Zotefoams H2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
March 24, 2025

There are 5 speakers on the call.

Operator

Attendees will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time using the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please simply type in your question at any time and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every Before we begin, we'd like to submit, the following poll, and I'm sure the company would be most grateful for your participation.

Operator

I'd now like to hand over to CEO, Ronen Cox. Good afternoon.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our presentation this afternoon where we will go through our 2024 preliminary results and we'll also take an opportunity to delve into our refresh strategy for the business. If we just move on quickly pass the disclaimer and first we'll touch on business performance. So 2024, an incredibly strong year for Zoho phones with record sales performance. Revenues up 16% to just under £148,000,000 A big driver of that was high performance products and up 37% to million with footwear within that being the real driver of that growth.

Speaker 1

In terms of earnings, record earnings before the exceptional item. So record earnings of operating profit up 20% to $18,100,000 and that drove an earnings per share before exceptionals to 25.95%. And the exceptionals were all driven by the decision to pause the investment in the resource technology and I'll come on to that in a few slides. Incredibly strong balance sheet, net debt is down 20% to £24,100,000 that excludes repay leases. Gary will go into a little bit more detail on the structure of that later.

Speaker 1

But really key is our leverage moving from $1,200,000 down to $900,000 So a really, really strong performance in 2024. If we look at the two traditional segments, so high performance products and polyolefin foams and the high performance product sector for us constituted the largest part of our sales for the first time in the history of Zoho phones. So with those sales of 79,600,000.0. As I said, the real driver around this is the strong footwear sales performance and that footwear sales performance is all driven by the partnership that we have with Nike. So TechF, which is our flame retardant grade product, and saw pretty strong sales, they're up nine, sorry, up 7% and that was despite quite a lot of headwinds still in the aviation sector.

Speaker 1

Very healthy order books in aviation, but really build rates still not getting back to pre COVID levels. And so we still see some good opportunities there looking forward that weren't materialized in 2024. We have taken the decision to make an investment in a manufacturing facility in Vietnam and that is very much centered around the footwear business and I'll take a chance to delve into a bit more detail on that later in the presentation this afternoon. The Xunsel agreement that we entered into 2024 is in some way allowing us to make that investment in Vietnam. But again, I'll touch on that in more detail when we come in to review that later in the presentation this afternoon.

Speaker 1

Very strong margins in HPP products and up to 28.5% and that was before we touched some inventory provisions. Those inventory provisions were taken just to be quite prudent in some of the inventory that we have in the business but a very, very strong operating margins in high performance products. If we look at the traditional polyolethoam business, as I said, first time that this has become the smaller element of the business, we saw pretty muted demand in Europe actually with sales down 8% and headwinds there particularly around automotive and particularly in Central Europe. The UK on the other hand was pretty resilient with demand and sales up 4% and then we saw US sales up 3% and that was despite some quite challenging mix changes that we see reversing over the course of 2025. We had lower demand in military grade products in our polyolefin foams for The US.

Speaker 1

We're also seeing some market consolidation around industrial which inventories being removed and we see that actually turning around again in 2025. Key point in The US and the polyolefin foam business is the investment in the second low pressure vessel. The U. S. Is a tremendous market opportunity for us.

Speaker 1

That vessel, the groundwork to settle completed in 2024, actually the vessel itself is now in situ in sight and is really standing us in great stead as we look forward from there. Again, I will touch more on that as we come in and look at some of the strategy sections later in the presentation this afternoon. If we go to the next slide, mail. We took the decision at the end of the year to pause the investment in mail and that was clearly a great disappointment for us as a business. We had reviewed the opportunities around the business and determined quite some time ago, over a year ago, that to bring this to commercialization that we needed to get a strategic partner in place for this really revolutionary technology.

Speaker 1

And this is a model material, fully recyclable and challenger to the LPB market, so the liquid paperboard market. And we carried out extensive development and testing through the course of 2024. And our belief is that we've taken this product right to as far as we can take it on our own. We engaged in the markets with a right across the entire supply chain and value chain for this whole industry from resin suppliers the whole way to retailers to try and bring a strategic investor on board for us to take this development from where we have brought it to market. Now the reality was is that we were not able to do that and our view was that there was no more that we could do on our own to actually change the outcome for this product at this moment in time.

Speaker 1

Now, what's key is that we've taken the development, it hasn't gone away, we have taken the IP, We have carefully boxed it. We are protecting it. We still have some residual revenues from the MEL machine business and we're using those revenues to maintain the IP until such time as we find the right opportunity to take this out and unlock value from this. But I would stress that it is not the intention for this to do this on our own. We continue to have discussions around this with potential interested parties.

Speaker 1

We don't believe that there's anything that we can do on our own at this point that will realize that value. However, as I said, this has not gone away and we are maintaining that IP and we're certainly not forgotten about this and are looking at how we might unlock future potential from this. That said, given the decision to pause the investment in this, given the decision to pause any further attempt to commercialize this on our own, That was the reason that we took the decision to take these exceptional charges in 2024 and to essentially reduce almost all of the costs related to the business. As I say, only really retaining costs around IP protection and that IP protection is being funded by the royalties that we have from the machine business within MEL. So our focus really is to take, to move away from this particular development and to try and bring strategic partners on board but not deploying any more resources specifically to develop this ourselves so that we can take those resources and focus entirely on the development of the supercritical fluid foam business that generates the vast majority of the revenues for Zolt Foams today and indeed previously in the past.

Speaker 1

So if we go to the next slide, Gary is going to jump in and take us through some of the key financials. Gary, over to you.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Ronen. So first of all these financials are as reported. For those that look at analyst reports these do not include the amortization acquired intangibles for the simple reason that it's so small that it just confuses. It's £250,000 of adjustment I would have made this year and the exact number last year. So these are the reported numbers you will see in the annual report and we'll see it on our prelims.

Speaker 2

Looking at group revenue, that number of 147.8, a record for Zote phones is actually 4,000,000 impacted by currency headwinds. So on a constant currency basis, that was 151,800,000.0. But the reported number up 16% on last year. And as Ronan mentioned, the first year that HPP actually surpassed polyolefin foams in terms of revenues. The if you look at gross margin, 31.2%.

Speaker 2

That's down 110 bps on last year. If you actually adjust for two items, as as Ronan mentioned, you actually get to a margin very much in line with last year. Those two items being, a quite thorough review of our inventory, particularly inventory that is aging and HPP, the high performance product stuff. Our product doesn't really, when it ages, it doesn't really lose its quality. But when you get to a certain when you've been out at two, three, four years and and your and your sales people aren't moving it, you begin to sort of really start to challenge people.

Speaker 2

We challenge them a little bit more than we have in the past. We identified a million pounds of additional provision which we added to the existing provision. On top of that the Shinsell agreement is a five year agreement. It's quite a complicated accounting approach. You have to capitalise it in the balance sheet.

Speaker 2

We write that down over ten years but you also have to recognize the liability, in the bottom part of the balance sheet. And that's over five years in line with the quarterly payments over five years we're making. That was an 80,000,000 RMB investment about between 8 and £9,000,000 we took an amortization charge of half a million pounds in the year. So a full year we signed up to that agreement back in April, May. But the half a million pounds had an impact.

Speaker 2

Those two together, those items would have taken us to pretty much 32.3% as last year. We had SG and A up 8%, mainly, actually not a lot of movement in, generally in costs outside of people. I didn't mention for the growth to get to gross margin. Energy costs pretty stable, raw material costs pretty stable, roundabout the historical average if you take away the COVID years. And SG and A up 8% really very much driven by people.

Speaker 2

The full year impact of 23 editions, people in '24. We had seven months of two CEOs and we started to build the new executive team which Ronan will talk about shortly. That led to a record operating profit of £18,100,000 up 20% on the £15,100,000 of the previous year and also includes a currency headwind of £1,000,000 so constant currency £19,100,000 operating profit. Interest slightly up for much for the first three quarters of the year our average debt was slightly higher than the previous year. We also took cost related to financial costs related to Amerenstol in line with the IFRS IFRS 16 treatment of this investment.

Speaker 2

But that still left us with a record of PBT 15,300,000.0 up 19.19%. I haven't mentioned until now that's excluding exceptional item. I trust you, you'll know that that was mentioned by Ronan and you will see shortly the impacts of the exceptional item on the P and L. EPS again before the exceptional item up 37% to 25.95p. Ron has talked about the exceptional item 15,200,000.0 that was 13,800,000.0 of asset impairment.

Speaker 2

Some assets relating to the original Newsel acquisition back in pre '20 '10, so goodwill and so on but the majority of it being intangible assets as a result of capitalizing the development costs through the period since 2019 when we first launched the initiative. Taking account of that, PBT drops to £200,000 don't know why, oh yes, £200,000 and LPL and loss per share was 5.66p. So in summary record revenue, record underlying profits and the MEL impairment we summarized the P and L for 2024. If we look on to, to kind of the key cash and balance sheet items, cash generated from operations, we are a cash generative business and we proved it very much so in 2024 with £30,400,000 of cash generated. That is a very high cash conversion rate over 90% and up two and a half x that the cash generated in 2023.

Speaker 2

We did invest and I've got a slide next on capital expenditure that was £13,600,000 Working capital and net inflow this year, last year was an outflow of £11,100,000 with investments being made in inventory particularly. We've settled down, we've managed, we're starting to manage that much more tightly. We dropped the actual percentage of, that working capital as a percentage of revenue was 40% plus in 2023. That drops to 33% in 2024. And we have a target of reducing that by a further 5% through the coming five years as we as we grow business.

Speaker 2

A lot of our a lot of our receivables, longer terms are with customers that we've been with for twenty plus years. But as we grow the business and and capture new customers, we expect to see that average reduce. We will be managing our inventory more closely. And we are also taking quite proactive actions around our suppliers and trying to get a better balance between our payables and our receivables. Return on capital employed is up 140 bps at 11.7%.

Speaker 2

If you exclude our investment in Newsel that was 16% up from 14.2% in the previous year. Of course going forward those losses won't be repeated. Ron mentioned strong balancing net debt, a lot of this cash inflow the net cash impact resulted in net debt falling by 20% to 24.1% from 30.2% that in turn as Rowan also said, has left us in a very strong balancing position with 0.9x of leverage down 0.3x. The final dividend, up 4% to 5.1p, full dividend for the year 07/1948 p reflecting our progressive dividend policy. Couple of items I want to dig into in a little bit more detail just to show you.

Speaker 2

Here's the, invest, here's our capital expenditure breakdown. And you can see that when you take resource and you take LP2, the low pressure vessel that we're putting into The US, that represents 69% of our capital expenditure growth capital. So without that the 5.2% is significantly below our depreciation charge. Resource is on pause as mentioned the LP vessel is due actually arrived last week. We had very nice pictures of that of that arriving.

Speaker 2

It's quite a big thing to drive through the streets of The USA. It's there and it will now be hooked up and connected and we expect to commission early in H2. And we probably and we're looking at another £6,000,000 to complete that leading to a total of around £10,000,000 investment. Shinsell is not included in here. And then my final chart before passing back to Roman is really the debt.

Speaker 2

Previously, it's pretty straightforward. Our net debt that we that many people consider to be real debt, I. E. The natural cash number, was pretty similar to the IFRS 16, representation of debt, which includes the finance leases. Different this year with that Shin and Sail investment.

Speaker 2

So whereas on a full IFRS basis, our net debt rose from 31.6% last year to 33%. When you take out those leases, it fell, as I said before, from 30.2% to 24.1%. You can see that represented on this on this chart. You can see the impact of of our cash inflow, a free cash inflow of $13,900,000 you then funding dividends and finance charges that lead to a significant reduction in total debt. And really putting ourselves with that strong balance sheet in a really firm position upon which to be able to build our refresh strategy.

Speaker 2

And with that, I'll be passing back to Ronan.

Speaker 1

Brilliant. Thank you. Thank you, Gary. Just to repeat that point. As we look at a refresh strategy, we are refreshing the strategy from a position of tremendous strength.

Speaker 1

So that sets us in an incredibly strong position. We've spent the last nineteen minutes looking backwards. So now I don't wanna spend much of the rest of the presentation today looking forwards what we can deliver through that strategy refresh. In this slide, we've got essentially a strategy on a page. Okay?

Speaker 1

And I think what's really key here is that our purpose as a business does not change. Our purpose is around making material solutions for the benefit of society and that does not change at all. At the core of our business is a technology which is called supercritical fluid Foaming. It's a particular way of taking gases and then expanding foams. We are world leaders in that.

Speaker 1

We've got one hundred and four years experience of doing it. We've been on our biggest site for ninety years in The UK and we've been expanding from there over the last few decades. So we have got incredible strength in our core business and it's that core business that I see will continue to propel the future of this great business. As we look out five years, we're setting ourselves revenue targets that will grow revenue by up to 70,000,000 or indeed more. This business is able to generate great operating profits.

Speaker 1

I certainly believe that 18% operating profit within our strategy period is absolutely continues to be achievable. And then the bottom point on return on capital employed, I can see opportunities to really turbocharge return on capital employed in the business. So growing by over eight points from the twenty twenty four position to take return on capital employed in 20%. And that's about doing things slightly differently, but we're not talking about absolutely moving away from our core competencies in supercritical fluid foaming. There are essentially five real strands to the strategy.

Speaker 1

The first is the pivot from product to industry focus and I'm going to go into a bit more detail on that over the next few slides. The second is about expanding our capabilities. So technology capabilities that will get us closer to our customer in the format of what we produce, but also physically closer to customers. The third is around sustainable innovation. Innovation has been at the core of what we've been doing for the last one hundred and four years.

Speaker 1

It will be absolutely key to the next growth phase of this company. So we will invest more in innovation as a business. And I'll delve into that later in the slides. The two other areas, so M and A has not been a feature for Zoltfones in the past. Okay?

Speaker 1

And this is a muscle that we are developing as a business. We are preparing ourselves and making sure that we're in a fit state to actually season any of the M and A opportunities that may be out there. We're not in a rush and we're not going to bet the farm. We have created great discipline in terms of the perimeter that we set for ourselves in terms of M and A. We can see that there are multiple opportunities.

Speaker 1

But what we are doing is making sure that the word is on the street, that people understand that we are in the market and we're ensuring that we've got the right ability in house to be able to execute in transactions when the right transaction comes along. But I would stress we are not going to bet the farm. We are humble enough to understand that we have to develop this muscle and develop it over time. But what we are ensuring is that as there are opportunities that come along and we can see opportunities and indeed we're looking at opportunities that we are properly equipped to execute on those opportunities. The fifth part is around executing the strategy and this is about creating high performing teams.

Speaker 1

As Gary mentioned earlier, we've been investing and I've been investing and bringing new talent into the business to supplement the already incredible talent that we have in this great business. And as we do that and as we bring the skills in that allow us to actually execute the strategy, we're also really, really, really clear that we have to be disciplined around our cost structure. So part of executing the strategy will see us addressing cost opportunities in both manufacturing overheads and in SG and A where we are looking to actually remove existing costs from the business, both a combination of people and non people costs, and then reinvest roughly half of the costs that we take out to back into this strategy, into a strategy that will really be focused on the commercial strength within the business and also within innovation. And then underlying all of this is our focus on health and safety. As we expand this business, we've got big manufacturing facilities.

Speaker 1

Everything that we do, we ensure that we do it in a safe and responsible way. We have always done that. We will continue to do that as we take this business into its next growth phase. So just delving into some detail on those first three points, product to industry, expanding capabilities by getting closer to customer and innovation leadership. Sorry, before I go there, what I would like to underline is that as a business, our strategy period, we see organic growth to $220,000,000 but our ambition is way beyond that.

Speaker 1

And in the next slide, I'll be able to describe why we think that our ambition can be way beyond that in terms of the addressable market. Now our route of adding $70,000,000 of organic sales can be augmented by other activities, whether that is through M and A that I mentioned or opportunities for other joint ventures or joint agreements that could see us propel well past that 300,000,000 mark. And that 20% operating profit is something that is very much within our gift as an organization. And what's really key about the growth that we can deliver as a business, it will be in IP rich areas. This will be sticky sales growth.

Speaker 1

We think that the multiple we know that the multiple that can come from this business as it grows, it will be really, really strong. So touching on the first point in terms of a product to market focus. First of all, over the last few months we've engaged in very detailed market analysis. We've worked with an external consultancy who's helped us map the entire global phone market and then specifically look at the markets where we operate today and then look at the opportunities beyond that market. And the first thing I would say is that the overall phone market globally, and this is for foam, this is prefabrication, is around £106,000,000,000 The addressable market for us within that is £15,000,000,000 But traditionally, we have focused on a real small sub segment of that £800,000,000 market.

Speaker 1

Now what extends this out? Within the billion, there are two rough components. One is the polyolefin foam business and the other is the $11,000,000,000 of high performance engineered polymers. What I would stress is all the products that we make within ZOIFOANs are high performing products. If you remember what I said is 106,000,000,000 is the total phone market.

Speaker 1

We discount roughly 91,000,000,000 of that 106,000,000,000 market that we don't participate in because they are not high performing foams. The foams we make, the supercritical fluid foams are super high performing products. We create this natural difference between polyolefin foams and the high performance engineered polymers. The only difference really there is around temperature and temperature ranges that they operate. So engineered polymers typically have higher heat operating ranges, so 120 degrees and above.

Speaker 1

We can see a real opportunity to be confident about increasing our addressable market from that $800,000,000 out towards the $15,000,000,000 addressable market. And that's what we set our sights on when we look at the business and the business opportunities going forward. This is what is driving our focus in terms of where we innovate and where we operate and the markets that we operate in. Just to build on that a little bit, you will have previously probably heard for those of you that have followed the company that our product goes into well over 20 different industries. You can broadly categorize those into three segments and they are consumer lifestyle, transport and smart technologies and then construction and other industrial.

Speaker 1

We are most successful when we sell to brand owners. We are most successful when we work with OEMs to get our products specified. We see that in examples across all of these sectors. So examples like Nike who don't buy any foam directly, but specify our foam for the shoes that they have manufactured in the Tier 1s. Exactly the same with the likes of Boeing, who do not buy our foam but specify the foam and the products that their tier ones manufacture for for them.

Speaker 1

And then in the likes of construction projects where it is where the big owners of facilities that are specifying the type of materials that are used and the installations that they are getting developed. So three broad categories. And our business will not look at products because our customers are generally product agnostic. Foam. Very often we will compete against hard plastics, against aramids, against metals.

Speaker 1

And what we want to do is to offer product solutions to the industries and customers within these verticals where we see the greatest opportunity for growth. So within that then our commercial team is being reoriented. We are bringing in business development experts who understand those industries with the very longest runway for growth for us. So for example, whether it's automotive or EV batteries or whether it's footwear or whether it's medical packaging or whether it's in construction. And this orientation is allowing us to be really focused also about where we spend our innovation pounds and as I say, where we bring the talent in that know how to navigate the way through these industries to get our really high performing products onto the brand's products.

Speaker 1

I can see by the end of our strategy period by 2029 that at least 80% of our sales will come from specified sales. What does that mean? That means that the brand owners will specify our products in their products. And that the people that make things for them will use our raw material as opposed to inferior raw materials that may have been substituted in the past. Now we have got a whole host of really great fabricators that work within our business and we're gonna work with those to ensure that we've got an organized fabricator network.

Speaker 1

So approved fabricators that really know how to get the best out of our products that can work with us in the industries where they go narrow and deep. So we can see that with this focus and this application selling focus that we can also broaden that addressable market that we've typically been looking at in the past. So a huge, very significant part of the strategic shift, that shift from a product focus to an industry focus. I think the last thing I would say on this slide is what are these three broad categories have in common? The selling cycle to a Nike or Decathlon is not entirely dissimilar.

Speaker 1

So there's a lot of fast moving products, lot of attention to color seasonality, lots of changes and the sales cycle can be really, really fast. You need people to know how to navigate the sales cycle whether it's in Portland or in Neil for those customers. When it comes to transport and smart technologies, the business developers that understand how to get accreditation and get over regulatory requirements in aviation or automotive not get over but to pass them, that takes a different type of person. It's similar for medical requirements and high end application. People need to understand that long sales cycle, the level of work that goes into it.

Speaker 1

And when you when you get specified that you're stuck on a product for a very long time and can navigate through that and have the resilience to that. Different sort of people in this area than necessarily selling in the consumer and lifestyle area. And then likewise then when we come to construction, very much project oriented. Understanding what are the projects that are out there, getting in with the architects and the designers and making sure that our products are actually specified into new buildings as they come along or for those refurbishments. Again, very different selling techniques.

Speaker 1

In the past, we have sold foam. Tomorrow, we're selling solutions with knowledge of the industries that we operate in. So really key pivot. The second area that I wanted to touch on was in expanding our capabilities. So today, our primary manufacturing locations are in The UK, so in a Croydon facility where we have been for ninety years where we have all of our manufacturing techniques are deployed there.

Speaker 1

We have a facility in The US in Kentucky which is a smaller version of what we have in Croydon. That's been in place since 2021. And then we have sorry, 02/2001. And then in Poland, we have a facility that's been in place since 2021. The yellow dots are new investments that we're making to expand our capabilities.

Speaker 1

The first to note is the investment in an innovation center of excellence in The UK. Why The UK? It's because this is where a lot of our talent is today and it's also where we see a lot of the plastics industry. We can attract the talent that we need for this business to create the next generation of industry solutions. We can also protect our IP by having this Core Innovation Center of Excellence in The UK.

Speaker 1

This will be located off the Crown facility. It will be independent. It will be servicing the rest of these old phones business. If we go across to the West in our Kentucky facility that I mentioned which has been in place since 2021, we've got that additional capacity that's going in right now. That's the LP2 that we've referred to in previous presentations.

Speaker 1

It's a £10,000,000, 13 million dollar investment. It's getting not only additional capacity for the current ranges in The US, but it's also gonna give us the ability to produce all of those engineered polymers in The US. That capacity is gonna come on stream over the next few months, should be up and running properly in H2. And then as we go into next year, they'll be able to take that extended range of high value, high performance polymers in there. In the Midwest, we are going downstream with manufacture of components for the construction industry.

Speaker 1

So this is a big foray into fabrication specifically for the construction market. We've already invested there. We've been doing some of this over the last few years. Over the last few months, we've been investing in automated gluing lines to get us closer to the customer with that component production. And then I jump across to the East, this very significant investment in Vietnam, it's £24,000,000 invested specifically to make three d parts for the footwear industry.

Speaker 1

Really important footwear industry, you see a fantastic runway for growth there. We currently supply this out of The UK. We will continue to supply some block phones from The UK but we're moving three d parts to give a greater array of products that we can satisfy to our key customer there, Nike in Vietnam. And then in South Korea, we're investing in innovation specifically to support that footwear industry. Why South Korea?

Speaker 1

Well, a lot of the footwear industry and the owners of the footwear industry in terms of the big footwear manufacturers are based out of South Korea. We've also got our partner, Nike has got a development center there. Mindful of time, talking about the Nike investment, we started this business with Nike in 2016. In 2024, our foam is now at 18,000,000 pairs of Nike shoes. So from zero to 18,000,000 over the course of roughly a nine year period.

Speaker 1

So a tremendous growth. As we move to Asia, what we want to do is to get on even more platforms. So today we are on the premium platforms. We started at the very, very premium. We've evolved down the pyramid in terms of product ranges for Nike, still at that high end running.

Speaker 1

As we move to Asia, we can see the opportunity will grow for us to move into even more shoe platforms. We're also going to be reducing a huge amount of waste for the customer when we do that. So this is a transitionary period moving from block phones to three d solution parts for our customer. And moving on, we're gonna just quickly play a video on innovation.

Speaker 3

If you look at our history, it's really a story of firsts. First to create supercritical fluid foam. First to produce closed cell materials. First to manufacture cross linked polyethylene foams. And we didn't stop there.

Speaker 4

Our foams have literally transformed industries, like making planes lighter so they burn less fuel or helping athletes push performance further with insane energy return.

Speaker 3

And all of this comes from a surprisingly simple process. We take a polymer and shape it either into a block or a three d shape. Then we put those into a high pressure autoclave, dissolve nitrogen borrowed from the atmosphere into them, then under controlled conditions, we expand it into foam.

Speaker 4

Sounds simple, but not even close. It takes serious expertise, technical know how, and decades of research to make it work like this.

Speaker 3

And we don't just stick to what we know. We're always experimenting. New polymers

Speaker 4

New applications new markets because great innovation happens through collaboration. We work with our customers, understand their challenges,

Speaker 3

engineer solutions,

Speaker 4

and that's how we keep pushing the boundaries of material performance.

Speaker 3

But it's not just about performance.

Speaker 4

It's about doing it better.

Speaker 3

Smarter.

Speaker 4

More sustainably.

Speaker 3

We're constantly reengineering our products to be greener.

Speaker 4

More efficient.

Speaker 3

That's innovation.

Speaker 4

That's ZOKEVox.

Speaker 3

And we're expanding beyond the core.

Speaker 1

Fantastic. So, we're expanding and the innovation is at the core of our past success. It is absolutely gonna be vital for future success of the business. As I mentioned earlier, we're investing in an innovation center of excellence in The UK. We will have a hub and spoke approach.

Speaker 1

So our first spoke will be innovation spoke center in Asia, which is specifically looking at the footwear innovation right beside, right in the middle of the ecosystem of footwear innovation for the whole footwear industry, but aligned very closely with Nike and their tier one partners. So innovation is going to be key to continuing to drive our success for the future. Okay, so very quickly, I don't want to talk about the '24 too much. Gary's talked about it, I've talked about it. Been a record year.

Speaker 1

HPP really strong. Polyolefin phones strong with some headwinds in Europe but we see some developments around there. The real big thing is the reorientation towards our industry focus in future. The Shinseo Alliance by the way has helped us evolve the technology that means the ticket size for entering Vietnam is significantly lower than what it would have been previously. We are not using the Shinseo technology, but we've been able to learn from their processes to accelerate our own innovation, to accelerate what we do to allow us to make that ticket size we're getting into Vietnam at least two thirds lower than what it would have been had we tried this to replicating technology that we have in The UK or in The US.

Speaker 1

It's a one way agreement. What we've learned, we keep it, we integrate it into our existing know how. We actually believe is that it's going to create an even better solution for us for the future and we keep all that know how to ourselves and resource we touched on. Looking forward to 2025 performance, consumer lifestyle, transport technologies have had a pretty robust start to the year. And so we've got a really a very good order book there.

Speaker 1

Construction and other industrial has been slower. We kind of anticipated that and we see that coming around in the coming months. So, the trading landscape is pretty good for us. We feel good with the diversity of our footprint. We also think that is going to help us in terms of the headwinds that are around the macroeconomic situation with tariffs.

Speaker 1

We feel pretty well positioned versus many of our competitors. I'm really excited about the refresh strategy, really excited about the reorientation to the commercial verticals, to the investment and people that are going to help us expand that runway for growth for Us. U. S. Capacity is well on plan.

Speaker 1

That move up the value chain and forward integration in The US with parts manufacturer is going well. And then there's innovation in R and D. R and D has been at the heart of what we've done. It's been at the heart of the success that we've had over the last hundred and four years. It's it's super important that that we really ratchet up on this.

Speaker 1

And we're going to self fund this. So this is about discipline, cost savings, and reinvesting those back into the business. And then all of the partnerships that we have, it is extremely important that we continue to work on those partnerships across the verticals to drive the growth in the business. So with that, mindful of time, we're going to jump into Q and A.

Operator

That's great. Ronan and Gary, thank you very much indeed for updating Investor Relations. Please do continue just to submit your questions using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of the screen. But while Ronan and Gary just take a couple of moments to review your questions submitted already. I'd just like to remind you a recording of this presentation will be available later on for your review.

Operator

Ronan, Gary, you have received a number of questions from investors, so thank you to everybody for engagement. If I may, Ronan, just hand back to you, if you would be so kind just to moderate us through that Q and A, and I'll pick up from you at

Speaker 1

the end. Yes. Okay. Perfect. Thank you, Mark.

Speaker 1

So first one is when do you expect the first revenues from the Vietnam facility? So 2027 is when we plan to have first revenues coming through there. And then how does the initial capacity of 10,000,000 mid soles from the factory compare to your current capacity? We were at 18,000,000 pairs of shoes this year. So it's a component of that.

Speaker 1

I would describe the Vietnam investment as a beachhead for our entry into the center of the athletic footwear market. Vietnam is where all the vast majority of high end running shoes are. This is just the phase one. It's an incredibly important entry point there for us. Oh, sorry.

Speaker 1

Let's go through and have a look at some of the other questions. Given that Zocalo is not in a position to redevelop resorts further, is there an option instead to sell or license the IP to a big player? Yes, there is that option. As I said, resource has not gone away and we will see how we can monetize it in future. All that's happened is that we're not going to invest anymore because we don't think we can add any more value in it.

Speaker 1

But we're looking at the best ways that we could return value from the investment that we've made in that, absolutely. Next one is, does the Nike deal procure the old fronts and selling materials to any other footwear companies? Our agreement with Nike is to exclusively sell to them up to the end of twenty twenty nine. What plans do you have to utilize the freed up capacity of Croydon and Poland once the new Vietnam is operational? Will they require further capital expenditure to bring technology up to the level of the plant?

Speaker 1

No. Sorry, let me just review that. Will they require further capital to bring them up to the level of Vietnam? No. I think those facilities are very well invested.

Speaker 1

We absolutely see opportunities to bring that capacity into into other markets, that is other industries. I think that we'll be able to use that capacity for future growth in other areas. So I'm pretty confident around that. There'll always be a need for some CapEx, but not I would say, not really of the sort of CapEx that we've seen in the past. So not for high pressure autoclaves or large pressure autoclaves, so of a completely different scale.

Speaker 1

One One of the things I would underline is my commitment to drive up the return on capital employed and the return on invested cash. I think that we can drive those returns up significantly over the coming years. Do you intend to develop the further four or five Nike customer relationships that you aspire to create? On the face of it, the new Vietnamese investment appears to increase the Nike concentration risk. Listen, our approach to this is win with the winners and win where it matters.

Speaker 1

Nike is a leader in running shoes. They've published their results over the last week and if you read through the detail of it, you'll see that where they're winning is in a running category. For as long as our relationship with Nike on an exclusive basis sees that we grow and that we continue to add benefit to them, then they're one of the best partners that you could have in that industry. If that were ever to change, and we don't want that to change, but if it ever were to change then then we're in the right place. Yeah.

Speaker 1

We're in the right place for the footwear industry should we should we ever need to change that direction. But, you know, we're really committed to Nike. That's been a great partnership. But if it were to change then our facility in Vietnam will be in the center of the footwear industry. But honestly, I see this relationship with Nike just continuing to go from strength to strength.

Speaker 1

Our phone is on 18,000,000 shoes. They produce over 60,000,000 pairs of shoes. There's a lot of runway for growth in Nike itself. I'm gonna have to give Gary one here. Let's have a look.

Speaker 1

Let's see.

Operator

Just going through.

Speaker 1

There's a lot on Nike, which I think I've I've answered a lot. You know, I've been under two years. Okay. So okay. New strategy.

Speaker 1

Could the new strategy could make it very attractive to a Solvay or a Saabik perhaps. Do you see cell phones being independent in five years' time? There you go, Gary. That's one for you. I've got my answer is pretty clear, but, you you have a go at that.

Speaker 2

Which one? Hang on. Could you just get us back to where that is?

Speaker 1

Oh, sorry. This one. New strategy.

Speaker 2

Alright. New strategy could make this attractive to Solvay. Yeah. Do I do we see Zopa as being independent in five years time? Yes, we do.

Speaker 2

We're laying out a strategy with a, you know, it's about having ideas and and being able to, persuade and excite our own shareholders that are sticking with us and doing what and believing that this management team is the right management team to drive the ambition forward. I think we're laying out today, a pretty clear and have done, you know, did last Tuesday, a pretty clear path, extremely rational building on our core capabilities, not going off in all sorts of directions, being very prudent with our approach to, to inorganic growth, which is which is something new to us. And so anyone coming in would need to be able to demonstrate they can do a better job than we do. We being people that, that are deeply involved in the organization, a leadership team that includes very, very, exciting new talent, but combined with people that have been in the business a long time and know that when this organization a long time, it's quite a unique organization. So, we absolutely believe we we are SABIC and so on.

Speaker 2

Not overly sure why they would be interested in this in this particular business. But no, I think we're pretty confident that we, that, you know, I mean, we do need, you know, we do need British PLC to get a bit of a boost, right? We do need the two to three years of net monthly cash outflows to change. Maybe Mr. Trump will be helping us there.

Speaker 2

Start getting inflows back in, start getting interest in UK PLC and start seeing our share price reflect the existing PBT and earnings, let alone the future.

Speaker 1

Very good. And I think there's a similar question, which I'll come to as well, which is which is how do we make sure that, hey, we protect ourselves from unwanted acquisition, which that would be.

Speaker 2

On the same

Speaker 1

Yeah. Exactly. We we can just we've just got to execute. We've got to leave nothing on the table and we drive this growth plan. Yeah?

Speaker 1

We just can't leave any low hanging fruit and that's why we're going to execute at PS. Absolutely. Question here is, is it practical to warehouse the resource assets? Okay. I think just on resource, it sits on a shelf.

Speaker 1

We're not going to resurrect it ourselves. We see there are various options for the resurrection of this by potential investors and we're confident that for the right people coming along that you could realize value out of it. But we have written the value of this down to zero. It now occupies less than probably 1% to 2% of management time, which is exactly the right thing as we focus all of our growth on the supercritical fluid phones business. Okay.

Speaker 1

There's a few questions here. Could you elaborate on the specific market segments you're prioritizing for strategic partnerships? It's not necessarily strategic partnerships, but it's where we see the greatest opportunity for avenues or runaways for growth. If you're talking about specifications then that can certainly be a partnership. The three verticals are well laid out.

Speaker 1

There are say 20 industries within those. Footwear is obviously very key to us. We see automotive in general, we see EV, we see aviation, we see opportunities across medical packaging and we see construction as sort of the key verticals. Our product as I say goes into over 20 different industries, but within those we see there are the biggest opportunities. And actually, we've got already some traction and so they're probably the most attractive to us at this point.

Speaker 1

And when we look at talent, that's really where we're looking to bring talent into the business is from those industries. What key learning from Nike partnership have been incorporated into the strategy? Know the industry, yeah, sell to the brands, work with them in getting your product specified. The people that are tend to be have the most influences if you can get your product specified into their products and they understand the inherent values. We make the best foam in the world.

Speaker 1

It is super lightweight, it's super sustainable, it's super durable, it's super clean, it's got no VOCs. There's a multitude of attributes to the stuff that we make that sometimes gets lost across the value chain when you can go straight to the brand owners who understand it of what it means to their brand values, you are most successful, okay? And that's why we will target to have at least 80% of our revenues coming from specified sales in the future. Okay. Let's delete that.

Speaker 1

How does ZoltFoam's foam compare with other recent competitor products in terms of performance and durability and what is your strongest advantage? We've been developing a product for one hundred years. There's other stuff that's there's other foam that's out there, yeah. We are materially better than Kamatib blown foams, there's no question about that in terms of performance, in terms of the zero VOCs. But we must not rest on our lives.

Speaker 1

We cannot sit here and think that there's company XYZ that we've never heard of that isn't going out there developing products. I think there's a massive future for supercritical fluid phones and people are waking up to that. So that's why we're investing in innovation is to create the next generation of those supercritical fluid phones. These are incredible materials that got their moment. I'm sure that there are other stuff that's been developed out there.

Speaker 1

We're just gonna keep charging ahead and keep creating the next generation of products to drive our growth. Okay. What part of the 46% growth in footwear sales increase would you qualify as exceptional? Do you expect to improve on 66 in a full year twenty five? Can you provide some color on the Nike partnership?

Speaker 1

What is the potential to be integrated into more shoes? As an exclusive, what does that mean? You can't do business with other brands. So working the way back, 2029 is when the partner at the end of 2029 is when the partnership runs out. We're very happy with our partnership.

Speaker 1

We only supply our phones to Nike and they love that. They love the innovation that we bring and they love the exclusivity. And we love them for loving that because that's really, really important. Okay? And can you provide some potential to be integrated more shoe ranges?

Speaker 1

Absolutely. We're on 18,000,000 pairs of shoes. I would say there's a natural limit supplying Asia because all of our foam goes from The UK to Asia at the moment. You'll hit a ceiling which is quite low out of their 600,000,000 shoes. About half of those will require foams of one form or another, but let's say it's 300,000,000 shoes.

Speaker 1

The ceiling is quite low when you're supplying out of The UK. When you go into Vietnam, then that runway for growth with them will increase significantly, I mean significantly. Okay? And so, but you've got to be there to develop that. We've got to supply foam, not in block format, but in three d formats for that.

Speaker 1

That's exactly why we're doing it because we can see the opportunity there. How much of this the twenty twenty four demand was exceptional? You know, it's amazing. Nike is is is they're they're refocusing stuff internally. They're deprioritizing and sort of taking a lot of the a lot of the athleisure stuff off the shelf and they're putting a lot more.

Speaker 1

They're focusing on five key sports of which running is one of them. And that's the category where we are most present. That's the category that sponsors us in Nike and then after that is basketball. So we've seen tremendous demand from them. We've seen tremendous demand as they I think they've been really injecting that back into their focus on those sports.

Speaker 1

If you read the results presentation or listen to it from last week, you'll hear whilst there are some headwinds, the bits that are really delivering. If you drill down into it, you see running is winning. So I can say demand remaining pretty robust from there. It's always difficult to get forecasts in this space. But it's '24 was a robust year that I guess took us a little bit.

Speaker 1

We were very pleased with how strong it was. I don't know, Gary, if you can add anything more on that in terms of in terms of the numbers.

Speaker 2

Yeah. I mean, it was strong. We we were predicting, it towards the end of the year to slow down because we did reference the Olympics and so on. But as Ronan says, there's a new strategy. The analysts have it down a bit from the 66 for 2025.

Speaker 2

But, you know, with the with the CEOs as as the question and answer question, it raises, you know, there's a new CEO in town, there's a new focus, there's a little bit of uncertainty. It started well. It's probably too early to be able to say whether or not what we were seeing last year is going to realize whether there's going or whether we're gonna have more momentum than we thought. We probably need a few more months to wear that out because Nike is still working themselves out.

Speaker 1

Yeah. I think there's a good point here because if you just look at the headlines of their results, it does talk about having excess shoe inventory that needs to work through the last a few quarters to work through. Listen more to that, yeah, and that's some things like Air Force 1s and the nineteen ninety five's and the sort of old those ranges that are feeling a little bit old now. That's what's working its way through the inventory. They don't have Zofoam's phone on them.

Speaker 1

Have a look at that where the positivity is coming and that's from the sort of categories where our product is going. They've got a big focus back on sports. Yeah, I think they talk about five sports in five cities and three countries or it's around this real focus is really important and running is a key category and that's where we are. And that's actually been offsetting some of the headwinds that they've seen in other areas like their leisure sort of ranges. Good.

Speaker 1

I'm very conscious of time, see if there's a Okay.

Operator

It does seem, Ronan, for every question you ask, there's another one or two coming your way.

Speaker 1

Oh my goodness. I'm never going to keep up, Mark. Am I right?

Operator

We're going to keep you for the rest of the day, I think. But what we'll do, Ronan, if there's any questions post today's meeting that you haven't had a chance to respond to, we can always add a response and we'll publish those to investors, further. So look, on that note, perhaps, thank you everybody for your engagement, for your questions. And Ronan and Gary, thank you for your time. I know investor feedback is important to you, particularly with the new strategy in place.

Operator

So I'll shortly redirect those on the call to give you their thoughts and expectations. But before doing so, Ronan, if I may just ask you for a couple of closing comments.

Speaker 1

Yes. Well, first of all, thank you for the time this afternoon. As I said, this is a fantastic company, an incredible heritage. We have had a tremendous 2024. We are driving this new strategy from a position of incredible strength.

Speaker 1

I'm incredibly excited about the future for Zoloftones. And we've set out the new strategy. It's fairly simple. I'm confident in our ability to execute. I'm excited for the future.

Operator

That's great. Ronan, Gary, thank you once again for your time. If I could please ask investors not to close this session as we'll now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the company can better understand your views and expectations. This will take a couple of moments to complete, but I'm sure it'd be greatly valued to the company. On behalf of the management team at Zote Firms PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending

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Earnings Conference Call
Zotefoams H2 2024
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