Cmon @Chagsy - you promise a posting full of milky puns and then just bring a lonely one ("bullish" arguably brings the total to two)! What about "milking shareholders wallets", "frothy share price", "udder-ly legen-dairy management"...I could go on.

Seriously though I'm not sure I can help with insight into a capital return, other than point out they are carrying a fair bit of debt. They're in an industry that you might expect that and it's not heifer-big but given the times they may want to give themselves a bit more headroom and lower interest costs.

In terms of the other thing I don't think the share buyback would be included in FCF. They would show this under financing cashflows. Though this in itself wouldn't prevent it being included in FCF, I don't think it would be for several reasons. First, they define FCF in the glossary as net cash from operating activities less net cash from investing activities. Second, it would go against convention and, third, I think the convention is right - FCF is more of an ongoing measure of the businesses activities rather than one-offs.

So the obvious question then is the one you've posed, why does FCF look so miserable? The obvious answer is capex, as an agri business it's likely going to be capital heavy-ish and you won't see that in EBITDA. Looking at the accounts though, FCF doesn't look as miserable as they're showing in that slide (they were FCF positive in the FY21 in the full year). If I had to guess I'd say it's got to do with the next slide in that deck, which points to the seasonal nature of the business (shown below). It's also possible that the 'normalisation' of earnings they do plays a role (given they don't normalise cash) but I don't think that's having much impact after a quick scan at the full year normalisation adjustments. I'd love to be able to give you an answer with more conviction but lactose insights!