Premier Foods H2 2025 Earnings Report

Premier Foods EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 14.50
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Premier Foods Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Premier Foods Announcement Details

• Quarter: H2 2025
• Date: 5/15/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, May 15, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 4:00AM ET

Premier Foods (LON:PFD), together with its subsidiaries, manufactures and distributes branded and own label food products in the United Kingdom, other European countries, and internationally. The company operates through Grocery, Sweet Treats, and international segments. It offers a portfolio of product categories, including flavorings and seasonings under the Bisto, OXO, Paxo, and Saxa brands; cooking sauces and accompaniments under the Sharwood's, Loyd Grossman, Spice Tailor and Homepride brands; quick meals, snacks, and soups under the Batchelors and Smash brands; ambient desserts under the Ambrosia, Bird's, and Angel Delight brands; and ambient cakes under the Mr Kipling and Cadbury brands. The company also provides dumplings under the Atora brand name; plain flour under the Be-Ro brand; dried milk under the Marvel brand name; plain and self-raising flour under the McDougalls brand; and plant based food under the Plantastic brand name. It offers its products through supermarkets, discounters, convenience stores, and wholesale and food service facilities, as well as through e-commerce channels. The company was founded in 1975 and is headquartered in Saint Albans, the United Kingdom.

Premier Foods H2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Premier Foods’ full-year revenue rose 3.5% to £1,148m, with brand sales up 5.2% crossing £1bn for the first time and gaining volume market share in the UK (+80bps) and Australia (+66bps).
• Trading profit increased 6% to £188m, adjusted PBT rose 8.8% to £169m and EPS grew 7.3% to 14.5p, while net debt fell by £92m to 0.7x EBITDA enabling a 62% dividend uplift.
• All five pillars of the growth strategy delivered strong progress: UK core business +4.4%, infrastructure investment +26% to £41m, new categories +46%, overseas markets +23% and organics acquisitions double-digit growth.
• Sustainability commitments advanced with non-HFSS product sales up 9%, scope 1&2 emissions cut by 10%, over one million meals donated to food poverty initiatives and 48% of management roles now held by women.
• The company merged its pension schemes to improve governance, ceased deficit contributions and repurposed the pension dividend match into a higher ordinary dividend, targeting full pension buy-in by late 2026.

Presentation

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Thanks for joining us. We'll make a start. Welcome to Premier Foods Full Year Results for the year that ended on the 29th of March this year. As usual, Duncan, I'll take you through the performance. I'll give us some headlines. Duncan can take us through the numbers, and then we'll round up by going through the progress against the five pillars of the growth strategy. I'm pleased to say it's been another really good year for the business, and that's been driven once again by the strength and the growth from our brands. Overall sales of GBP 1.148 billion, that's up 3.5% versus last year. Importantly, our brands grew at 5.2% and actually crossed a billion pounds of turnover for the first time for the business in its current format. That growth was again ahead of market.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

We took 21 basis points of market share in the U.K., and that was actually 80 basis points of volume share. You might remember at the beginning of the year I said that we were going to see, we're gonna sharpen our promotional prices and we'd see volume growth tracking ahead of value growth. You can see that flowing through market share as well. Volume market share growing, ahead of our value market share. We also, by the way, we do not normally talk about it. We also grew market share in Australia, by 66 basis points. That is one of the other markets where we measure these things. Trading profit then GBP 188 million, that is 6% ahead of a year ago. That is just slightly ahead of that upgraded guidance, that we gave in January this year. Adjusted PBT at GBP 169 million is up 8.8%.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

That is obviously tracking ahead of the growth rate for trading profit because what you have there is you have lower interest costs as we continue to delever the business. Similarly, adjusted EPS at GBP 0.145 was up 7.3%. That deleverage then, GBP 92 million of net debt reduction in the year, down to 0.7 times net debt to EBITDA. That is really helped by the fact that, of course, this was the first year where we stopped paying pension deficit contributions. Linked to that actually is the dividend. Dividend up 62% versus a year ago. That is driven by two things: strong performance of the business, obviously ongoing, but also the removal of the pensions dividend match.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

What we've done is we've repurposed the cash from that into a stronger dividend, which I know Duncan will talk about pensions in more detail in a little while. As well as that strong financial performance, we've also made good progress against all five pillars of the growth strategy. On the left-hand side there, growing our U.K. core business, our U.K. brands grew by 4.4%. As I said, that was ahead of markets because we took market share in both volume and value terms. In terms of infrastructure investment, we increased to GBP 41 million. That's up 26% versus a year ago. That's us investing back into our manufacturing sites. What we're doing there, of course, is we're putting in automation. We're putting in new faster kit that actually ultimately makes us more efficient and improves our gross margins.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

We use that gross margin improvement to invest in growing the brands. The third pillar is our expansion into new categories. We grew 46% there, still off a fairly modest base, but again, another big growth and another big growth year. Over time it becomes less modest as we progress. Our overseas businesses grew by a very healthy 23% with actually all of our key regions in double-digit growth. Finally, in organics, these are the brands that we bought over the last couple of years. The Spice Tailor and FUEL10K, both of those grew by double digits as well, contributing more than their fair share to the overall growth.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

What you can see playing out here as you look across the growth model is you've got your core U.K. business which grows, and then we're layering on top of it what we get from new categories, what we get from overseas, and what we get from the brands we buy. It's that that's going to help us scale up Premier Foods as we progress through time. If you look at that trend actually over the last five or six years, the top left-hand side there you can see our revenue growth. Good, strong, consistent performance year after year after year. In fact, a 6.3% average growth. That's a 6.3% five-year CAGR. Then similar picture from trading profit top right. That's actually a 7.2% CAGR.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Trading profit actually consistently going a bit faster than our overall turnover. Adjusted PBT down the left-hand side, and that's growing at 12.6% on a five-year CAGR basis. That's obviously benefiting from the deleveraging that's happening in parallel at the same time and therefore less interest costs. You can see that deleverage in the bottom right there with the net debt to EBITDA falling from 2.7x down to the 0.67x that we're announcing today. Good, strong, consistent performance year after year after year. Now at the same time as that, we've continued to make good progress on our sustainability commitments. Obviously, there's a lot more KPIs than the ones I'm gonna share here. They'll all be in the annual report, of course, but some of the highlights that we're just pulling out today.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

On the product pillar, our non-HFSS sales, so sales from products which are not high in fat, salt, or sugar, they grew by 9%. That is doing exactly what we want to do. That is growing faster than our core, our overall, business as we gradually make the portfolio healthier by reworking some of the recipes. One thing that we did change during the year was our FUEL10K granola recipes. They are now all reworked to be non-HFSS. You cannot tell the difference, so they are better for you, but also it facilitates us having big displays at the front of store, which we would not be able to do if they were classified as HFSS. On the planet pillar, we have reduced our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by a further 10%.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

It is obviously great in terms of carbon reduction, but obviously it means we are losing less energy. If we use less energy, of course it costs us less. It is a win-win there. Also, during the year we adopted new water and human rights policies. In terms of the people pillar, for the first time we hit our 2030 target of donating over 1 million meals to those in food poverty via FareShare. One of the things we are learning here is that where we get the most traction is when we run promotions in store where part of the promotional offering is that we are donating a meal to someone in food poverty through Fair Share. Basically, it is a win for everybody. The retailer and ourselves, we get more volume.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

The consumer gets a promotion and somebody somewhere gets some benefit out of it through fair share. From a gender balance point of view, if we look across our entire management population, we've now reached a point where 48% of those roles are held by women. We're almost in gender balance across the management population now. With that, I'll hand over to Duncan, and Duncan can take us through the numbers.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

Thanks, Alex. Good morning everyone. I really just wanted to start off, I guess, with probably the three key themes from the financial performance for the year. Alex has just mentioned, we have, you know, a number of years of pretty good trading profit growth. I think this year builds on that. We have 6% trading profit growth and just over 7% adjusted EPS growth. That continues the strong progress that we have seen. I think from a cash perspective, you have probably heard me say a few times that actually Premier's underlying cash generation has always been pretty good. It is just generally, the cash has gone to debt holders and pension schemes. I think this year we have really seen the benefit of a continued lower leverage, but also, you know, the first year really of not having to pay those pension deficit contributions.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

Therefore, net debt reduction of GBP 92 million, you know, reasonably significant. I think more importantly, it just opens up, you know, even more options for investing into high returning projects and getting returns. I'm really pleased to be able to share some further pension progress. I'll talk a bit more about, I guess, the pension's journey over the last five years or so. You know, we are announcing the full merger of our pension schemes today. That is creating one separate legal pension scheme. I'll talk a bit more about the details of that. One of the things we've done as part of that is we moved the dividend match. That was a mechanism, and we've managed to redeploy that into the dividend. Hence, that underpins the 62% increase we've seen so far.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

In terms of performance, it's really the branded business that continues to drive the growth, very much in line with strategy. You can see branded revenue is growing just over 5% up to just over GBP 1 billion. That is good, consistent growth across both grocery and sweet treats. Non-branded, I mean, clearly we said before, much less of a strategic focus for us. We do continue to selectively exit some contracts. That's down 7%. We see total revenue on a constant currency basis up 3.5% to GBP 1.15 billion. In terms of margins and looking at divisional contribution, there's really two things going on here. One is, you know, this growth has been very much volume led. As we get more volume growth going through the factory, it enables us to run the factories more efficiently.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

We see a leveraging benefit through the P&L. The second is our well-established sort of cost reduction and efficiency program, particularly in our supply chain and manufacturing sites. Both of those really combining to be able to grow divisional contribution slightly ahead of turnover. That's up 5.4% to GBP 265 million. Growth in corporate costs, they're growing. There's a bit of inflation in there. We've got efficiency programs within that that we try and use to offset. We've also invested in our IT systems. That's really around trying to simplify the business, trying to automate and automate a lot of what we do. All of that leaves trading profit at GBP 188 million, which is up 6%. You can see trading profit margins nudging up as well versus last year.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

From an interest perspective, as we have continued to build that cash during the year, that has been sitting in the bank, earning a return. That has helped reduce net regular interest by over 14% to GBP 19 million. You can see adjusted PBT, that is up nearly 9%. Adjusted earnings per share up just over 7%. As I said before, we have redeployed what was the dividend match into dividend this year, which makes dividend per share of GBP 0.028. If you look at it across grocery and sweet treats, it is actually, relatively unusually, a really, really similar picture across both. We have got good volume led growth across both. Grocery, branded is up 4.6%, and that is really good growth across a lot of brands. Nissin, Alex will talk a bit about later, but that continues to be a standout performer for us.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

In sweet treats, we've got a really good innovation program, particularly behind Mr Kipling. And that's been a strong driver of the 7.3% branded growth we've seen. As I said, non-branded, pretty similar picture across both. As I say, we're exiting some contracts. We are seeing some people switching from non-brands into brands. so that leaves from a grocery perspective, revenue up 3.3% and sweet treats up 4%. Again, looking further down the P&L, we are again seeing the leveraging effect of the efficient manufacturing sites plus the cost saving programs coming through. Grocery divisional contribution is up 5.5% to GBP 229 million, and in sweet treats, that's up 5% to GBP 35 million. Going back to cash, obviously in terms of how the cash flow looks this year, you can see clearly as we grow profits, that's clearly chucking off a load of cash.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

CapEx, so GBP 41 million spent this year, very much in line with guidance. That is just over double what we spent a couple of years ago. I am continuing to step up. We are guiding to about GBP 50 million for the year ahead. This all comes back to this untapped opportunity that we have got to invest behind, you know, good payback projects, high returning projects. We very much see a very long list of those that we really want to get after. Hence the increase in guidance. Interest continues to nudge down. As I say, as we build the cash, we get the return. That is down to GBP 17 million this year. I think looking forward to, looking forward to FY 2026, we have got the bonds, the FY 2026 bonds in October, that mature.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

We'll be looking at options to refinancing those as we go through the year. Clearly, we're in a bit of a different interest rate environment, aren't we today versus 2021? That's underpinning the higher interest guidance. very much remains to be seen when we, when we access those. Pensions, as we said. first year without any pension deficit contributions. there's actually one in there, which is the tail end that fed into this year relating to the contributions last year. Other than that, it's pretty much administration costs. Restructuring is the tail end of the closure of our Knighton and Charnwood sites. We wouldn't really expect to see much of that in the year we've just started. All of that gets us to net debt of GBP 144 million.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

Pensions, I thought it'd just be worth just reminding where we've, where we've come from on that. It really started five years ago where we did this segregated merger of our U.K. schemes. That was more of a structural solution where the schemes were legally separate. There were still three schemes, but they were just managed under one trust and by one set of trustees who were the RHM trustees that had done a great job with the RHM scheme. I guess the vision and the plan at the time was that over time we'd be able to use the strength of the RHM scheme to benefit the Premier Foods scheme, which had been in a deficit for a number of years. In terms of how that's played out, it's probably played out a bit quicker than we expected.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

A couple of years ago, in May 2023, we announced the first of those deficit reductions. That is a GBP 5 million reduction. Last year we saw the full suspension. We have obviously seen that flow into cash flow this year. I think that really reflects the combined comfort and strength of the company and the trustees in terms of how the scheme position is, and therefore not needing contributions from the company. What we are announcing today is really a key step to resolution and a buy-in transaction that we are still targeting. It is called a full merger. Basically, we have collapsed the ring fencing and the segregation. Rather than three legally separate schemes, it is now one scheme, one set of disclosures on the balance sheet that you may have seen today.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

What does that do? I think really it just further enables the trustees to better manage the scheme. I think if you are spreading, you know, your assets, your returns, your risk, your hedging over the whole population rather than trying to manage it in three distinct buckets, it just helps again manage the smooth journey from here towards resolution. As you said, we have negotiated the removal of the dividend match. We have redeployed that into dividends, which steps it up here, and still on track for full resolution, which you see as a buy-in transaction towards the end of next year. Final word on capital allocation. I mean, very much the same really. I think we still see the best home for our capital investing in the business. That is in CapEx and sites. The cost out capacity increases.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

Alex will talk a bit about the money we have put, last year and this year into increasing capacity for Ambrosia porridge going forward. M&A, again, we are always looking at a key part of our strategy. FUEL10K and TST, you will hear about shortly, continue to perform really well for us. We are still very much on the lookout. I think dividends, really pleased to be able to do, do a bit of a one-off rebase if you like. You know, we have always talked about growing it, faster than earnings. We continue to do that. It will be from a, it will be from a higher base. From a leverage perspective, one and a half times target, very much where we are. Clearly the timing of M&A will depend exactly, you know, where we get to and how far we pass through it.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

In terms of, you know, what we see, I guess there's a more efficient leverage. That's still where we see things. That's it for me. I'll hand back to Alex.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Thanks, Duncan. If we just walk through the progress against the five pillars of the growth strategy, and remember what's really underpinning this is if our core skillset is in building brands and growing brands in a profitable way, then if we can take that skillset and apply it on a broader base than just our original brands in their core markets in the U.K., then in principle we can build a much bigger business over time. That's really what this looks to do therefore. It starts on the left with actually still doing a good job on that core business because that's where most of our sales and profit is delivered from today. It's really important we continue to do a really good job on our core U.K. business. The second pillar is that investing back into our manufacturing structure pillar.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

We're investing in two things really. One is making our factories more efficient, and using more automation. As I said, that releases gross margin. We use gross margin to fund the growth model. Then the other thing is actually investing in the kit that we need in order to manufacture some of the new products we bring to market. 'Cause you'll be aware that our model is pretty heavy on new product development. The third pillar is extending the business within the U.K., but into new categories. That's new parts of the store where we've historically not played. I think the image of the porridge pot from Ambrosia is a really good example because Ambrosia is obviously a dessert brand. Anything that we sell of porridge from Ambrosia comes completely on top of anything from the original Ambrosia business in the desserts category.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Then the fourth pillar is taking our brands and selling them where they're relevant in overseas markets. Again, anything that we sell outside the U.K. as we start to build businesses overseas is all incremental to what we do in the U.K. Finally, we've got the inorganic opportunities. Looking for brands which we can bring into the business and will benefit from the application of that branded growth model. You can see how that then all layers on top of what we get from our core U.K. This is all underpinned by the way in which we go about building and growing brands, which is what we call the branded growth model. There are four key levers to this. Top left-hand corner where we've got, in the U.K., this wonderful situation where we've got these really well-known strong brands.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

They're generally market leaders in their core categories. We've got very high household penetration. If we knocked on a random door somewhere in the U.K. this afternoon, in all probability we'd find several of our Premier Foods brands in the cupboard. but then we need to make them grow. That's where the other levers come in. One of the key things we know is that for FMCG brands, if you want to make them grow consistently over multiple years, it's really important you've got a strong innovation program. We put a lot of energy into understanding our consumers, understanding how they're cooking, how they're eating, how they're shopping, so that we can develop new products that fit with their lifestyle and their current trends. That's a big focus for us.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

And therefore we are constantly bringing new products to market. Bottom left there is sustained marketing investment. We are lucky that we have got these really strong brands to start with, but they will only stay strong if we keep investing in them. We invest in marketing and advertising programs which build the brands, maintain brand awareness, and keep them relevant and contemporary for shoppers. We really focus on trying to build an emotional bond, an emotional connection between the consumer and the brand.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

The fourth, but really important lever is the way in which we interact with our retailers, where we work to build strategic partnerships with our key retailers so that we're building the size of the category together, which is important if you think about it when we've got leadership positions in most of the categories we're in, and therefore we'll disproportionately benefit from that. If we look at how that played out as we went through the year, from a U.K. perspective, pillar one, as we said, very strong branded growth of 8% in the U.K., leading to 4.4% value growth. That's as we sharpened some of those promotional prices. That was even more exaggerated in sweet treats, by the way, because sweet treats are more price sensitive.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

We have a particularly strong innovation program on sweet treats at the moment. As I said at the beginning, market share gains were 21 basis points in the U.K. from a value point of view, but 80 basis points from a volume point of view. That is reflecting that stronger, branded, volume growth that you see over on the left-hand side. Within that, one of the things we have been working on is premiumization. On several of our brands now, we have premium tiers to them, and we have seen that continue to build through the year. There are two examples on the page here. On the left, you have Mr Kipling Signature Bites, which are small brownie bites that are enrobed in chocolate, and they grew by a further 78% in the year. I think this taps into two consumer trends.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

One is for indulgence. And we've talked about this before, that as we all try to eat a bit more healthily, when we do want to treat ourselves, it's, it, you know, what we hear back from consumers is it's got to be worth it. I think this touches into that because it's quite a small bite, but they're really, really nice. The second trend it taps into is sharing. Obviously this is a box with several bites in, and it's something that you share with other people. Similarly, Ambrosia Deluxe goes from strength to strength. 45% growth from Ambrosia Deluxe during the year as we introduced some new formats and flavors. That actually also helped Ambrosia gain quite a lot of market share during the year. Nissin also performed really well for us.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Nissin, if you look on the left-hand side there, that's the revenue trend from the Nissin branded business over the last five or six years. That is a 41% five-year CAGR, which is something I don't think I've ever seen before, and just significant growth year on year on year. We've continued to take market share. 65% market share now in the authentic noodles category, hitting GBP 62 million of retail sales. That's under three sub-brands now: Nissin Soba, Nissin Cup Noodles, and what we brought into the range this year or this last year was the Nissin Demae Ramen block noodles. The Nissin brand for us is now bigger than our OXO brand actually.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

I said as part of the branded growth model that one of the things we do is invest back into the brands and invest into building brand equity. We know that correlates really strongly to long-term brand value, and we use a variety of different techniques. We still use TV for some of our bigger brands. The reason for that is our brands are bought by millions of people every day. We need tools that have got a strong reach that can get to talk to millions of people in a day, and there is only really TV that is capable of doing that. We still use that.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

We use more and more out of home, and we use that particularly for highlighting some of the new products that we are bringing into the range because it is great if you see a reminder for that when you are on your way to the store. More and more we are working with digital tools as well. Also, on some of the brands with influencers, which we know is bringing younger shoppers into our brands. Particularly at that point when you leave home and have gone and set up home for yourself. That fourth lever of the branded growth model is our relationships with our retailers, and this is helping us get great execution in store. You can see on the left there, that is a breakfast display where we are leveraging the benefit of having both the FUEL10K brand and Ambrosia.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

And then in the middle, that's actually a Christmas display. You have a lot of Ambrosia on there. You have Paxo, you have Bisto, you have OXO. All the things that we tend to sell a lot of around Christmas. I think equally important though, on the right-hand side there is we've continued to move forward our distribution. You have 500 basis points of improvement in distribution for our grocery brands and 300 for our cake brands. In simple terms, we're getting more products listed in more stores again this last year. It is a year-on-year benefit. If I move now onto the second pillar of the growth strategy, this is investing back into those projects that we've got with really good paybacks, actually still many projects with a three to four-year payback, in line with our cash allocation principles.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

You can see the trend of capital investment over recent years on the left-hand side there. We are guiding to about GBP 50 million for the current year, which feels like an appropriate plateau for us to play from. What have we been doing? On the grocery side, we have invested in things like a new pot filling capability for Ambrosia. This is really to improve capacity, but it also allows us to run recyclable pots as well. Ambrosia porridge Pots, we are investing now in dedicated manufacturing capability for Ambrosia porridge pots. If you remember when we started off with that, we adapted some of our existing kit, which was fine at the beginning, but now this is getting so big and it has got so much further growth potential that we are now starting to put dedicated capability behind it.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Another thing we've invested in is the ability to make these, which are Mr Kipling Birthday Cake Tarts. This is a trend that we got from the U.S., which is birthday cake as a flavor, not just as a birthday cake. We came up with then a birthday cake tart, which is, you know, sort of jam and sponge and icing and sprinkles on top. We did this as a four-pack, which makes the price point a little bit more accessible. It is really quite incredible how strong the sales of this thing have been since we launched it quite recently. We have put a bit of capital behind automating how we produce those and particularly the ability to make it in a four-pack rather than in a six.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

In terms of the cost reduction projects, there's a massive list of course, but there's just a couple of examples here. One is automating phase two of automating actually our sponge pudding manufacturer. This is introducing robotics to manage the cooking process for the sponge puddings, which we call retort, but also more efficient localized generation of steam. The benefit that's giving us is we're getting reductions in labor costs, we're getting reductions in energy, and as a result, we're also getting reductions in CO2. That's a sort of a win all the way around. Then air compressors, we're gradually replacing all our older air compressors with new technology. Actually, the paybacks on this are really quite short. We get significant improvement in energy efficiency. Again, saves us money on energy and also reduces CO2 emissions.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

If I move on to the third pillar, this is our new categories, these categories that traditionally we've not been present in. You can see the growth trend on the top left there over the last three or four years. It is things continuing to build. The lead horse in this is very much the Ambrosia porridge pots. We've now got a 13% share of porridge pots overall. We've got a 20% in our lead customer in this area. We've continued to support the product range as it's grown, and actually we gained quite a lot of new distribution during the year. That has been one of the key drivers here, and we're expecting further distribution gains this year because we know we're going into now from being in all the major retailers, but now going into some of the smaller stores as well.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

We introduced a fifth flavor. As the sales get bigger, we flesh out the range in terms of more flavor choice. We also had good growth from the others as well. Cape Herb & Spice, really, really strong double-digit growth as we got more listings, and really present across all the major retailers now. We also added some new flavors, like the Greek, lemon and herb flavor on the left there. Ice Cream continues to grow, and we have more listings for that coming on stream, in time for the summer. OXO marinades, also big double-digit growth in the year as we fleshed out distribution. We are seeing some really strong repeat rates on this one as well. Really good progress there with sales up 46%. Moving on to international. Our overseas businesses did really well, grew by 23%.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

We had double-digit growth in all regions. You can see the trend over the last five years there. We have actually more than doubled sales from our international businesses over the last five years. We expect that trend to continue in that direction as we go forward. A few little things to pull out across the regions. Australia, New Zealand. Now this is Australia, New Zealand, we are more developed than anywhere else. As you'll know, we have already got leadership positions in cake and leadership positions in Indian sauces. What we are doing there is we are fully applying the branded growth model. Supporting the brands with advertising and introducing new products. New flavors, with Sharwood's, for example, we introduced a family-sized jar which has done particularly well during the year.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

We're fleshing out the The Spice Tailor range, including within Indian, but also stepping out of Indian into broader Asian cuisine types as well. The other interesting thing there, given that in this market we've now got a proper business unit on the ground and we're leaders of two categories, we're now looking at category three, four, and five. What's that going to look like? We made our first step into gravy with the launch of Bisto Best Gravy. That's our premium tier of gravy, although it's called Bisto Best Gravy in Australia. In North America, we continue to make progress. We've been in Canada a few years longer, so we've got a bit more traction there where we did extremely well actually in Canada with some significant distribution increases on Mr Kipling, but also further distribution on the Spice Tailor.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

In the U.S., we got the first listing. So we've got our first retailer taking The Spice Tailor in the U.S., which seems to be doing pretty well. We're using that as a case study that we can take round to other retailers over time. What we're about to do is relaunch our Mr Kipling cakes with a much more overt British positioning to it. 'Cause one of the things we've learned from talking to U.S. consumers about our cakes is once they realize they're British, they sort of increase in their expectations and how good they think they are. We think that's something to do with the fact that Bake-Off gets shown in the U.S. and something to do with British afternoon tea. We're going to capitalize on that.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

We're also going to launch apple pies, as well. Apple pies to America. Finally, down the bottom there, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, The Spice Tailor's now available in four different markets across Europe. The game here is really about distribution. It's just constantly plugging away, getting more distribution of Sharwood's and The Spice Tailor over time. As I say, all three regions delivered double-digit growth in the year. That really brings me to the fifth pillar then. The Spice Tailor and FUEL10K. Another double-digit growth year from The Spice Tailor. What you're seeing here is you're just seeing the branded growth model being deployed against these acquired brands. Several examples of new products that we launched during the year, extending out into different cuisines, beyond Indian.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Japanese, Vietnamese, and actually a whole range of Chinese products. We've started to support the brand and start to build brand awareness through advertising. This is important because one of the things we know about The Spice Tailor is once people know about it and they try it, they really like it and they come back again and again. It's really up there as one of our absolute best repeat purchase products that we've got in the range. We are now at the point where we're investing in making more people aware of the brand. In Australia, we tested our first TV campaign. In the U.K., we've been working on digital tools to do a similar thing. We're gonna be looking at that and working at what the best way to go forward is.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

We're also getting some really impactful displays in store. You walk into the store and you bump out into these things and it just brings it to your attention and gives you a chance to try. If you look carefully, we're leveraging the combination of The Spice Tailor and Sharwood's 'cause we've got both brands in that category. That is to expect there's further new products coming. We've got some Pad Thai noodles coming and also some authentic premium poppadoms. Similar story on FUEL10K actually. Double-digit growth again. We're very excited because our chocolate granola over the full year is now the U.K.'s number one selling granola SKU. We're super excited about that, and we've continued to invest in the brand.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

We've had our first outdoor media campaign and also lots of different digital campaigns as well running for the brand. Building awareness over time. We've brought more new products to market. Given the success of the granola, we also started to bring to market some big box cereal, traditional big box cereal formats with multigrain hoops and multigrain flakes. We did this right at the end of the financial year. This is really early, really early days. One of the things we're learning from the data is that what this is doing is it's bringing new shoppers, younger shoppers back into that big box cereal part of the category in stores. I think that's quite a positive thing for our retail partners. We launched a high protein version of our breakfast shake.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

The standard range is 15 g and this is 25 g. What we're seeing for this year is quite an important step, which is something we always envisaged when we bought the brand, because we know it was anchored in breakfast, but we always thought that the proposition could extend beyond breakfast into other times of the day and other formats. What you're seeing here is a step into other meal occasions. We've got protein-enriched FUEL10K noodles, obviously helped by our friends in Nissin to develop those. We've got FUEL10K instant soups. This is something called protein bowl. This one's actually a Mexican bean chili. It's in a microwavable pouch, and then it's ready to eat.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

There is lots of other stuff going on here, but commercially I cannot quite share that with you yet because we are not quite in store yet. By the time we get to November, I will have more things to share there as we continue to extend the brand. We do see FUEL10K has got the ability to be a lot bigger and a lot broader brand than it is at the moment, and we continue to look. There is no change in this chart from the one I have shown a couple of times before. The plan is very much we are actively looking for more brands that we think will fit well into the portfolio. We believe that when we apply our branded growth model, we will be able to deliver more value from it.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

The thing to remember though is that we are very fussy. I think that fussiness has served us well with the two things that we've bought so far. We are very actively looking for the next one. If I then briefly look ahead to the current year, as you'd expect, we've got strong plans across all five pillars of the strategy. We've got a whole stream of new products coming to market. The one I'd probably highlight, there's just a few pictures on here, is pasta and sauce. We all know we've had Batchelors Pasta 'n' Sauce for many, many years. This is essentially an almost ready-to-eat version in a pouch. You microwave this for 90 seconds and it's ready to go. You don't have to rehydrate anything. I think that's quite a big technical step forward.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

In terms of infrastructure investment, I've talked about we're investing back into the lift and site in order to get dedicated production capability for the porridge pots, which we're going to need given the current rate of growth. We have a whole list of efficiency improvement projects. The one we've put here is an improvement in the cooling process once we've covered the mini rolls in chocolate. New categories we still expect to see strong growth again. Ambrosia pot distribution we know is going to make a step forward this year. We have some new products on ice cream. We've got a new version of the Angel Delight handheld ice creams. We've also got a new flavor of Mr Kipling, which is a caramel tart flavored ice cream, which sounds absolutely delicious.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

If I move quickly onto our overseas businesses, slightly different story in Australia, New Zealand, because it is a mid, bigger, more developed business for us, where it is really building on those leadership positions in cake and Indian sauces and then expanding outwards into new categories. Whereas in North America and Europe, it is really a distribution build game now. It is about building more stores across those three focus brands. At the same time, looking to find more brands that we can buy and bring into the portfolio over time. To wrap up from me, it is another year of strong financial performance and good progress against all five pillars of the strategy. Strong branded growth driven by volume, which is great. Further profit delivery, which is a bit ahead of the already upgraded expectations from January.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Is a 62% increase in dividend, as the pension match has been repurposed into the dividend. In terms of outlook, this year we would expect our revenue growth to be more balanced between volume and price mix. Obviously, it was very much volume driven for the last year. We expect a more balanced, between volume and price mix, bearing in mind that price mix also includes the premiumization, impact of price as well. We have a strong innovation pipeline, which we expect to then see coming to market as we go through the year. As Duncan said, from a capital allocation focus, that is going to remain on infrastructure investments, back into our manufacturing sites and also on M&A, acquisition activity. At this point, six weeks in, we are on track to deliver the trading profit growth expectations for the year.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

And then just some final thoughts to leave you with, really. Look, we've got some really strong brands and a proven branded growth model. We've got a strong track record of growth, and in fact growing faster than market year after year. The way we're looking at this now, if you look at that five pillar strategy, we're seeing plenty of opportunity to scale the business up over time as we continue to deploy that. Thank you very much. We're very happy to take questions. Cracking forest of hands goes up. Charles.

[Charles Hall, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Charles Hall from Peel Hunt, Alex, could you talk a little bit about the phasing of sales growth during this year? Obviously, last year you started with pretty strong period. Do you see a tough comp in Q1? How do you see the balance of sales growth?

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Yeah, you, I mean, you're absolutely right. We do see that. If you look at Q1 a year ago, we've got some very strong comps to cycle. What we see going through the year is that that sort of tapers off as we go through the year. I suspect that'll have an impact on overall turnover growth shape.

[Charles Hall, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Looking out of the window, it's pretty nice weather. Generally, that's unhelpful for you.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Yeah, generally unhelpful.

[Charles Hall, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Yeah. Secondly, a lot of chat earlier in the year about retail pricing and price wars. Do you see any impact on Premier from what's going on in the retail space?

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Not really. Not really. No, I think, you know, retail ebbs and flows and there's always something happening.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

I think we continue to focus on the fact that we've got these really strong relationships with the retailers, and we've got really strong brands as well. We will just carry on deploying our branded growth model, and it's not really been a major issue for us.

[Charles Hall, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Thanks.

[Matthew Abraham, Analyst at Berenberg]

Thank you. Matthew Abraham from Berenberg. Just first question in reference to the distribution point increase that you called out. Just wondering if you could put some context to how significant that factor was in the context of the growth that was delivered for top line this year. And then as a follow-up to that question, can you provide a sense of the degree of headroom that you have on distribution points for your existing customer base and how much further that driver has to run?

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Yes, it's a good question because, you know, distribution is the first and most important fundamental thing, isn't it? Because if a product's not in the store, you can't sell any. Constantly moving distribution forward is really important. I haven't got a, you know, deconstruction of exactly how much that contributed to overall growth, but it's definitely helpful. What you're seeing is the benefit of two things, really. As we've got strong growth from our brands, they deserve more shelf space. Also, as we launch new products, they've got to fit on the shelf somewhere as well. Those two things are the drivers. I think, you know, we'll continue to nudge that forward over time, whileever we've got strong performance and more new products coming to market.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

I'm not seeing a natural, a natural ceiling to it. Although we do remember, of course, that shelves aren't elastic. They only occupy, they can only take as many, as many facings as they can. You know, over time, what you see is some of the weaker players fall out, and we gain shelf space from that.

[Matthew Abraham, Analyst at Berenberg]

Okay, that's helpful. Just one more, if I may. We've obviously spoken about the step up in CapEx. Just wondering if we should also be thinking about an increase in marketing investment given, you know, the improved cash flow dynamics of the business and how that will link to top line outcomes and, you know, the associated lag with that top line outcome.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Yeah.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

You know, I mean, I think, I think we've been very clear over time that we are on a journey with our marketing investment. It isn't at the point where we want it to be yet. That's why we've been working really hard on gross margin improvement and using gross margin improvement as a way to fuel our own, you know, sort of internally, funding and increase in marketing investment. We're on a journey, I would say, you know, there's a long-term commitment towards increasing, increasing that investment. We're probably, I would say, about two-thirds of the way along that journey. There's definitely more, definitely more to do.

[Matthew Abraham, Analyst at Berenberg]

Great. Thank you.

[Damian McNeill, Analyst at Deutsche Numis]

Thank you. Damian McNeill from Deutsche Numis. Just, can you talk about the sort of your CapEx program?

[Damian McNeill, Analyst at Deutsche Numis]

I know you sort of qualitatively said you're gonna increase CapEx, but could you sort of quantify that and also talk about the returns profile that you are likely to expect from that, whether that's sort of as good as what you've been achieving so far? I think, just the, my second question, is, I guess, on the pension full resolution. Can you just clarify the timing of that 2026? Is that calendar year or your fiscal year, please?

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

They both feel like questions for you, Duncan.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

Does, doesn't it? Yeah. No, thanks. Thanks, Damian. So yeah, so CapEx, so the GBP 41 million we spent is, as I said, pretty much double what we spent a couple of years ago.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

We've always talked about, I guess, the untapped opportunity from this where a few years ago we had to limit how far down our list of opportunities we could go. Now, obviously, with a bit more cash to deploy, we're very happily moving down it. You know, continue to be investing in high returning projects. We've talked, you know, sort of two, three, four-year paybacks. That's very much, you know, the sort of thing that we're looking at. Obviously, within that envelope, there's stuff, you know, keeping the lights on, making sure the sites are a suitable work environment for our colleagues. Clearly, in terms of the step up, we're focusing on the cost out and some of the capacity increases we've talked about. We're guiding to about GBP 50 million for this year, Damian.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

That's probably a reasonable feel for the number going forward. As I say, it reflects just, we've just got loads of opportunity that we can still access, you know, a broadly similar returns profile, I would say. Keep it, pensions. Yes, calendar 2026, calendar 2026. We've said for a while, I think, you know, by December 2026 is generally how we're thinking about resolution. When I say resolution, we're thinking about a buy-in, you know, ultimately a sort of de-risking of the scheme, which I think would be logically a buy-in. Sitting here today, you can never predict these things exactly, can you? I think December, you know, by December 2026 still feels a decent estimate.

[Damian McNeill, Analyst at Deutsche Numis]

Have you started talking to potential sort of people that would execute the buy-in with you, or is it still a bit too early for that?

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

Yeah, I mean, I think probably the best way to explain it is, you know, we are monitoring the scheme really closely. We're taking the necessary actions. There's a load of data cleans under the bonnet type stuff that we've been at for a long time. I think we'd naturally progress to those discussions when we think the timing's right.

[Damian McNeill, Analyst at Deutsche Numis]

Just one last one before I hand it to Clive. Just on the distribution point, can you just clarify that it's the entire business, not just U.K.?

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

No, those are U.K. stats.

[Damian McNeill, Analyst at Deutsche Numis]

So they're U.K. stats.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

They're U.K. stats.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

It will be obviously more if you included the rest of the world because we're constantly adding new stores on. We have no way of measuring that, unfortunately, with the same detail we have in the U.K.

[Damian McNeill, Analyst at Deutsche Numis]

Have you got any idea of the headroom that you've got on distribution then, given that shelves aren't elastic?

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

No, not really. It's sort of difficult to try and imagine what it might look like. Wherever we're able to keep bringing great innovation that deserves shelf space to market, then I'd expect us to finish up with a bit more distribution.

[Damian McNeill, Analyst at Deutsche Numis]

Yeah. Okay. Thanks. I'll sit up.

[Clive Black, Analyst at Shore Capital]

Thank you. Clive Black from Shore Capital. I've got three short questions, I hope. One building on Damian's question about CapEx. Why is GBP 50 million the right number?

[Clive Black, Analyst at Shore Capital]

Given you are loaded or minted now, why are you saying you have got an optimal manufacturing program and base, or could that be accelerated? I guess that would be the first.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

It is really about site disruption. If you look back, obviously five, six years ago, it was very much about cash constraint. As that has sort of gradually been removed and we have geared ourselves up in terms of having more engineering expertise within the business, because if you are going to do more big capital projects, you need more engineers. We have now got all that in place. It feels like this is probably a happy level if I look at the amount of disruption that we would accept in any one factory at any one time.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Because of course, we're making these changes while we're churning out millions of consistent high-quality products every day. There's only so much we can do to one factory at once. That's probably why we'd get to a sort of a natural ceiling, which feels like about GBP 50 million, but we'll see.

[Clive Black, Analyst at Shore Capital]

Okay. Thank you. In terms of the margins between grocery and sweet treats, is there scope for any convergence? I do not mean a collapse of the grocery margin, because there is a very wide difference. Is that a potential prize in the medium term, that sweet treat margin?

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

I think there's certainly more automation opportunities in the sweet treat factories than there are in grocery. Whilst there are opportunities in the grocery factories, they are already fairly automated, as you've seen.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

There is definitely more to go for in sweet treats, which will definitely flow through as a margin benefit. There are some inherent differences, particularly because there is a shorter shelf life between the two, which means the two will probably never quite come together.

[Clive Black, Analyst at Shore Capital]

Okay. Lastly, just in terms of your shopper insight or customer insight, both, I mean, what are the really big things that are leading you to think about how your assortment and proposition is going to develop in the sort of medium to long term rather than the next year?

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

I think the big trends that we have seen over the last four or five years remain. If you think about it, everybody is trying to eat a little bit more healthily. We are constantly evolving the portfolio in that direction.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

We know we've got an important trend, an important trend on convenience. So things like the microwavable pouches, which make creating, you know, quick meals easier for people. And some of that's interesting actually, 'cause sometimes that's about speed, but also it's about skillset. You know, people don't know how to make some of these things anymore. So actually being able to help people by, you know, the The Spice Tailor is a great example actually of, you know, a foolproof kit that gives you something that's as good as you get in the restaurant. So whatever we can help with that, that's great. Indulgence is that sort of slight counter trend to the healthy eating piece. Those big building blocks, they're still there and they remain.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

You get subtle changes within it, but you know, we keep, and we are talking to consumers all the time.

[Clive Black, Analyst at Shore Capital]

Thank you.

[Andy Wade, Analyst at Jefferies]

Hi, Andy Wade from Jefferies. Couple from me. First one on sort of, just building on the question earlier on sort of margin revenue trade-off to some extent. This year obviously saw a good performance on the trading profit margin. Thematically you typically talk to having broadly flattish margin and that being reinvested in driving revenue growth. Just sort of interested in the dynamics of how it worked through, how it did this year, i.e. driving margin rather than more on the, what could have potentially, I do not know, been more on top line. Was it, is it more of a timing thing or is just interested as to how that played through?

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

It is really a consequence of two things actually.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

It was mix. So if you look at the mix, you've got less non-branded and more branded. And also that volume leverage through the manufacturing sites and that came through stronger than we expected. I think that's probably the simple answer to the question. It does not change our long term. Yeah, it does not change, does not change anything going forward, Andy. I think we'd expect to follow a similar model in terms of, you know, growing gross margins and reinvesting back.

[Andy Wade, Analyst at Jefferies]

But a higher base rather than something that you're gonna reinvest again back to where you were later on.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

No, from the higher base. Yes. Sorry.

[Andy Wade, Analyst at Jefferies]

Yeah. Cool. And then the second one, just sort of looking at the pasta and sauce microwavable 90 seconds. Now I, I can't imagine the sticking point has been having the idea for that.

[Andy Wade, Analyst at Jefferies]

It's presumably there's some innovation required to actually get it to work. Not that I'm gonna be putting this in my model anyway, but I'm just generally interested to how that sort of.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

We've got the recipe.

[Andy Wade, Analyst at Jefferies]

Yeah. Could you tell me the recipe? You know, how that process worked from an innovation perspective and what needed to be done.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Yeah. It's something we've been wanting to do for a while. You're right. The idea is, we've had the idea for quite a long time. The tricky part actually has been how you get the pasta in such a situation that it can then be microwaved and be ready to eat in 90 seconds, but not have gone mushy from being suspended in the sauce for all the while that it was sitting on the shelf or sitting in your cupboard.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Actually, you know, the chefs have done a really great job kind of getting that right. It took us some years of work to get that to where we wanted it to be so that it was a, you know, sort of a good experience for the consumer.

[Andy Wade, Analyst at Jefferies]

Interesting. Thanks. Yeah. You are gonna make it easy.

[Matthew Berg, Analyst at Investec]

Morning, Matthew Berg from Investec. I've got three questions, then just one quick clarification as well, please. First question is on the revenue growth outlook. I see on slide five, you've noted your average revenue growth over the last five years, CAGR, over 6%. Obviously, there's been some inflation in there. I just wonder how close you think you can get to that sort of number going forward? Given, you know, all the progress you're making with the business.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Yeah, sure.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Can I take 'em one at a time?

[Matthew Berg, Analyst at Investec]

Yeah, please.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

No, I'm gonna hold it all in my head. Look, I think over the medium term, and you take all the pillars of the growth model, we would expect the business can grow mid, mid-single digit. That'll include the benefit from bolt-on acquisitions as well. Yes, there's some inflation in that 6% you saw on there. But, you know, I think over the medium term we can, we would be mid-single digit.

[Matthew Berg, Analyst at Investec]

Great. Thank you. Second question on the reformulation of the FUEL10K granola, but leaving the taste unchanged, which is obviously the holy grail. I just.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Yeah, quite.

[Matthew Berg, Analyst at Investec]

Yeah. I just wondered how, you know, how you've managed to achieve that, how easy or otherwise was that? You know, which ingredients have changed?

[Matthew Berg, Analyst at Investec]

Who's helped you with it? Any color on that would be interesting.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

I'm not gonna go through what we changed, but what I can tell you, it was not easy. There were multiple versions of granolas that were tasted and tested until they came up with one that they were happy with that was essentially imperceptible in terms of how it tasted from the original, but actually then not classified as HFSS. It was not easy, but I think that we did a really super job actually.

[Matthew Berg, Analyst at Investec]

Yeah. Fantastic. Third question, in terms of expanding FUEL10K into noodles, I think you said with help from Nissin. Yeah. I mean, how does that work? 'Cause presumably there's the danger of cannibalizing Nissin product.

[Matthew Berg, Analyst at Investec]

Do you pay a certain amount away to Nissin to accommodate that for their assistance, et cetera? How does that work?

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

No. Our noodle parts are manufactured by Nissin for us. In that sense, they act as a co-manufacturer for us, but they also help us develop the product. We are literally just buying a finished good from them and then we sell. There is nothing more complicated to it than that.

[Matthew Berg, Analyst at Investec]

Oh, I am with you. Okay. So you are interested in lines anyway. Fine. Okay. That is great. And then, sorry, just final point of clarification on the Ambrosia porridge pots distribution. I think you talked about moving into smaller stores. Did you mean smaller stores of the larger retailers or smaller store chains?

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Right. The former. Okay.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

At least, it'll be both over time. Right. The thing I know about is, you know, one of the big retailers, we've now just had a conversation about, okay, this is working so well. Even when we've got small stores with a much tighter range, they deserve to be in that range.

[Matthew Berg, Analyst at Investec]

Got it. Fantastic. Thank you.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Thanks.

[Andrew Ford, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Thanks. It's Andrew from Peel Hunt. Just another question on the margins. Obviously I know that the case is to reinvest it, but with the mix changing, volumes coming through, is it possible to reinvest all of it or is there gonna be naturally some kind of progress in that margin inevitably? What's the kind of, are we now at the terminus or is there more to come on the trading profit margin?

[Andrew Ford, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

I have got another question.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

I think the dynamics here are what we are trying to do is expand our gross margin and you get that from a whole bunch of savings initiatives we have going on all the time in the business, plus the capital investment into the sites. All that gives us an expanding gross margin percentage, but we are using a lot of that to fuel the growth in the business. As I answered one of the other questions earlier, we know that we need to step up our marketing investment further from where it is. We have made a lot of progress over the last five years, but from where we were, there is still more we need to go after.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

We'll continue to do that and it'll take a few more years for us to get that where we need it to be. As a consequence, and as Duncan said, we therefore see trading profit moving broadly in line with top line. As I say, this year it actually grew a bit ahead of that. That's because, you know, things flowed out better than we thought and later in the year as well, which is one of the reasons why we came ahead of our January guidance. That mix and volume benefit flowing through. Does that make sense?

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

Yeah. I think, you know, just on non-branded, we probably expect non-branded to sort of normalize a bit more as we go forward.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

I think it's been extra pronounced this year, which has probably accentuated the mix over and above what we expect to see going forward.

[Andrew Ford, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

That's clear. Thank you. The next one on capital allocation, you mentioned obviously the increase in CapEx, but that's probably at a limit now. I know the dividends going up, but without sort of acquis and, you know, where you want to maintain the leverage to be means there could quite easily be quite a lot of excess cash kind of building into the business if acquisitions don't come along. I know that you are selective with those. What are your, are you having thoughts on what to do with that extra capital as it comes, you know, as it builds or, yeah, if acquisitions don't come along or you just?

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

I think I was thinking the acquisitions will come along. I think that's probably our start point is, you know, the priorities are very straightforward. It's investment back into the sites and then it's acquisitions and then dividends. I don't see any change in that.

[Duncan Leggett, CFO at Premier Foods]

No, it's better.

[Andrew Ford, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Yeah. Great. Thank you.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Any more? No? Good. Thanks, thanks everybody for coming today. I think as you can see, another year of good financial performance progress against all the pillars of the growth strategy. I think what it also tells us is it sort of hints to the future a little bit, doesn't it? Because if we can keep driving that, the five pillars of that growth strategy, there's a very clear model here.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

We just keep repeating that and then we'll be able to scale Premier Foods up to a much bigger business than it is today. Thanks very much.

[Alex Whitehouse, CEO at Premier Foods]

Thanks all.

Participants

Executives

• Duncan Leggett, CFO
• Alex Whitehouse, CEO

Analysts

• Matthew Berg, Analyst at Investec
• Andrew Ford, Analyst at Peel Hunt
• Clive Black, Analyst at Shore Capital
• Damian McNeill, Analyst at Deutsche Numis
• Matthew Abraham, Analyst at Berenberg
• Andy Wade, Analyst at Jefferies
• Charles Hall, Analyst at Peel Hunt