Macfarlane Group H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
September 2, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Neutral Sentiment: The group delivered 13.1% sales growth in H1 2025 largely from the acquisitions of Pitreavie and Polyformes, while organic sales were down around 1% amid price deflation.
  • Negative Sentiment: Adjusted operating profit fell by 22% to £9.8 m due to a reduction in gross margin (from 39.7% to 37.8%) and higher staff and property costs squeezing profitability.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Operating cash flow remained robust but net debt rose to £15.2 m by end-June after £13.3 m outflows for acquisitions, capital expenditure and the share buyback programme.
  • Positive Sentiment: Management expects a strong H2 uplift from seasonal demand, new business wins and price increases, aiming to deliver full-year 2025 results in line with its July guidance.
  • Positive Sentiment: The group is maintaining its 0.96 pence dividend, pursuing a £4 m share buyback, advancing sustainability initiatives and preparing to resume acquisitions in 2026.
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Earnings Conference Call
Macfarlane Group H1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 4 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Macfarlane Group PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged and could be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. Now I'd like to hand you over to the CEO, Peter Atkinson. Good morning, sir.

Speaker 1

Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to today's review of Macfarlane Group's first half results for 2025. I'm Peter Atkinson, the CEO, and I'm with my colleague, Ivor Gray, who's our CFO. In terms of the agenda for today's meeting, I'll make some opening remarks in terms of an exec summary, and Ivor will then take you through the key metrics for 2025 first half. I'll cover off the two main divisions, the distribution and the manufacturing division, in terms of their individual performances. Ivor will take you through the pension scheme, capital allocation, and we'll finish up with some concluding remarks and take questions.

Operator

In terms of the introduction to the business, for those who are maybe not familiar with Macfarlane Group, we're a specialist business in the protective packaging market, and we supply customers across the UK and increasingly in Europe with a range of protective packaging products and solutions. We're here to protect their products through the supply chain to ensure the products are effectively packed, stored, and transported. A key benefit we bring is the working capital reduction and administration burden. Clearly, from a sustainability point of view, we're working to optimize and minimize the environmental impact of that packaging. We differentiate ourselves from the competition through the fact that we have now fully European coverage with local service. We've got a breadth of product and service offer, added value customer proposition, something called the Significant Six, which you may have heard of before.

Operator

Longstanding supply partnerships going back for 50-60 years. Our business is focused on protective packaging. We don't deal with any other materials. We don't deal with any other product groups. We simply focus on protective packaging. Let me summarize the first half results, and then I'll pass over to Ivor to take you through the detail. What we've seen in the first six months is a pretty challenging period. Clearly, we delivered good sales growth, 13.1% ahead of the previous period. That was based primarily on acquisition growth through the acquisition of Pitreavie that we made in January and the benefit of Polyformes that we made in 2024. We've seen weak organic sales growth, and we've seen price deflation in the first six months of the year. The sales growth was then offset by weaker margin, and there are three components to that.

Operator

We've been slower in recovering input price changes. We've seen quite a lot of competitive activity that has needed us to retain customers by reducing prices. We're seeing customers in the current environment understandably focusing on short-term price reduction rather than the medium-term value that we can bring them. That has impacted our margin in the first half of the year. The second component of the sales offset has been higher costs. I think we're all familiar with the increased costs through national insurance and minimum wage, which is impacting all businesses, and obviously, we're not immune to that. That's been a big feature of our first half cost increase. The second key feature has been material increases in property costs, both rental and rates costs. The effect of the stronger sales but weaker margin and higher costs means that our profitability is down versus the previous period.

Operator

What we're going to talk about in the presentation is clearly what's going to happen in the second half that's going to recover that position. There are a number of features that we'll pick up during the presentation. Firstly, in the second half of the year, we'll have the seasonal benefit, which is usual for the Macfarlane Group-based business, and it's particularly acute within the Pitreavie business. They generate something like 70% of their profit in the second half of the year because of their bias towards the food and drink industry in Scotland. That will give us positive momentum into the second half of the year. The new business that we've won in the first half of the year will flow through into the second half of the year. We win it in the first six months, and then it really starts to expand in the second six months.

Operator

We'll see a benefit from that. The price increase program that we've initiated, again, will start to flow through in the second half of the year. To be fair, in terms of both the revenue line and the margin line in the early weeks of 2025, the second half of 2025, we're seeing improvements in both those areas, which give us confidence for the remainder of the year. The final element of the second half recovery is clearly, you know, we've got tight cost controls in place. We've made some people changes. Our headcount is lower in the first half versus the second half, and we will see the benefits of those coming through. In terms of our full-year 2025 results, we expect them to be in line with the recent market update that we provided back in July.

Operator

Let me pause there and pass over to Ivor, who will talk you through the detail of the first half metrics. I'll actually put some color on the business by talking about the packaging distribution and the manufacturing operations.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Peter, and good morning, everyone. I'll just take you through the kind of first half year key metrics. Up at the kind of top line, you've got the revenue, which has increased by 13%. That has really split 14% benefit from the acquisitions. That was the acquisition of The Pitreavie Group Limited in January of this year and the acquisition of Polyformes Limited in July last year, and a small amount related to the acquisition of Allpack Direct at the very beginning of last year. 14% improvement due to acquisitions, and we've had an organic decline of around 1%. Most of that decline is related to price. Volumes are relatively flat year on year. In terms of adjusted operating profit, we're down 22%. We're down £2.7 million versus this time last year, a reduction from £12.5 million to £9.8 million.

Operator

We have a positive contribution from the acquisitions that I mentioned earlier of £1.7 million and an organic decline of £4.5 million. That is primarily driven by a smaller amount related to the reduction in sales, a reduction in the gross margin from 39.7% to 37.8%, which has made quite a large impact indeed in terms of profitability, and rising operating costs, as Peter described earlier, which has impacted the business. Overall, those two elements, the reduction in gross margin and the increase in cost, are the prime reasons for the reduction in profitability with the small amount related to the organic reduction in sales. In terms of the balance sheet, we've had cash outflows of £13.3 million in the first half of the year, and I'll come on to describe that in a minute.

Operator

Our bank debt, net debt position at the end of December was £1.9 million, rising to £15.2 million at the end of June. The operating cash flows remain strong. Clearly, we've used those operating cash flows to fund acquisition at the end and also the start of the capital share buyback program, along with investment in capital expenditure in the business. The gap to the pension stock price is down slightly from the year end, £9.6 million to £9.2 million. Clearly, the key message here is that the pension scheme is not drawing any cash from the group, and we're working in the short term towards a buy-in, possibly before the end of this year, at least certainly within the next 6 to 12 months. In terms of the dividend, we've held the dividend at £0.96 pence.

Operator

That's the same as last year, and that gives us dividend cover at 2.4 times, and the EPS is moving down in line with the reduction in profitability. Moving on to the income statement, Peter will cover the revenue line in a bit more detail. As you can see, as I described earlier, two of the key features here is the reduction in gross margin from 39.7% to 37.8%. That's primarily driven by a reduction in margin within the distribution business. It's gone from 37.9% to 35.6%. Albeit, we saw a reduction in the gross margin in the second half of the year, which the second half of the year last year, the gross margin distribution was 36.4%. A slight reduction in the first half of this year of 35.6%. Pleased to say that the margins have now stabilized as we start the second half of this year.

Operator

There is a margin reduction in manufacturing of 44.3% to 41%. That is primarily related to the mixed impact of the Pitreavie business. The Pitreavie business does run at a lower gross margin than the rest of the manufacturing division. If you strip out the Pitreavie impact, the gross margin is in line with last year. In terms of the cost base, we've got a £6.6 million increase in the operating expenses. £5.1 million of that is related to the acquisitions that we've brought in. £0.7 million of that is due to incremental labor costs. £1.3 million related to incremental property costs. Some of that related to the consolidation of the East Midlands operation, which Peter will describe later. We've got a £0.5 million reduction in other costs.

Operator

The interest costs are a bit higher last year, and that reflects the higher borrowing rates that we've had in the first half of this year compared to last year. There is also an increase in IFRS 16 interest related to the incremental property costs coming through on East Midlands business. In terms of cash flows, really the key message here is our operating cash flows have stayed relatively robust, albeit 15% down in the last year, but certainly lower than the reduction that we've seen in profitability. That's because the working capital is still being managed well. We've got a capital inflow of £1.4 million as a result of that. We've used that £12.4 million of cash inflows from operating dividends to spend £15.1 million on acquisitions. £13.9 million of that are weighted at the Pitreavie acquisition and £1.2 million of earnout payments related to Gottlieb and Allpack Direct.

Operator

We've had £1.3 million of capital expenditure. That's primarily related to the consolidation of the properties of East Midlands and the racking out of the new facility. £0.3 million related to expansion of capacity or grants and manufacturing operation, and some other capital expenditure we've made within the manufacturing operation. You can see the £0.2 million in the first half of the year on the purchase of borrowing shares. That is part of the £4 million buyback program that we announced in June. Primarily, you'll see around £2.5 million in outflows in the second half of the year related to that buyback program, with a very small amount of that related in the first half of the year. You can see the dividend there, £4.3 million. That's the final dividend payment that was made in June.

Operator

An outflow of £13.2 million and an increase in net debt of £1.9 million to £15.2 million at the end of June. I'll hand back to Peter now to go through some detail around the operating performances within distribution and manufacturing.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Ivor. Let me begin by talking about the packaging distribution business that represents around about 75% of the group's revenue. As you can see from the slide, like-for-like sales were broadly flat year on year. What we've seen is, as Ivor's already indicated, we've seen price deflation and volume declines. That's simply because our customers are not buying as much packaging as they're used to, so they're not buying as much packaging from us. That's more acute in the retail space than it is in the industrial space. The split between retail and industrial within distribution is sort of 70-30, 70% being the industrial business. The new business performance in the first six months has been slightly weaker than the previous year. What we're finding in this period of uncertainty, which we're all very, very acutely aware of, is customers being slow to make decisions.

Operator

We know we've got a very strong pipeline of activity. We know we've got a number of customers that are very, very close to completing, and we'd expect our new business to accelerate quite materially in the second half of the year as new business customers come on stream. Our gross margins, as I indicated in the exec summary, have reduced versus the previous year. That's primarily increased input costs and our inability at this stage to fully recover those input cost increases. Plus, we've had to do some competitive defenses of key customers through some aggressive pricing competition from a small number of our competitors. That's caused us to reduce our margins on some of our major customers that were up for tender. We're confident that the gross margin will start to improve in the second half of the year.

Operator

The evidence of the early weeks of the month of July and the early weeks of August, and to be fair, moving into September as well, is that our margin is beginning to improve. The operating cost increases, which I'll talk about on the next page, are really the labor cost increases, national insurance and national minimum wage, property cost increases, and issues around the East Midlands property consolidation. I'll pick those up on the next page. The final metric just to comment on is our Net Promoter Score. As you know, it's a key part of how we measure how we are dealing with customers and how customers perceive us. The Net Promoter Score has remained pretty solid at 61. As you know, the average for B2B customers in Net Promoter Score is sort of late 20s, early 30s.

Operator

We're way above average for B2B type clients who use Net Promoter Score as a measure of customer satisfaction. Just moving on to the raw material price graph, as you know, this is a series of ups and downs because we're operating in global markets for polymer and paper. What we're describing there is what we're seeing in the first half of the year is broadly input price increases, hence that gross margin pressure as we now work to recover those. Just the detail as I promised on the cost program. Here's a breakdown of where the cost increases have been. If you take employee costs, our headcount is down by around about 33% versus the previous period, so we're operating with lower heads.

Operator

We've obviously had to take on board the impact of NI, the impact of extra temporary costs associated with the East Midlands project, which I'll come back to. We've also had some redundancy costs in the first half of the year as we've taken some heads out, and there's also increased pension costs in there. The property cost increase that you see, which is the second big chunk of cost increase during the period, is two things really. It's partly increased rental costs on existing properties. As you know, most of our properties are leased and we've had a number of rent reviews that have come around and we've had very aggressive rent increases from our landlords and not really had much opportunity to offset that in any material way. That's impacted us by about £200,000 in the period.

Operator

Obviously, you've got local authorities that are ramping rates up at the moment, so that's impacting us also. Ivor referred to it and I touched on it, the East Midlands project has been something which has impacted the first half of the year. We were due to complete the project at the end of May. It's actually run through to the end of August, and it's quite a complicated project moving four sites into one, closing four sites and moving into one. The delay in the project has caused us to actually incur additional rent because we've been renting the existing properties and the new property, and additional operating costs. We've had to add extra labor as we've managed through the transition. The good news is that project is now completed. We're out of the four sites. All the business is in the new site.

Operator

We won't see a recurrence of that incremental cost in the second half of the year. The next page is just a refresh and reminder of our acquisition program. While we haven't specifically acquired in 2025 in the distribution business, as you know, we bought the Pitreavie business, which is part distribution and part manufacturing. We've classified it within our manufacturing division. We've got a very strong pipeline of acquisition opportunities both in the UK and in Europe. While it's unlikely we'll do any more acquisitions in 2025, we would expect to be back on the acquisition trail in 2026. The next page is just a summary of the key things that we are focused on. I won't even try and go through all of them, but probably worthwhile just touching on sourcing. We're increasingly finding ways to utilize our in-house manufacturing for in-house supply opportunities.

Operator

Certainly, the acquisition of Pitreavie has given us a big opportunity to use their manufacturing capability for some of our RDCs to buy from an internal supplier rather than an external supplier. Obviously, we keep the margin internalized rather than give it away to an external supplier. In the bottom left-hand corner, we launched our new website around about six months ago. Good progress. It's early days. We've got some interesting momentum there, which is positive. We expect that to become an increasingly important part of the way we transact with customers going forward. I mentioned acquisitions. In terms of Europe, Europe, as you know, is a key part of our development of the group's business to give ourselves an opportunity to access different and larger markets using our existing customers to help us through their relationships with their subsidiaries or their head offices.

Operator

We continue to make good progress both in the follow-up customer program and also from the first acquisition that we've made down in Frankfurt with the Pacman business. We've got further acquisitions that we're working on that we would hope to bring to fruition, probably not next year, but certainly moving into 2027. Finally, on property, we've done the East Midlands consolidation. Prior to that, we did the consolidation in the northwest. Recognizing the property footprint we've got and the increased rental costs that we're seeing, we're looking now to accelerate our property rationalization program. More of that to come as we go into 2026 and 2027. Moving on to our manufacturing division, which now represents close to 25% of the group's revenue and has been an important area for us investing in, certainly in terms of acquisitions recently. They had a pretty solid first half of the year.

Operator

The revenue growth was primarily through the acquisition of Pitreavie and then also part benefit of the acquisition of Polyformes that we made in 2024. There was some small organic growth. The partnership with distribution, as you know, it's not a standalone business as such because it does partner strongly with distribution. That partnership continues to strengthen as we're able to offer customers a broader range of services and a wider product offer. As you're aware, everything we do in this business is bespoke. There's customers coming to us with particular requirements and then us designing with their engineers bespoke solutions to protect their typically very high value or fragile items through their journey through the supply chain. Margins have weakened slightly here, but that's primarily a mix issue. As we've added Pitreavie into this business, Pitreavie has generally a lower gross margin than the base manufacturing business.

Operator

The margin reduction is a mix issue, not a pricing or margin issue related to transactional activity. Our operating expenses are well under control. While we've got an increase in obviously NI and national minimum wage here, we've managed to do some offsetting of that in terms of productivity improvements. Moving over the page and just a reminder, I mentioned this has been a fruitful area for us in terms of acquisitions. We've made about four acquisitions in the last two years: Suttons, B&D Group, Polyformes more recently, and Pitreavie very recently. Pitreavie is doing well for us. Pitreavie, I think if you remember from when we made the announcement, is like a mini-Macfarlane in many ways. It's got a box making facility up in Scotland. It's got a distribution business in Scotland. It's got a design and manufacturing business based up in Aberdeen serving the oil and gas industry.

Operator

It's got a temperature control packaging business. We're now working to create synergies within Pitreavie that benefit the group, particularly from in-house sourcing, which I touched on. We're in the process of combining our distribution businesses. We've got more acquisition activity planned. We've got two more acquisitions we'd like to do within this business in the near term. Moving over in terms of the action plan, I won't go through everything. We've touched on in-house sourcing and that's progressing really well with both Pitreavie and with GWP. Bottom left-hand corner integration, we have now effectively closed the B&D Group site in Southampton. That's been integrated into our Westbury business, and we've got further integration programs in place for the next 12-18 months. Acquisitions I've talked about, and as I say, there's two more acquisitions we'd like to do in this space to strengthen our UK proposition.

Operator

Going forward, a little on the schedule, we're reviewing internally because we've got some pressure from certain customers to extend the reach of this business into Europe. We do some export work at the moment out of this division, but we've got certain customers who are asking us to actually co-locate with them. We're working on plans to actually evaluate that and see whether that's a fruitful journey for this particular business. I'll pause there and turn to Ivor to talk you through sustainability, which is obviously a key issue at the moment, both in terms of our in-house sustainability objectives and also the external pressures around government legislation, and also take you through the pension scheme and the capital allocation.

Speaker 2

Yeah, thank you, Peter. In terms of the sustainability agenda, a lot of information is in this slide. I think off to the left-hand side, you can see we've been continuously making progress in terms of the impact that Macfarlane Group's having on the environment, whether that's through the electrification of our truck fleet, putting solar panels in at various sites that we have, managing our carbon reductions, our carbon impact down that we're managing internally within the business, and also working with our suppliers on the broader impact that we're having on the environment through Scope 3 emissions. In terms of customers, clearly we continue to support our customers through their innovation labs. One of the key features that's coming through this year, which we'll cover off in the next slide, is the introduction of extended producer responsibility (EPR) costs, which are going to impact primarily our customers.

Operator

We are working very heavily with our customers to minimize the carbon footprint that they have, but also to help them through the challenges of introducing the new kind of packaging regulations, the first fees, which are due to come in in October this year. You can see we're also continuing to make good progress on our Net Promoter Score, which is a kind of external validation of the kind of services that we're bringing to our customers. Across the right-hand side, we continue to progress the accreditations. That kind of gives us some validation that we're doing the right things and we're moving in the right direction. Some of these are quite important to our customers, and some of these are important to our investors. Overall, we're making pretty good progress on our sustainability agenda.

Operator

I've come on to discuss really some of the regulations that are coming in that are impacting the business. The ones that are impacting the business at the moment are the ones on the left-hand side. The one that's probably particularly prevalent is the extended producer responsibility. This is effectively a charge that's coming in on all packaging that is ending up in household waste. From a Macfarlane perspective, it effectively impacts around about 20% of our customers. It's broadly customers that are involved in e-commerce retail. We're working with our customers. Effectively, any packaging that we provide to those customers that they are then shipping to their customers, they will have to pay a charge on that packaging, depending on whether it's paper, plastic, or any other kind of substrate.

Operator

We are working with our customers to educate them on the impacts of that packaging, supporting them in terms of what impact that's going to have in terms of their costs, and engaging with them to try and mitigate the impact of that packaging, whether it's moving to something that's more recyclable or whether it's reducing the actual amount of packaging they're actually using. We do that through our innovation lab, and we do that through our Significant Six progress. There is clearly some evolution of that coming through next year in phase two, which is called modulated fees. That's effectively saying that the fees will start to increase for the packaging that's not considered environmentally friendly and stay the same or decrease for the packaging that's considered more environmentally friendly. It's like an evolution of the EPR that's coming in this year.

Operator

We see ourselves as being well positioned to be able to support our customers to try and mitigate the impacts of that as much as possible. As you can see, there are a number of other things that are going to come through over the next two to five years that will impact the packaging market in terms of regulation. Clearly, a lot is going on, but the major impacts for our customers and for us as a business is the impact of extended producer responsibility, which is coming in in October this year and will continue to evolve over the next few years. In terms of the pension scheme, the key message here is pension schemes and accounting surplus. The company hasn't had to put any cash contributions into the scheme for a couple of years now.

Operator

We are actively working towards a buy-in within the next 6 to 12 months. We always said that we'd be working towards a buy-in somewhere around 2026. There is a possibility we might be able to achieve a buy-in this side of Christmas, but we are certainly more in that kind of short term. First of all, moving the scheme to buy-in and then ultimately to buy-out. At the point of buy-out, that's the point where the scheme would come off our balance sheet. The scheme is well funded. It's not drawing in any cash and resources from the group. We are working towards a position of taking the pension scheme off the balance sheet. The first stage of that is buy-in, which we hope to complete in the next 6 to 12 months. Then a buy-out would take a couple of 18 months beyond that.

Operator

In terms of capital allocation, as I described earlier, we've invested in, we've continued to generate good operating cash flows, both through the profitability of the business and good management of working capital. We've invested that in the first half in capital expenditure programs. We've also continued that acquisition program with the acquisition of Pitreavie at the beginning of the year. We paid the final dividend out in the first half of the year. Clearly, the new thing that we've introduced in the first half of this year is the share buyback program, which we commenced in June. We are looking to spend £4 million buying back all those shares between now and June next year.

Operator

That's really a reflection of the fact that, you know, if you look at the rating of our share price relative to the profitability of the business, there's not a huge differential between that and some of the acquisition program. At the moment, we're prioritizing some of our capital towards the share buyback program in the short term. Clearly, we're not planning on doing further M&A this side of Christmas. We'll get back onto the front foot of M&A in 2026. A slight prioritization of resources towards buyback as opposed to M&A in the short term, but we'll get back on the front foot with the M&A program in 2026.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Ivor. Before we go into Q&A, let me just sort of conclude. It's clearly been a difficult H1. There's been significant headwinds that we are trying to, and to a certain extent, managing to navigate through. Those headwinds are around, you know, at the end of the day, our customers just aren't buying as much as they previously were buying. That weak demand is impacting customer volumes. The whole customer uncertainty, you know, you wake up every morning at the moment something new has happened in the marketplace. Customers are uncertain about making big decisions. That's slowing down our new business performance. Obviously, we've got rising operating costs, a big part of which has been the taxation on unemployment.

Operator

As we look to the second half of the year, and we're now sort of two months in, we don't expect the market to improve in the second half of the year. We will benefit from the seasonal uplift, and I touched on that earlier on, both in the Macfarlane business and more acute in the Pitreavie business that we acquired. From there on in, it's really us focusing down on a series of management actions around converting a new business pipeline, which is extremely strong. We really feel very confident about the new business in the second half of the year, managing through the price changes to improve margin. On both those things, as I say, we're seeing some positive trends in the early parts of the second half of the year. Continue to drive operational efficiencies.

Operator

We won't have the challenge of East Midlands from now on in because we've managed the transition. We'll benefit from East Midlands consolidation. Ivor's touched on sustainability and how we're helping customers manage through the EPR challenges. The Pitreavie acquisition, there's still some more benefits to come from that, particularly around in-house sourcing. That's something that we're focusing very hard on at the moment. As Ivor touched on, we've got strong control of working capital, and that will continue to be the case. Ivor's touched on the fact that we're not planning to do any more acquisitions this year, but the acquisition pipeline is strong. As I said earlier, expect us to be back on the acquisition trail in 2026. The share buyback program we initiated, we're continuing that. Also, obviously, we've announced our dividend position, which is a continuation of the current dividend at the current levels.

Operator

In overall terms, difficult period. We're navigating well through it. Second half, we will demonstrate improved performance, and we will exit the year on a good trajectory for 2026. We will move from here to questions.

Operator

Peter, Ivor, thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab situated on the top right-hand corner of your screen. While the company takes a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via Investor Dashboard. Peter, Ivor, as you can see, we received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. Can I please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so? I'll pick up from you at the end.

Speaker 2

Okay. No, I've got two questions for you, Peter. First one is, can we kind of rank the relative kind of contributions from price inflation, the impact of demand, and customer churn on the kind of organic decline story? I think I covered off in the financials that basically the price deflation impact was the primary reason for the kind of worker set reduction and organic decline. Yes, there are ups and downs. I think Peter touched on new business growth of about £3.7 million. We've also seen an equal and ups reduction of that kind of similar scale in terms of customers spending less and some losses of business, albeit some of the losses of business have been primarily at a smaller customer end. If you think of our movement across in sales line, particularly within distribution in the year, most of that is kind of price-driven.

Operator

Impact of new business is £3.7 million. As we then offset in terms of lower demand from existing customers and a bit of loss of customers within the smaller customer base, which kind of offsets that in equal order. I don't know if you're getting that right.

Speaker 1

That's fine.

Speaker 2

That's fine. In terms of there was a discussion of the EPR there. Is EPR going to significantly increase the cost to the business? I suppose adding on to that, do you see any kind of a continual headwind in customer demand declining as a result of that in terms of environmental pressures?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I mean, it's very difficult to judge because EPR is complicated. The rules around EPR and the metrics around EPR keep changing. We've not got a steady state at the moment in terms of where EPR is going to impact. In terms of the direct impact on Macfarlane Group PLC, it's relatively small, primarily because, as you're all aware, retail is an important but relatively small part of our overall business. It's about 25% of our distribution business revenue. A majority of what we're doing in, which is EPR related, is e-commerce. It's not FMCG. There's a small direct cost to the business, which is not material. Where we are very active at the moment is working with customers to help them reduce their risk of EPR taxation.

Operator

There's a lot of work going on, a lot of work in the innovation labs, a lot of roadshows that we're doing, which is basically guiding our customers and helping them navigate through what is a very tricky and complicated period and process. Is it going to overall reduce demand going forward? Undoubtedly, I think there will be a demand reduction around FMCG, which is where the EPR has the most material impact. There may be some slight reduction around e-commerce potentially, but I don't think it's going to be a material feature that's going to impact the business and its future over the next three to five years.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Peter. There's a question here on operating margins. What does the half-to-run rate in terms of margins look like in terms of first half versus second half? What does the outlook look like for operating margins going forward? If I can pick that one up, if you look at our net margins in the first half of the year, we were just under 7%. We would expect that to be kind of near 9% in the second half of the year. That's primarily driven by more volume throughput. There's quite a seasonal uplift in volume that we expect in the second half of the year. That naturally absorbs our cost base more effectively in the second half of the year. We actually do see the gross margins being slightly higher in the second half than the first half. They are the kind of two key features.

Operator

The other feature is the Pitreavie business, as Peter described, is more weighted towards the second half of the year. Some of that is down to some of the seasonal uplifting spend that Peter described earlier. We're driving some of our more internal corrugated buying and distribution throughout the Pitreavie business. That's also retaining some profitability within the group. We'd expect our margins in the second half of the year to be higher than the first half. Certainly, as we exit this year, we're probably targeting our net margins around about 8%. We don't see that probably improving much next year because I think next year we continue to see those kind of operating cost pressures. While we see the kind of gross margins stabilizing, we don't see the margins changing significantly next year.

Operator

We would expect the margins next year, the net margins to stay around 8%, with we starting to see some improvements from about 2027 onwards. What we're looking at next year is seeing some uplift in sales next year falling to the bottom line, but not a significant change in terms of the bottom line margins. I think there was an add-on to that where that changes our view in terms of capital allocation between M&A activity and returns to shareholders. I don't think it does. At the end of the day, we are trying to achieve a balance between returning some money to shareholders through the share buyback program. We want to be recognizing the M&A activity program is still an important feature of the growth story going forward. I don't think we're missing out on any significant opportunities at the moment.

Operator

We do want to invest strategically in M&A, both within the manufacturing and distribution business going forward. Clearly, where those opportunities arise and the price points are right and are strategic for the business, we will certainly continue the M&A program and try to balance that return to shareholders and M&A program in line with each other where we can. In terms of looking at a question around Europe, Peter, in terms of yourself, kind of third-party logistics, do we see third-party logistics being a key part of supporting the growth story in terms of our European expansion?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. The answer bluntly is yes. Through all the research we did before we entered Europe, we recognized that a big part of the model in Europe for successful distributors is more outsourcing of activities, particularly warehousing and distribution. While in the UK, the majority of our activity is running through our own warehouses with our own trucks, we do recognize in Europe it's different. Certainly, in terms of our operations today, we are very active in using third-party logistics companies. That will be a growing feature of our European story to make more use of third-party logistics companies, both for storage and for distribution.

Speaker 2

A specific question here around you mentioned East Midlands site consolidation. I think previously we had mentioned that we would get some cost savings out of that once we're through the program. Do we still see those levels of cost savings coming through? The question mentions that we'd mentioned £400,000 per annum once we're through the program. Do we still expect to see that or is that a change given the current circumstances?

Speaker 1

Yeah, when we get to a steady state, probably it might not be. £400,000 was based on assumed volumes. Clearly, as we've said, the market is weaker, so the volumes are weaker. The benefits are probably not going to be as great. You're probably talking more in the £300,000 range than the £400,000 range. Yes, we would expect to see, once we get to a steady state, savings coming through the East Midlands consolidation.

Speaker 2

Moving on to there, we talked about the V1 shop, the website, and you know, that adding a positive impact. You know, how much of our revenues do you see coming through the online shop?

Speaker 1

Yeah, so in relative terms, the online shop is a small proportion of our revenue today. It's less than 5%. In terms of trading electronically with customers, we've got about 50% of our revenue where we trade electronically. In terms of direct people buying over the website, it's less than 5%. We clearly would like to increase that. The new website is the start of the journey to increase that because we recognize that both the functionality, appearance, and presentation of our old website was not in line with current website trends. We've done the relaunch. It's still early stages, but we are seeing some positive progress. We'd expect to see further progress as we exit this year and into 2026.

Speaker 2

There's a question around the kind of margins within the distribution business. You know, our up-and-up competitors are facing the same challenges that we are facing. Do you see the opportunity for us to recover that? Specifically around gross margins, is the declining gross margins a sign of that kind of competitive intensity or kind of discipline within the market that is starting to loosen?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I mean, I think the market conditions, the market conditions, so it's certainly affecting all the key players in the UK market to different degrees. How they're managing it is their business rather than our business. Certainly, we've seen the margin fall back in the first six months of this year compared to the first six months of last year. We're now seeing the margin start to recover as we've gone into H2. We would certainly expect to see the margin that's currently running at just under about 35.6% at the end of H1. We'd certainly expect, as we exit the year, to be back up the exit rate at the end of 2024, which was around about 36%. Certainly pressures there, but certainly we can see a way of getting back to a sort of 36% gross margin.

Operator

We're probably never going to get back to the heights of gross margin that we saw during the COVID period, where I think most of you were aware, that was where demand was outstripping supply and price increases were going crazy. We over-recovered during that period, and hence, margins were high. I don't see us getting back to those levels, but certainly, around about 36% is what we see as a sustainable level going forward.

Speaker 2

In terms of one of the questions, you mentioned headcount reduction within action distribution. What are the kind of key areas that that's impacting?

Speaker 1

Yeah, what we've tried to do is to focus our headcount reductions primarily in the Head Office, the central functions. We've tried to retain staffing levels as best we can in our operational business units. As you know, we operate the business through a series of business units. We've not tried to strip out major costs there. It's really been in the Head Office functions. If you look at the increase that we've seen in terms of headcount over the last two or three years, it's primarily been not in the operational side of the business, but in the Head Office support functions. It's that where we've focused our activity in the first six months of this year, and we'll continue to focus our activity. Clearly, we want to be able to service customers effectively.

Operator

In terms of salespeople, in terms of drivers, in terms of warehouse people, in terms of sales administration, those are functions that we continue to ensure that we've got strong resources in place to service our customers.

Speaker 2

I think we've probably covered this one. Do we intend to continue to acquire companies as a regular process?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I know acquisition is a key part of our strategy. Clearly, it's finding the right companies at the right price. I think we've got a well sort of rehearsed program in doing that over the last seven or eight years, and we continue to work on that. The fact that we're in a pause now is purely because obviously Pitreavie, we did it in January, was the biggest acquisition we've done in the last 20 years, was complicated in terms of the components, the full components of the business. We wanted to spend management time making sure that bedded in and making sure we generated the synergies, which Ivor touched on. We'll be back on the acquisition trail, the right companies, the right time, right place, right price, back in 2026.

Speaker 2

One of the features of the first half of the year is manufacturing is clearly contributing more to the cost of the group than distribution. Historically, distribution's been the kind of stronger contributor in terms of overall. Do you see that as a kind of structural shift in the cost of the business?

Speaker 1

No, I mean, it's right to identify that proportionally, the business has always been sort of 90-10 historically, 90% distribution, 10% manufacturing. I think we've seen a really good opportunity in manufacturing. As you can see, it's a specialist niche. The customers are extremely sticky. The margins are higher than distribution. Although it's a smaller market and is a more complicated market, we do see it as a nice adjunct to our distribution business. As you see from the stats, a significant proportion of manufacturing sales is driven through distribution. There are synergies by the two businesses working together. I think in terms of the scale of opportunity, distribution still represents the biggest scale opportunity for Macfarlane Group PLC. We do see manufacturing as an important adjunct to our distribution business to provide a comprehensive sort of protective packaging suite of products and services.

Speaker 2

I think, again, we may have covered some of this in terms of operating margins. You know, we've always talked about looking at a 10% goal. I think we got there last year. Obviously, we've gone back a wee bit this year. Does that feel still like a medium-term target? What are the levers to kind of get us from where we are now back up to that kind of level?

Speaker 1

We've always, you know, over quite a period talked about 10% being the underlying operating margin we were looking to achieve. We've touched that, you know, recently, as Ivor said. I think the sort of things that we're doing, we've got to make sure that we get our gross margin back up to 36%, which we mentioned. We've got to ensure that the cost increases that we have inherited in a way or come our way, a big part of that through government legislation. We've got to ensure that we find ways to offset those, either through pricing or through a lower cost structure. I think there's no doubt that the property portfolio, as I touched on this, and I'll repeat it, the increase in rental costs is going to be an increasing challenge for us going forward.

Operator

Having completed the East Midlands project, we'll be looking to accelerate the opportunity to rationalize our property portfolio. It's a balance between ensuring that we've got effective customer service on a regional and local level, ensuring that we've got a property portfolio that fits and is cost-effective. There's clearly some more opportunities to do property rationalization and property consolidation. We'll be accelerating those programs in the coming period.

Speaker 2

Okay, we've covered all the key areas. I think we covered EPR. Didn't really impact EPR directly in the business. Whether that's a long-term headwind from customers picked in on to reduce packaging, we covered that one earlier.

Speaker 1

I think we've covered all the questions from what we can see. If anybody has got another question, they're happy to take it. If not, we will thank you for all your questions. Thanks for your attendance today. Appreciate your continuing support as we navigate through what are turbulent times. Thanks very much.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

Peter, Ivor, thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Macfarlane Group PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation and good afternoon to you all.

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