at 1.3 times EBITDA, Finally, we're proposing an interim dividend of 10.1 pence per share, representing an increase of 5.2% year on year, underlying our confidence in the long-term growth prospects of the business and in line with our progressive dividend policy. In the first half of the year, we saw a good performance in red meat and convenience with volumes growing 3.1%. This is above market growth and reflects the strength of our customer partnerships, our operations, and our winning product ranges. In contrast, we've seen softer demand in whitefish, mainly as a result of raw material inflation, with higher prices dampening demand. At Poppen, we've seen an impact on operations after certain batches of products did not meet the...