For immediate release
17 October 2018
Address by Chairman John Shine AC and Slides for MD/CEO Paul Perreault
CSL 2018 Annual General Meeting
Please find attached the Chairman's Address and Managing Director's slides to be presented at CSL's Annual General Meeting which commences at 1.00pm today.
Fiona Mead Company SecretaryFURTHER INFORMATION
For further information, please contact:
Investors: | Media: |
Mark Dehring | Jemimah Brennan |
VP Investor Relations | Head of Communications, Asia Pacific |
CSL Limited | CSL Limited |
Telephone: +61 3 9389 3407 | Mobile +61 412 635 483 |
Email:mark.dehring@csl.com.au | Email:jemimah.brennan@csl.com.au |
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CSL Limited AGM 2018 Chairman's address
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is the appointed time for the commencement of the Annual General Meeting of CSL Limited, a quorum is present and I declare the meeting open.
My name is John Shine and as Chairman of CSL Limited it is a pleasure to welcome you to the Company's 2018 Annual General Meeting. I also welcome all shareholders who are accessing the meeting via the webcast.
Before we start today's meeting, can I please ask you to ensure your mobile phones are turned off or switched to silent.
I also want to make sure you are familiar with the evacuation procedures that we will follow in the unlikely event of an emergency. If the evacuation alarm sounds, the venue's fire wardens will enter the room and direct us to the emergency evacuation points. Please follow their instructions.
The Notice convening the Meeting has been circulated to every shareholder and I now take that Notice as read.
May I now introduce your Board of Directors and our Company Secretary:
On your left (immediately to my right) Ms Fiona Mead, our new Company Secretary, Mr Paul Perreault, our Managing Director, Dr Brian McNamee, Dr Megan Clark, Mr Abbas Hussein, Ms Christine O'Reilly, Professor Andrew Cuthbertson, Ms Marie McDonald, Mr Bruce Brook, Dr Tadataka "Tachi" Yamada and Mr David Anstice.
You will have an opportunity to hear from the three Directors who are standing for election later in today's meeting.
In relation to the procedure for the meeting, I will give a short address and I will then ask the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director to address you with more detailed information on our performance. We will then go through the formal business of the Meeting, during which time, shareholders and proxies will have the opportunity to comment and ask questions on each item of business.
I would now like to provide you with some of the highlights of our performance for the year ended 30 June 2018. I hope that you have taken the opportunity to read our most recent Annual Report, copies of which are available here and also on CSL's website.
I am very pleased to report that CSL delivered a strong full year reported profit, reflecting the execution of our strategy and patient-focussed workforce.
CSL's total operating revenue reached US$7.9 billion, up 11% on a constant currency basis.
Our reported net profit after tax was US$1.7 billion, up 29% on a constant currency basis1, with earnings per share similarly up.
Return on invested capital, a measure which provides an insight into how well the company is turning capital into profit, was 25.9%. This compares very favourably with the average return on invested capital for Australia's top 15 companies.
Mr Paul Perreault, our CEO and Managing Director, will shortly be sharing with you some further detail across the individual business units
Turning to capital management.
Efficient capital management remains a strong focus of the CSL Board.
CSL's balance sheet and debt serviceability remain strong. Net debt to Earnings Before Interest Taxes Depreciation and Amortization currently stands at around one point three times (1.3x).
We are very much focussed on investing in future growth with our R&D and capital investments. We are also focussed on rewarding our shareholders.
Which brings me to dividends.
The Board determined a final unfranked dividend of US 93 cents per share or approximately A$1.28 for the 2018 financial year. This dividend was paid to
1 Constant currency removes the impact of exchange rate movements facilitating comparability of operational performance. For further details, please refer to the Directors' Report on page 47 of the 2017-18 Annual Report
shareholders on 12 October. This brought total ordinary dividends for the year to US$1.72 per share or approximately A$2.28 per share, an increase of 30% in Australian dollars.
The reason this dividend is unfranked is that there are insufficient Australian franking credits available. Australian franking credits are dependent on the profits earned and tax paid in Australia. As CSL's business continues to grow globally, our ability to provide franked dividends declines.
I'd now like to make some comments on Corporate Responsibility, a subject of significant focus for the Board.
Today CSL released its tenth Corporate Responsibility Report, sharing with our stakeholders our performance over the reporting year. Copies of the Report can be found in the foyer and, for those listening to the AGM on webcast, on our website.
Our environmental, social and governance (also known as ESG) performance continues to be recognised externally, with CSL remaining a constituent of the FTSE4Good index and the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) for both Australia and the Asia Pacific region. These initiatives are globally recognised indices designed to measure the ESG performance of companies assisting investors with investment decisions.
In 2016 we announced the establishment of a new $25 million fellowship program for discovery and translational research in Australia. We again received many applications and, last week the next two recipients of this A$1.25 million CSL Centenary Fellows were announced. They are Dr Connie Wong from Monash University and Dr Daniel Pellicci from the Doherty Institute and MCRI. To date we have awarded six fellowships totalling awards of A$7.5 million, and we look forward to seeing the progress of their inspiring research in the years to come.
In August 2017, CSL responded to the devastating impacts of Hurricane Harvey in the US. The Category 4 storm caused US$125 billion in damage and affected 13 million people in multiple states. CSL and employees provided a total of US$200,391 in financial support to relief efforts and donated 22,500 doses of influenza vaccine to help displaced residents in the hardest hit state of Texas.
We are also very proud of our support for communities in Papua New Guinea. We entered a new three-year partnership to help save the lives of people bitten by venomous snakes in PNG, with the PNG Department of Health, the Australian High Commission, and the Charles Campbell Toxicology Centre (CCTC), at the University of PNG. PNG has some of the highest rates of snakebite death in the world and our vaccines business has committed to provide an annual donation of 600 vials of anti-venoms, with an approximate value of more than A$1 million annually.
CSL has an Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability Strategic Plan which ensures its facilities operate to or exceed industry and regulatory standards. This strategy includes compliance with government regulations and commitments to continuously improve the health and safety of the workforce as well as minimising the impact of operations on the environment. To drive this strategy, a Global CSL EHS Management System Standard has been implemented.
We continued our long-standing record of no work-related employee or contractor fatalities and zero safety violations or fines. Our environmental record also remains strong."
I have been very proud to be part of an organisation that is so patient focussed. There is no doubt that CSL's success is the result of more than 22,000 employees who are committed to saving lives and protecting the health of people around the world every day.
Our employee feedback survey conducted in May 2018 tells us our employees continue to be actively engaged, and proud to work for the company. They believe there is a promising future for them at CSL.
A testament to this level of engagement is the external recognition that our talented people and innovative workplace received. Recognition of note includes being named one of the world's Top 50 employers by Forbes and one of Australia's top most innovative companies. We are also proud that Thomson Reuters has named CSL in its 2018 Top 100 global Diversity & Inclusion Index. This Index ranks over 7,000 publicly listed companies to identify the top 100 publicly traded companies with the most diverse and inclusive workplaces, as measured by 24 separate metrics across four key pillars.
We also received the Patient Impact Award from Life Sciences Pennsylvania for the development of HAEGARDA, the first subcutaneous preventative treatment for patients
Attachments Disclaimer CSL Limited published this content on 17 October 2018 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 17 October 2018 02:22:06 UTC
