Next week, Mr Guerin will travel to Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne to meet both customers and staff of the rural services company.
Already he had seen sobering photographs of houses belonging to staff which had been destroyed.
The company’s priority had been its people, both its own team members and customers, and it was endeavouring to get products through to collection points for those customers.
Its own network of stores largely came through all right, he said.
In the livestock division, the immediate concerns were around animal health issues and, in the more medium-term, the feed situation — particularly over winter given the loss of feed and crops.
There was an issue with bovine tuberculosis around the East Coast area, as far as stock movement.
There were also animals scheduled to go to processing plants but they were temporarily closed, so it was all "very much work in progress", Mr Guerin said.
PGW had made some interim donations to rural support trusts and it was also supporting staff involved in the response.
It was also working with Ag Proud on several other initiatives yet to be announced.
Mr Guerin had been talking to the Ministry for Primary Industries about product needs, and said the scale of the event was such that it needed to ensure its response was in collaboration with the more national response.
It was too early to know what the impact on PGW and its divisions would be, but the company — which was cautious about its medium-term outlook — had been around for 165 years and its communities were resilient.
While not wanting to make comparisons, Mr Guerin recalled Cyclone Bola, and said that event showed the communities did survive.
Revenue was up 6% at $585.8 million and net profit after tax from continuing operations was down 6% on the record result in the corresponding period at $21.2 million.
In the announcement to the NZX, chairman Joo Hai Lee said the result included new revenue and earnings highs for its retail and water group, which generated the majority of its earnings in the first half of the financial year. That was partially offset by challenges in its agency business, particularly real estate.
Operating ebitda for retail and water was $48.9 million (up $5.2 million) and revenue was $500 million, up $31 million.
While noting the "extraordinarily good" 2022 financial year, the company held "a degree of caution" looking forward for the reminder of the financial year given the volatility in the macro operating environment, Mr Lee said.
Farmers and growers were facing a range of uncertainties and headwinds.
Two recent rural confidence surveys, conducted prior to Cyclone Gabrielle, had reported farmer confidence levels at some of their lowest sentiment levels since surveys began.
Clients were experiencing an environment with rising interest rates, tightening credit, increased input costs, labour shortages, supply chain disruption, an uncertain geopolitical and domestic regulatory landscape and adverse weather events, including the "extraordinary" impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle.
The full effects of those dynamics were yet to be assessed.
PGW’s board outlook remained cautious. It saw some softening based on those macro factors and had recalibrated its forecast operating ebitda guidance for the financial year to June 30, 2023 at around $57 million.
Mr Guerin said he was "cautiously happy" with the half-year result in the context of the environment, putting the most recent weather events aside. It had been a challenging spring and late summer.
In the wool business, it had been a good time in the merino space but not so good for strong wool.
Beef prices were holding up, lamb was back although there was a suggestion it would rise, albeit slowly, and dairy prices were holding up from a herd perspective and back a bit from a commodity perspective, although were still reasonably strong.
There was a lot of nervousness among the farming community and also caution, particularly in the capital spending space. Where they did not need to, farmers were deferring those costs.
There were products in the farming cycle that could be used to push production if returns were available, and there was some softening in that space.
The extent of tree planting on sheep and beef farming land was also something that concerned both PGW and its communities.
During a visit to the Wairarapa late last year, it was "really the only topic of conversation" at the saleyards, Mr Guerin said.
