external headwinds mask a great growth story, page-23

From my knowledge, it's a bit of all of them, except for maybe cyclicality (unless you include currency in this).
At the moment, there are a few large factors at play. These are:
- Currency fluctuations (this makes a big difference, given the export focus)
- Shift in product. Amalgam sales are declining, with the focus being on higher-margin (and less 'commoditised') products.

The latter is more prominent this year (and more important overall), as EBITDA rose without the FX tailwind and on a very slight increase in revenues.

There are other (smaller) factors at play, such as:
- Brazilian/Sth American operations (move to packaging and distribution from Brazil, rather than import from Australia and pay import taxes on the complete product)
- Management change - The new CEO (Samantha Cheetham) seems to be more focussed on shareholder comms
- Remuneration - I'd argue management is overpaid here, especially as we have paid ~$1.2m for a CEO this year... Surely Jeffrey Cheetam's salary will drop next year in the Chairman-only role

As for competitive advantage - yes, there is a shift toward such products. SDI have received a number of awards for new products recently, and from memory even spent time to re-design their packaging to fit into a dentist's "workflow".

Finally, on economies of scale - I'm not sure this is too important. Sure, R&D spend is fixed, so the larger the business, the less it needs to spend on R&D relative to competitors (all else being equal). I'm not sure that's playing a big role here...