M.P. Evans Group (LSE:MPE) — Full-year results for the year ended 31 December 2025

0:01 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the MPEF Group PLC twenty twenty five Results. Throughout today's recorded meeting, attendees will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They could be submitted at any time. Please just use the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen, type in your questions and press send. Before we begin, we would like to submit the following poll, and I'm sure the company would be most grateful for your participation. I'd now like to hand over to the management team from MPEF Group PLC. Peter, good afternoon. Thank you very much, Mark, and good afternoon to everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for this presentation of our 2025 annual results. I'm joined as usual by my colleagues, Matthew Coulson, our CEO, and Luke Shaw, our CFO.

0:47 And as usually happens, we'll take you through the presentation, which will last about half an hour, and then we'll allow up to another half an hour for any questions you may have. And please do submit any any questions that you're interested in knowing the answers to. But the full presentation and q and a won't go on for any longer than one hour. So without further ado, let us move to the first slide. This is an overview of us, MPE Evans. We're a 150 year old AIM listed plantation group, focusing on sustainable Indonesian palm oil. We now, including our, smallholders who I think to our projects have, over 70,000 planted hectares.

1:42 We, produce 76% of our CPO is certified sustainable. The the that has gone up, as Matthew would explain, because, we are taking out less from independent smallholders. We've continued to grow. Impressively, we've acquired 14,000 hectares since 2023. We have six zero waste palm oil mills. Again, Matthew will talk more about that on the sustainability section. Apart from the seven of us in The UK, we have over now 12 and a half thousand employees in Indonesia. And on a five year total shareholder returns basis, which includes dividends and indeed share price growth, we have achieved a 121%.

2:37 So we can move to the next slide, and this has been, another a new record year, helped, of course, by the strong pricing of palm oil. Also, as I just touched on, by the beneficial crop mix, which has led to record profits and indeed cash generation, we're continuing to grow the group with, more planting, more areas acquired, and a continued improvement in the quality of our of our management, improving yields on both FFP and indeed CPO extraction rate. We are now in an extremely strong financial position, a robust balance sheet, all debt repaid and indeed significant net cash now.

3:32 We continue to deliver to shareholders increasing dividends and indeed share price growth, which one would look forward to continuing. So if we move to the next slide, these are, if you like, the key the the highlights from 2025, 5% increase in revenue to over 370,000,000, a significant increase in earnings per share up to over 160 p. The normal dividend for the year has been increased to 60p per share. So the final dividend proposed is up from last year's 37.5 to 42p per share.

4:21 As just mentioned, we are debt free with net cash now of 87,500,000. The total crops harvested between ourselves and our smallholders, 1,300,000 tonnes. The yield per hectare for our FFP fresh fruit bunches is 21.5 tons per hectare, a 3% increase from last year. And I think a very impressive so all credit to the team for having significantly increased the extraction rate from last year by 1.3% to 23.5%, which is a very creditable level, but we aim to continue to improve this. And as just mentioned, the proportion of total sustainable production is 76%.

5:22 These, just to remind you, are our core strategic pillars, responsibility, excellence, growth, and yield. And they all link in one one with the others. You can run your eye over some of the bullet points there, but I won't run through each of each of them. But just to say, if it weren't for the the responsible approach that we take and the excellence of our team, the excellence of our facilities, we wouldn't be able to encourage the best people to to join us or indeed to stay with us. So it it all feeds in one into the other.

6:09 And, of course, leads to further growth, not just from more acquisitions and new plantings, but also from improving the quality of what we what we already do. And that, in turn, leads to the the yield in terms of yields, return on on investment, returns to shareholders by way of dividends. But we also are looking at investing in new areas of land, particularly around around the mills, those six mills that that I referred to. So I'll now, at this point, hand over to Matthew to talk about the market initially.

6:55 Fantastic. Thank you very much, Peter. So as you said, we'll just start by taking a very quick look at the palm oil market. But even before that, the wider vegetable oil market. Many of you will have seen this slide before. We've simply added another year to it to show what's happened in 2025. And as you can see, the vegetable market does indeed continue to grow as we've added the 2025 bar to this chart. Demand continues to increase around the world for vegetable oil. We now have a thirty five year series here on this chart, and and demand continues to tick up over the last thirty five years on average. We've seen about a 4% increase year to year to year in demand and indeed in consumption of vegetable oil around the world.

7:53 The largest individual vegetable oil within that complex is is Parm. You can see the bottom part of each of those bars in dark green is the contribution made made by palm. And if indeed we do look at palm in a little bit more detail, As I'm sure many of you are aware, the largest producer of palm globally is Indonesia itself, and you can see that Indonesia as a producer accounts for almost 60% of the world's production of palm. In terms of consumers, again, Indonesia is is the largest individual consumer of palm around the world.

8:39 Generally speaking, a large proportion of palm is consumed in Asia. It is the most traded, and and it is the most exported of the world's vegetable oils, but a a large proportion of consumption does happen in that part of the world. One of the reasons why Indonesia is the is the largest in is the largest individual country country in terms of consumption is is is to do with their their program of supporting biodiesel, biofuel consumption within within the country. Indonesia has a very large biofuel program. It has something that is currently described as a b 40 program, which means that all of all of the biofuel that's consumed within the country is expected to have a 40% palm blend within it.

9:30 Indonesia is currently exploring the potential to move from b 40 to b 50, which would obviously mean a further increase in in demand and consumption for palm within Indonesia. The other important thing to say about palm is just how efficient it is, and that's really what's illustrated on the right hand side of this chart. The blue bars give you an indication of the ability of other main vegetable oils to produce oil per hectare of land cultivated. And you can see those other major vegetable oils typically doing less than one ton for every hectare cultivated.

10:16 Palm does a lot better. Palm, on average, will do more three tons per hectare per annum. Palm done well, we'll do a lot more. You can see the dark green bar there representing what we achieved in 2025, which was actually just just over five tons on average for every mature hectare that we cultivated. And, of course, that's that's an expression, I should say, of the of the crude palm oil that's produced. Of course, there are two products. So on on top of that, there's there's even more that comes out from every hectare because, of course, there's crude palm oil, but also the palm kernels and, hence, the palm kernel oil that comes through as well.

11:05 In terms of market dynamics, the market has been strong again throughout 2025, and you can see from the chart on the top left hand side of this slide an illustration of that. We saw a small dip in in q two, but otherwise, pricing was very strong throughout 2025. You may remember from this time last year, we were very pleased to be able to report to you that we had an average price of over $800 per per ton leading to the to the great results for that year, and we had an average price in 2024 of 823. Now we're telling you we have an average price of 866 in terms of our average for 2025, which is a fantastic result for the year. We also saw a step up in terms of the average price we were able to achieve for the pump kernels that we sold, and Luke will cover that in a bit more detail shortly.

12:16 This slide simply illustrates the the mix change in terms of our inputs and our outputs. Very importantly, as Peter was mentioning earlier, we continue to take in a smaller proportion of crop from outside suppliers to process in our mills. Proportionately, we continue to process more and more of the high quality crop that comes from the areas that we manage. So as you can see, in 2024, almost a quarter of what we processed came from outside. Now that's down to 15%, and that makes a real difference to us in terms of not only our cost base and our margins, and Luke will cover that in a bit more detail, but also the quality of our output.

13:06 And so you can see we're continuing to push up the sustainable proportion of our output now up to over three quarters, and we want to see that continuing to go up as a proportion as we move forward. So I think at that point, we should move on and talk a bit more about the financial performance in detail, and I'll hand over to Luke for that. Thanks, Matthew. So I think if we start by just looking at revenue, we've touched on that that went up 5% in the year. You can see the growth there from 352,800,000 to 371. And a large proportion of that was really the pricing environment that we saw in '25, not just on the CPO side, but also on palm kernel pricing. That was up 42%, and you can see that the PK revenue, so was a greater proportion of total revenue in the year.

14:02 On top of that, also, we saw our sustainability income flat really for the year despite that increased output that Matthew was just talking about in the previous slide. The units that or the amount, I should say, that we are able to receive for a unit of certified output, particularly on the PK side, went down in the year about 20%. So, unfortunately, that pricing impact was more than that volume upside that Matthew was just talking about in the previous slide, but still in and around that 5,500,000 mark. On the right hand side of the chart here, we have our two cost metrics, and we focus predominantly on the first cost metric, which is the cost to produce a ton of our own palm product. And you can see that that was relatively flat in 2025, 04/14 versus 410 in 2024.

14:56 If you then look at the breakdown of those costs, that was quite static as well. In the past few years, we've had some ups and downs with fertilizer pricing, but across '24 and '25, that was relatively static. You'll also see that we we benefited from about $10 per ton by weakening Indonesian rupiah. So we've seen that now for a couple of years where the Indonesian rupiah has weakened against the dollar, and that makes particularly our labor cost in Indonesia cheaper in dollar terms. So we definitely benefited from that over the last two years. I mean, sort of estimate that around $10 per ton in 2025. Always worth pointing out when we reference this this number that it's a fully loaded number, includes all of our overheads across the group in in Indonesia, including the head office. But, also, it includes circa 20% of noncash I. Depreciation.

15:53 So when looking at breakeven levels, when looking at our cash cost per ton, you can kinda take 20% off of that four one four, and it's obviously a much lower number. The second cost metric that we look at is the total cost, which per ton, which then incorporates the cost of supply from both our scheme smallholders and also the independent suppliers as well. And that went up to $528 compared to 519 the year before. That went up a little bit less than our revenue. And for those that that are aware or those that are not, I should say, when we see an increase in the commodity price, that flows down to the cost of supply from scheme smallholders and independent suppliers. And I'll demonstrate that a little bit more on the next slide. And so we saw an increase there of 2% in terms of total cost per ton.

16:50 We can just jump to the next slide. So focusing on profitability. So this is a gross profit bridge, which takes you from gross profit in 2024 of a 116,000,000 through to where we ended up in 2025. So the first two bars on the left hand side, you can see the green and the red, they net out to a net price benefit of just over $20,500,000 in '25. And, again, that's coming from the pricing benefit for CPO, but also p k two. And I just touched on the fact that as the commodity price goes up, so too does the cost of supply, that's and why we'll always have a net price benefit in there, providing we are buying in from independent suppliers. And we will, of course, continue to buy in from our scheme smallholders.

17:38 So that takes you to the to the first blue bar. We then look at the next few items. So we did process at slightly less total crop in 2025 compared to 2024, and that resulted in a small decrease in the volumes that we dispatched throughout '25. But we were able to offset that by the mix change, and that's where we've been processing, as Matthew touched on, more of our own crop as a proportion of the total. And that's a much higher margin than what we achieve on independent crop and scheme smallholder. So that mix benefit, which also includes an improvement in extraction rate, that we quantified there, and that absolutely outstrips that volume reduction as well.

18:24 The next bar, 3,300,000, that is the additional gross profit we received in the year from the new acquisition that we made in July 2025. So we added two new subsidiaries, SBS and SKMA in 2025, and they have formed part of our Boomi Mass estate in the in East Kalamantan. And at the time, we announced that we paid approximately $1,212,500 dollars per hectare for that land, and that's slightly more than we have paid previously for for land. But one of the reasons for that is the fact the land that we require, and in particular, the plantings were of much higher quality than we had purchased previously. And that meant that they were able to effectively supply the mill at a good rate and a good yield immediately, and that ultimately generated that that earnings accounting amount of 3,000,000 in the second half. So it's a fantastic return on our initial outlay of just over 30,000,000, which I'll come on to in a minute.

19:28 And then, of course, we do have some cost pressure. In particular, in Indonesia, we have our labor inflation, which we have to try and manage as best we can. We try and do that by offsetting that labor increase by increasing the amount of output to really drive that cost per ton down as we touched on the previous slide, that four one four number. That 6,000,000, though, is still sort of less than 3% of the total cost base for for the group. So we try our best to to manage that. And then if you add in the final light green bar of two two point nine, that effectively is the FX benefit, which also helps us on that cost base. So that's the weakening IDR coming through in absolute terms.

20:15 And if you then take that across the page, you get to the 142,000,000 of gross profit, up 22% compared to 2024. That drops through further down the p and l to our operating profit. That's gone up by 20%. And then our profit for the year is up 25%, and Peter's already touched on the fact we repaid all of our debt in the year, reducing as a result the finance cost for the group. So we've now moved in 2025 to a net finance income position, and that gives us a little bit extra when we kinda move down from operating profit down to profit for the year. So that's up 25%. If we move on from profit and then take a look at cash so, hopefully, most people are familiar with this chart now, but if not, the top bar reflects the amount of cash that we came in to the year with. So that first blue bar, the 79,000,000, that takes account of the cash that we came into 2025 with. That was a gross cash number. We had net cash at that point close to around $46,000,000.

21:23 And then the bigger light green bar at the top of the page, that shows exactly how cash generative the business is. Of course, supported by some of that price environment, but still generating over a $160,000,000 from cash from operations in 2025 is fantastic. And that's a 116% cash conversion. The bar below ultimately shows how we use that cash throughout 2025. So we've continued to pay our taxes. Then I touched on the fact we've repaid all of our debts, so we were due to repay all of our US dollar debt that we'd had for a number of years. That was repaid by the first half. But then in the second half of the year, we accelerated our repayment on the Indonesian debt that we had acquired as part of an acquisition in 2023.

22:14 So we are now debt free on the balance sheet. The three dark green bars in the middle, that is a continuation of our balanced approach to capital allocation. So with the first one to be CapEx just under 25,000,000, we're continuing to invest in the group, continuing in particular to plant new areas at our Mussiavalles estate and also at Cotabaggan, our enlarged Cotabaggan estate where some of the areas we acquired in 2023 have have planting opportunities. We then made that acquisition in the year that I touched on for around $33,000,000, adding in that additional hectare just around 3,000 hectares, and then also continued to give money back to shareholders through dividends. And that number there reflects the final dividend from last year and the interim dividend for 2025.

23:07 So despite doing a reasonable job of spending the cash that we came into the year with, we actually exit '25 with more cash than we came in at just over 87,000,000. And I think we've said in the past that having cash on the balance sheet is beneficial for a couple of reasons. One, obviously, we are in a commodity business, and we need to manage any of those cycles that come through. But, also, what we do find is having cash readily available when it comes to m and a opportunities does put us at a little bit of advantage if it comes to a competitive process. So having that available absolutely helps us when it comes to our growth ambitions moving forward. And then this slide here is just to shows just shows our dividend progression.

23:53 So we now have a record of thirty five years of either maintaining or increasing our dividend, and that's something that we're very proud of at MPEvans, and it's something that the board take really seriously. And and because we take so seriously, when we do think about dividend increases, we absolutely take an approach to a sustainable dividend growth model. So we had a very good year in 2025 from an earnings perspective, over a 160 p per share, and we distributed 60 p as Peter joined such on for 2025, up from up by 14% compared to the prior year. And with that, I'll pass back to Matthew for some sustainability.

24:40 Great. Thank you, Luke. As as Luke says, no presentation from us is complete without a few words on our sustainability strategy and how we continue to deploy that. First of all, a quick update for you on where we are with our our carbon balance sheet, as it's called. We've been measuring this now for the last five years. We first recorded our our carbon balance sheet in accordance with the guidelines back in 2021. And it's very pleasing to be able to report to you that that that balance sheet, unlike our financial one, has shrunk significantly since we first captured it, now down by 45%. We've been working very hard in this area.

25:26 And and particularly, if you measure it in a in a sense of carbon intensity, which is one of our KPIs, and actually, it's gone down even more because, obviously, it is reduced as production has increased. So when measured and looked at per ton of of CPO produced ton of palm product, and, actually, it's down by more than half. So we're pleased with progress in this area, and we're carrying on carrying on thinking about what more we can do to to work towards the targets that that have been set. Giving a live example of operation operationalizing, if I could use such a terrible word, sustainability.

26:15 Again, we've spoken about this before, but really to give you a sense of scale, we're very pleased with the progress that's been made with our biogas, our bioelectricity facilities across our mills. Last year, we generated not far shy of 40,000,000 kilowatt hours of renewable electricity at these facilities, which is superb. The vast majority of that, we then use in our own operations to replace what would otherwise be effectively powered by diesel gensets, putting it bluntly. So it's a fantastic sustainability win. It's also a fantastic win for us in terms of cost savings because even after netting off the cost of of running these facilities, we estimate that by doing this, we're saving more than $4,000,000 each year.

27:14 So fantastic for us in terms of reducing our exposure to to the cost of alternative fuel sources, but clearly, also a fantastic win from a sustainability perspective. And we're excited about doing more. This is not the end of the story when it comes to these facilities. At the moment, we can only use the the renewable electricity as far as we can put out our electricity grids around our estates. So there are some remote locations that we can't get to, and we're thinking about what we can do there. And we're excited about a new a new program we're developing now to actually compress the biomethane and then send it around to our more remote locations so we can use renewable energy to replace other sources of energy in our more remote locations around some of our estates, which is fantastic. And we have we we hope to have that operational next year.

28:20 Thinking more broadly about future plans for the group, I hope you get the sense that this is this is a journey, not a destination, and there's lots more that we're still focused on in accordance with our strategic priorities. We continue to push up the amount of certified sustainable output that we deliver both in terms of absolute volumes and in terms of the proportion of our output as we become less and less reliable reliant on buying in from outside suppliers. So expect to see that continue to change as you've seen it change in 2025. We're building a number of new facilities. A very good example being that biomethane plant that we're building to make sure we're we're getting the very, very best out of our ability to generate renewable energy across all of our facilities.

29:16 We're continuing to grow. We're still planting. We're still planting new hectares at several of several of our locations, but we're continuing to look for new suitable lands to bring into the group, very similar to what we've just done in 2025 where we bought the the hectare close to Biminas. We want to be doing more and more of that. If we're successful in buying more land around our Simpan Curie project in in Acha in Northern Sumatra, then that would give us the opportunity to build our seventh mill. And that's something we're excited about looking at if we can find that suitable land. And, of course, all of this is within the commitment to make sure we're applying sound financial management and capital allocation, a core part of which, of course, is deploying funds towards continuing to enhance shareholder returns.

30:16 We're absolutely committed to our progressive approach to dividends. You'll remember that the the slide that Luke just showed you in terms of what we've been doing with dividends over recent years, and we absolutely want that to continue. This slide really just further illustrates, if you like, I guess, the sort of size of the prize in in terms of what's possible as we go forward. If you look at the chart on the right hand side of this slide, you can see where where we've come from and how the the green dark and light green part of this bar representing the crops that we harvest have grown and we expect will continue to grow as areas continue to mature, as we continue to push up at 21 and a half tons per mature hectare in the coming years.

31:08 Then the blue represents us continuing to buy some crop from outside suppliers. Then the the gap that in future years, we've colored in orange, that goes to show where we've got that real opportunity to buy in further hectare to continue the growth story for the group. And, of course, it's not just the orange. Of course, we would be delighted to buy more than the orange and continue to squeeze out the blue, if you like. If we're successful in buying enough to do so, that would be superb. And, of course, here we are today reporting to you on 2025, and and we're almost a quarter of the way through 2026 already, so we we should give you an update on that as well.

31:58 And we're pleased to do so, pleased to share with you that 2026 has got off to a great start too. You've got a sense of that in terms of this this table showing you the first two months of crop. You can see that our own crop continues to increase compared to the first two months of last year. We continue to to hold back and hold the line in terms of what we're buying in from outside suppliers. So that mix change is carrying on, and we're pleased that that is the case. And pricing remains very strong. So in the first two months of the year, we see average pricing of around $860 per ton in terms of what we've been tendering, but we do see signs of increases in in March for very obvious reasons given what's going on in in in the wider world.

32:56 Can't say how clearly, can't say how long that that will last, but but we do see signs of higher pricing at the current time, and that will benefit our our results in the latter part of this first quarter. So that's where we are. This slide simply summarizes what you've heard, a fantastic 2025, whilst at the same time, we feel we've got off to a great start in in 2026 with lots more exciting things to come. So, hopefully, that that gives a clear picture. We we we can see there have been lots of questions coming in along the way. But just at this point, I'll pass back over over to Mark for a moment. Thank you very much. That's great. Peter, Matthew, Luke, thank you very much indeed for updating investors. Ladies and please do continue to submit your questions just using the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of the screen. Just want the guys to take a few moments to review your questions.

33:57 I'd like to remind you, a recording of this presentation will be available post today's session. Peter, if I may, it'd be a good time to hand back to you, if I could ask you please to moderate us through the questions. There's a number of questions. Thank you to everybody for engagement. And Peter, over to you, sir. Yes, indeed. I echo that, Mark. Thank you so much for a very good and interesting range of questions submitted. We'll we'll try and get through them as best we can in the remaining twenty five or so minutes. So, broadly, I think I can sort of take them through from top to bottom. There are some which are a little bit overlap, but we'll get through as as best we can. So since the war began in The Middle East, the Russian palm oil prices moved up. Has the mill gate price in Indonesia tracked to this?

34:43 And is there likely to be an export tax? Presumably an increased export tax? Did do you want to Who is gonna take that? I want to take that. Yeah. Yeah. I think that you're you're right. The SIF Rotterdam price has gone up in particular over the last couple of weeks. We we haven't seen the the movement in that SIF, Rotterdam price. We haven't seen that drop through to the EMG pricing at this stage. We have seen, as Matthew touched on, I think, just just a little while ago, we have seen an an increase in the EMG price above the sort of reported level of $8.60 for the first two months of the year. We have seen that, but we haven't seen, if you like, proportionate increase in Ciforadenant drop down to EMG. Now sometimes that can take some time Yep. To to do so considering where we are in the chain, but we haven't seen that. But what I will say is that we haven't seen, and we're not expecting any changes in the tax environment as a result of that.

35:48 The the tax scale is a graduated scale. So the proportion that the government take on the export tax levies is is effectively the same as the price goes up and as it comes down. So we're not expecting an additional tax grab, if you like, based on where the pricing is at the moment. But we'll obviously keep an eye on that as we move forward into April. Thank you, Luke. Will you be interested in the next one, Matthew? What proportion of cost of production is fertilizer cost? Do you have alternative sources of fertilizer than typical ammonium nitrate based products, e. G, non chemically produced alternatives? Yes. So, to answer the first part of the question, you may have noticed in the earlier parts of the presentation in reviewing the cost per ton, excuse me, the cost per ton analysis, fertilizer cost accounts for a little bit more than 10%, about 11% of the total cost of production.

36:54 In terms of alternative sources of fertilizer, we do produce quite a substantial amount of organic fertilizer as part of the milling process. So when we think about our integrated milling facilities and the fact that we're entirely committed to this concept of zero waste, the empty fruit bunches that come out of the milling process are actually put through a composting facility to generate organic compost that goes back into the field. That's very much complementary to the the use of of inorganic fertilizers. So we do still use inorganic fertilizers alongside that that compost.

37:40 I presume that partly the the question is motivated by some reporting about the fact that, again, broader global factors are leading to some increases in input costs and fertilizer has been referred to specifically recently. That may have an effect on us as we move forward. And one thing I would say, though, is that we had prior to what's been happening in The Middle East already secured our our fertilizer tenders all the way through to the end of twenty twenty six, which gives us a degree of security in terms of price certainty for all of this year.

38:31 Thank you, Matthew. The next question is, as a company listed on AIM, are you eligible for the AIM tax benefits? Perhaps I'll I'll attempt a brief answer on that, so correct me, finance director, if you have anything to add. But I think in short, we would say that we don't provide advice on this. However, we and certainly, I have not known of any cases where an estate where there were MPE of the shares have not been eligible for the full AIM tax benefits. Of course, those benefits have changed since the chancellor's budget of whenever it was, which I'm sure most people will be familiar with. But as far as we are aware, we continue to be eligible, but you must seek your own separate advice on this.

39:32 Now there there are there are two or three questions on this particular topic. The first one is, would you please expand on your statement regarding the Indonesian task force known as Satgas and their purpose in Indonesia. The next one do we want to make the old note, Matthew? Because I might link these all in together. The next one is is related. It is with regard to potential challenges to legal titles, which have been referred to in the press. The question says, with local groups, smallholders, is the land title issue a possible concern for MPE. Evans? And then we also had a question regarding whether there have been any challenge by sat gas to companies, foreign companies like ourselves owning land in in Indonesia.

40:32 And I believe there was another question along those lines. But I think that's the that that pretty much summarizes the extent of questions or gives a board a claim for the questions about this particular issue. So do you want an attempt to answer on that? By all means. Yes. And I think this is an important issue, and, understandably, there are bound to be questions about it given what's been happening. In terms of the purpose, first of all, our understanding is that this task force, sat gas task force are seeking out areas where development has not happened properly. Properly, typically, would mean where areas have been developed that should not have been developed because they're in areas that are are more properly designated as forest areas and or where there is there isn't proper title to the land, bringing in the sort of second question that's coming up about concerns with legal title to the land.

41:44 Now in terms of then those second parts to the questions that are being asked about to what extent do we see this as a concern for MPEvans, it's very important then to reflect back on what has been for the very long term our approach to responsible development. And we've always been extremely clear, and I'm sure you've heard this from us, those of you who participated before, our approach to ensure that the areas that we cultivate are indeed suitable for cultivation, and that's been a very, very long standing approach that we've taken. We've also been extremely clear about ensuring that we have a a fantastic legal team who work very, very hard to ensure that all the necessary titling process is done extremely diligently.

42:46 And because of these two fundamental factors, whilst, you know, it would be foolish of me to sit here and tell you that we are sort of exempt from any review by an Indonesian task force. Of course, we're not. We we are, you know, like everybody else under their purview. Of course, we are. But I think because of these fundamental factors, we feel that puts us in a in a in a robust position. Yeah. Absolutely. Next question. Can you give some color on the operational resilience of your mills if the current oil prices do not recede quickly, presumably, meaning if there were shortage and etcetera, which we rely on oil.

43:36 Would you like to do that, Peggy? I'm taking my time. Yep. Yep. I mean, in terms of the the mills themselves, the answer to that is extremely resilient because slightly going back to this point about the the zero waste nature of the mills, the mills themselves use a negligible amount of external power in order to run, genuinely a negligible amount of external power to run. The areas where we need to focus is, as I think we've already mentioned, around transport. So actually transporting the crop to the mill and transporting the output from the mill. But the the underlying mill operation itself uses a a remarkably small amount of external power.

44:32 And a sort of slightly, you know, linked, but another sort of potential outcome from the recent crisis situation in The Middle East. There's a Bloomberg report that the biodiesel 47 blend could be disrupted by a shortage of methanol, a crucial element for the production of biodiesel due to the war in Iran as Indonesia has to import around 50% of its needs. Any views on this? Being perfectly candid, this is not something that we've been made aware of. As far as we're aware, there is a continuing strong demand for palm as a as a feedstock into biofuel.

45:17 And if anything, as as we were saying, there is a continuing review of the potential to increase the mandate from the current b 40. Luke, perhaps you might take this one. I would have presumed that demand for certified product would be increasing. So why did the premier reduce? Yeah. I mean, we would absolutely love the demand for sustainable product to to increase. I think we have to reflect that there are only certain parts of the world that are are that have been and continue to demand certified sustainable output. And as a result, because that has been falling a little bit, so too has the premiums.

46:07 If some markets, end markets where CPO and PK end up, particularly in in Asia, were to start demanding sustainable output, then we were in a fantastic position to take advantage of that. And that is when you will see those premiums start to go up. So it really is a demand driven element in terms of why those unit pricings have have fallen slightly. Another one for you, Luke. What is the capital outlay for an additional seven mill? Notwithstanding all of the moving parts that are going on in the world right now, I don't know if that would have any impact. But, typically, it does depend on the size of the mill that you build.

46:52 We have a range of mills, but if you were to build a sort of 60 ton per hour mill, which is typically what our mills are well, that said, I should say if you're particularly on the seventh mill, that would be at our St. Pancurious state. We may build a slightly smaller one there. So for a 30 ton per hour mill, probably looking at somewhere in the region of 15 to $20,000,000 outlay for that. Yep. And talking of costs, perhaps Matthew, do you want to take this one? How easy is it to buy land? Do you prefer crop you can improve, planting yield, or good quality land with no potential to improve? What price do you consider fair? Gotcha. There's a selection of difficult questions there.

47:40 How easy is it to buy land, first of all? Not very, but I think it'd be fair to say. Certainly, when you layer on top of the equation, the fact that we have some fairly stringent criteria that we need to consider when buying land. Part of that is to do with what I was just discussing in terms of any land that we buy needs to be of suitable quality in terms of land titling and in terms of its environmental characteristics and that it's been properly cultivated in a suitable area. But then on top of that, we have a whole load of other conditions that we will deploy as part of our diligence process before we buy land.

48:30 In terms of the what what sort of land do we prefer on one where we can improve it or one that's already, you know, fantastic and has no opportunity to improve? Probably the former, to be perfectly honest. Because if it's already superb, then chances are well, actually, it's unlikely that you'll get access to the latter. Yeah. Because if it's already superb and doing really well, then it's probably held by a company that knows exactly what they're doing and likes likes it very much and is not going to sell it. The typical ones that are actually available for sale tends to be ones where actually they do need some improvement and do need somebody to come along and make it better.

49:15 So it it actually tends to be the the the former, the ones that need some improvement work, that tend to be the ones that that change hands more often Yeah. Than than the ones that are already superb, which which which are in from a marketing and transaction perspective like hen's teeth. In terms of pricing that we consider fair, again, a really hard question. You get a sense of that in terms of the transaction prices that you can look at that we've paid over the last few years. In 2025, we paid just over $12,000 a planted hectare for the land near. That was of a reasonable quality on the way in. That was already producing at a good standard. And as Luke has already indicated, it was all was immediately earnings enhancing.

50:05 So we were happy to pay a slightly higher price for that than the previous transactions we did over the course of the last of the of these couple of years prior to that. Thanks, Matthew. Luke, that's one for you. Do you foresee issues with the supply of fertilizer in coming months? Is much in stock? Yeah. So I think this is obviously an area we do have to to keep an eye on. I think Matthew's already on the fact that we we buy in advance of our application fertilizer. So we have already secured fertilizer for the whole of 2026 at pricing below where you're currently seeing it at the moment in the market. We would next typically go back to the market to look to tender for 2027, probably around the autumn time.

50:54 So we are gonna keep an eye on that and see where pricing is at that stage. Hopefully, things have calmed down by then, and there's still the ability to get at the fertilizer and, of course, at a reasonable price. In terms of in stock, we we do kind of keep as much as we can in stock and on hand. There is a restriction in terms of the amount we can keep on-site. And and also one of the other challenges is some of the fertilizers that we purchase actually go off, go out of date. So purchasing them too far in advance would actually not be beneficial. So we try and buy as much as we can, when we can, and store as much as possible. But, inevitably, we will potentially be exposed to some of that later in the year, but let's see where we are come the autumn.

51:44 Thank you, Luke. The next one is to consider share buybacks as part of your capital allocation. If not, why not? Maybe maybe I'll attempt to answer this. We do absolutely continue to review the opportunities for share buybacks, but also, of course, balancing that against dividends and the potential for investing in new land, particularly areas around our existing plantations. There's no absolute science about the extent to which we balance these three, And we will continue to look at the opportunities for share buybacks, but it is constantly under review.

52:33 And we still believe the shares represent good value at these levels. Whether we are in a phase of buying back our own shares or not, we believe they still represent good value at the current prices. There's a reference to yes. I think that's probably a lot of potash prices have risen sharply, but is there anything that you think that we would also reference to? Yeah. Do do you want to Yeah. I think I think we've I think we've touched on the fact that '26 from a fertilizer perspective, unfortunately, we kinda got it in advance. On on the oil side, we'll have to see, but our exposure there is is not as high mainly because of some of the things we've touched on. That's about diesel price, it says. Yeah. And generating our our own power as well. Yeah. And but but you the last part of the question is is, yes, that the flip side to that cost equation is that that there could be, and we have seen so far, some upside on the CPO price, which may well offset those two cost inputs as well. So no one likes to benefit from what's happening, but there there may be, at the moment, a sort of slight net benefit in total when you factor the higher CPO price offset by those cost increases. But, of course, we'll have to keep an eye on that and see how each of those components move as we go through 2026.

54:05 I'm just reviewing the next question, which is quite a a a long one. If you've already absorbed it, Matthew, do you do you want to tackle it in to the extent that it hasn't already been Yeah. I addressed it. The the the next question, just try to summarize Yeah. Is in relation to whether we anticipate there being any impact from any changes in governmental regulations, particularly in relation to what's going on in the in the Ministry of Forestry and changing regulatory rules. Now the the short answer to that is at the moment, no. We don't. It comes back once again to the approach that we've taken over the long term.

54:53 Again, coming back to my answer earlier, we can't give cast iron guarantees on these things because we will review any changes in in regulatory environments carefully along the way. But I think once again, our our very long standing approach to the way in which we develop, the way in which we cultivate, the way in which we maintain a a responsible approach puts us in a strong position. Thank you. There's a question about the the actual cost of the fertilizer. I think that's basically been covered by Do you want to make any further comments on that? Yeah. No. I I I think we've we've kind of covered our exposure on that Yep. At this stage. Yeah. One more about sat gas. I think we have covered that. Yep.

55:41 Are staff wages reviewed regularly, and is pay increased at intervals? Yeah. Yes and yes. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Now okay. At 12,500 per hectare, which was paid for the plantation Boomi Mass, which we did acquire in 2013. How does the expected return on that investment compare to your historical acquisitions, and how should we think about returns on future deals at current market prices? Do you want to Yeah. Talk about that? I I I think, you know, that that that deal in particular is is a good deal for us on the on the basis that, as Matthew's already touched on, and I think I said earlier that the quality of the planting that we were able to acquire was was good already, we feel we can add value to that as we move forward.

56:44 So, you you know, you could you could very crudely take the sort of second half of the year results and extrapolate that out and come up with a sort of quick dirty return on capital estimate for that particular acquisition. In terms of other deals, I think that does depend on the type of land that we are purchasing. But, of course, as we've touched on throughout, we are and we do take very diligent approach to our capital allocation and looking at the returns that we can get. And we clearly do have a hurdle rate that we try and ensure we we exceed. So that's something that we do as part of our financial discipline look at. But in terms of the deals, one for the other, they're not always exactly the same.

57:30 Think that's worth pointing out. Right. Again, a slightly longer question. Given the Indonesian government's use of domestic price caps, export levies, biodiesel mandates, how exposed is the country to risk that the government could increase the mandated volume of palm oil it must supply to state linked programs while at the same time lowering or tightening the price cap, thereby compressing realized CPO prices below the prevailing international market level. Do you want to attempt? In in the next Two minutes. Very briefly, I think if if I've read it and understood it correctly, I think the point lurking behind the question is to what extent are we exposed to the fact that we are a single country, single commodity company?

58:26 And the answer is, well, yes, we are. We've identified and recognized the fact that, of course, if the Indonesian government makes changes, that that has a knock on effect on us. Of course, it does. All I can say is that up to now and as has been the case for a very long time, the government seems to be very supportive fundamentally of of this industry. It is a very, very big industry within the company I mean, sorry, within the country as a whole. And I think the government might be, to some degree, shooting itself in the foot if it was to do things that were ultimately harmful to this very large industry within within the country. Right. Thank you. I'll take the very last question, but I might also say thank you to to to or three who very kindly made some nice comments at the end. So thank you very much. But the last one is, would you prefer to invest incrementally in mills and land, or would you consider merger or acquisition of a larger company?

59:32 Perhaps I'll just briefly say we are we do continue to be focused on growth for the moment. We're focusing on areas which might potentially be acquired around our existing mills to make best use of of the capacity that we have there. In some cases, though, because we might be acquiring two, three, four, five thousand hectares, those are companies that that own those areas of that size. We're we're we're not looking at much bigger m and a type opportunities right now, but, you know, never say never, but that's the current focus. So it seems to be 01:00 now. So we've come to the end of your questions.

1:00:18 So thank you very much. That that's great, Peter. Thank you very much indeed, and you've taken every question bang on time as usual. So thank you to all of for your engagement this afternoon. Peter, I know that feedback is important to you, Matthew, Luke and the Board, and I'll shortly redirect those on the call to give you their thoughts and expectations after a great year. But perhaps I could just ask you for a few closing comments, and then I'll redirect investors for feedback. Well, thank you again very much for for tuning in, and thank you for your excellent questions. Really, really good. Good, good selection. And for those who are shareholders, we hope very much that we might be able to see you at the AGM on the June 12, and if not, another time. But thanks very much again for joining us today. That's great. Thank you very much indeed. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as we'll now redirect you in order that you can provide your feedback directly to the company. On behalf of the management team of MPEvans Group PLC, thank you for your time this afternoon and enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.