Trifast PLC
LSE:TRI
Earnings Call Analysis
Summary
Q2-2024
Amid a challenging macroeconomic environment, the company has shown resilient performance. Focused strategies on margin management, cost control, and working capital management have started to yield favorable results. Inventory levels have significantly improved, moving from a high in Q3 of FY '23 to targeting low 20s weeks by year-end. Operational improvements, like the U.K.'s National Distribution Centre (NDC), are set to substantially cut costs, with full-year savings at GBP 200,000 and future annual savings of GBP 5 million expected. The company is also progressing toward a stronger engagement with fewer, but higher value customer segments (Global 200) and segments with higher growth rates and profitability. Additionally, plans involve nearshoring for supply chain derisking and sustainability. Management reasserts commitment to reaching an underlying operating profit (UOP) margin of 10% to 13% and a return on capital employed (ROCE) of 12% to 16%.
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Good morning, and welcome to the Trifast plc interim results investor presentation. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand over to CEO, Iain Percival. Good morning to you.
Good morning, and thank you very much for that introduction. So good morning, everybody, and welcome to this morning's presentation of Trifast plc's half year results. My name is Iain Percival. I'm the Chief Executive Officer. And I'm joined this morning by Darren Hayes-Powell, our Chief Financial Officer; and by Dan Jack, the Chief Operating Officer.
Good morning.
And on behalf of all of us, thank you very much for taking your time to join us this morning. Together, we're going to be taking you through the highlights of our first half year, following which, as you just heard, there'll be a question for us to review the questions that come through. As it's the first time that I've met you in my capacity as CEO, let me first quickly introduce myself and share my early impressions of our business after my first 45 working days. So for those who don't know me, I joined Trifast at the end of September and bring with me more than 30 years of successful transformation change and turnaround in industrials. I've a career which has covered aerospace, automotive, consumer and health care markets, dealing with many of the world's leading companies, and have got a strong track record of creating shareholder value and building leading businesses with high-performing leadership teams. In my first 45 days, I've visited more than half of our locations, meeting and engaging with our local teams to gain an understanding of our business, and I'll be continuing to meet the remaining major locations as well as talking with our key customers and other stakeholders before the end of the year. What I've seen so far reinforces my outside in view that Trifast is a business with strong foundations. Our people are loyal and passionate about our customers, and they provide excellent service and response that help them be successful. We design, develop, manufacture and supply excellent quality products and provide services and have a reputation for technical excellence. We have, though, historically suffered from an unfocused strategy, and coupled with weak and nonstandard business processes, whether that be in operations, for example, in safety or leveraging best practice, commercially in how we manage the margin or in general business such as reporting standardization and working capital management. Clearly, the team have started to address those challenges, and we're demonstrating -- and you'll hear today positive progress on the key self-help programs that we'll talk through in more detail shortly. We are, though, at the early stages of our turnaround journey, and there remains a lot for us to do. And at the same time, we're facing an increasingly challenging macroeconomic and geopolitical environment, through which we must navigate and remain focused on our execution to maintain the positive momentum that you'll hear that we've started. We're working through our strategy and our turnaround plan, which, coupled with the delivery of our margin, operational and working capital improvement programs, will ensure that we deliver on our midterm targets. And I'm confident that we can and we will deliver on those commitments. So let me turn then to the next slide, which covers the financial highlights for the first half year. So given the backdrop of a challenging trading environment, we're pleased to have delivered revenue broadly in line with last year, with the impact of general industrial markets, home and health, offset by our growth in light and heavy vehicle markets. We've seen recovery in those light and heavy vehicle end segments and customers from the supply chain disruptions that have impacted the last couple of years. As I mentioned, it's really encouraging to see the strategic initiatives that the team here shared with you in July, and they're now beginning to come through in margin improvement of 110 basis points and working capital improvements, which have contributed significantly to our reduction in net debt by more than GBP 10 million and improved our leverage ratio to around 1.6x, as we committed. You will also recall that we announced the consolidation of our U.K. footprint as the first major step of our operational efficiency program, and I'm delighted that the implementation of our U.K. national distribution center is already delivering efficiency gains, and we're confident in delivering that project on time and delivering the anticipated full year savings next year. We've announced today a joint venture with a leading Asian manufacturer in China, [ Jiayi ], and that strengthens our relationships with existing customers in China and provides us with an excellent platform for servicing the needs and the growth in the world's second largest industrial market. So whilst I highlighted in my introduction there clearly remains a lot for us to do, I think it's fair to say we've made a really good positive start, and we're delivering on the key self-help programs that are within our control, and we'll continue to stay focused on those as we drive forward into the second half year. Before I hand over to Darren and Dan, who will take us through more details, let me take you through a reminder of our 4 strategic key indicators. On the left-hand side, organic revenue growth, we said, should be greater than GDP. Clearly, in the first half year, as I mentioned, we've had a challenging macro environment to trade within, but it's good to see that in operating margin, which we are targeting in the midterm being in the range of 10% to 13% and ROCE, similarly, in the range of 12% to 16%, it's great to see that we've turned the corner and are making the first steps of progress in delivering on those midterm ambitions. On the right-hand side, you can see our ambition for the North American market, the world's largest fastener market, being -- ultimately delivering more than 25% of group revenue. And again, you'll hear later how that region continues to see good steps of growth, even again in the challenging environment. So with that, let me hand you over to Darren and Dan, and they'll take you through more details.
Thank you, Iain. So let me just take you through some of the financial KPIs. So if we do the top left graph first, as you can see, as Iain outlined already, revenue has dropped slightly by 2.2%, and that will flow down into the profit. And I'll talk to that more in the bridge for the underlying profit data. In the middle graph, you're seeing that our underlying profit before tax has dropped GBP 1.6 million. A large driver behind that is the servicing of our debt and our interest charges. Again, I'll take you through in more detail. But overall, our operating profit still maintains better than half year 2023. And if I take us to the right-hand side top graph, our earnings per share has been affected by underlying operating profit but also has been affected by an effective tax rate increase to last year's half year. This is because we are trading now in other countries like in Europe that have higher tax rates. If I take you down to the bottom left-hand graph now and talk more on cash, our working capital initiatives that we drove -- both Dan and I do fortnightly meetings to drive with the equity to try and bring our working capital down back to the levels we want to do, continues to drop. And you can see that in our net debt figure, where we've actually delivered a net debt reduction of over GBP 10 million, in our middle graph. And if you then go to the right-hand side, our ROCE is actually following our underlying operating margins, and we'll talk more about that in the next few slides. And I'm then talking about revenue in that side of it, and I'll talk to it by the regions, then I'll hand to Dan to take you in more detail on the sectors. The first one to talk about, U.K. U.K. has dropped 10.7%. Now this is actually 2 factors driving that. One is the transfer of the European distributor market from the U.K. division to our German division, Kuhlmann, and that transfer completed in May this year. The second is the softness and the deterioration in the distributor market from our 2 distributor business we have in the U.K., and Dan will take that into more detail when we talk about the sectors. And in Europe, you have the contra effect of having the new business transfer from the U.K. into the Kuhlmann business, but also we've seen some great performance in our light and heavy truck, especially in Sweden, especially part of our engineering and delivering our customer excellence. Plus we've also seen some improvements in our TR VIC factory in Italy. In North America, we're still pleased to see growth and continued development as we fully absorb in the Falcon subsidiary, and now the North American business continues to grow and actually perform in this large segment. Asia has seen a major drop of 14.3%. This major drop is actually based again from our large distributor market that we actually distribute the business that we have in Taiwan that delivers to the rest of the world. And again, that softness in the market for distributor business. If I hand to Dan to take us through a bit more through the sectors.
Thanks, Darren. Yes, let's start by talking about the distribution sales channel. And really, it's a comparator from half year of FY '23, needs reminding of what the dynamics in the marketplace were at that time. You'll recall that lead times were extremely extended, and freight times were at their longest in sort of known history, frankly. And what that led to was -- the purpose of a distributor in the first place is having stock on the shelf that can be accessed in short-term requirements. And so we saw a real upside to our revenue in the half of FY '23. And obviously, since that point, lead times have contracted, capacities have become available in the marketplace, freight times have reduced, and frankly, customers have a lot more stock on their shelf. And so over-inventory positions and market dynamics lead to that fall that you see. Over-inventory positions aren't just the preserve of the distribution sales channel. We've seen that in other sectors too, ET&I and general industrial and also in health and home. But beyond the over-inventory, there's also demand. And so for health and home, in particular, we see consumer confidence come to bear with discretionary spend items. Of course, things like domestic appliances have a lower demand at this point in the economic cycle than they've had in years gone by. And so that has had a real impact on our business. With that said, though, as Iain referenced earlier, we've seen a real upside in our light vehicle and heavy vehicle business, and a couple of key reasons here. Firstly, as Iain said, supply chains have really steadied themselves from the last 1 to 2 years. We've all heard about microchip availability. Those things have really settled down now, and so our customers are back on a level footing. That said, we've also grown our market share. We call out our pipeline wins -- record pipeline wins. And over the last 2 years, we've been developing a pipeline funnel that is starting to come to bear now in our revenue. We know that there's a 6- to 24-month lag between winning and invoicing, and so the market share gains that we have seen come to bear in this FY '24 are helping to offset some of the deterioration in other sectors. As well as that, we've really worked hard on our engineering, our manufacturing and our distribution and supply chain competencies. And in particular, we've been able to work hard on prototype availability and speed-to-market and agility by the skills of the team and the resources that we have around us. Thanks, Darren.
So if I take us now down to a little bit more detail in the underlying operating profit. So if I just talk it from half year to half year, as you can see, overall, we've had a growth. This is before inventory, but we've had an improvement half year to half year that we're really pleased about. And that's really being driven by the self-help initiatives that we're doing to drive our margin management, but also our cost controls across the organization. If I take us down by the regions and talk about U.K. first, U.K. is down 290 basis points. Again, 2 driving factors again was the transfer of business to Europe from the U.K. division to the German division of ours and also the distributor market margins down due to the softness in the marketplace at the moment. Europe is up 660 basis points. Again, they had the contra benefit of having the U.K. business, the U.K., European business being transferred to Germany. But also, we've seen some great, as Dan has already outlined, prototyping and engineering and actually supporting our customers, especially in our Swedish division that's really delivered better margins and strength in that area for the engineering excellence that we can offer. We also have seen improvements in our VIC, and -- which is our Italian business, especially with the utilization of the factory. And then if I look at North America, North America continues to improve as we go through both on revenue and on operating profit, and there's some really great synergies of costs and benefits that we're seeing in those units. Asia, even though we've talked about the drop because of the distributor markets affecting the Asia business, what we've actually seen is flat half year to half year, and this is really getting ahead of this and actually doing great cost controls and focus within the region. So overall, we're very pleased with the operating performance. But if I now walk you through the underlying profit before tax bridge, so we're seeing a GBP 1.6 million delta there. So we talked about the revenue being off by 2.2%. You can see that flowing into the profits. But more importantly, if we look at the margins, and this is very much about our self-help, 3 areas driving that. One is the margin management, both on supplier costs but also making sure that we get a fair price for the service and the excellence that we offer to our customers. Two, better utilization of our factories, both in Asia and in Europe. And three, we'll talk more about, is our warehouse efficiencies and how we're actually driving costs out there and especially in the NDC and the U.K. If I then talk about the overhead, overhead delta is up, as you can see from the graph. This is very much about wage inflation, but we are also taking [ confidence of ] our discretionary spend and keeping costs under control, but obviously, wage inflation is something that we have to take into account. And then the major one that we're talking about very much, the delta difference between the half year to half year, is the interest. This is servicing our loans, and this is really about the base interest rates being higher year-over-year for the 2.5 years. So overall, that's what's impacted us to the GBP 1.6 million delta. If I then move us into more of a cash looking at it, this is the net debt walk, the adjusted net debt. First off, just talking about, obviously, the profit that drives from the businesses or the cash that drives from the businesses, but the one thing that we're focused on is inventory. We talked about working capital, both Dan and I have fortnightly meetings. Our inventory has reduced, as you can see, GBP 6.5 million between the 2 half years with a very much focused with the entity leads actually driving that to make sure we can get ourselves back to a better inventory level. And as we've talked about previously, what we're looking to do is much more in weeks of inventory, and we're looking to drive that further down, in the second half, down to in the low 20 weeks of inventory before the end of the year. But we're also not just looking at inventory. We're looking at the rest of the working capital, both creditors and debtors, making sure our past years in our creditors are very much under control, and you can see that improvement. If you look at the CapEx, the CapEx mainly has been focused on the development of our national distribution center in the U.K., and you'll see some small spend of that actually in the second half as well. And then the interest I've talked about is actually servicing our loans as we go forward. But the one thing just to highlight, in the other side, in that GBP 1.8 million of other is that, that includes a GBP 1 million deposit for the sale of our Bellbrook Park, Uckfield warehouse, which we have completed the sale on just after half year on October 23. But that's -- for greater than GBP 4 million. But that was the first warehouse that we transferred into the national distribution center, and that has been fully completed. And obviously, we've now, as we've agreed, is to make this a cash-neutral initiative has been completed before the half year and is -- the national distribution center is actually now invoicing it, and it's performing well. And as I move through to the next one, and I'll get Dan to explain that a bit further.
Yes. Thanks, Darren. So the national distribution center, you will have heard us reference that at financial year-end for the last year, a commitment that we made as part of an operational improvement program. I should start off by saying thanks to the U.K. team. They've worked incredibly hard to help us move the Upfield location. We took the keys to the NDC in July of this year, and we started invoicing in September. We're on track to complete inside this year, both on budget and delivering the benefits that Darren has just alluded to. It's a real statement of intent for us in the U.K. We believe strongly in the U.K. business. This really puts us in the heart of the U.K. with a consolidated location that will enable us to improve customer service and expand, frankly, as well. So we're excited about it. We know it's been hard work. There's more to come. But for us as an organization, this is us doing what we said we would do in the time that we said we would do it.
Thank you, Dan. If I move us really to the midterm target that we've been talking about, which is the underlying operating profit, and as you can see from FY '23 that we've -- the last time we spoke to you all, we've actually seen good progress. This is about self-help and focus on the things we've talked about, margin management, cost control, et cetera. So that's the first movement in the first half year of this year. But just to talk about a little bit more about the next 3 initiatives. The first initiative here is the operational improvement. You've heard about the NDC in the U.K., we are going to deliver the benefits we plan the full year in FY '25, and you can see that's a large proportion of our improvements that we're expecting to get that and as we focus on now on further improvements in initiatives, in an operations perspective, both in Europe and Asia. And if I hand over to Dan to talk about the next 2.
Yes. So the purchasing and supply chain focus that we have, we've had disparate ERP systems over time. We've aggregated that information and data down to common part numbering that allows a leverage discussion with our supply base. Not just that, but we've done a routine branch overhaul of our org design, so not lots of individual conversations with our suppliers around the world, but a one TR voice into our suppliers that allows a more sophisticated conversation. For working capital improvements, we're looking at using the systems for scheduling and EDI messaging and also consignment inventory conversations with our supply base. We're looking at nearshoring too, and that enables us not just to derisk the supply chain geopolitically, but also for us to achieve our sustainability goals over time. Then as we turn to the customer, you'll see 2 things referenced on this bar: G200, which is our Global 200 customers; and HYMS, an acronym which means high yield market segmentation. The G200, this is us focusing on fewer customers but creating greater value customers that recognize pricing as part of a reasonable, balanced conversation that enables us to have engineering-led, manufacturing-led and supply chain competency-led discussions. And it points to our new wins pipeline, frankly. The more we focus on fewer customers, the greater our returns on the long term. That said, too, we want to focus on segments that have higher than our average growth rate and higher than our average profitability. Thanks, Iain.
Thanks very much, Dan and Darren. And so let me close by summarizing the key messages you've heard. We've delivered a resilient trading performance despite the challenging macroeconomic environment that the business faced. Our strategy of maintaining a balanced portfolio of customers and end markets clearly is helping us manage those risks. The strategic initiatives that we launched by the team earlier this year on margin management and operational improvement as well as working capital management has really started to deliver encouraging results. And of course, we remain focused on the execution of those programs, not only in the second half year, but beyond. I'm really pleased to see the efforts and commitment of our employees coming through in these gross margin improvements and net debt reduction, which puts the balance sheet for Trifast in a much stronger position. And therefore, we're pleased to announce the dividend of 0.6p per share as part of the overall package of shareholder return. Looking ahead, Dan shared the continued success of our pipeline wins. And clearly, as we talked about, our national distribution center project is on track to deliver the committed savings in this year and the full year savings next year. Today, the announcement of the manufacturing joint venture in China is a great statement of intent and commitment to our Chinese-based customers and the belief that, that market, industrial market, despite being in a challenged environment right now, has a huge opportunity for growth. And Trifast, with this joint venture, we are positioning ourselves with the manufacturing capacity, with agility and with a supply chain network that will allow us to capture that growth as and when it returns. So look, the combination of strong fundamental foundations of customer service, quality and technical excellence, the development and implementation of the focused turnaround plan and business strategy, which I and we as a team will be working on, together with the continued execution of those self-help strategic initiatives, gives me and the Trifast Board confidence in the delivery of our midterm targets. In the short term, clearly, we're operating and we'll continue to operate in a challenging macro environment, and we'll need to stay focused and vigilant and ready to take any further actions necessary as we navigate our path forward. So thank you very much for your attention, and I can see that we're beginning to get some questions coming through on the portal. And so we'll now move to those questions and answer.
Perfect, Iain, Darren Dan. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation. [Operator Instructions] While the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via Investor dashboard. And Iain, Darren, Dan, then as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. And Iain, if I may hand back to you and kindly ask you to read out the questions, give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.
Thank you very much. So first question has come from Gavin, and he's asking about our funds for continued working capital improvement and the impact that, that will have on future inventory levels. I think if we hand over to Dan, do you want to take that one?
Yes, sure. Thanks, Iain. So as Darren called out earlier in the presentation, we have regular reviews with our teams on working capital, and in particular, inventory. Inventory, as we know, peaked to the high point in the third quarter of FY '23. You've seen from Darren's slide a marked improvement. As we finish the half year, our inventory levels are in the high 20s of weeks, but moving from a conversation of pounds to weeks of inventory, and we're targeting low 20s as we come to the end of this financial year. And I don't know, Darren, if you wanted to add any more to that.
No, I think it is a major focus that both of us have. And I think what we're now going to do is rather than actually a financial value, we're talking about weeks. And after we've got to that level in the low 20s, we will then look at other initiatives that will bring it down lower, but making sure that we support our customers as well.
Thanks very much. Okay, there's a question from James. Could you briefly summarize the costs and benefits of Project Atlas since the initiation, please? And first of all, maybe just to highlight for anybody who isn't familiar with the wording, Project Atlas has been the transfer of old outdated ERP installations into a new modern ERP platform. And I think that project, first of all, clearly, ERP implementations take time to do properly and to do well. And I think the project itself has one remaining location within Trifast to complete, and we expect that to be completed by the end of this financial year. I think in terms of benefits, so we -- Dan alluded to some of the benefits that we're already seeing when it comes to the supplier part of the relationship. But I think also important to call out, we couldn't have delivered the project around the national distribution center had we not have made the investment in the ERP installations. If we'd not had a common platform, that project would have been significantly more challenging. And so clearly, the benefits that we're seeing already in the first half year and that we expect to see from that program are partly due to the implementation of that ERP program. So we have another question from Gavin. How many customers do you have? Is it a long tail? Dan, do you want to pick that one up?
Yes. So Gavin, we've often called out the fact that our top 200 customers represent a large percentage of our revenue, but don't forget that we also have distribution sales channel business model entirely different to OEM servicing with hundreds, actually thousands, of customers inside that. That's the way the model is set up. And so across our business, we have a Pareto of revenue where we're focusing and we're becoming more focused. But yes, there's a tail. And frankly, as we continue to execute strategically, we will review what that tail looks like and where we spend our time.
Thanks, Dan. Darren, there's a question from Mark on the current ROCE being significantly below your weighted average cost of capital and when is the business expecting to see it return and improve to an acceptable level. I think just before you dive in, I think, look, we've demonstrated the start of the turnaround journey through the first half year, and that's a testament to the efforts not only of my colleagues here, but the colleagues across Trifast. And I think we're all conscious in the leadership team and the Board and across our business of the need to drive and accelerate our turnaround plan. So yes, I can understand the background to the question. I would say it's really encouraging to see the step improvement that we've made already in the first half year and confidence in the programs to continue to develop and deliver improvement in our return on capital employed. I don't know if Darren -- did you want to add anything?
So the only thing I would add to it is, obviously, we've talked a lot about our midterm objectives, and we've outlined that, both Dan and I explaining the different elements that will drive the underlying operating profit. That's the major driver of the ROCE. So we're going to see improvements progressively. We are recommitting to the 10% to 13% in UOP or 12% to 16% in our ROCE. So what you'll see progressively half year to full year into the future is us progressively, through self-help, improving ourselves back to the numbers that we plan to get to.
Thanks, Darren. There's a question from Richard M. The question is, it would be useful to have a comment on the implications of the political pressures to improve the ease of disassembly on our products. Dan, maybe do you want to pick up on that, the EU regulation and the benefits?
That's right. Thanks, Iain. So I think, Richard, you're referring to the right to repair bill, as it's known, and it's been adopted here in the U.K. as well as it has in Europe. And a couple of things come from that. Firstly, products are less welded and lasered together, and there needs to be an ability to take things apart and put them back together to avoid landfill and frankly, to have a more sustainable, cyclical environment. And we saw that, and we called that out in the last year or 2. Frankly, there's opportunity. More fasteners are required in that regard because we're not into welding and lasering, we're into fasteners and fixings. And whether it's holding together or taking apart, we see opportunity. Of course, it does mean too that certain products in the marketplace last longer, and that's another impact as well. But for us, we see it opportunistic than we do in some form of negative view.
Thank you. There's a different type of question here from James. Then can I ask the executive directors about their plans to bring shareholdings up to the stated 250% of salary over the 5 years? I appreciate he says that both CEO and CFO are recent appointments, and thank you. Yes, we are. But please guide how you plan to be compliant with this policy. There's not been much buying to date, and it's now not a good time to buy shares. Well, I think, James, just to answer, look, we have, as any public listed company, a close period for anybody of management responsibility, that includes myself and Darren and other members of the team, where we are not able to buy into and acquire shares. So what I would say is Darren and myself are fully aware of our -- the expectations and the obligations -- and I'm sure once we're out of close period, we'll both be making commitment and getting back to being able to be compliant with this policy. There's nothing other in it than that. Okay. Not many more questions. So please keep the questions coming in. John W. has asked a couple of questions. Given the positive statements made at the last AGM, I'm surprised to learn from the new CEO that we've lost focus in a number of areas. Why was this? So come back to that one in a minute. And also he also asked, given that some of the half year results are below half of the last full year results, is the Board confident of meeting market expectations for the current year? Let me give an initial response, and Darren or Dan, please add if you feel necessary. What I actually said is in my first 45 days, the business has lacked, historically, a focused business strategy. It had an acquisitive portfolio approach to building the business, and now in the situation that we face, what we want to do as a business going forward is create and deliver a focused business strategy. And as I said, as I work through understanding the rest of the 50% of the business that I will see between now and the end of the year, together with my team, we'll be working on the detail of the turnaround plan and the business strategy, and we'll happily be presenting that back in this forum certainly no later than the end of year results next year. Given -- and the second part of the question, I think what we've demonstrated today is the activities and the initiatives that we've been taking and the team has been driving with considerable effort are on track. And those elements of the program that we control, I think we demonstrate that we're delivering successfully, whether that be the margin improvement of 110 basis points at gross margin level, whether that be working capital improvements that are helping drive net debt reduction by more than GBP 10 million. Or indeed, whether it be the operational improvements that we've been making across the business, but specifically the big transformation in our U.K. operations, the national distribution center, where already we're seeing in the first half year GBP 200,000 of savings, and we're on track to deliver the full year -- this financial year's benefit of circa GBP 1 million and the full financial year benefit next year of circa GBP 5 million of gross benefits. So I would say that as a business, despite the challenging macro environment, on the areas that we can control and the actions that we will need to take, we will stay focused and manage the second half year. And at this stage, we are confident in delivering the management expectations and consensus in the market. Let's see. Another question from James. Whilst I see the dividend policy is to retain cover of 3x to 4x and debt reduction is clearly important, [ would holding ] the dividend at the same level to last year reinforce the positive messages I hear today about the company's future prospects? I think, James -- thank you for the question. As ever, there's a balance. I think we feel as a leadership team and as a Board that this dividend that we announced today is at a good level and reflects the confidence that we have, and as you described in your question, in the strengthening of the company's balance sheet, and is a balanced return to shareholders, recognizing the need to continue to focus on cash and also focus on investment in the business. Question from Richard. Can you add more detail to the market environment in Asia? Which industries and geographies are you most dependent upon? And what is the capacity situation and the footprint -- is the footprint fit for the future? I think -- let me talk briefly to those elements of the question, Richard, and thank you for those. I think the market environment across Asia, as we indicated in our update, is mixed. I mean, we see consumer softness in China as an example, and we talked about the softening of the distribution market, which impacts part of our business also in Asia, which supplies into the global distribution market. So I think there are areas in Asia where we have seen challenges in the first half year. And certainly, we see continued challenge going into the second half. At the same time, we have parts of our Asia business that are performing strongly, whether that be in Malaysia or Thailand, for example, where together with new business wins, improvement in utilization, we're seeing those parts of our business have very successful first half years. So I think we have to reflect that it's a balanced picture. Clearly, in Asia, it's something that we continue to watch and be focused on. And as I said, we're vigilant, and we'll continue to take necessary actions to control costs and protect the business going forward. In terms of the fit for the future part of your question, look, 45 days in, I think there's a process of -- that you would expect me to go through as the CEO, which is to understand the business as it sits today, to work with the team on the opportunities and the initiatives that together will drive the turnaround plan for this business and ultimately also work on the future strategy. And as I said, we'll be coming back to shareholders and investors later when we -- no later than the full year results presentation to share those plans. Question from Karen. At what point going forward do you see a less turbulent, more positive time ahead for Trifast? My response, and Darren and Dan have been here longer than my 45 working days, but I would say, clearly, it's -- as an organization, yes, there's a lot of transformation and change going on. At the same time, I think what we've demonstrated today, there's already a lot of positive momentum being generated thanks to the hard work and effort of all of our colleagues across the Trifast business. So I think even today, we're demonstrating -- and I'm sure our colleagues, from the conversations I've had -- are confident that we are driving forward positively and turning the business back into where it will be a leading and successful and profitable growing fastening solutions business.
Perfect. Iain, Darren, Dan, thank you for that. And I think you have addressed all the questions from investors today. And of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on our Investor Meet Company platform where appropriate to do so. But before we direct the investors to provide you with their feedback, which are most particularly important to the company, Iain, could I please ask you for a few closing comments?
Yes. So first of all, thank you very much to everybody who's taken the time to dial in. Thank you very much for the questions. As we said, if we didn't get to a question or if there are further questions, we'll gladly review and update individually or collectively at a future point in time. And thank you very much to Darren and Dan for helping me run today's session, and look, I look forward to updating you further again next year when we come together for our full year results presentation and sharing with you continued success, progress towards our midterm targets. Thank you very much, everybody. Thanks for your time. Have a good rest of your day.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Iain, Darren, Dan, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you will 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 Trifast plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.