Genus plc (OTCPK:GENSF) Q4 2022 Results Conference Call September 8, 2022 2:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Alison Henriksen – CFO
Stephen Wilson – CEO
Conference Call Participants
Anand Date – HSBC
Charles Hall – Peel Hunt
Daan Arends – Kepler Cheuvreux
Damian McNeela – Numis
Jens Lindqvist – Investec
Stephen Wilson
Welcome to our webcast of the Genus Preliminary Results for our 2022 fiscal year. Thank you for joining Alison Henriksen and me today. As well as our recorded webcast, there will be a live Q&A held later today and details are in our results release. So, after the usual disclaimer on Chart 2, I’m going to be covering our business and strategic progress, and Alison will outline the financial performance.
But first, let me start with some headlines for Genus for fiscal year 2022. We continue to make good strategic progress, and we invested for the future while navigating a challenging macro environment. With the war in Ukraine were dramatic increases in input costs for protein producers. As anticipated when we announced our half year results, the porcine market in China continued to be challenging in the second half, exacerbated by COVID lockdowns there. As you can see from the headline numbers, this had a significant impact on our performance in the year, resulting in lower adjusted profit and earnings per share against the very strong prior year comparison. However, outside PIC China, Genus has performed strongly with revenue up 9% and adjusted profit up 28% despite the challenging external environment. Encouragingly, since June, we’ve seen an improvement in pig prices in China, and I will talk more about that shortly.
I’d say our progress was really underpinned by market share gains with key customers globally, who are recognizing the strength of our genetics and the great services our Genus colleagues provide. And I’ll illustrate some examples of that in the presentation. We’ve also been investing significantly in our supply chain and systems to support future growth, and I’m really pleased with the progress we’ve made. Our R&D programs also continue to make good progress. We have a growing pipeline of initiatives across different discovery and development stages. And our PRRSV resistance program is on track. So through the great commitment and contributions of Genus colleagues in pursuing our consistent strategy, we’ve continued to make progress through the year. And we’re recommending a final dividend unchanged from last year, taking the total dividend for the year to 32p.
So, now let’s understand a bit more about what is happening in our customers’ markets and the challenges they’re facing. Looking around the world, North America is perhaps in the best shape for protein producers. While they are experiencing high input costs of grain, fuel and labor, output prices have also risen, creating profitable conditions for producers. However, they are generally cautious on expansion due to factors such as the high cost of construction, shortage of labor, or drought conditions in many beef raising areas. In Latin America, tough trading conditions in the second half of FY ’22 were driven in part by lower exports to China of both pork and beef.
Currently, we’re seeing somewhat better signs around exports and an improved balance between input and output prices, though concerns remain about the strength of domestic demand. Conditions for our customers in Europe, across all categories, are really very tough. Which I’m sure is not surprising to you given the well-known issues with the Ukraine war, cost inflation, African swine fever spreading across Europe, and to cap it all the scorching summer drought that we experienced. Finally, in Asia, I’ll deal more with the China porcine market on the next chart, but here, I’d comment that China dairy has been a favorable expansionary market environment, but is now turning to a more cautious, neutral phase. So to summarize, while the global picture is always complex, this has been a uniquely challenging environment for many of our customers.
Let’s look then in more detail at China porcine. I think those of you who follow Genus will be well aware that pig producers there have been heavily loss-making in FY ’22. The chart on the left shows the ratio of pig price to corn price, which can be used as a rough rule of thumb on the profitability of production. A ratio of 6x is typically seen as a benchmark of breakeven. What you’ll observe is that since June, the ratio has moved above this level. Although corn prices rose, they’ve been more than covered by the increase in the pig price above 20 RMB per kg. And actually in this last week, it was at 23 RMB per kg. And industry observers expect prices to hold above 20, at least for the remainder of this calendar year. So the move upwards is clearly encouraging. However, it typically takes some months of good prices before demand for porcine genetics improves.
In managing our business in China, we continue to take the long view, and we’re building our capacity to supply, both through third-party multiplication and owned and joint venture farms, in what is the world’s biggest pig market. In addition, our team truly is incomparable to any others in the market, and our genetics are performing very well in customer systems. So we remain confident that we’re very well placed to benefit from improving demand as and when it materializes.
Let’s now turn to see how we’re winning with strategic customers around the world. And I’d like to start with PIC in North America. We’re clearly gaining market share in both the sire line and dam line, based on the strength of our product performance backed up by outstanding technical service. The PIC800, which we introduced following the [Malavang] acquisition, is now used by 17 of the top 20 U.S. producers and is gaining share within these systems as they see its performance. Our overall market share gain in the sire line was an impressive 5 percentage points in the year. The Canberra sow continues to lead the market and has been at the forefront in capturing share from internal programs in North America. Most recently at Olymel, where our integration of their AlphaGene program got off to a very good start in the second half of FY ’22. The results of these gains are now clearly showing through in accelerating North American volumes, and our fastest rate of royalty growth there, at 7%, for many years.
Spain is the largest porcine market in Europe with a strong focus on technified production. We’ve been focused on growing our presence in this important market for several years, and the fruit of that is also now clearly coming through. Our volume growth is accelerating, and it’s been driven by growth in royalties. Our strategy to win has focused on demonstrating performance at key customers, such as those highlighted on the chart, while growing our capacity to supply the market. Most recently, we’ve been particularly focused on creating more boar stud capacity with strong partnerships with Semen Cardona, a leading boar stud operator, and the Sergal acquisition, which performed well in its first year. All of this gives us confidence that there is considerable opportunity to continue to grow.
Let’s now switch our focus to ABS, where our strategy of driving growth in sexed and beef continue to show progress, with sexed and beef semen volumes exceeding 50% of global semen sales for the first time. The case study on the right is a great example of how we use our total ABS portfolio to drive value for strategic customers. Our relationship with this customer started about 4 to 5 years ago, through providing genetic advice and embryos to improve their herd quality. Next, we introduced Sexcel. Then, we conducted a trial with them of our new era beef and dairy genetics against Angus bulls. The result of that trial was so compelling that the customer decided to not only switch fully to a new era, but to retain and grow out the resulting calfs to capture the beef value. We then wrap great technical and reproductive service around the genetics, and that’s further added to the customers’ performance with the result that we now have essentially all of the customers’ business.
I mentioned earlier that China’s dairy market has been growing. As you can see on the bottom left of the chart, with large-scale producers driving consolidation and modernization of the industry, ABS has achieved significant success there through our engagement with key accounts and supply chain partners. This has enabled us to rapidly gain share and, importantly, to also start to drive the growth of sexed semen, as you can see from the graph at the top left of the chart. Through examples, such as the case studies shown here, we’ve been able to move beyond the previously typical transactional buying behavior of China dairies, into more strategic genetics relationships.
In the case of this inner Mongolia key account, we created a genetic index focused on the customers’ objectives, and that’s enabling us to drive and measure progress with the customer; leading them to increase the share of the business that we have in that account. In the second example, we’re partnering with a leading global producer of dairy products to access a network of smaller farmers. These examples, I think, illustrate how we’re achieving strong progress in our presence in the China dairy market.
This year has been a year of significant investment in the business. Investment we’ve been making based on our confidence in the future growth opportunities for Genus. I’ve touched earlier on some of our M&A deals. So here, I’ll focus on facilities and systems. You can see here in the middle, our new porcine elite farm in Saskatchewan called Atlas. This is now stocked and operational, and I was fortunate to be able to visit it, along with other Board members, in June. It’s a great facility. We’re using the opportunity of the greenfield site there to achieve an even higher health status of our genetics. I was also able to visit our new leads facility in Wisconsin, which first opened in 2021, and where further barns were added this year. It’s a truly wonderful environment for our bulls to live in and be productive.
At the same time as facilities, we’ve also invested in our systems. In ABS, we’ve introduced new approaches to digitally interacting with our customers, enhancing customer experience. And our Genus One rollout continues, with the U.K. successfully going live last month. Meaning that now over 60% of Genus is live on the system.
As well as these capital investments, we also invest significantly in R&D, knowing that in our long-cycle business, it is important to consistently pursue the next opportunities for innovation that can drive future progress. PRRSV gene-edited pigs are an example many of you will be familiar with, and I’ll comment on that on the next chart. Here, what I really want to highlight is that our pipeline of projects has grown significantly over the last 2 years as we’ve built out our R&D capabilities. And that pipeline now contains a broadly balanced set of opportunities over time and across discovery and development stages. Of course, scientific discovery and technical developments face many challenges on the way to eventual realization. And some projects, frankly, may not succeed. So we manage this very much as a portfolio of opportunities.
Our PRRSV project continues to make steady progress in line with its plan. We’re expanding our E2 generation animal numbers, and we’ll be giving birth to E3 generation animals towards the end of this calendar year. We’re commissioning an additional farm this autumn to house the growing number of animals, which will add to our gene editing expense in FY ’23. Meanwhile, our productive relationship with the FDA continues, and we’re expanding our regulatory engagement in other key countries. In addition, our engagement with supply chain participants, including producers and packers, is stepping up and the interest we see is encouraging.
Finally, I’d like to wrap up this segment of the presentation by commenting on sustainability. The most important contribution we make to sustainability is the genetic improvement we deliver to our customer systems. Enabling them to produce protein with fewer resources, like less land, less water, and fewer emissions. I’m pleased to report that across pork, dairy, and beef, our teams again made strong progress in driving genetic improvement. This drives our results in making our products the best choice for customers and it benefits the environment. So, sustainability really is at the heart of what we at Genus do. However, we do also want to reduce the carbon emissions we’re directly responsible for as a business through our own operations. And so we’ve set out some clear goals, and we’re making strong progress.
Our primary intensity ratio measures carbon emissions versus the weight of animals under our control. And that reduced further. We’ve now achieved a 25% cumulative reduction in carbon intensity since FY ’19. Many factors drove this, including our animals’ diet composition, manure management, more sustainable energy sourcing, and land management. And we have many actions in place to drive further gains over the coming years to meet our commitments. With that, I’d now like to hand over to Alison to take you through the financials.
Alison Henriksen
Thank you, Stephen. This year, Genus had some particularly challenging market conditions, and I’m proud of the performance of the business and especially our colleagues in meeting these challenges, whilst keeping one eye on future growth. Milly, who features on this page symbolizes this. PIC don’t normally name their pigs, but Milly is the one millionth piglet that was born at PIC’s Apex Nucleus farm last year, and she gave birth to her first litter of 22 piglets. She’s a special sow.
But let’s get on to the numbers. As you heard from Stephen, our full year results have been impacted by PIC China’s performance, but there were robust performances across the rest of the group. In actual currency, adjusted profit before tax of GBP 71.5 million was down 16%. The graph to the right very clearly shows the decrease in trend of profit and operating profit margin. However, what you can also see is that despite the downturn in PIC China, our results were still higher than the profit and margin achieved in FY ’21. And I’ll talk more about the different regional performances in a moment. This year, there was a GBP 1.8 million exchange rate benefit on the translation of overseas profits, primarily from sterling weakening against other currencies. And this was particularly pronounced in the second half. At today’s spot rates, we estimate that the benefit for FY ’23 will be over GBP 6 million.
The work of our R&D team is incredibly important, as you heard from Stephen, and they’re making great progress with the PRRSV program and other opportunities. And thus, we invested GBP 67 million, which is up 7% on the prior year. I’ll share some more of the specifics of this later. Central costs were 16% lower than prior year, reflecting prudent cost management given the challenges for PIC China, and we had lower performance-related employee rewards. Adjusted operating profit excluded gene editing costs was down GBP 11.8 million or 14% in constant currency. And I have talked previously about our target being 10% CAGR growth over the medium term, and I’ll share more on this later. So for the rest of the presentation, I’ll refer to constant currency growth, as I believe this is a better indicator of our underlying trading performance.
Now turning to volumes. China has significant impact on our porcine volumes, which meant they were flat overall, but strong at 8% growth excluding China. And in bovine, we achieved record growth last year, and there have been more headwinds this year with the challenging macroeconomics in many markets. So against this tough compare, it was a robust performance, achieving 3% growth in the year. Consistent with the first half, this was led by beef and sexed genetics. And from a regional perspective, Asia led the way in growth.
Now, what I want to do here is pull the numbers apart to show you what happened in PIC China versus the rest of the group. And in the graph on the left, you can see the adjusted operating profit trend of Genus, excluding PIC China and gene editing costs. 25% growth was achieved in the year, which is higher than 17% growth achieved in FY ’21. And at the same time, there has been growth in profitability, with margin improving over 150 basis points in each of the past 2 years.
On the right-hand side of this slide, you can see what’s happened to PIC China’s performance. The graph on the top shows the causes of year-on-year decline in PIC China’s profit from circa GBP 33 million to under GBP 6 million in the year. Similarly to the first half, there was a loss of profits from the reduction in upfront sales and royalty contracts. Higher supply chain costs were incurred due to the closure of an aging facility in the first half and expansion of another in the year. And also by-product sales were over GBP 4 million lower with the average pig price down 50% to below RMB 15 per kilo compared to a peak of RMB 35 per kilo back in December 2020, which really provided unusually high profits for FY ’21. PIC China’s profits were also impacted by a charge of GBP 4 million, which was a one-off refund to a customer that we talked about in the first half when it was concluded.
The graph in the bottom right shows the volume trends, where you can see in the second half, volume remained low compared to prior year, down by 42%. However, volumes improved 19% in the second half in comparison to the first half, reflecting higher sales under royalty contracts to customers that commenced populating their farms. It’s still very early days in the recovery of the porcine market. But as you can see, we now have a much larger business than in FY ’19, when African swine fever first occurred in China. But most importantly, the PIC China team have done a great job the past year, positioning the business for the recovery. The last of the supply chain changes is the new farm in Ankang that will be stopped in November.
So as you can see, PIC’s profit declined 13%, but increased 11% if China is excluded. Royalty revenue was up 1% for the year, but up 8% if China is excluded. The loss of profits in China meant PIC lost some leverage of its cost base; and its adjusted operating profit margin dropped to 36.6%. And you heard from Stephen how North America has continued to achieve strong growth in the second half, taking market share, which led to very good growth in operating profit: up 7% on prior year, the highest rate of growth they have achieved for more than 5 years. And royalty revenue growth was also strong at 7%, and we expect more growth to come. Latin America also performed well, with profit up 5%. But as I warned in February, Brazil had a tougher second half as customers were cautious given the drop in exports to China.
Our joint venture with Agroceres saw profit drop 7% for the year. Europe’s profit was slightly up on prior year, and we’ve continued to operate in Russia. But profit was down 27% on prior year, when there was a large expansion with a key account in Russia. As you heard from Stephen, Spain has continued to be the growth driver for the region, up 40%. This underpins Europe’s royalty revenue growth of 7%, which is very encouraging. And lastly, as you’ve heard, China overshadowed Asia’s results, but the rest of the region achieved strong growth of 25%, with the Philippines being a key contributor, achieving 67% growth as the country recovers from ASF.
Now ABS’ revenue growth was 7% and adjusted operating profit growth was 9%. Performance was softer in the second half, and this is due to the challenging market conditions, particularly following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And there was an impact of an IT security incident in June, which had an impact on Latin America. North America’s sexcel volumes grew 10% and new era beef volumes were very strong at 33%. Embryo volumes also recovered in the second half. Revenue grew 4%, and this reflects the volume growth and also growth in intelligent third-party business. The mix effect of revenues, combined with sound management of pricing to offset some cost inflation, meant North America’s profit was up 4%. Latin America continued to grow, delivering a 5% increase in revenue and 2% increase in operating profit.
It was certainly a tougher year for our team, and this is due to a temporary ban on beef exports to China in the first half. And in the second half, June trading was significantly impacted in Brazil due to a cyberattack that hampered the team’s ability to dispatch product in that month. We estimate the impact on trading was just shy of GBP 1 million, which means that if that hadn’t happened, LatAm would have achieved operating profit growth of 11% for the year. And I do want to mention that the cyberattack affected some legacy systems only. Our Genus One ERP was secure, and the impact was only in the month of June. It’s just unfortunate, and this is a common occurrence for companies these day. But I want to acknowledge that the situation was extremely well managed by our IT team, and we further bolstered our IT security.
EMEA’s revenue was up 5%, even though total volumes were down 2%, and that’s because there’s been sound management of pricing to offset inflation and good growth in our intelligent third-party business. Sexcel continued to grow at 8%, and beef volumes were up 9%. But the market uncertainties, particularly triggered in the second half by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, meant overall volumes and profit were impacted in the U.K. and in our distributor markets. And consequently, operating profit was down 4% for the region for the year. ABS continues to operate in Russia and the Ukraine. And I just think it’s quite remarkable that despite facing enormous challenges, our colleagues in the Ukraine beat their budget for the year. Asia continued to achieve high growth in operating profit, up 24%. And as you heard from Stephen, ABS is doing very well in China, with profit up 40%.
Now overall, R&D increased as planned to GBP 67 million. And that’s despite the challenging year we’ve had. We’ve stuck to our strategy, investing in R&D. And as Steve illustrated, the increase in spend in the past 3 years has really translated into a growing pipeline of opportunities. Porcine product development was stable as was our spending on gene editing. However, we do expect that gene editing costs will increase by GBP 5 million to GBP 6 million in constant currency in FY ’23, as we increase the numbers of edited animals and get closer to completing our FDA submissions. We also expect porcine product development cost to increase in FY ’23 by around GBP 6 million, which reflects the expansion of PIC supply chain with the opening of the Atlas Nucleus farm. Bovine product development spend was up 13%, and that reflects the continued investment in our intelligent production capacity and our dairy and beef development programs, particularly New Era, with it now accounting for a third of beef volumes.
So moving on to statutory income. We consistently measure and report our adjusted results as we do think these give a better understanding of the business’ underlying performance. Our statutory results were affected by a number of noncash items, and I’ll walk you through these. Statutory profit before tax decreased to GBP 48.4 million, and profit after tax on a statutory basis was GBP 36.7 million. The adjusted tax rate was 24.3%, and that’s up 180 basis points on last year; which is due to the reduced share of group profits arising from China, where we have a benefit from the availability of tax relief on certain agricultural-related activities. The effective statutory tax rate was also higher at 28%. again, due to the mix of China profits. And there was a one-off charge reflecting higher deferred tax rates on the porcine biological assets in China.
Those of you that are familiar with our accounts will know that we are required in our statutory accounts to apply IAS 41 accounting for biological assets. And the effect was a GBP 5.4 million decrease, which is due to the reduction in the fair value of bovine assets due to certain fair value estimate changes. As those of you who follow the company know, these fair value calculations can fluctuate and are noncash movements. Exceptional items are lower with income of GBP 3.6 million from a legacy legal claim in Brazil which we had in the first half, and that offset legal costs of GBP 1.4 million in relation to the ongoing litigation with ST Genetics. And ABS had supply chain restructuring costs of GBP 2.8 million. With the expansion of leads in Wisconsin, ABS was able to consolidate and close its barns in Canada. And lastly, the share of post-tax profits of the JVs was GBP 5.2 million. That is GBP 8 million down on prior year, reflecting the weaker performance of our JVs in China and Brazil, and also biological asset movements in the JVs.
So, FY ’22 was a big year of investment for us. It was a peak year for capital expenditure of almost GBP 51 million, which meant we had a cash outflow of GBP 13.5 million, and we spent GBP 19.5 million on investments that included the Olymel transaction, which we completed in February. You can see on this chart, we ended the year with net debt of GBP 185 million, which compares with almost GBP 106 million at the beginning of the financial year. Our leverage has increased to 1.7x EBITDA but remains within our targeted range of 1 to 2x. Cash generated by operations of GBP 59.7 million reflected cash conversion of 82%. This is an improvement on the first half, although a little below our annual target of 90%.
At the 30th of June, the headroom of our credit facilities was almost GBP 78 million. And subsequently in August, we exercised the accordion in our facilities and drew down the equivalent of GBP 60 million, and extended the term a further year to August 2025. This gives us headroom more in keeping with historic levels. The first half of our financial year is less cash generative. And with the recent weakening of sterling against the U.S. dollar also impacting our U.S. borrowings, I would expect our net debt to EBITDA to increase to above 2x by the middle of the financial year before returning at the full year to around the current level. With the increased debt and higher interest rates, I expect we will also have higher finance costs in FY ’23, up by around GBP 4 million.
So, given our solid financial performance, we are pleased to propose our final dividend remains flat compared with prior year, which is 2.6x adjusted earnings cover, and that’s within our targeted range of 2.5 to 3x. While 2022 has been a challenging year, we need to put it in context of Genus’ medium-term financial objectives. When referring to our 5-year profit CAGR performances, you can see we’ve delivered against our target of 10%. There are a few ups and downs in annual cash conversion, but our 5-year average is over 100%. So, despite the various macroeconomic challenges in various parts of the world, our stated financial objectives remain the same, and we’ve continued to manage the company with our focus on the medium- and long-term growth opportunities.
So, thank you for listening. And I’ll now hand over to Stephen to conclude our presentation.
Stephen Wilson
Thank you, Alison, for taking us through the financials. We’ve covered a lot in this presentation. So, I’ll try and summarize briefly. As we’ve seen, our performance in FY ’22 was heavily impacted by the porcine market in China, but has been strong excluding it. We’ve been making continued good strategic progress and have invested for growth. I think we’re all aware that the macro landscape that companies are navigating has many challenges, both economic and political. More positively, we’ve seen recent improvement in the China porcine market, and we’re well positioned to benefit as and when demand for genetics improves. You’ve seen from Alison our performance against our stated medium-term growth expectations. And looking forward, those expectations remain unchanged, which reflects our confidence in Genus’ strategy and the many opportunities we have for growth. So, let me just thank you for your time today.
Operator
Welcome to the Genus Full Year Results Q&A webinar. We’re joined today by Stephen Wilson, the Chief Executive; and Alison Henriksen, who is the Finance Director. Stephen, over to you.
Stephen Wilson
Let me just welcome you all to this live Q&A session. We hope you’ve had a chance to look at the video of our results that we published this morning. I don’t want to say more at this point, but just let’s get straight away into Q&A.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
[Operator Instructions] I’m delighted to welcome Charles Hall from Peel Hunt, who will ask the first question. Charles, please unmute yourself and turn on your video.
Charles Hall
China. So interesting on your slide on China to see the royalty volumes picking up quite nicely in H2 and actually pretty similar to H2 prior year. Can you just unpick what’s happened on the royalty side? Because totally understand the volumes well down overall. Is that just a function of the customers on royalties becoming larger? Or can you just explain what’s happening there?
Stephen Wilson
Alison, do you want to take that?
Alison Henriksen
Yes. It’s just a reflection of the customers who bought our genetics. A couple of customers who are starting to stock new farms and sell a few pigs to third parties as well, and they just happen to be royalty-based contracts. And through this downturn, we’re seeing no change really in the mix of business. We started the downturn, if you like, with about 30% of our contracts or volume under royalty, and that’s still the case.
Charles Hall
And the comment on the prepared words where that it will take a few months for volumes to start improving in China for obvious reasons. Where do you feel the customer base is? Obviously, they’ve had a pretty horrendous year, led a lot of cash. Are they still feeling pretty battered? Or are they sort of starting to look forward to a market where there’s a lower supply and potentially better money to be made?
Stephen Wilson
Yes. Maybe I’ll take that. Look, I think — as you’d expect, the customers are pleased to see the price has increased, and so they’re feeling better. But as any businesses, which are coming out of a pretty steep recession, you take a little bit of time to rebuild balance sheet, to reset to a new market environment.
And so that’s why we would expect that demand for genetics, which is typically a little bit lagging market movements, will take a number of months to get going again. I think it’s a very normal cycle. We’ve seen it before.
Charles Hall
Yes. And is there anything happening on the customer side? Or is it more a matter of supplying the customers you’ve already won? As in, it’s quite difficult to win customers when the market is really tough.
Stephen Wilson
Look, I think we’re actually pleased with progress in terms of conversations with both customers and prospects. I will say that one of the challenges that our China team have really been facing in the second half has been the COVID lockdowns, and just that ability to travel and meet with customers face-to-face.
If you want to get business done, the ability to be in the same room is still is quite important. And so I think the COVID lockdowns have definitely been something that have presented a challenge for the team.
Charles Hall
But obviously, that’s a challenge in the period. But presumably, it’s even more of a challenge for your competitors, given that you’ve got a supply chain in China, whereas a lot of others have to fly in personnel and…
Stephen Wilson
Yes, I think it’s a challenge for everyone involved in business in China, frankly.
Charles Hall
Yes. One last question for me before I let someone else have a go. You pulled out some numbers on China bovine, which has obviously become a bit of a success story having been a weak spot in years gone by. And then also in the prepared remarks, you said it was beginning to become a less expansionary market. Do you want to just weigh up those 2 factors in terms of how your position is improving against where the market sits.
Stephen Wilson
Yes. Look, I think that markets are always going to go through phases where they have expansion and then take a pause for breath. And I think structurally, what we’ve seen is that the China dairy market has grown quite substantially. Structurally, what you also see from the chart in the deck, is that China still imports a lot of dairy product. And so I think there’s still ongoing opportunity for there to be continued growth in the dairy market in China. .
The other big structural shift which has taken place, which I would say, if you look back 5 or 6 years, you would see a dramatic difference. Is that in the past, the dairy business was made up of many small farms. And what we’ve seen is a very significant consolidation into a few large dairy-ing groups, which are actually quite integrated owning both farming and processing. And that’s a very different environment from the one that existed several years ago.
You’ve also seen that from some of the examples that we’ve taken a very structured and strategic approach to our relationships with these larger core customers, and we’re starting to move the nature of those relationships away from transactional selling and towards relationships where we can really explain and articulate and make in value what genetics can really bring to their herds.
And so I think that, that’s — I think it bodes well structurally for the future of our business in the sector in China.
Charles Hall
And does this mean you can potentially bring IVB into China? Or is it not that far developed?
Stephen Wilson
No, I think there are opportunities for embryos alongside sex genetics. I think an area that perhaps has not yet been really taken up by the Chinese dairy-ing industry would be the idea of beef-on-dairy. And perhaps at this point, the industry has really been focused on expanding the dairy footprint. But I think over time, I’d like to see a significant opportunity for our beef-on-dairy genetics there as well. .
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Our next question is going to be from Anand Date from HSBC. Anand, we have promoted you to panelists. If you could please unmute yourself and turn on your camera.
Anand Date
Hello, everyone. Sorry. Sorry that took a moment. I was wondering, guys, could I ask a little bit about North America or Genus ex-PIC China for a moment. North America seems unbelievably strong to me. And I was wondering, you’ve got 7% profit growth in PIC North America, 7% royalty growth. A, could you give us an understanding of what’s driving that? And b, is it right that North America is sort of the center of excellence for how you do things? And to what extent then has that been — is that applied globally? Is that the case already? Or is there a lot more to do?
Alison Henriksen
Yes. So North America has performed extremely well, and it really is a combination of a few things. First of all, the PIC 800 Duroc has been introduced into the market over the last couple of years. And as Stephen showed in our presentation, they now have 85% of the top 20. And also, the other thing is, of course, the Olymel acquisition, which occurred in February, reaping royalties from that. And also just the other internal programs that they’ve gained over the last couple of years.
So it’s a combination of all those things, and we expect more growth to come. I wouldn’t dare to say that they are the leaders within PIC, because all of our regional teams are excellent in what they do. And I think that — I think if you look at the numbers of each of the regions, you can see that leading PIC China’s financial performance in the year. Even so, if you look underlying at what they’re doing as well in setting up the supply chain for the future, it’s an A team, whichever region you look.
Anand Date
Just on that then, can we talk about sort of the market share? I think previously, you’ve said sort of 25%, and you see no reason why you can’t get to 40%. Is there an aggregate figure you can give sort of Lat Am or for EMEA and therefore, we can sort of say, well, okay, North America, most mature, most consolidated, they still think they can do this. And there’s multiples of that still to go in EMEA, Lat Am, et cetera?
Stephen Wilson
Yes. Maybe I’ll take that. I’m not exactly sure of all the numbers you’re quoting. But just to give a sense of how we are by region from a PIC perspective. So we have a very strong market position in North America, and we’ve been taking share in North America, which you can clearly see from the data that we’ve shared with you.
In Lat Am, I would describe our position as really super strong, so I don’t want to get into exact numbers. But I would say we have a super strong market share position in Latin America. In Europe, we — historically, we had actually quite a modest market share, but we have been gaining share quite nicely. I think there’s still plenty of opportunity in Europe to grow share further.
And then in Asia, particularly in China, we still have a very small share of the market. So the opportunity, you can decide how big you want to make the numbers, but it’s a big market, and there’s plenty of opportunity.
Anand Date
Okay. And then I have one on reproductive biology. So you provided that chart on the future incremental R&D-driven profit streams, which is quite interesting. Would you — I expect the answer is no, but would you be able to talk about some of the nearer-term initiatives?
And then on reproductive biology specifically, I’m very curious about the NPVs you sort of come out with. So I would have thought success in reproductive biology offers sort of multiples of the NPVs you’re flagging because it accelerates progress, takes out significant costs. So just curious what I’m sort of missing there.
Stephen Wilson
Look, firstly, I think in terms of the chart that we’ve shared on our R&D pipeline, the key message from this chart is that our pipeline of R&D projects has grown quite substantially over the last 2 years as we built out teams in various areas that didn’t exist before.
One of those teams, as you point out, is reproductive biology. We’re not going to go into detail of specifying exactly what all of these projects are. You’ll understand that there are commercial and IP reasons that we would not want to do that. I think the key message of the chart is there’s lots of exciting things being worked on in our R&D teams.
In terms of how one sizes the NPVs of these different projects then, there are — there’s obviously an element of judgment required in the way that those are modeled. I think the main point is that, does reproductive biology offer some potentially large transformational opportunities over time? Then I think the answer to that would be yes. However, there’s a lot of discovery involved. That takes time. So you see that the time line access on this chart is an important one also.
Anand Date
Great. And the last one on maybe not so positive in that. I was just looking at the risk register. In Sexcel, you’re sort of flagging the next generation of [ventures]. I was just curious, you put it that the risk has increased. I was wondering why that was.
Stephen Wilson
The R&D pipeline, you have a variety of things that you’re dealing with. I’d say we’re pleased with the growth that we’ve seen in Sexcel with the performance that the business is delivering for ourselves and for third parties. And I wouldn’t read too much into it. .
Operator
I’d now like to ask Jens Lindqvist, sorry, from Investec to come and ask a question.
Jens Lindqvist
A couple of questions, if I may. First of all, on PIC 800, obviously doing fantastically well in North America it has done over the past couple of years. Could you give a little bit of color on the commercial potential for that side, or was it outside of North America, specifically in Europe and would expect a sort of a similarly positive reception elsewhere? And if not, why not, I guess?
And then secondly, on Spain, specifically, which appears to be emerging as the peak production hub of Europe almost. Could you give a little bit more detail on the market share you have in that geography amongst the top producers? And if so, what’s the scope for market share gain could be perhaps in addition to the underlying growth.
Stephen Wilson
Thanks, Jens. I need to also congratulate you on the PIC tie there. So very good, very good. So look, the PIC 800, I think, is doing well everywhere. We highlighted North America because I think there’s just quite a dramatic story there.
And the Duroc sire in North America has been quite a trend amongst producers over the last few years. You would find in some other geographies, take Europe for example, where you would find if you went to, say, a country like Germany, you would have a heavy emphasis on, say, [indiscernible]. So there are some different preferences amongst producers in different parts of the world. But generically, I would say the PIC 800 has — is doing super well in America. It’s doing well everywhere, and the opportunity is good for it.
If we were — if we then go to your question around Spain, then I’d put it in a little bit of a historical context. If we went back quite a few years ago, then we had a very disappointing and I would say, inappropriate share of market in Spain. And we changed a lot of things there in terms of the product we were offering, the way that we were setting up with our availability of product in the marketplace, the personnel and the team. So we’ve really refreshed a lot of things, and we’ve been working steadily over many years to grow our presence in that marketplace.
Structurally, I’d say that we’ve made very good progress on the female side, particularly — and you can see that a little bit in some of the customers that we’re highlighting where you can see the female share has done very well. We’ve had a bit more ground to catch up on the male side of the business. And that’s why you’ve seen us actually be quite proactive over the last couple of years in creating more capacity to serve the marketplace.
So the Siemen-Cardona relationship was around creating more boasted capacity. The Segal acquisition, the same theme, let’s get more boar capacity. So we think there’s a good opportunity as we add this distribution capability for the male market share in Spain to start to catch up to the female share.
Operator
Thank you, Jens. We have our next question from Damian McNeela who’s from Numis.
Damian McNeela
Yes, a couple of questions from me, please. Firstly, on China. I think the — really interesting to sort of see that sort of, as most people expected, that cycle is coming back. Interested in your comments around how we should think about or how customer conversations are going around composition of revenues going forward, whether we — as the industry builds back, are we seeing consolidation in the same that way that you sort of mentioned that the dairy industry is consolidated. And then should we see more royalty contracts coming through in China, how that sort of looks would be the sort of my first question.
Alison Henriksen
Yes. I think it is inevitable there’ll be more consolidation of the industry as the market recovers, and we’re very well placed to take advantage of that because all of our customers are in the top 50.
In terms of our contract mix, PIC have continued to promote the royalty model in China, but also being selective about who they have that type of contract with. But having said all that, yes, I fully expect over time, we’ll see further increase in mix of royalty contracts relative to upfront contracts.
Damian McNeela
Okay. And — but in the near term, should we expect sort of a similar mix of business that we had?
Alison Henriksen
Yes.
Damian McNeela
More recently, we’re not expecting a big shift in the near term?
Alison Henriksen
I don’t expect a dramatic shift in the next 6 months or so.
Damian McNeela
Yes. Okay. That’s pretty clear. Then just on sort of European market share growth. Can you sort of talk a little bit more about how important the Segal acquisition or the Segal deal has been in terms of helping you drive that market share growth and whether there are any other markets outside of Spain that are sort of — that you view as sort of critical to sort of helping drive market share gains across Europe?
Alison Henriksen
Yes. Segal has been important for the Spanish business, no doubt about that. There will be other opportunities in Europe potentially for PIC. So yes, we’ve got our eyes open.
Damian McNeela
There’s no sort of particular target market that you’re sort of focusing on across Europe at the minute, it’s sort of just a broad-based approach. Is that fair?
Alison Henriksen
Yes, so not one particular country. Yes.
Damian McNeela
Okay. And last one for me. Just a geeky question on the MPV chart. The PRRS bubble, is that global, or is that ex China?
Alison Henriksen
That’s global.
Operator
We have our next question from Daan Arends, we brought you to panelists. Daan, please go ahead.
Daan Arends
I have a question on the Russian operations. Can you update us a little bit how things are going there have been able to operate normally or were results down when maybe excluding the ruble tailwind?
And something that would be interesting if you could talk a little bit how your experience operating in Russia in these circumstances has maybe changed how you look at China as an opportunity? Because as you’re probably aware, a lot of companies are rethinking their China strategy. So I was wondering if you’re also doing this in this regard?
Stephen Wilson
So let me just address Russia. So I think the first thing to say is that we took a decision to continue operating in Russia as we’re part of the food supply chain, providing basic commodities that are important for people’s diets. And so we felt in line with our vision and mission of helping to nourish the world. It was important that we were consistent with that.
In saying that then, we’ve also been very cognizant of the fact that a variety of sanctions legislation has been passed. And we’re very scrupulous in ensuring that we’re adhering to all of those requirements in the people that we deal with and the banking system and all the other aspects of the sanctions legislation. So I think that’s very important to state it upfront.
That obviously has made our business more complicated and challenging. Transport, obviously, is another matter that has obviously become significantly challenging. If we look overall at the business, so we have continued to operate there. Our results in the year were down overall and partly reflecting actually the very strong prior year that we had in [indiscernible] due to some specific projects that were taking place in that year.
But generally, we have a good market position in Russia and we have strong teams there. And we’re trying to support them in the best — doing business in the best way that we can while adhering to all the sanctions and legislation.
With regard to your question on China, I think that we see China as a very, very important market globally. And consistent again with our vision and values, we believe we should be active there and helping to feed the world. There are 1.4 billion people there. and there are significant opportunities to improve the efficiency and sustainability of food production in China. And we think that we should rightly be continuing to play a major role in seeking to help with that.
Operator
Thanks very much for that, Daan. We will now have another question from — sorry, from Anand Date from HSBC.
Anand Date
Guys, I just wanted to ask about industry consolidation in the sort of tail. So sort of [indiscernible] over, I think there are some coops in Europe on the core sign side that are getting together. What does that — or a, what are your thoughts on that? And b, — has it had an impact? Do you think it will have any impact, please?
Stephen Wilson
Yes. So I would say, I don’t think we have seen significant impact from it. Generally speaking, I think there is scope for further industry consolidation in both porcine and bovine.
You mentioned European co-ops or a number of bovine European comps that are that are actively in discussions with each other. We’ve seen topics at [indiscernible] come together to make topics. [indiscernible] on the other side, we’ve seen actually a fragmentation of Dan Bread into multiple companies.
So these shifts are going to continue. Generally speaking, we like industry consolidation, whether that’s something that we’re participating in or others are doing, we think it’s good news either way. And I think I’ll leave it at that.
Anand Date
But there’s no discernible impact on your business yet. Is that fair?
Stephen Wilson
Yes.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Okay. As we have no further questions at the moment. I’d like to pass back to you, Stephen, for any closing and final remarks.
Stephen Wilson
Just to thank everyone for your time today for participating for some good questions. We’ll be making the webcast available on our website, along with the prerecorded remarks and the presentation, and we look forward to continuing conversations with you as we go through the roadshow. Thank you.
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