7 minute read
Chair’s report
Ryman residents Norm Reid and Maggie Gubbins with chair, Dr David Kerr.
We bore the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic during the 2021 financial year. I am pleased to report that we have come through well and are in good shape for future growth.
DR DAVID KERR CHAIR, RYMAN HEALTHCARE
The board of Ryman Healthcare is proud of what has been achieved in the most challenging of years.
The work we have done to turn our villages into safe havens has been greatly valued by our residents and their families.
A good result in a difficult year
The pandemic has been a once-in-a-generation challenge, but we kept everyone safe. We also continued to build and innovate, and the board is proud of what has been achieved.
In the year to 31 March 2021, our audited underlying profit was $224.4 million. This is a decrease of 7.3 percent compared to the prior year and reflects the increased costs of responding to COVID-19 and the impact lockdowns in New Zealand and Victoria had on our ability to undertake construction and transact units.
Our operations in Victoria, where we were expecting the majority of our growth to come from in the 2021 financial year, were significantly impacted by Melbourne being in varying degrees of lockdown for around 6 months.
Having voluntarily repaid the New Zealand Government wage subsidy, the impact of COVID-19 on underlying profit for the year was a cost of $19.8 million. This was spent on additional staffing, security and resident welfare.
Our reported IFRS profit, which includes unrealised valuation gains, increased 59.8 percent to $423.1 million.
We reached a milestone this year with the payment of a full-year dividend of 22.4 cents per share, meaning we have now returned more than $1 billion to shareholders since listing in 1999.
UNDERLYING PROFIT
$250m
$200m
$150m
$100m
$50m
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
CUMULATIVE DIVIDENDS PAID SINCE LISTING
$1,200m
$1,000m
$800m
$600m
$400m
$200m
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Project Safe Haven
Keeping our villages COVID-19 free, coping with unexpected lockdowns and adapting to the changing alert levels was a challenge.
Our plan, known as Project Safe Haven, was simple. We did everything we could think of to allow our residents to stay home, entertained and comfortable, but, most of all, safe.
By delivering everything they needed, keeping them connected and finding new and better ways to keep them engaged, we managed to keep them safe.
Our team has been truly amazing.
Throughout the year, they have put the welfare of our residents first and they continue to do so.
Some of our team have been in varying amounts of personal protective equipment for well over a year. They continue to exercise great caution with their own activities, living arrangements and personal health and we are enormously grateful for their extra efforts.
At the date of printing this annual report, our residents and staff remain COVID-19 free, and our vaccine roll-out programme is in full swing.
Our residents have jumped at the chance to get vaccinated, as have our team, which is great for everyone’s wellbeing.
Investing in innovation
We have innovated more than ever in the past year.
The pandemic meant we needed to work in a completely different way, and it brought technology to the fore.
The pioneering investment we made all those years ago in myRyman – which moved our care records into the digital space – paid dividends.
We will continue to innovate in the year ahead. With the help of technology, we will lift the experience of our independent residents to a whole new level including health monitoring and medication management.
We will be staging our own version of the Tokyo Olympics – an opportunity to empower our residents to compete, do things they never thought they could, and demonstrate where technology can take us next.
Our residents are overwhelmingly positive about their lives, and our survey results during COVID-19 showed how much they appreciate what we do.
We cannot rest on our laurels; we will keep working to find the next improvement or innovation that will make their lives even better.
Introducing new Rymanians to the team
We continued to strengthen the skillset of our board and senior executive team during the year.
In March we welcomed Greg Campbell to the board. Greg is a well-respected CEO, who has strong governance and commercial skills and has held a number of chief executive and director roles across Australasia.
Most recently Greg has done a great job leading the team at Ravensdown Limited for many years. Greg has great insights into sustainability issues, which adds a valuable new discipline to our governance team.
During the year we appointed Cameron Holland as Chief Executive in Australia to run our Victorian operations and drive our growth opportunities in the Australian market. Cameron is an experienced business leader having previously worked in the airline and travel industries and has experience in the aged-care sector at a senior level in Australia.
We also appointed Chris Evans as our Chief Construction Officer during the year. Chris is an engineer who has built a distinguished career in the construction industry in Australia, including 25 years at John Holland, and most recently he worked as Chief Assets and Infrastructure Officer at Sydney Airport.
Gordon MacLeod signals intention to stand down
Group Chief Executive Gordon MacLeod let us know recently that he had reached a point in his life where he is keen to try something else after giving 15 years of extraordinary service to Ryman.
During his 4 years as CEO we have opened 10 new villages, increased our market capitalisation by $3 billion* and returned dividends of $448 million to shareholders.
We also achieved our goal of opening five new villages in Victoria by 2020.
As CEO he has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to relate very positively to the many stakeholders in the company and has been an authentic leader.
We will be conducting an international search for a new group CEO. Maintaining our culture of everything we do being “good enough for Mum or Dad” is of the utmost importance.
We are very fortunate that Gordy has committed to stay on until a suitable replacement is found, and he will be leaving Ryman in a great position.
I would like to thank him very much on behalf of the board and everyone at Ryman.
Our purpose remains unchanged
As a board we are acutely aware of our intrinsic purpose as a company and the role Ryman plays in the communities it operates in, as well as the importance of purpose to our staff and many stakeholders.
Our purpose is to provide the best of care for our residents in beautiful, sustainable homes. Our work is greatly valued by the communities we operate in.
I suggest our purpose is what drives the collaboration, innovation, commitment and creativity of our teams and our stakeholders.
That’s why we’re called Ryman Healthcare. The name says it all. We care for people.
Competitive returns to shareholders are essential to the company’s success. These returns help provide the funds to achieve our purpose.
We have not achieved this target recently for a variety of reasons, but the board and management of this company are very focussed on restoring this level of return to the owners of Ryman as we move out of the restrictions of a global pandemic, especially in our key growth market of Victoria.
Thank you
Our result for the year is very credible given we were operating during the worst pandemic in 100 years.
We have kept everyone safe, and we have continued to grow, innovate and develop.
We’ve proven that our model of care is a critical part of the infrastructure of the communities we serve.
The safety and security of living in a Ryman village is more valued than ever by our residents and their families, and we are expecting demand for our services to continue to grow in the years ahead.
We are looking forward to what comes next – and we are certainly well prepared.
This company has enormous potential and I look forward to reporting back on our achievements in 12 months.
Thank you, as always, for your support.
Dr David Kerr
CHAIR, RYMAN HEALTHCARE
