Key Highlights

  • Select Harvests (ASX:SHV) Limited is Australia’s largest listed almond producer, and after several difficult years its story has become harder for investors to ignore.
  • The shares have reflected the improving mood, outperforming the broader market over the prior year as almond pricing firmed from the depressed levels that
  • The core dynamic is straightforward.
  • Signs of the turn have shown up in the company’s own decisions.

Select Harvests (ASX:SHV) Limited is Australia’s largest listed almond producer, and after several difficult years its story has become harder for investors to ignore. The vertically integrated group owns and manages orchards, runs primary processing — hulling, shelling and packing — and operates value-added processing, selling into retail, food-manufacturing and trade channels at home and abroad. As a near pure-play on the almond price, its fortunes swing with a single soft commodity, and that Commodity has been recovering.

The shares have reflected the improving mood, outperforming the broader market over the prior year as almond pricing firmed from the depressed levels that had squeezed the whole industry.

A commodity-price recovery

The core dynamic is straightforward. Almond prices had been weak for an extended period as global supply, dominated by California, ran ahead of Demand and pressured growers worldwide. As the balance between Supply and demand improved, pricing recovered, and for a low-cost, large-scale producer like Select Harvests, even modest movements in the almond price have an outsized effect on profitability. The size and quality of the annual crop, water availability and input costs are the other key variables.

Signs of the turn have shown up in the company’s own decisions. Market-data figures show trailing Earnings around 20 cents per share and the payment of a fully franked Interim Dividend during 2026 — notable for a Business that had been under pressure through the lean years. Managing director Paul van Heerwaarden was recorded buying shares on market in the middle of 2026, and the stock was last recorded around $4.11 in mid-2025.

Why it matters

For investors, Select Harvests offers direct, scaled exposure to an almond-price recovery through a vertically integrated producer that controls its crop from orchard to packed product. When prices rise, that integration and scale translate into strong operating leverage; the same leverage works in reverse when prices fall. The renewed dividend and insider buying are read by some as signals of management’s confidence that conditions have improved.

Catalysts and risks to watch

The catalysts to watch are seasonal and price-driven: crop-size updates and harvest outcomes, the trajectory of the almond price, commentary on water costs and orchard yields, and the dividend as a barometer of confidence. Full-year reporting, given the company’s September financial year-end, is a key window into how the recovery is translating into cash.

The risks are equally commodity-driven. Almond prices are volatile and set globally, largely by the Californian crop, so Australian producers are price-takers. Water is a major cost and availability risk in Australian agriculture, and weather, pests and Yield variability can swing a single season’s result sharply. The business is heavily exposed to one commodity, so Diversification is limited, and currency movements affect export returns. A Reversal in almond prices would quickly undo much of the recent improvement.

The balance

Select Harvests is a scaled, integrated almond producer geared to a recovering commodity price, with a reinstated fully Franked Dividend and insider buying adding to the improving narrative. Whether the story keeps building depends on the almond price and the crop, both of which sit largely outside the company’s control. For investors, the substance is in crop and pricing updates and in the full-year result, and the genuine Operating Leverage should be weighed against the single-commodity, weather- and water-dependent risks that define the business.