LONDON: Tuesday, 26 July 2022: Trifast plc (LSE Premium listing: TRI) ('Trifast', the 'Group' 'TR' or 'Company'), publishes the Group's audited Annual report and Financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2022. The following information contained within this announcement is a summary taken from the Group's audited FY2022 Annual report and Financial statements which can be viewed in full via this link:

http://www.rns-pdf.londonstockexchange.com/rns/6812T_1-2022-7-25.pdf

"The medium term is increasingly exciting and as a Board we remain confident that the fundamentals of our business model and strategy position us well to become a larger, more profitable company. Over the coming financial year we will continue to make steady progress through a mix of customer service, technical innovation, investment and capturing key opportunities being presented"

CEO, Mark Belton

FY2022 Summary

FY2022 Financial highlights

1.     Adjusted net (debt)/cash is presented excluding the impact of IFRS 16 Leases

2.     Calculated in line with banking agreement

To read the financial report in full, please go to pages 52-59 of the FY2022 Annual report

To also read more about:

-our key strategic indicators (KSIs) and key performance indicators (KPIs), refer to pages 12-15 of the FY2022 Annual report

-our balance sheet and focus on capital allocation refer to pages 38-41 of the FY2022 Annual report.

Unless stated otherwise, amounts and comparisons with prior year are calculated at constant currency (Constant Exchange Rate (CER)). Comparisons with FY2020 are calculated at FY2020 exchange rates. Where we refer to 'underlying' this is defined as being before separately disclosed items (see note 2 in the Annual report).

Presentation of FY2022 results

Trifast plc

2022 Annual results

Extracts from the Strategic report

The report can be read in full on pages 2-89 of the FY2022 Annual report

"As we approach our 50 year anniversary in 2023, I am pleased to see how our business is transforming, from an international company with individual operations worldwide, to a more global company, working together as one team"

CEO, Mark Belton

Introduction

Over the last few years, we have seen the world change dramatically creating opportunities and challenges along the way.  As a Group we have come together and met those changes head on.  The combination of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine conflict has affected everyday life around the world in so many different ways.  In business, further obstacles have created a combined macroeconomic backdrop not seen commercially for many decades, manifesting in commodity shortages, to supply chain logistics disruption, plant lockdowns, and significant cost inflation.

Yet despite these challenges, we have had our best trading year ever by revenue, with growth of 18.7%.  This resulted in underlying operating profit increasing by 27.1%.  Gross margins at the end of March moved much closer to our historic levels and all regions delivered profitable growth.  In the summer we also acquired Falcon Fastening Solutions Inc. as part of our strategy to both grow and rebalance our North American region and I am pleased to report that TR Falcon revenue is performing slightly ahead of our original expectations.

We have had to operate smarter, collaborating much more with our customers and suppliers to ensure our Trusted Reliability of supply. I am incredibly proud of how our teams globally have managed it, thanks to the strong relationships that they have developed over many years.

I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the hard work and commitment of all my colleagues around the world, as none of this could have been possible without their dedication, and their 'can do' spirit.

Overview

At the beginning of the financial year the Covid-19 vaccination programme began to be rolled out and life started to return to some form of new normality.  We adapted our working practices to ensure all our people continued to remain safe and that the Group adhered to local government regulations.  While virtual communications cut down travel costs and in the main made us more productive, we recognised the importance of working together face-to-face and the comradery that this achieves.  The opening up, therefore, of restrictions towards the end of 2021 and into 2022 has been very much welcomed, enabling us to visit and, more importantly, continue to support our people around the business.  We are mindful that potential risks associated with Covid-19 remain in many parts of the world, as the recent lockdowns in Shanghai have evidenced, however this has had limited impact on FY2022 and we will continue to adapt our business to ensure our people remain safe and that we are able to service our customers effectively.

Following change and technological developments in our end markets, we revisited our sector analysis in FY2021 to better reflect how we view these markets and the opportunities within them.  All sectors within the period showed growth, despite the ongoing supply chain disruption and the temporary factory closures across several of our global OEMs.  In particular, we are very pleased to have delivered growth of 7.4% in our light vehicle (LV) sector, which represented an outperformance of c.9% against an automotive market that has been subject to significant short-term challenges.  We are delighted to report that we have successfully added a number of contractual wins to our order book both from existing and new customer relationships across our key sectors. Sales to distributors and energy, tech & infrastructure (ET&I) sectors were driven by strong underlying demand.  We have also continued to see an increased number of opportunities develop in the electric vehicle (EV) market.

Our North America region continues to go from strength to strength, with very strong organic revenue growth further supplemented by acquisition growth from TR Falcon.

The Ukraine conflict has exacerbated wider supply chain disruption, especially in Europe.  The direct impact on the business has been minimal with less than 1% of Group revenue going into Russia and Ukraine, however a number of our global customers operating in Europe do also include Russia as an end market which is impacting volumes at specific locations.  On behalf of all of us at Trifast our thoughts go out to all those affected by this conflict and we hope the situation can be resolved quickly and family and friends reunited.

The macroeconomic environment (supply chain pressures, together with freight, energy and other input cost increases over the period) created challenges, generating pent up demand but also impacting our margins in the first half of the year.  In response to ongoing inflationary pressures, we instigated a co-ordinated price increase programme, with phase one substantially completed by the financial year end.  This helped gross margins return closer to more historic levels, although further inflationary cost increases, such as energy incurred during the latter part of the financial year, held back a full margin recovery due to the lag between cost increase and recovery.  As part of doing business in this environment we are continuing dialogue with our customers to pass on relevant additional costs and the successful outcome of these negotiations will remain key.

Given the various macroeconomic factors affecting the supply chain, we invested significantly in stock during the period and whilst this has impacted cash generation, it has guaranteed continuity of supply in a period of very high lead times.  It is pleasing to report that over this difficult period, we have met our contractual obligations and not let customers down as well as enabling us to capture market share.  During FY2023 we expect stock levels to start to unwind as the macroeconomic environment stabilises.

Engineering-led innovation

'Innovation today for a better tomorrow' has long been our mantra and this has never been so important as in this current dynamically changing marketplace.  As a society we are moving away from being wasteful towards preservation and conservation; not only do we have a resolute team focused on ESG, but we also have teams of highly skilled engineers who collaborate with customers to help support them on their application fastening issues by developing innovative and cost-effective engineered products.  Our agile approach enables customers to develop sustainable products and solutions that will add value to society and the planet.

You can read more in depth on our approach to sustainability in the case studies on pages 32 of the Annual report

Accelerated acquisition journey

Following our successful integration and the solid performance delivered by TR Falcon, we continue our acquisition journey.  With a focus on our strategic initiatives of rebalancing the regions alongside establishing supply chain support through more on/near-shoring manufacturing capabilities to help deliver economic and environmental benefits.

You can read more about our acquisition journey, go to page 34 of the Annual report

Investing in organic growth

Organic investment is core to our strategy for growth and medium-term margin enhancement. This encompasses our people, our systems and targeted locational investments.

You can read more about our organic growth strategy, go to page 28 of the Annual report

Locational investment

As we continue to expand, we need to ensure that our locations remain fit for purpose.  In May 2022 we relocated our high growth Hungary operation to larger, purpose built facilities and around the beginning of FY2024 our UK-based PTS business will also relocate to facilities that are over 40% bigger, enabling it to support future growth and more product ranges for the distributor market.

We recognised early last year that TR VIC, our European manufacturing site, would soon reach its capacity as higher-level demand is set to increase over the next few years.  By the end of this calendar year we will have invested c.€4.0m into TR VIC's infrastructure and its machine capacity increasing production capability by over 30% and providing the foundation to produce more in-house, improve efficiencies and localise manufacturing support for our European OEMs and their ESG requirements.

You can read more about this on pages 28-29 of the Annual report

Project Atlas

Project Atlas, a key driver of future growth and cost efficiencies, has continued to progress over FY2022.  After the successful implementation at three sites in Europe, we decided to bring forward the phased roll-out to our highest revenue trading subsidiary TR Fastenings (UK). This in turn will enable us to free up greater capacity sooner. We knew this was always going to be the most complex and challenging roll-out and despite a successful phase one, we have seen a delay, to the end of calendar year 2022, in the implementation of phases two and three due to capacity constraints balancing supporting and protecting the growth we have seen, against training and educating the same people involved in Atlas. Although early days, we are pleased to report that the benefits of Atlas, both expected and unexpected, are being seen already within the business. Again, I would like to express my thanks to all our people involved in this transformational project. To undergo a change like this is difficult in the best of times, but to do it in the environment we have seen over the last few years is testimony to their resilience and strength of character.

Full details of our progress and plans for Project Atlas are provided on pages 30 and 31 of the Annual report. The financial impact of the work undertaken to date on this project is as follows. We have incurred direct costs of £2.6m in FY2022 (cumulatively £14.9m), largely relating to project team, consultancy and training costs. We have excluded £1.0m of these costs from our underlying results (see note 2 in the Annual report), to reflect the unusual scale and one-off nature of this project. In line with accounting standards, we have also recognised the remaining £1.6m (cumulatively £7.2m) as fixed assets on the balance sheet at 31 March 2022.

You can read more about this project on pages 30-31 of the Annual report

People

We place great importance on the development and training of all our people.  As part of our investment in Atlas we have launched a comprehensive human resources module which includes a global Employee Assistance portal to support staff in all aspects of wellbeing and an Online Learning Management System to complement face-to-face Development training.  During the year we expanded our talent pool in our commercial function to drive our ambitious growth plans.

In March 2022, Scott McDaniel joined us as North America Regional Director.  He has a wealth of operational and business leadership skills and has worked in a variety of industries including large global industrial fastenings companies.  Scott will also sit on the Operational Executive Board (OEB) and is responsible for driving profitable growth in North America, both organically and acquisitively.  As part of our succession planning, Glenda Roberts (who previously held the responsibility for the US), will continue to provide mentorship to the US team and remain Global Projects and Marketing Director.

We have further strengthened our Group compliance team to ensure that we continue to meet the expectations of our stakeholders.  From April 2022, Lyndsey Case became Head of Governance and we welcomed Christopher Morgan, an experienced FTSE 250 practitioner, to the plc team as Group Company Secretary.  To increase our strategic resilience within the business, Maddy Webb, who has been with the business for 21 years, has become Head of Risk, while Neil Stanbury joined us in March 2022 to assume the role of Global Director of Quality.  With our strong growth aspirations, continual improvement initiatives, combined with the importance of environmental, social and governance (ESG), the enhanced team provides a stronger structured framework of governance.

To read more

·      on governance, refer to pages 47 and 96-100 of the Annual report

·      about the Board and OEB, refer to pages 92-95 of the Annual report

Sustainability

We have developed a clear vision for sustainability for the next five years and have created a focused strategy that will improve both our sustainability and opportunities in a changing market.  During FY2022 we conducted a full review of our global KSIs and operational KPIs, which will be reported into the Trifast plc Board and our Operational Executive Board.  In addition, we have also included a second level of KPIs which we believe will support functional reporting of sustainability data.  These indicators have now been expanded to include a more detailed overview of our sustainability performance, supporting the ongoing commitment to our sustainability strategy.  I am pleased that our work to explore and assess climate-related risks and opportunities has gone well and the Annual report includes disclosures in line with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures.

To read in more detail about

·      our five-year framework go to page 43 of the Annual report

·      our approach and focus on Sustainability, please go to pages 44-51 of the Annual report

Outlook

As a Group, we continue to see significant scope to build the business through a mix of organic market share growth, as well as through strategic acquisitions.  We are pleased with the progress we are making, albeit the operating backdrop continues to require considerable effort to be applied to managing rising inflationary costs and supply chain disruption, as well as the ongoing roll out of Project Atlas.  I remain incredibly proud, as well as amazed as to how the TR teams around the Group cope with all of this on a daily basis.

A rigorous focus on service levels and responsiveness have strengthened the Group's position in its established markets during this challenging period and have created incremental opportunities with key international OEM customers.  While supply lead times are now stabilising across most of our territories, they remain at historically high levels at c.50+ weeks vs. c.25 weeks pre 2020 and so we have continued to invest in inventory to support customer demand. 

To protect margins as inflationary cost increases continue, we do expect price increase negotiations to form an important ongoing part of doing business in the current macroenvironment. The pass-through of these additional costs is a better understood process as we head into FY2023, than it was a year ago, but the successful outcomes of those conversations will remain key. Consistent with many businesses, in the first quarter of FY2023, we have seen a further uplift in certain key input costs, including energy. As a result of this, in the short term we expect to see a period of cost recovery deferral across our non-transactional business and therefore a greater degree of the Group's FY2023 profitability weighted towards the second half of the year.

In the first three months of the new financial year Group trading has been solid with c.10% growth in total revenue (at CER). We are continuing to see an increased number of opportunities in high growth and emerging technologies, with good momentum in new contract wins and our pipeline has never been so strong.

Revenue growth in the first quarter has been achieved despite ongoing challenges in certain markets.  We welcomed the easing of the Shanghai lockdown in June, having seen trading in our Chinese operations significantly affected in the first two months of FY2023.  This is estimated to have impacted revenue by c.£1.5m, although providing there are no further lockdowns in China, we envisage recouping a good proportion of this by the end of FY2023.  Whilst less than 1% of Group revenue is directly derived from Russia, the conflict is having an indirect impact on some of our European health & home customers, coupled with some volume reductions as a result of a downturn in consumer sentiment.  Our light vehicle OEM/Tier 1 customers continue to manage through semi-conductor chip shortages across all regions.

We continue to be proactive in both cost management and pricing actions to mitigate the impact of ongoing, significant, inflationary cost increases.  These actions are proving effective, albeit the lag between cost increase and recovery has continued to be seen in margins in the first quarter.

Given the unprecedented political and economic times the short term outlook for the Group is proving somewhat challenging to predict. However our Q1 performance, together with new contract wins and the growing pipeline, gives us confidence in delivering strong revenue growth in FY2023, despite a cautious view as to how quickly some of our specific market headwinds described above abate. We anticipate inflation in many cost areas will remain elevated over the remainder of the year and we will continue to take proactive steps to mitigate the impact of this on our margins.

The medium term is increasingly exciting and as a Board we remain confident that the fundamentals of our business model and strategy position us well to become a larger, more profitable company. Over the coming financial year we will continue to make steady progress through a mix of customer service, technical innovation, investment and capturing key opportunities being presented.

We look forward to updating you on our journey over the coming months and as always thank you for the interest you have shown in our business.

Key Strategic Indicators

1.             Based on initial scoping

Extracts from the Financial review

To read in full, refer to pages 52-59 of the Annual report

"The next couple of years remain a very exciting and challenging time for the business as we build the momentum and the foundation for our medium‑term aspirations"

Clare Foster, CFO

FY2022 was a very positive year for the Group. Robust growth in the second half followed a strong recovery in HY1, to end the year with revenues up 18.7% to £223.3m (AER 16.2% to £218.6m; FY2021: £188.2m).  15.9% of that growth was organic, with the remaining 2.8% reflecting seven months' trading from our latest acquisition, TR Falcon.  Against FY2020, we grew organically by 8.9%, meaning that FY2022 represented a record-breaking trading year for the Group, with organic revenues coming in 2.3% greater (at AER) than our previous highest level of £209.0m, as recorded in FY2019.

This growth reflected persistent high demand in most of our underlying markets, and was achieved despite supply chain shortages across a number of sectors, most markedly in the light vehicle market, coupled with a significant increase in our sales to distributors, as end customers increased in-fill stock purchasing in the face of wider supply chain pressures.

Gross margins have remained in line with FY2021 at 26.6% (AER: 26.7%; FY2021: 26.5%) as the positive impact of higher revenues has been offset by the lag effect in the pass-through of inflationary cost pressures.  UOP increased significantly by 27.1% to £15.2m (AER: up 23.1% to £14.7m, FY2021: £12.0m), with UOP margin up 40bps to 6.8% (AER: up 30bps to 6.7%, FY2021: 6.4%).  Operational gearing gains fed through into profits, although the positive impact of this was partially offset by the normalisation of overheads from a lowered FY2021 base (including the removal of government support schemes) as well as ongoing strategic investments to support our organic growth journey.

Reflecting the strong trading performance, our underlying PBT is up 29.2% at CER to £14.2m (AER: 25.0% to £13.8m; FY2021: £11.0m). This, coupled with a reduction in our underlying effective tax rate, has resulted in a marked increase in our underlying diluted earnings per share (EPS), up 30.3% to 8.13p at AER (FY2021: 6.24p).

Supply chain challenges remain and although lead times are now stabilising across most of the world, these continue to stand at historically high levels.  Considering this challenging backdrop and given our strong financial position, the business took the decision to invest in inventory levels in FY2022 (£31.7m) to support growth and ensure reliability of supply.  This has led to a temporarily negative underlying cash conversion rate at AER of (66.8)% (FY2021: 147.9%), which, in conjunction with the acquisition of Falcon on 31 August 2021 for £5.8m (net of cash), means that we ended the year with an adjusted net debt position of £(23.8)m (FY2021: £13.3m adjusted net cash).  We expect the investment in stock to reduce and drive historically high cash generation rates, as the macroeconomic environment settles.

As a result of these investments, our leverage ratio, calculated in line with the banking agreement, at 31 March 2022 was 1.27x (FY2021: n/a - adjusted net cash).  Whilst this is higher than recent history, it remains within our target range of 1.0x to 2.0x and therefore continues to provide flexibility to invest in future non-organic growth.  Facility headroom as at 31 March 2022 was c.£30m (FY2021: c.£62.6m), as stated before an additional £40m accordion option.

CER continues to be the best way of understanding the positive progress of our underlying business. To aid understanding, the impact of this on our key metrics can be seen in the chart on page 53 of the Annual report.

Revenue

We have seen strong growth across all our regions, with revenue increases ranging from 13.9% to 89.2% (3.5% to 78.1% against pre-Covid-19 FY2020).  The majority of these increases reflect volume, rather than price increases, largely due to transitional delays in the pass-through of inflationary cost pressures outside of our distributor sector business.

Europe has seen a 14.2% increase to £83.9m (AER 9.6% to £80.6m; FY2021: £73.5m) to report record revenues that are 14.3% ahead of FY2020.  We have seen the highest growth from our German business, across a mix of sectors.  Strong growth in the energy, tech & infrastructure (ET&I) sector, and a new global health and home OEM, has led to a marked trading increase at our Hungarian operations.  Our Italian operations drove the greatest revenue increase in the region in HY1, predominantly into the health & home sector, with revenues in the second half of the year going on to stabilise at this high level.  Supply chain shortages, most particularly in the light vehicle sector, have continued to limit growth in Holland.

However, we are pleased to report that despite a similar sector focus on the light vehicle market, solid market share gains in Spain have been able to more than offset these macro challenges, to drive >20% year-on-year growth.

In Asia, we have seen a revenue increase of 13.9% to £56.1m (AER: 12.3% to £55.4m; FY2021: £49.3m), but with trading only 3.5% ahead of FY2020.  One of the main reasons the region was slower to recover was the summer lockdowns and December floods in Malaysia that limited domestic light vehicle volumes and also health & home production levels at one of our key multinational OEMs.  In contrast, we have seen exceptionally strong growth in Taiwan as distributor sales recovered and grew substantially beyond pre-Covid-19 levels in key European end markets.  In Singapore, solid growth in the ET&I sector, supplemented by increased intercompany manufacturing, has more than offset temporary sub-contractor transfer issues at a key health & home customer.

Trading levels in the UK have recovered and grown very strongly, with revenues increasing by 21.7% to £83.9m (FY2021: £68.9m), to end 11.1% ahead of FY2020.  The biggest driver of this has been significantly higher sales volumes to distributors, coupled with a market pricing model that allows for the rapid pass-through of inflationary costs in this sector.  Health & home and general industrial sales have continued to show strong growth across a number of key global OEM customers.  However, light vehicle sales remain below pre-Covid-19 levels, predominantly due to the impact of semi-conductor shortages.

In North America revenue growth has been very high at 89.2% to £18.4m (AER: 82.0% to £17.7m; FY2021: £9.7m), leading to a 71.8% increase against the pre‑Covid-19 FY2020 period.  Organic growth has driven 36.6% of this as new platform builds in the light vehicle sector come online and ET&I sales gain momentum.  TR Falcon has represented 52.6% of growth, with revenues running slightly ahead of expectation since acquisition on 31 August 2021.

Underlying operating profit

Underlying operating margins have increased by 40bps, to 6.8% (FY2021: 6.4%) contributing to a strong uptick in operating profit of 27.1%, to £15.2m at CER (AER: up 23.1% to £14.7m; FY2021: £12.0m).

As a Group we have seen the positive impact of stronger sales driving operating profit increases and margin upgrades.  Further supplemented by a shift in sector mix with a greater proportion of the Group's trading being secured in the higher margin distributor sector.  The normalisation of our overhead base, including the removal of government support schemes and the return of higher bonus, travel and other discretionary spend has offset this in part.  In addition to which, the business has made a number of targeted strategic investments (see pages 28 to 31 of the Annual report) to support our ongoing growth journey.  This includes Project Atlas business as usual costs, now roll-out is underway, further investments into our HR, ESG and acquisition capabilities and targeted recruitment into our commercial and compliance teams.

Outside of North America all of our regions are now showing underlying operating profits, with Asia continuing to bring in the highest returns at 12.9% (FY2021: 13.2%).  In North America we have seen an improvement in year-on-year margins from a negative position of (5.9)% in FY2021, as very strong sales growth has driven operational gearing gains, and following the acquisition of TR Falcon in August 2021. Our European region has seen the largest fall, recording a reduction of 210bps, as sales growth gains are more than offset by gross margin pressures due to the relatively early onset and then transitional delays in the pass-through of inflationary cost pressures.  Cost increases have impacted underlying operating profits across all regions and are expected to continue to do so as ongoing cost inflation and price increase negotiations become an everyday and key part of doing business.

Net debt (AER)

The Group's adjusted net debt has increased by £37.1m to £(23.8)m (FY2021: adjusted net cash of £13.3m), predominantly reflecting £34.7m of net working capital investments to support growth and ensure reliability of supply.

Outside of working capital, £(5.8)m (net of cash acquired) was used to fund the acquisition of Falcon (USA) on 31 August 2021 and supporting the Board's ongoing investments for organic growth, capital expenditure in the period amounted to £5.2m (FY2021: £3.1m), including £1.5m in relation to Project Atlas.  Further details of these strategic investments are provided on pages 34 to 37 and pages 30 to 31 respectively in the Annual report. Including the impact of IFRS 16 Leases, the Group's net debt position was £(37.5)m (FY2021: net cash of £0.5m).  

Adjusted net debt bridge can be seen on page 57 of the Annual report

Taxation (AER)

The underlying effective tax rate (ETR) is lower at 19.1% (FY2021: underlying effective tax rate: 23.9%).  The main reason for the difference is the year-on-year movement in adjustments in respect of prior years.  Subject to future tax changes and excluding prior year adjustments, our normalised underlying ETR is expected to remain in the range of c.20-25% going forward. The main reason for the difference between our FY2022 ETR of 15.4% and the FY2021 ETR of 25.6% is due to a patent box claim in Italy in addition to the adjustments in respect of prior years mentioned above.

Dividend policy

Following such a strong recovery in FY2022 and with an ambitious growth strategy in place, we remain committed to a progressive dividend policy that shares the benefit of ongoing profit growth with our shareholders.  As a result, the Directors are proposing, a final dividend of 1.40p per share.  Subject to shareholder approval at the forthcoming AGM this will be paid on Friday, 14 October 2022 to shareholders on the register as at Friday, 16 September 2022,Together with the interim dividend of 0.70p (paid on 14 April 2022), this brings the total for the year to 2.10p per share, an increase of 31.3% on the prior year (FY2021: 1.60p).  The ex-dividend date is Thursday, 15 September 2022.

Trifast plc

Consolidated income statement

for the year ended 31 March 2022

Consolidated statement of comprehensive income

for the year ended 31 March 2022

Consolidated statement of changes in equity

for the year ended 31 March 2022

Consolidated statement of changes in equity

for the year ended 31 March 2021

1.             Previously, the merger reserve was reported in retained earnings at a consolidated level. Due to the additional merger reserve created from the equity raise, management now consider it appropriate to separately disclose the merger reserve.  Therefore, we have transferred the £1.5m previously reported in retained earnings to the merger reserve

Statements of financial position

at 31 March 2022

Statements of cash flows

for the year ended 31 March 2022

Trifast plc

Notes to the announcement

Detailed notes to the financial statements can be found in the Annual report on pages 148-197

Geographical operating segments

The Group is comprised of the following main geographical operating segments:

In presenting information on the basis of geographical operating segments, segment revenue and segment assets are based on the geographical location of our entities across the world and are consolidated into the four distinct geographical regions, which the Operational Executive Board uses to monitor and assess the Group.  Interest is reported on a net basis rather than gross as this is how it is presented to the Chief Operating Decision Maker.  All material non-current assets are located in the country the relevant Group entity is incorporated in.

In addition to the above, there were £0.4m separately disclosed items in relation to VIC patent box claims set against the tax charge in FY2022 (FY2021: £nil).

FY2022 Annual report and Annual General Meeting (AGM)

In addition to the link on the front of this announcement to a pdf the Annual report, it will be available in due course to view and download from the Company website at www.trifast.com, and it will also be uploaded to the National Storage Mechanism in due course. https://www.fca.org.uk/markets/primary-markets/regulatory-disclosures/national-storage-mechanism.

The 2022 Annual report and financial statements is also available on request by writing to: The Company Secretary, Trifast plc, Trifast House, Bellbrook Park, Uckfield, East Sussex TN22 1QW, alternatively email: Companysecretariat@trifast.com.

Details of the AGM, which is to be at 12noon on Wednesday, 7 September 2022, will be sent to shareholders in due course together with the Annual report, Notice of Meeting and Form of Proxy.

The financial information set out in this release does not constitute the Group's statutory Report and Accounts for the years ended 31 March 2022 or 2021 however, it is derived from the 2022 Report and Accounts (pdf attached to this announcement on page 1).

The Report and Accounts for 2021 have been delivered to the Registrar of Companies and those for 2022 will be delivered in due course. The external auditor has reported on the 2022 Report and Accounts; the report was (i) unqualified, (ii) did not include references to any matters to which the external auditor drew attention by way of emphasis without qualifying the reports and (iii) did not contain statements under section 498(2) or (3) of the Companies Act 2006.  

The Auditors Report can be read on pages 134-141 of the Annual report

The 2022 Annual report and Financial statements were approved by the Board of Directors on 25 July 2022.

Forward Looking Statement

This document may contain certain forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements reflect the knowledge and information available to the Company during the preparation and up to the publication of this document. By their very nature, these statements depend upon circumstances and relate to events that may occur in the future thereby involve a degree of uncertainty. Therefore, nothing in this document should be construed as a profit forecast by the Company.

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) 596/2014 as it forms part of UK domestic law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 ("MAR"), and is disclosed in accordance with the Company's obligations under Article 17 of MAR.  Upon the publication of this announcement via the Regulatory Information Service, this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain.