Mark Leslie: Pamū Landcorp CEO on the company's turnaround in profit

Pāmu, formerly Landcorp, is seeing a significant financial turnaround, having reported a net profit after tax of $120 million for the year ended June 2025, which will see it return a $15 million dividend.

It's a significant turn compared to last year's results, where the company posted a loss of $26 million.

Chief executive Mark Leslie says he's 'thrilled' to be reporting these results.

"It's great to post the result - but equally, I'm thrilled for all our people as well because there's a lot of people right through the organisation who work hard every day."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now huge turnaround for Land Corp, reporting a net profit
after tax of one hundred and twenty million dollars for
the year. That is up from a twenty six million
dollar net loss last year. This means the business is
going to pay the government a dividend of fifteen million dollars.
Mark Lesley's the chief executive and with us Hi, Mark.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Good evening here to be with you.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now you sound as thrilled as I think that you are.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
I am, and it's great to post the result. But
equally I'm thrilled for all of our people as well,
because there's a a lot of people right through the
organization who work hard every day and many who do
the mahiad on the farms every day. It's nice to
be able to acknowledge their hard work turning up and
producing some fantastic results.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
What's the secret to the turnaround? How'd you do this?

Speaker 2 (00:44):
I think it's something that we as a team have
been working on over the last few years. It's a
very new look leadership group with some few white heads
in there as well, and just really going back to
some real good basics of farming and farm management, whether
it's our livestock farms, and just start focusing on the
core of landing percentages and things like that, or our

(01:05):
dairy units and focusing on cows and condition and the likes.
We've just really gone back to those basics to get
the core fundamentals right. And the nice part of it
that's gone with it is actually getting some really good
commodity prices, so that's helped as part of that as well.
And I think you're saying where I suppose a we're
a good signal of where the agriculture sector is at
at the moment in a pretty good heart.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
What have you ditched?

Speaker 2 (01:27):
We've had We've had to make some few tough calls.
So with Palmer Foods, which was our venture into selling
products beyond the farm gate, we had a tough call
on that about eighteen months and closed some of that down.
We've consolidated some leadership roles and taken them some overheads out.
There was a number of when I started, there was
probably one hundred plus little trials right across the farm,

(01:48):
across all of our farms, and they were each in
their own right, We're interesting, but they were probably an
element of distraction as well. So we've simplified and stripped
some of those things back to then allow us just
to focus on those core things that farmers need to
do every day.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
What kind of stuff was Palmu food selling?

Speaker 2 (02:05):
So Palmu Foods was selling milk powder, bulk milk powder
out into the international market. So yeah, that was at
a time I suppose in the past where the business
was looking to diversify its incomes trains. And so that
was established and hey, you end up competing with some
of the very large processes out of New Zealand. And

(02:25):
the call was we made the call that that was
our core business and go back to where we can
fundamentally make it different.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
And what about these trials? What was the most ambitious
of the trials?

Speaker 2 (02:35):
There was a number of them. There was there was
technology trials looking at condition, scoring cows and the likes
and and many of them will have their day and
they will come to fruition. So but we've gone back
and said, hey, let's look at those. We don't need
to be at the bleeding edge of some of those technologies.
We've continued some of the areas with jenetics and dairy
beef and where we believe we've got some real skills.

(02:57):
So we're focused back on those because they will drive
our core performance.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah. Are you still doing the deer milking?

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yep, we are still looking at it. Well. We are
still doubt selling deer products as we speak, and we've
we've got really strong consumer demand coming out of Southeast Asia.
It's a very very small part of our business, so
my focus is on the bigger part, but we've kept
that going. It's a nice compliment to our large dear business.
We have a very large dear business across the rest
of the network.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
So do you reckon you've put the brakes by but
delivering a result like this and then also talking about,
you know, maybe even increasing it through to twenty thirty
in the next five years. Do you reckon you've put
the brakes on the government selling off bits of you.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
I I've always been pretty clear on that that's a
decision for the government of the day, but also that
I've also seen it does have some complexities with it
as well. There is a number of those farms that
are still subject to treaty sentiments settlements, is a number
that are leased. There's a number of it they've got
first right of refusal, so that that has some complexity
that's a decision for the government of today. But that
I can keep doing is what we've just been talking about,

(03:56):
is delivering some fantastic results and playing a dividend back.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
To your good stuff. Mark, keep it up. Thank you,
Mark Leslie, chief executive of Land Corp.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
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