ALS Limited ($ALQ)

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to ALS Limited FY '26 Results Briefing. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your first speaker today, Mr. Malcolm Deane, CEO and Managing Director. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Desmond, and good morning, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. It's been a very strong year for ALS, and we've delivered record results, reflecting our ability to achieve strong growth while staying disciplined on margin performance, cash generation and capital allocation. As always, I'm joined by Stuart Hutton, our Chief Financial Officer. We'll speak for around 30 minutes, and then we will open for questions. Four years ago, we set ourselves ambitious fiscal year '27 targets. I'm pleased to report that we have achieved these targets 12 months early while refining our strategy and focus for the future. What's most pleasing is that we achieved the fiscal year '27 plan primarily through strong organic growth. Fiscal year '26 revenue was $3.32 billion, up 10.7%, with strong organic growth of 8.4% at the top end of our guided range, reflecting the breadth of our global operations. Underlying EBIT of $599 million, up 19.3% with EBIT margin accelerating by 129 basis points to 18%. But excluding recent acquisitions, the legacy underlying EBIT margin was 19.8%. Underlying NPAT was up by 25.8% to $381.2 million, a record result for this company. These results for ALS reflects the work of more than 23,000 people across our global network. So I want to acknowledge that upfront because this was a true team effort. Commodities delivered an exceptional year, led by Minerals at 20.2% organic growth and 33% EBIT margin. We saw increased activity from juniors with revenue growth in the second half consistent with Majors and Ms. Life Sciences was mixed, but still delivered a 55 basis points margin expansion to 14.6%, led by Food and Pharma. Food delivered 7.2% organic growth being another strong year for this division. And as planned, we saw strong margin improvement from Nuvisan. Environmental growth was strong in our key EMEA and APAC regions, but the Americas, especially United States and LatAm, were a challenge, and we'll come back to that shortly. Cash conversion was 92% and leverage is very healthy at 1.5x. So let me now focus firstly on safety, which remains our top priority at ALS. Health and safety underpins everything that we do and remains a top priority across every aspect of our business. It's key to protecting our people and building trust with our clients. As shown in the chart on the right, we have delivered a leading safety performance. This reflects the culture our team lives every day across our labs and sites around the world. I am very proud of these results, and it gives me great confidence that the operational discipline behind these safety outcomes is also driving our financial performance. These next slides capture the true strength of our fiscal year '26 results, solid revenue momentum, disciplined margins and a strong balance sheet. The 8.4% organic revenue growth was broad-based with positive contribution from minerals, industrial materials, food and environmental. Underlying EBIT margin was 18%. But as mentioned before, excluding recent acquisitions, the margin was 19.8%, which exceeds the 19% floor we set for the fiscal year '27 strategic plan. The return on capital employed improved by 309 basis points to 21.5%, a real step change, reflecting both earnings growth and disciplined capital allocation. Underlying net profit after taxes was up 25.8% to $81.2 million. Underlying earnings per share increased by 21.2% to $0.757 per share. Leverage at 1.5x sits comfortably below our preferred target range, but this is by design. It gives us the flexibility to complete the hub lab expansion program, pursue targeted bolt-on M&A and respond to growth opportunities as they arise. Based on the group's strong financial performance and maintaining balance sheet strength for the future, the Board has declared a combined fiscal year '27 dividend of $0.425 per share, an increase of 10.1%, equating to a 57% payout ratio of underlying net profit after taxes. So with that overview, let's move now to the operational performance, and we'll start with the division that had the strongest year. Commodities delivered revenue of $1.29 billion, up 18.8% with organic growth of 17.9% and EBIT margin expanded by 167 basis points to 29.5%. Within commodities, the Minerals result was outstanding with 20.2% organic growth and a record year of samples processed. The Minerals margin improved by 222 basis points to 33%, driven by operating leverage and pricing. Minerals margin on the second half was 34.5%, up from 31.3% achieved in H1, reflecting a step-up in sample volume growth during the second half. Geochemistry recorded 22.7% organic revenue growth, largely driven by higher sample volumes from exploration testing, improved utilization of previous processing capacity investments and growth in mine site production testing. I want to be clear about this. There is no equivalent business in these sectors delivering returns at this scale. The combination of our global hub-and-spoke model, high-performance methods and growing downstream services across mine sites and metallurgy creates a position that is very difficult to replicate. Metallurgy saw a full year organic decline of 2.5%, reflecting the normal lag we see between exploration spend and downstream project work. Significantly, H2 delivered positive organic growth against H2 '25 and margin improvement with a healthy forward pipeline well diversified across commodities. Industrial Materials also contributed a strong result with 10.5% organic growth and continued momentum, especially within oil and lubricants and assay and inspection. The next slide provides a clear picture of geochemistry performance, including the stronger sample volumes we have seen as market conditions improve. During the year, sample flows volumes accelerated strongly, specifically on the second half, with overall year-on-year revenue growth of 22.7% in geochemistry. Pricing conditions also improved progressively through the year, with H2 reflecting a healthier pricing environment, a more positive mix, increased junior sample flows and the cycling through of discounts secured during fiscal year '25. We saw consistent growth in Australia, Africa, South America, Asia and the Middle East throughout the entire year, with North America being the highest growing region in the second half. Previous capacity investments position ALS to absorb volume growth while maintaining strong service delivery. Our revenue mix continued to favor major miners, providing an earnings stability as financing activity for juniors and intermediates increasingly converts into active field programs. Junior financing has recovered strongly with global juniors and intermediate capital raisings more than doubling on a year-on-year basis. As mentioned earlier, we have seen the first signs of these conversions flowing through into our volumes in H2. Volumes growth in juniors was keeping pace with majors. However, the lag between capital raising and field activity has extended beyond the 2 to 3 months we have historically seen. And as a result, we are being appropriately cautious in how we reflect that in our fiscal year '27 guidance. The structural drivers remain strong, high commodity prices, the energy transition, critical minerals demand and resource nationalism. These are multiyear trends, not just peak cycle indicators. Let me now step through the margin profile of the Minerals business, which is benefiting from both operating leverage and pricing benefits. The chart at the top left shows the different factors impacting the margin progression to the reported fiscal year '26 margin of 33% -- the margin expansion to 33% was driven by volume-led operating leverage, the cycling through of fiscal year '25 pricing headwinds, mainly impacting H1 and continued cost discipline across the network. In H1, we shared with the market that the pricing impact was roughly negative 120 basis points. For the full year, pricing turned into a positive contributor as the discounts from '25 flashed through and the pricing environment firmed. High-performance methods continue to grow at an accelerated rate and mine site production testing maintained its 20% 3-year CAGR. Collectively, new service offerings and downstream activities now represents approximately 25% of Minerals revenue. This diversification is structural, and it matters because it reduces our sensitivity to exploration cycles. Our client mix continues to skew towards majors, although the second half, we saw the first meaningful uptick of volumes from juniors following successful fundraising activities. So with that, we move from commodities to Life Sciences. Life Sciences represents 61% of the group revenue and continues to be a key growth platform for ALS. Total revenue grew 6%, including organic growth of 2.8% from Environmental, 7.2% from food and a slight organic decline in Pharma. The Life Sciences EBIT margin improved by 55 basis points to 14.6%, which is a good result given the headwinds we experienced in Environmental, especially in the Americas. Excluding recent acquisitions, the legacy margin improved to 16.8%. So let me walk through each of these businesses. Environmental delivered mid-single-digit organic growth in our largest regions, APAC and EMEA, partially offset by softer conditions in the U.S., especially around the integration process of York and Latin America. It is fair to say that the performance in the Americas was a disappointment. There are market factors at play and some signs of weaknesses in this market, but there were also operational issues within our control, and I take responsibility for those. All York certifications have been reinstated during Q4. The effect of the U.S. government shutdowns have eased and the outlook is more positive as we enter '27. Starting fiscal year '27, we have appointed a new AGM for this division, Andrea Vallejo, with a clear mandate to continue building the best-in-class global environmental business. PFAS' growth continued to materially outpace the broader portfolio and now represents 6% of environmental revenue, supported by our global reach and cross-market capabilities. ALS Environmental continued to be a global leader in this space with the second largest market share and an operating model that makes us unique and position us strong to continue growing in the upcoming year as we did in the past 3. Food delivered their third consecutive year of strong organic growth at 7.2%, led primarily by Europe. The team has executed extremely well, and I want to acknowledge that consistency. Pharma recorded a slight organic revenue decline of 1.6%, but the real story here is Nuvisan. EBIT grew 123% and the margin improved approximately 450 basis points since the successful completion of the transformation program. This is a credit to the team that led those efforts. So let's now take a closer look at the performance of the core Life Sciences business. As I shared earlier, Life Sciences organic revenue was 2.8% for the year. Excluding Nuvisan, Wessling and Europe, the legacy Life Sciences organic revenue growth was 4%. This was achieved against a very strong result last year alongside some market slowdowns and operational challenges, as mentioned before. While we improved margins in recent acquired operations, it's important to reflect on the 32 basis points improvement in the Life Sciences legacy operations, showing the strength of our core Life Sciences business. Nuvisan completed its transformation ahead of schedule, delivering expected exit savings of approximately EUR 25 million and margin improvement of around 450 basis points. The focus is now on revenue growth from the improved commercial platform. Wessling ing performed positively with revenue and earnings performance ahead of the initial business case. And Europe, as mentioned before, has been our most significant integration challenge. The business was affected by the loss of certification at specific sites and additional subcontracting costs. During the second half of the year, we have addressed those issues, regained certification and fast track the integration plan execution. But I'm not going to make excuses. We bought the business believing we could improve it, and we have not yet delivered on that promise, but we will. Overall, this was a positive result and clear progress on our integrations and transformation plan. So now let me hand over to Stuart that will walk you through the financial review.

All right. Thanks, Malcolm, and good morning, good afternoon, everyone. ALS has delivered a very strong year with double-digit uplifts in revenues, earnings and dividends to shareholders. Revenue grew organically by 8.4%, supported by favorable FX and minor scope contribution to achieve 10.7% overall revenue growth. Underlying EBIT increased 19.3% with group margin up 129 basis points to 18%. Net interest expense decreased from $81.7 million to $69.3 million, reflecting reduced net debt post the equity raising and improvements in our own internal cash management. Underlying NPAT increased by 25.8% to $381.2 million. On the back of the performance, the Board has declared an FY '26 final dividend of $0.231 per share, partially franked at 30%, representing a combined full year dividend payout ratio of approximately 57%. Let's now look further into the margin performance. The underlying group margin increased by 147 basis points on a constant currency basis, with positive organic margin growth of 180 basis points, offset somewhat by both scope and corporate cost dilution. The commodities margin grew by 186 basis points at constant currency. As Malcolm has pointed out already, operating leverage was a key feature of FY '26 as well as pricing with pricing contributing positively in half 2 following the runoff of historical discounting and firming pricing conditions as the market tightens from higher demand. Life Sciences grew organically by 73 basis points, but scope dilution attributable to Wessling of 27 basis points led to a 46 basis point improvement at constant currency. There was a group adverse FX impact of approximately 17 basis points. All in all, a very pleasing year as it relates to margin evolution at ALS. Moving to capital management. In May 25, as all of you know, the group successfully completed a $367 million equity raise, which reinforced the balance sheet and reduced our leverage. Leverage as reported at the end of FY '26 was 1.5x. This result is below the lower end of the targeted range of between 1.7 to 2.3x and well within lender covenants. We still view the leverage range of 1.7 to 2.3 as being appropriate for ALS as we pursue growth into the future. EBITDA interest cover for loan covenants was 13.2x. Group liquidity remains robust at over $580 million. Moving to capital expenditure. Total CapEx through the year was $263 million. This included approximately $94 million invested into the 4 major hub laboratories with each of these projects on track on a combined basis. Base CapEx was approximately $170 million, representing approximately 140% of depreciation and 5% of revenues. We continue to invest to support growth with approximately 80% of that expenditure on growth and 20% on maintenance spend. Free cash flow generated before CapEx increased by approximately $84 million versus the prior comparable period to $674 million. EBITDA cash conversion was 92%, a very solid and pleasing outcome. Reflecting our continued focus on supply chain management, DSO improved to 50 days, while DPO was back a little bit at 66 days. DPO is okay at that level, but we have opportunity to push it harder as we move forward. The FY '26 final dividend was $0.231 per share, franked at 30%, representing a 17.3% increase on the prior period. On a combined basis, the FY '26 dividend was $0.425 a share, an increase of 10% on FY '25. Looking now to cash. Free cash flow increased 14% to $674 million, underpinned by the EBITDA cash conversion of 92%, which remains comfortably above our minimum 90% threshold target and reflects both the quality of earnings flowing through to cash and growth in the underlying operations. Net CapEx of $255 million includes the $94 million invested in our 4 major hub laboratory upgrades previously mentioned. As we look forward to FY '27, we expect base CapEx to be in the order of $170 million as we invest to meet increasing demand and improve efficiencies. In addition, the expected investment on the hub lab program will be approximately $70 million in FY '27. I'll now turn to leverage. As noted, leverage reduced to 1.5x at the close of the year, largely due to the equity raise completed in May '25, sound working capital management and strong earnings growth. Our improved net debt position provides additional flexibility and scope to complete the hub lab update upgrade program as well as provide capacity for targeted bolt-on M&A in due course, which Malcolm will cover shortly. The focus remains on solid cash generation as the hub lab CapEx program continues and the integration of the recent acquisitions we have completed. We are targeting improved ROCE through disciplined deployment of capital and steady margin improvement over the medium term, as evidenced by the improvement in ROCE we made this year. With leverage well within our targeted range, we have maintained flexibility to keep investing for growth. Let me now move to the balance sheet and the debt position. There is significant capacity and headroom in our available facilities and covenants with approximately $530 million of undrawn committed bank funding capacity. In addition to the surplus cash held on hand, this provides over $580 million of available liquidity. The weighted average debt maturity is 3.9 years, and the drawn weighted average cost of debt is approximately 3.6%. 90% of our debt is fixed at that level. Post balance date, the group refinanced its USD 50 million 1-year revolving term debt facility maturing in May '26 with a like-for-like replacement facility maturing in May '27. The total underlying interest cost on borrowings and leases in FY '26 was $69 million, down from $82 million in FY '25. Underlying interest costs in FY '27 are expected to be between $65 million and $67 million. Now turning to corporate costs. Corporate costs have been well controlled and are in line with the expectations we provided to the market at 2.2% of revenues. This is inclusive of investments being made for additional support in data governance and digital transformation, which includes investments in digital process efficiency, innovation, AI and also our Lab of the Future program. Our quest to deliver continuous improvement in operating leverage of corporate functions will continue. That said, you should expect corporate costs to be approximately 2.3% of revenue in FY '27. This is a result of the group continuing to accelerate its digital transformation focus linked to Smart Labs and digital efficiency, which will still be in an investment phase during FY '27. In addition, on cybersecurity, while we had already planned to increase our spend in this space, given the recent cyber issue, there will be further investment in cybersecurity-related initiatives during FY '27. And with that, I'll pass back to Malcolm.

Thank you, Stuart. Let me now walk you through our scorecard, which is how we hold ourselves to account. So starting with what went well. At the group level, we exceeded the fiscal year ' 27 strategic plan targets by 1 year. Minerals delivered an exceptional result across every measure. The team maintained margins above 30% for the fifth consecutive year and expanded them to 33%. Industrial Materials grew across all businesses. Food delivered strong consistent growth with margin improvements and Nuvisan completed its transformation, creating material value to our shareholders. Now what did not go as expected. As mentioned before, environmental in the Americas was not performing as expected, driven by integration challenges in York and some market-specific challenges in LatAm. I am not satisfied with the environmental outcome in this region, and it is a priority for fiscal year '27 under the new leadership. This scorecard is important to me because it reflects how we run the company. We celebrate the wins. We are honest about the misses, and we act on them. So let's now turn to the considerations on the Middle East conflict. This conflict is creating disruption to certain supply roads that affects our consumables and reagents. We have identified approximately 10% of our cost base as exposed. Supply chain disruptions for the Middle East conflict is creating incremental cost pressure. Our mitigation actions include diversifying suppliers, increasing safety stocks and working with clients on cost pass-through. The financial impact to date has been limited, and we estimate the full year risk at between $5 million to $10 million. We are managing this very proactively. I also want to take this opportunity to address and update you all on the recent cybersecurity event, which we disclosed to the market a couple of weeks ago. As mentioned at the time, ALS identified malicious cyber activity involving certain IT systems. Immediate containment actions were undertaken in line with the incident response procedures. The vast majority of the operations were restored within hours, avoiding business disruptions with some targeted remediation in specific areas. With operations running back to normal and the containment phase being completed, investigation is ongoing to determine the extent of any potential impacts to data. But to date, no material financial impact is currently anticipated. So now let me shift to something that I'm really excited about. Fiscal year '26 marks the point where our digital and AI investments started translating into real operating results, faster turnarounds, higher quality and lower cost per test. Our unified LIMs now covers 80% of group revenues. It powers one of the largest proprietary data sets in the TIC industry built over 30 years across 450 labs. This is a foundation for the future competitive advantage and is the backbone of everything we're building in AI. In April, we launched our internal AI marketplace, a platform where we build a solution once and scale it everywhere across the group. We have already given private secured Gen AI tools to more than 5,000 employees at minimal costs. Every hour saved on routine tasks flow directly into productivity and margins. Automation is where the margin story becomes most concrete. With labor representing approximately 60% of our cost base, we already have more than 20 robots in production and 115 and counting opportunities in the pipeline. Each of these projects must achieve accelerated paybacks. This is a direct margin lever, and fiscal year '27 we will see the first tangible returns with more material impacts as we scale. So with that, let's move to the outlook for this fiscal year '27. As we look ahead to fiscal year '27, the demand environment across both divisions supports continued growth. At a group level, we are targeting mid- to high single-digit organic revenue growth, with margin expansion continuing at a similar pace to '26. Starting with commodities, the outlook for Minerals is strong. We are the market leader. The exploration cycles continues to build and the pricing environment is constructive. We are anticipating 13% to 15% organic revenue growth for the year. For H1, we have higher visibility and expect 15% to 17% organic growth to continue, consistent with the growth uplift we delivered in H2 of '26. On the second half of '27, we expect ongoing strong organic growth, though we are being measured in our assumptions given the evolving geopolitical conditions and some emerging supply chain constraints in the upstream drilling market that may influence the pace of capital deployment by junior miners. The demand signal is clear. It is the timing of conversion we are calibrating around. On margins, we expect to hold H2 fiscal year '26 Minerals margin of approximately 34.5% to continue into H1 and target a further 30 to 50 basis points of incremental improvement in H2. Industrial Materials is expected to deliver high single-digit growth with incremental margin expansion. In Life Sciences, we are targeting improved mid-single-digit organic revenue growth. We expect Environmental to improve in the Americas while maintaining solid delivery in EMEA and APAC. Food will continue to grow at a consistent rate and Pharma should benefit from improved conditions in the legacy business, while Nuvisan pipeline is expected to continue to convert into new contract revenue as the year progresses, in line with the momentum we experienced in Q4 of fiscal year '26. That reflects our confidence in the operational progress across the portfolio. Our Lab of the Future initiatives moves into the next phase in '27, shifting from investments to early delivery. '27 will see the first tangible returns from our investment in automation, digital infrastructure and AI, building towards more meaningful impacts over time. Some near-term items to be aware of. Our procurement actions help manage the supply chain risk from the Middle East conflict with an estimated earnings impact of $5 million to -- and if the Australian dollar remains at current spot levels, we would expect adverse FX headwinds with every 1% movement in average FX rates for major currencies against the Australian dollars, equating to an estimated annualized impact of $3 million on underlying EBIT and $2 million on underlying NPAT. Both of these are at group level and are independent of the individual organic growth and margin guidance I just walked you through. With leverage at 1.5x and over $580 million in liquidity, we have a strong balance sheet to keep investing for organic growth, bring the Sydney and [ Lima Hub ] projects online in H2 and move decisively on inorganic opportunities where strategic fit and return thresholds are met. So let me finish where I started. Four years ago, we set out a fiscal year '27 strategic plan with clear financial targets. Today, we have delivered those targets 1 year ahead of schedule. That is a reflection of disciplined execution and the quality of the team across the organization. 12 months ago, we asked investors to back our growth ambitions. The hub lab projects are on track and on budget, and the balance sheet flexibility we gain is already working for us. There is still a lot of work to do. We need to fix the environmental in the Americas. We need to convert the Nuvisan pipeline into revenue growth, and we need to keep delivering on the hub lab programs. And we need to continue building the Smart Labs capabilities that will drive the next phase of margin improvement. But the foundations are really strong. The opportunities are real, and I'm extremely confident in this team's ability to capture them. So before we open for questions, I want to thank every member of the ALS team around the world. Their dedication and commitment makes these results possible, and it is a privilege to be a colleague of yours. So thank you all for your time. I think Stuart and myself will be happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of John Purtell from Macquarie.

Just 2 questions, please. Look, firstly, on commodities. Just regarding your '27 guidance, what are you assuming the juniors? You mentioned there is some conservatism there. So does that mainly relate to your assumptions around the juniors? And the second part is what sort of price increases are you seeing in the market? You obviously talked to sort of 4% to 5% last year.

Sorry, John, thanks, and I hope you're well as good. Can you repeat the first question? The second one was -- I could hear you clearly, but the first one -- can you repeat it, please?

Sure. No problem. It was just regarding your -- so a question on commodities regarding your '27 guidance. What are you assuming regarding the juniors? You mentioned that there is some conservatism there in terms of your guide, and does that relate to the juniors?

Yes. Thank you for that. So let me try to take both questions and obviously, Stuart jump in. On the first question on the guidance and what we are assuming for juniors, I think that a couple of interesting points that we mentioned and that we have seen on H2 is we've seen juniors uptick and sampling increase, specifically on Q4, and that's quite interesting. The second point around juniors is that it seems that the markets are still open. And if the market are still open and there's not a sudden stop, sorry, that would increase our confidence on H2. So in terms of guidance on '27, we thought that it was going to be better to tell the market what we are currently seeing, and that's why we're calling H1 with a high degree of confidence, which I think it's a very strong result as well. And we are -- as I mentioned before, juniors are around 25%, but we're seeing they are growing at least at the pace of the majors, if not slightly higher in recent weeks. So probably during the year, when the confidence levels and we see the markets continue to open, we see the drillers continue being able to operate the field season starting in the Northern Hemisphere, I think that, that confidence on juniors will increase. On the second question on your price, we always manage price, I think, through the cycles quite successfully. And in '25, we took the decision that to adjust our price to ensure market share was appropriate to the levels that we expect for the business. And I think that, that decision is proving to be the right one, and we're benefiting from those actions. At the beginning of the year, we had a book price adjustment of around 4% to 5%, depending on how you measure that, depending on the currency. And what we're seeing is that increased sample volumes. Inventories on the labs are building quite positively. So the price environment, as we call throughout the call, has firmed, which means that discount levels have been reducing throughout the year. Stuart, do you want to add anything?

No, I think John, all I'd say and also like in terms of mix of clients, I know you know this from history, I mean, the juniors because of, I guess, their need for speed in a pricing environment, they are, call it, less discounted than the majors in the mid. Some of that is to do with their speed of or desire to get the test done promptly. So they'll pay a premium for the turnarounds. But also just in general, without being disrespectful to them, the pricing power they have is perhaps less so than the majors in the mid, which is, I would just say, common sense without going into too much detail. So more juniors in our mix is from a margin point of view, is a positive thing.

And just a second question on Life Sciences, if I may. I think your guidance there, what mid-single digit is a slight pickup on the -- or is a pickup, I think, on the 2.8% in '26. So what's driving that? And obviously, the margin piece of 30 to 50 bps, it sounds like Malcolm, you're expecting an improvement from York and LatAm.

Well, I think you got it right, John. I think that we could have -- I think that the market has been calling a little some market conditions that were not favorable for the environmental business. We think that we need to be better than the context. Yes, there were some weather conditions in the Northeast, in the United States and in Europe. But overall, we play in a market and we have to be better than the market. The guidance of the mid-single digit is around recovery in the Americas, especially the United States and LatAm and continued strong improvement from APAC and EMEA. On the 30 to 50 bps, yes, I think you are right. It's based also on a recovery of those 2 regions that you mentioned. But also there is margin improvement opportunity in other parts of the world as we progress with the lean standardization, as we progress with the Smart Lab initiatives as we progress with the digitalization of the business. So I would say that throughout the year, we should see some incremental improvement also in the strongest regions as well, while we improve the operating model throughout the year.

John, just on the other couple of divisions in there. I mean, food has been a steady performer in the last 3 years, growing at that sort of 5% to 7% organically. We wouldn't see any reason why that's not a reasonable expectation. And then the other positive factor, I guess we've been waiting for this day, but we're feeling more optimistic that pharma rather than being a drag on organic growth, which it was again this year, albeit small, will move to positive territory in '27, and that all helps to deliver that sort of mid-single-digit organic revenue growth guidance for '27.

The next question comes from the line of Rohan Sundram from MST.

I'll just start with a question on your minerals lab capacity. I appreciate you're seeing much higher volumes. How would you describe your existing capacity at the moment to absorb these volumes?

Rohan, thanks for the question. I would describe it as very appropriate to the levels that we're seeing. And in '24, we finished the Perth expansion. We're finishing Lima expansion during this second half of '27, early second half of '27. And we are always doing incremental capacity. Stuart mentioned that 80% of the CapEx this year was for growth and a big portion of that CapEx went to the Minerals division to ensure that incremental capacity was added as needed. So I would comment that is we are very well prepared to continue sustaining the service delivery at the expected growth levels that we are seeing.

And just one last one, just out of curiosity. It sounds as though Middle East is not a big portion of group and you're not really seeing much material impacts. Are you able to just confirm just how much Middle East is as a portion of revenue for the group?

So Middle East is small. Right now, in Middle East, we have a JV, which we own 42% -- it's less than 1%, 2%. Our business there is primarily a mineral business with also life sciences exposure, environmental and food. And I think I mentioned that throughout the call, the Middle East has been extremely positive in terms of sample volumes. And year-to-date, I can tell you that, that sample volume and positive momentum continues. So we haven't seen major disruptions from especially the big part of the business that is minerals to date. But again, less than 1%, 2%, and we own 42% of that JV.

Our next question comes from Nicholas Rawlinson from Morgans.

Congrats on a strong result. Just going back to the FY '25 result, I mean, you guys guided for organic revenue growth in commodities around 5%. Obviously, a few things have changed, and you've come out and done 18% for the year, so more than 3x. How are you guys sort of thinking about the upside scenario to your commodities guidance?

Thanks, Nick. I think that it's a valid question, but you will recall that in H2, we upgraded the guidance. Still, we were slightly ahead of the guidance. And if you see the sample chart that I think it's on Slide 10, and I think you would appreciate that the scale is big enough now and everybody can read it. you will see that the momentum changed in H2 right at the time that we were in November, December, that's where we saw the big swing, especially with North America coming to part. So to your first question on how are we guiding '25 compared to where we landed in '26 and how we're guiding on '27, I think it's fair to say that when we had the data on H2 of '26, we updated the market with the latest view that we had. So I think it's the same way, Nick. We have visibility on H1 that is -- I think it's pretty strong. And that gives us the confidence of the guidance we gave for the full year. Now if something changed throughout the year, and we have to be -- we have to adjust that, we are well aware of our market obligations, and we'll do it as we did in H1 of last year. That's everything I can comment. So we try to guide the market with the best information we have available. And yes, you have some macro indicators that could help you and try to read how the market will be going. That includes juniors racing. It could include the drilling. But it's also important to understand the contracts that we have secured, the sample flows. So that's where we're guiding. That's how we are guiding right now. Stuart, anything else?

Yes. So Nick, I mean, again, we don't want to overengineer the famous sample volumes chart. But you can see on that chart that, yes, it stepped up a lot about -- just after a right about the time we were talking to you in November. But you can also see -- and again, I'm not going to say it's plateauing or whatever, but it hasn't continued to rise. It's sort of taking your breath is probably how I'd describe it. So -- and that's the visibility we have. all the indicators, the macro indicators, which is the same as they've been in the last 2 years would suggest that the trajectory should start to move in a northeasterly direction again. But at this point, we don't have the visibility of that. So that's why we've been what I would describe as appropriately cautious in our guidance, which is exactly the same stance we had at the half year.

That's really helpful. And just on the Life Sciences side, I was a little bit surprised that we didn't see any acquisitions come through in that second half. Could you guys just touch on the strategy from here around acquisitions? Like should we expect that you might make some early in FY '27?

Great question, Nick, and I asked that to myself as well. I think that the point is we have a very clear shareholders' value creation framework. And we talk to the market the same way we talk internally, and we're only going to pursue acquisitions that hit those return hurdles and our own strategy. So we may have expectations during '26 to close the deal. We obviously we scouted the market a lot. We had a lot of opportunities. But if those opportunities will not achieve the return hurdles that we commit, we are not going to overengineer business cases just to get synergies. And the answer is yes, we're going to do as many acquisitions as we can if they are in line with our strategy and with our returns. Where are the areas we're looking, I think it's very clear and transparent. If you see our strategy, we have 2 or 3 buckets that are a priority, and then we have adjacent opportunities. But obviously, those return hurdles increase for those adjacent opportunities. So we have a very active pipeline, a very active M&A team. But at our level, we would only approve those deals if we can secure that 15% return on capital employed in year 5 that we have in our shareholders' value creation framework. So yes, we're looking for bolt-ons. We know where we want to buy. We know what type of services, geographies we want to cover. The answer can we expect? If we can get those numbers to work, absolutely, yes. But we're not going to build fake synergies just to get to those returns. We want to firm them and ensure that we can deliver on those. Stuart has another...

And Nick, I'd say, I mean, again, just, I guess, as a practical point, I mean, we don't want to belabor the point, but we have been appropriately on in integration mode the last 12, 24 months. And we've had some -- as we've called out today, some of that hasn't gone quite to plan. So I think adding additional complexity on top of a platform that we're not comfortable with is not where we want to be. So I think that's still got some internal elements to iron out. And I'd also say, look, in terms of -- there has been -- and there is always ongoing activity in life sciences. But without being disrespectful those that have acquired assets, I don't think there's any assets that have transacted that we really wanted to have or had to have. So it's not as though we've missed opportunities while we've been perhaps more inward than outward looking. But there -- again, I think -- which no doubt will be a question that somewhere on this call, there is some renewed activity in the whole TIC space. So I guess we are fairly confident there will be more opportunities in the next 12, 24, 36 months that we will look to pursue.

Just one more from me, if that's okay. I was just hoping if you could touch on Lima, Malcolm. I think you said second half is -- the start of the second half is when you expect that lab to be up and running. I mean it's a great growth market. Conditions have probably improved a lot since you guys pressed the button. Yes, sort of how are you thinking about it? How big is it? Could you give us some sort of parameters?

Yes. So first, I know that you asked about commodities, but let me say that the first one to be live is going to be Sydney, which is great also for our environmental business. And Lima, probably we're expecting late October, early November to be ready. Don't put that on writing that that's the expectations right now. And now that we said it on the call, the team will have to ensure that we deliver on that. In terms of capacity, it's -- we love the Latin America region and not because I'm from Argentina, but it's -- I think you described it quite well. It's a fantastic growing market opportunity. We're expanding into new geographies and services as well, including mine site. And in terms of returns, it's one of the safe -- from a minerals perspective, it has been one of the strongest performance throughout the history of the company. So we're very confident. In terms of capacity, we don't have a bottleneck right now, but it will give us a lot of flexibility to continue growing and ensuring that hub location can receive samples all around the region and all around the world and ensuring, as we always do, that the clients are served on the levels that we expect. We will invite you when it's ready, Nicolas, and I think you're going to like the size and what we're doing there.

The next question comes from the line of Jakob Cakarnis from Jarden Australia.

I just wanted to go to Slide 30 for the guidance, if I could, please. I think, Malcolm, you touched on this in your comments on the outlook. But am I right in understanding that the procurement disruptions and FX are after all of those original guidance items. So yes, if you could just give us a sense of -- I appreciate it's probably worst-case scenario, but where are you tracking against those procurements? And then FX, it looks like there's about a 12% delta on the Aussie to your basket of FX. Like what are you guys budgeting for internally? I appreciate spots where it is wherever. But yes, just interested where you guys are budgeting to, please?

Yes. So Jacob, just on your first point, the answer is yes. So the organic growth and margins guidance is before the impact of the Middle East war, which is like it's a risk rather than call it a hard issue. We just flagged as a risk because there will be some impact up to us to manage it. And then on FX, I mean, the guidance we give because it's what we budget, et cetera, we'll leave that to you, intelligent people to use whatever rates you want to use. But the guidance we're giving is how we see it. Things do move around. We're in a number of currencies, but the ones that matter the most are the euro, the Canadian dollar, the U.S. dollar and obviously, those against the Aussie dollar. So that's the -- I can't really say too much about budgets, et cetera. I think I'll let you determine what rates you want to use. But -- and again, what the average rates were last year, et cetera. But there's -- if you picked it today, clearly, there's going to be a headwind from where it was last year. And we saw that play out during FY '26 anyway. In the first half, FX was a tailwind. And in the second half, FX was either neutral or a slight headwind. And that headwind has strengthened since the end of the year.

Okay. I think the old rule of thumb used to be if we use the currency debt denominator from Slide 22. Is that a rough way to think about it just in that pin wheel or the pie chart you've got there, how it's broken down where your debt is, is the right FX by sensitivity?

In terms of where the earnings, et cetera, are? Yes, that -- you can use that as a guide. Yes, that's probably okay.

Just across the platform, Malcolm, the opportunity for more efficiencies. Obviously, you did a good job with Nuvisan. You've delivered on the cost out there. There's been some improvement. How do we think about the opportunity potentially in Life Sciences? And I guess, specifically, obviously, York has had its challenges, but how are you thinking about the portfolio from an optimization perspective, please?

Thanks. So I think opportunities are building up as we prove that the technology that we are deploying is effective. But as I mentioned in the call, these are still early days, and we see '27 as a year of consolidation and seeing the first returns, and that's going to be accelerating into '28 and '29. Opportunities are improving throughput, routine tasks, building more efficiencies in terms of quality assessment. So we see the opportunity not only in Life Sciences, we see opportunities across the business. And that's why we -- a little bit the model that we have is build one scale everywhere because there's a lot of similarities in how to run tests within the minerals -- between the Minerals and the Life Sciences portfolio, the commodities and the Life Sciences portfolio. For '27, I think that the opportunities are to fix some of the businesses that underperform. That's a clear improvement area. The best way to make money is not to lose and not because we have lost money, but to improve those margins will be quite important. But I think on the main -- on the most mature markets is how we repling the routine tasks with the digitalization strategy that we have in place. And adding to that, that as we move and accelerate the LIMS consolidation, it's going to be easier to replicate those efficiencies throughout the network. So right now, we are at 80%, and we are targeting -- we said in August last year in 3 years from that time, 3 years to be 90%, 90-plus percent in LIMS consolidation. I think we are on track to deliver that in the main blocks of the company, the main businesses of the company.

Our next question comes from the line of Nathan Reilly from UBS.

Just the Middle East situation. So I'm seeing what you're saying or hear what you're saying in terms of the potential cost impact. I'm just curious from a demand point of view, have you seen that situation -- or how have you seen that situation impact your business from a demand point of view?

Thanks, Nathan, for the question. To date, we haven't seen impacts on demand. If you're asking on commodities, I can confirm that we haven't seen an impact on demand, both in the region and globally. I think that's a risk that is floating, but that has not converted into reality. We are seeing still very healthy sample volume growth in line with what we called out for the H1. So we haven't seen that dropping. And we are actually starting slowly the field season on North America. In terms of future risk, I think that the geopolitical risk is how long the oil price will be sustained at high prices and the potential impact of that, that will have to juniors balance sheets or P&Ls, if you want, more than balance sheets and expected returns from their field activities. And that could be a risk that could be more translated on the second half, but it's still an unknown what's going to happen with that. So I think if that -- if these high oil prices sustain more than 3 to 6 months, some of those companies may start having some challenges. But to date, with information we have seen until late last week, the demand has been pretty strong in every region. So that's what we're seeing right now. And as I think mentioned earlier, even in Saudi, our mineral sample volume is still growing at a very healthy pace.

Got it. And final question, just in relation to mine site production-based testing trends. Can you just give us an update on how the volumes have been tracking to date and also what you're baking in, in terms of the Minerals outlook or the contribution to the Minerals outlook in the first half?

So I will get that question first. I will answer the easy part, and Stuart will try to answer the most complicated one. How we are seeing that business, I think that we have sustained a very healthy growth that kept us in that 20% CAGR for 3 years revenue-wise. We are still winning clients. But as we mentioned, I think, throughout the last 2 years, we have to be very consistent in the targets that we are targeting for those specific sites to ensure that they help in the long-term sustainability margins of the mineral business. So the overall diversification into downstream, though, the strategy behind that relies on ensuring that we can keep solid margins throughout the cycle distinctly where we are up or down. I'm sure will answer the second point.

So for my benefit, Nathan, just remind me what the second part of the question was? Sorry.

Yes. I guess I'm just trying to get a sense of how that strategy is contributing to your first half minerals organic revenue growth guide in terms of the materiality to that guide?

Yes, sorry. So see it as it's -- I would say it's in line with that.

I think it's consistent with H2, Nathan. We have -- sorry, several projects that are in construction phase so pre-revenue. So we shouldn't expect revenue coming from those projects H1. And as we discussed many times, these projects from securing them to revenue generation may take 6 to 12 months. So I think for H1, you just need to assume what we're assuming that's going to be in line with H2 of '26.

The next question comes from the line of Cameron Needham from Bank of America.

Just first one from me on junior sample volumes. And obviously, you've highlighted the uptick in the second half of the year. Can you just give us a sense as to how sticky you feel this uptick is? Like are a lot of the juniors booking repeat programs or a lot of this coming through as more sort of one-off campaign work at the moment?

It's very hard to give you a clear answer on that, Cameron. I think what we would say is I think what's clear is still a lot of the exploration activity is brownfield rather than pure greenfield, if you want to refer to what is that. So in that sense, you might argue it's slightly more sticky because they've got some history of of reserves in the areas they're exploring as opposed to greenfield, which can be -- well, it's clearly higher risk because they don't know. So I think in that sense, it's probably more sticky than if it's pure greenfield exploration. But juniors by their nature, dependent on funding. And if they don't -- if their brownfield exploration doesn't yield results, well, they stop exploring pretty quickly because they're going to go and then find other places to explore. So there's no real clear answer to that. Hopefully, what I've said gives you some color, but it's very difficult to give you much more detail than that.

Yes. I think, Cameron, the other part is the service reliability and turnaround time. I think keeping turnaround time to be leading on the market that you are competing, it's critical for them. So that's why to the question of someone earlier today, I think that Rohan asked the minerals capacity, ensuring that those hub locations have enough capacity to ensure that every client, majors, intermediates and juniors are served with reasonable turnaround times better than the market. It's the target, and that's how you're going to get the repeat programs for the different juniors.

Sure. Very clear. And if I may, just a quick second one. Just on group structure. So one of your global peers is looking at potential separation. So I guess just keen to ask how do you think about risk and opportunities for ALS with a competitor looking at separating its underlying businesses? And then I guess just to piggyback on to the back of that, do you feel the current structure with commodities and Life Sciences under the one roof is still the right one for ALS? Or would you consider some kind of separation yourself?

That question should go to the CEO of the competitor, A. We feel that the -- it's a great question, by the way, Cameron. I think that the current structure of ALS, as I mentioned many times, I think that is the right structure. And the reason behind that is there -- what I call maybe it's a stupid term, but it's called silent synergies, how you run a mineral business and how you can improve the other businesses and learning from them is quite -- is a big tailwind for us, and we are seeing that flowing through the standardization programs on Life Sciences that we pushed very strongly in the last 3 years. So we believe that the structure that we have right now is good that adds value to shareholders. And you have areas that we're growing like mine sites that basically touches all the clients. So in the TIC space, I would agree with you, it's a very broad definition. It's more important the end markets that you serve and how you serve those end markets. And I think we have a pretty good understanding of which are those end markets, how to serve those clients and what are the growth opportunities within the different sectors. So we do believe that the current structure of ALS adds value, especially to shareholders. And I think we're proving that with the growth that we have seen in the last 4 years, the organic growth that we've seen. And I think that the overall earnings increase that we have, again, in the last 4 years. Why this may be different to other players, that's not for me to answer. But if you ask me, I'm quite comfortable with the portfolio that ALS has. We have a very clear strategy where we're going to play, why we're going to play. The moat is very clear, and we're going to continue pushing to that.

And I mean the other thing is -- sorry, Karen, I was just going to add one other point, which is we obviously have a portfolio, and we assess -- regularly assess that portfolio, what is core, what is close to the core, what is potentially noncore. So if we assess one of our businesses and don't -- clearly, the core is commodities and environmental. But outside of that, if there was options to do something different, I mean, we're no different. We're a public company. So if someone was to approach us with -- on those assets, that would be potentially something that we would consider, but would need to be obviously compelling for us to do so.

Our next question comes from the line of Nicholas Daish from RBC.

Congrats, Malcolm and Stuart. Just a very quick one for me. I noticed CapEx looks like it stepped down quite meaningfully in the second half relative to the first half. I'm just curious on whether there was anything specific that drove that as it relates to perhaps your lab investment that you're making at the moment or whether it was more sustaining in nature, please?

Yes. Nick, there's nothing specific. It will just be a timing issue. And you're quite right, there's -- I mean, there's -- again, there's the -- in the businesses, there's only so much you can actually do at one point in time. So there's no doubt there's some resources that are appropriately being directed to the hub lab upgrade projects. But there's -- it would purely be timing. There's no other reason why the timing is different first half, second half. I mean, we encourage all our businesses to invest the capital, if you want to do it that way or think of it in the first half of the year. So you start to get benefits in the second half of the year. But apart from that, there's nothing else that -- from our side that is structural. It's really just the timing of when these projects can be implemented.

Got it. And then I guess building on that, is it fair to say, obviously, the balance sheet delevered during the period, that CapEx dynamic that I just referred to would have assisted that. But given the challenges you've had integrating York, does it change how you think about using your balance sheet moving forward given those challenges integrating that business? Or is it just a case of it's a one-off challenge in isolation and you'll take those learnings into the next opportunities. I suppose my question is, ultimately, has it made you rethink how you deploy capital and how you use your balance sheet?

So I think, Nicolas, when you do deals, acquisitions, you always learn things. We all like to believe that our integration plans are bulletproof. And I think with every integration, the good ones, the ones that didn't go as expected, we always learn thing. We always are looking at ways to improving integration to ensure that integration is delivering the business case that we committed to -- internally to the Board and finally to shareholders. But it didn't change where and how we're going to do deals. It changed things of how fast we can do integrations, how to deploy specific resources, resources, human capital. But it doesn't change the strategy. And in this sector, I think that the strategy is -- we believe that we can have a very strong organic growth and probably ahead of -- ahead the average of the market. And we like organic growth, but there's also important to add specific bolt-ons in specific wide markets that we may not have a presence that we want to have the scale to be successful or specific services that we are not delivering within the core businesses. So to your question, no, it doesn't -- Europe doesn't change our view on acquisitions. But yes, I think we have to be humble and always improve our integration plans that are not perfect. Things are going -- some of the deals went really well, and we also have learnings from those ones. So it's just learnings, refining and improving, but it doesn't change the overall strategy on inorganic growth.

Yes. Sorry, I might have been clear. I realize that that's always going to form part of the strategy, such as the sector. I was just curious on the learnings themselves, but it sounds like that's something that you're continuing to work through. So yes...

We will now take the last question from the line of Niraj Shah of Goldman Sachs.

A couple for me. One, just on Minerals. I appreciate the overlay of conservatism, I guess, given the geopolitical environment. But in terms of the '26 exit rate and the first 6 weeks of '27, how does that business -- how is it tracking relative to that 15% to 17% first half range you quoted? And then the second one is just if you could just elaborate on how you think market share in commodities has evolved over the last 6 months, that would be useful.

Yes. Thanks, Niraj. I mean without getting too much detail, what we've seen, and this is why we've given the guidance we've provided is what we've seen this year thus far is consistent with how the second half traded. There's no more to say on that. So as I said, if you look at the sample volumes chart, it stepped up in November last year, and it sort of held at that stepped up level. We haven't, at this point, seen a step up anymore. Indicators would suggest that, that could happen. But at this point in time, we're seeing a continuation of what we saw in the second half.

Yes. And on the market share, we always have a very specific target of how we want to expand that business. And what I can tell you is that we are on track, both -- in fiscal year '25, we'll probably overachieve the target, which was good. Initial data from '26 supports that as well and the target for '27 is in line with that. So we're not going to lose the discipline of ensuring that we provide a better service that allows us to continue building share globally and in the regions that we have those options.

With that, I would now like to hand the call back to management for closing remarks.

Well, thank you very much for your time. I'm sure we're going to follow up with Q&A. I want to thank again the employees of ALS across the world for their extraordinary efforts and commitment to deliver these results. Thank you, everyone, and enjoy the rest of the day.

That concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.