Revenue up 104.9% but EBITDA fell 7.8% on a lower-margin mix shift

Despite this, EBITDA fell 7.8% to $81.0m, profit before tax fell 20.2% to $58.0m, and NPAT fell 38.1% to $30.1m. The gap is explained largely by segment mix: Global Proteins' revenue share rose 30.7 percentage points to 64.6% of the group at a 9.0% margin, displacing higher-margin Horticulture (25.7% margin), whose share fell to 29.4%.

Compounding this, the effective tax rate rose to 30.3% from 20.8%, widening the PBT-to-NPAT growth gap to 17.9 points. Net debt/EBITDA rose to 1.32x from 0.77x, the upper edge of the company's historical range (mean 0.78x), while gross borrowings rose 41.0% to $157.8m, funding an inventory build to $123.2m, up 301.6%.

Revenue growth of 104.9% is not a like-for-like organic signal because it is concentrated in the lower-margin Global Proteins segment, now 64.6% of revenue versus 34.0% prior. This means the headline revenue figure overstates the strength of the underlying business, since EBITDA and PBT both declined even as revenue nearly doubled.

Tax is distorting the bottom-line read. With the effective tax rate at 30.3% against 20.8% previously, PBT growth of -20.2% is the cleaner operating measure than the NPAT decline of -38.1%, though the underlying PBT contraction is real and not simply a tax artefact.

Leverage and inventory have moved together. Net debt/EBITDA at 1.32x and inventory days at 29.4, above the historical range (mean 22.0 days), point to inventory being funded partly by higher borrowings, which reduces near-term balance-sheet flexibility if the buildup does not convert to sales.

A release excerpt references an increase to FY26 underlying NPAT guidance, but the specific range was not captured in the extracted content, so this briefing cannot validate management's guidance against the 20.2% PBT decline shown here.

The company's historical first-half share of full-year performance (41.3% of revenue, 51.7% of EBITDA, 48.1% of NPAT in the prior comparable year) suggests earnings are typically more concentrated in the first half than revenue is. That pattern implies the second half will need to recover meaningfully in EBITDA and NPAT terms if any lifted FY26 guidance is to be met, but without the guidance figures this cannot be confirmed.

However, the exact prior-period conversion figure is not usable here because of a denominator distortion in that ratio, so the comparison should be read directionally rather than numerically precise.

Part of the cash improvement is balance-sheet assisted rather than purely operational: capex fell 30.9% to $6.7m (0.9% of revenue), an unusually low level, which flatters free cash flow independent of underlying trading. Pre-lease free cash flow of $13.3m is well above the historical average of -$32.6m, but the inventory build was funded partly through higher borrowings rather than internally generated cash, meaning some of the balance-sheet strength is debt-supported rather than organic.

This briefing cannot assess the specific FY26 guidance range referenced in the release excerpts, as the numeric figures were not captured in the supplied extraction.