Another complex process trying to reconcile underlying profits...

Another complex process trying to reconcile underlying profits against statutory profits and pro-rata contributions, and ascertain longer term trends.

It's fair to say that management was demonstrably bullish about the result and wanted to iterate it was also cycling off a strong PCP. The main points of interests I gleaned from the investor call were:

• They are targeting JacPak revenue to triple over the next 3-5 years
• Guidance update is solely due to JacPak.
• Warrick Farm closure costs are completed
• The most interesting questions came from retail shareholders rather than analysts, including:

1. Why pay a dividend and not reduce debt? Answer was that there has been a lot of investment in the business yet net debt is consistent YOY and going forward they are comfortable in their cash conversion
2. Comment on bad reviews on Lasoo? Apparently these reviews relate to, and are accumulative from years before the relaunch by IVE, in fact prior to IVE ownership. Trust Pilot has a review rating of 4.3 which is good compared to their competitors and much more relevant to the period since relaunch.

They were very positive about Lasoo which is tracking ahead of targets and they seem not only committed but very positive for the longer term contribution. One thing I found interesting was that retailers like the platform because of the fact that Lasoo does the product mapping for them and because Lasoo doesn't compete with the retailer, unlike say Amazon which uses data generated from it's third party retailers to enhance its own product offering.

The overall impression was that management was very upbeat about the outlook or that was the impression they wanted to give, this is probably backed up by the maintenance of the dividend even with greater debt obligations.