Ann: Half Year Report 2017 - Appendix 4D, page-6

"I thought there might be a Masters closure boost in the numbers,"

Quite the opposite, actually, @CaptainBarnacles: there was still some lingering effect of Master's liquidation stock hitting the market in the half.


"...and the H2 outlook looked a bit dour to me, with mentions of costs going up from China. I suspect a rough NPAT excl the $3.1m write-back of about 135.5 for FY, with H2 not as shiny."

Because of the variability in DLX's average tax rate from one period to the next, after tax profit numbers tend to mask the underlying operating performance of the business.
For example, in the first half, the tax rate was 27%, meaning that under normalised tax rate in the second-half, sequential NPAT performance doesn't look as good as sequential Pre-Tax comparative numbers.