Dyno Nobel Limited (DNL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Dyno Nobel Limited's 2025 Half Year Results Briefing. This is Tom Dixon speaking, and I'm joined this morning by our CEO and MD, Mauro Neves, and our Interim CFO, Damian Buttler. The materials we'll be covering today have been lodged with the Australian Securities Exchange and can be found on the ASX and Dyno Nobel Limited's websites. At the end of the presentation, we'll have time for questions, and an audio recording of this presentation will also be available on the company's website. I'd like to draw your attention to the disclaimers found on Slide 2 and Slide 3 of the presentation, and before we move into the main presentation, I'd like to start with an acknowledgment of country. I'd like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land we are coming to you from today, the Wurundjeri peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to elders past and present. Thank you. And I'd now like to hand over to Mauro.

Thanks, Tom. Good morning, and welcome, everyone. It's great to present to you today under the Dyno Nobel name and provide an update of the considerable progress we made against our strategy, and as well as our financial performance for the half. I'll first touch on our financial results and then the progress we made on the fertiliser separation. Our statutory results after tax was a profit of $7 million, which included individual material items, totaling a loss of $80 million, mainly related to the closure of the Geelong manufacturing plant and a noncash full impairment of the St Helens fertilisers plant in the U.S. Our EBIT of $174 million shows a strong underlying earnings growth across our Explosives business after adjusting for the WALA sale, the impact from commodities and foreign exchange and the scheduled turnarounds completed during the first half. This performance continues to reflect the benefits of the transformation program, which is driving improved results. We have announced today an interim dividend of $0.024 per share unfranked, which represents a 51% payout ratio, consistent with our capital allocation framework. Our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio at 1.6x is slightly above our target of equal or less than 1.5x, but we expect this to be within target by end of year, which Damian will cover last in his presentation. As we outlined last year, our strategic ambition to become the leading global explosives business is structured in three distinct phases. The first phase is separation of the Fertilisers business, and I'm very pleased to say we're presenting today a very important milestone against the commitment. We have delivered on the Distribution business separation with sales agreements in place. We also have a conditional contract of sale for Gibson Island, and these combined transactions will generate gross proceeds of up to $835 million, which is a great result for the company and our shareholders. Phosphate Hill strategic review is on track to conclude no later than September '25. Our transformation program is the second phase of our strategy, which drives our ambition to double earnings and deliver returns above our cost of capital. The program continues to deliver, and we remain on track to reach the 40% to 50% exit run rate for the 2025 financial year, with $25 million of net earnings uplift generated in the first half. Each strategic phase built on the success of the previous one, the final phase of consolidation, we expect to talk about further down the track. I'll run through the other highlights on this slide later in the presentation. This next slide will be familiar to many of you. We are striving to be the leading global player in explosives by doubling our earnings and delivering returns above our cost of capital. We are focused on leveraging our unique competitive position and executing in our transformation program while remaining committed to capital prudence to ensure attractive returns. As you see from our updates today, we are successfully delivering on this ambition. Safety remains the prime responsibility of everyone in the organization, and I'm pleased to report that our performance is improving. Our operations excellence program, which we call the Nobel Way is enhancing the efficiency and reliability of our operations. In addition, it has contributed to an improvement in our process safety statistics, which are 25% lower than the same time last year. At our full year results in November, I expressed disappointment in our TRIFR but we saw some leading indicators that gave us the confidence, we were on the right track with our safety programs. Our starts are reflecting a positive turnaround in performance. We're still not where we need to be, but we are heading in the right direction. We had a reduction in recordable injuries and in the severity of those injuries with less workdays lost as a result. Our environmental performance also continues to be first class with now over 3 years since we last recorded a significant environment incident. Last year, we outlined our plan to separate Fertilisers with a focus on divesting in parts to maximize value and certainty for shareholders. We made substantial progress against this objective. We have signed transaction agreements for both the Distribution business and the Perdaman Offtake Agreement. The Distribution business will be sold to the ASX-listed Ridley Corporation, and the Perdaman Offtake Agreement will be sold to Macquarie Group's Commodities and Global Markets business. Completion for these transactions is expected to be in the third quarter of calendar year '25. A conditional contract of sale has also been executed for the Gibson Island land for which we are targeting completion in September, and the relocation of the Gibson Island PDC is on track to be completed by December this year. The Phosphate Hill strategic review continues to make progress, and we are on track for this to be completed no later than September. The cessation of manufacturing at Geelong by September this year is also progressing to plan. These key milestones marked substantial progress of Dyno Nobel, on the path to achieve full separation from the Fertilisers business and transforming to the leading pure-play explosives company. Over the past 6 months, we have undertaken a competitive sale process to divest the Distribution business, engaging with a range of global and domestic strategic players as well as financial sponsors. The transaction with Ridley for the Distribution business is a great outcome for Dyno Nobel, for Ridley, our employees and the widest stakeholders of IPF. Ridley is an ASX-listed agribusiness with a long history in serving Australian farmers and the acquisition of Distribution, is complementary to their strategy. The Perdaman Offtake Agreement has been acquired by Macquarie Commodities and Global Markets, CGM, a business division of Macquarie Group, which has a strong track record of managing long-term supply and offtake agreements. This is a highly strategic acquisition for Macquarie CGM and expand its global commodity trading and risk management business. Following a competitive process that engage a wide universe of bidders, these transactions provide significant value realization for Dyno Nobel shareholders with combined gross proceeds of up to $641 million including working capital benefits. Ridley and Macquarie collectively offered the strongest value and execution certainty. These transactions are not condition of any regulatory approvals. This is a great outcome, and I want to thank the teams involved in these transactions, including our advisers, Jardine and Macquarie. We have also entered in a conditional contract of sale for the Gibson Island land with a subsidiary of an ASX-listed property developer. The headline transaction value is $194 million, with net proceeds before tax expected to be around $100 million after accounting for remediation of the site and other transaction costs. The transaction represents a compelling sale price with a high-quality counterparty that has deep industrial redevelopment experience and an ability to fund the acquisition from existing liquidity. This also represents monetization of a non-core industrial asset which reflects our commitment to disciplined capital management. The contract of sale is conditionally executed with settlement expected by 30 September this year. Progress has also been made on the strategic review of our manufacturing operations, and we remain committed to announcing a decision on Phosphate Hill no later than September this year. Following extensive engagement with prospective buyers, we are continuing to engage with a party who is conducting due diligence. A comprehensive request for proposal to source alternative or complementary solutions to the PWC contract for long-term economic gas is being assessed. Supply under the PWC contract recommenced on April 10. And while supply remains variable, we expect it to continue for the majority of the second half. Our team is continuing discussions with PWC and the Northern Territory Government to work towards a reliable gas supply for Phosphate Hill beyond '25. As part of our forward planning, we have also been actively addressing asset remediation obligations, ensuring capital requirements and timing for any turnaround in fiscal year '26 aligned with gas supply time lines and requirements. At Geelong, closure planning is well underway for the cessation of manufacturing operations and the transition to an import based supply model. We expect manufacturing will cease by September '25, with estimated closure costs of $54 million reflecting the provision for the first half financial report. We have provided this proceeds slide to give you a clear picture of the gross proceeds from the various transactions, the additional cost and activities involved following the sales agreement and reconciling the net proceeds from all transactions of up to $606 million, which is exclusive of the working capital tied up in Phosphate Hill. We have also provided an additional slide in the appendix which outlines the timing of the net proceeds to further assist in your modeling. Now moving to our transformation program. We have delivered a $25 million uplift to our first half EBIT, following the continued success delivery of the program. This brings the total transformation earnings to $89 million as we pursue our ambition to double fiscal year '23 EBIT. The benefits in first half were driven by strong recontracting outcomes, new customer wins and a range of procurement, supply chain and manufacturing initiatives delivered across the business to reduce costs and improve efficiency. We are on track to deliver the target initiatives that will support a run rate equivalent to 40% to 50% of the earnings uplift as we exit the year. We have previously outlined that we would be delivering these transformation benefits across the three levels of operational, commercial and growth. This slide shows roughly how much of the overall benefit we expect to come from each of the levers, highlighting those activities that have been delivered and those that are yet to progress. You can see we have had a number of wins from the program so far, and we expect continued uplift through '25 and beyond. Moving now to technology. Delivering customer-centric technology remains a major focus from the team. Providing high-value customer solutions will be key to our success. The value proposition of these leading technology solutions is demonstrated by the growth we are seeing in the sales of such products. The conversion of our Australian U.S. customers to electronics is particularly pleasing with Dyno Nobel as a leading supplier of these advanced initiation systems in the Pilbara, in the Bowen Basin and across the U.S. The growth in CyberDet has exceeded our expectations and has already been deployed across 9 mine sites supporting advanced blasting strategies. The benefits of our advanced blast design and optimization tools embedded in Nobel Fire are also being recognized by an increasing number of customers with year-on-year growth of 10% in the number of blasts being analyzed. This generates flow-on benefits with the number of electronic detonators used in these blasts increasing by 16% over the prior year. As I previously told you, we are working towards converting our explosive trucks, also known as MPUs to renewable energy and that we are investigating the use of biofuel based explosives. I'm proud to advise that we delivered on both fronts. Earlier this year, we launched what we believe to be the first -- the industry first Electric MPU. Our Electric MPU reduced noise pollution and fumes, positively impacting workplace health and safety as well as supporting our customers to reduce their GHG emissions, helping drive the industry towards a more sustainable future. During the period, we also successfully trialed a TITAN Emulsion product formulated with renewable diesel. These trials demonstrated a commercially viable low-carbon alternative to regular emulsion. Now I would like to spend a moment talking about how we're using AI at Dyno Nobel. We see artificial intelligence as an important enabler of internal productivity and efficiency gains. And we also believe there are some incredible benefits to be gaining by using AI to enhance our product offerings, particularly in optimizing blast designs. The correct blast design is a critical factor in generating downstream benefits for our customers. Our advanced detonators, combined with our monitoring control systems, generates significant amount of data from every blast we undertake. The optimization and calibration capabilities of AI are being applied to these large data sets to provide greater insights into how we can improve our blast design models. Such insights are being used by our team to update advanced blasting modules within Nobel Fire which is resulting in ever more efficient and effective blast for our customers. We're also looking at how AI can more deeply analyze safety and operational data, which will allow us to improve our decision-making and risk management. Our manufacturing facilities are another key focus area where we are seeing great rewards to our efforts. We are also embedding a new operating model that we call the Nobel Way which is a systemic approach to continuous improvement. This change typically take time to show results, but we are seeing key reliability numbers that give us confidence our approach is working. We've had very good reliability across all our major sites with the highlight of the period being the major turnaround completed Moranbah. This was the largest turnaround we've ever done at this facility, and I'm very proud of the performance of our dedicated Moranbah team for safely completing this complex 8-week progress on time and on budget. The headline of this slide calls out for the $42 million impact of turnarounds completed in the half, which really highlights the strong underlying performance of the Dyno Nobel Explosives business. Dyno Nobel Asia Pacific has performed well, delivering earnings of $81 million with an EBIT margin just under 16%. On an underlying basis, DNAP earnings increased by $19 million, which is a 20% increase compared to first half '24, which in itself was a record first half. This was largely driven by the ongoing benefits from the transformation program, including positive recontracting outcomes in Australia and the several new customer wins during the half, partly offset by the impact of very heavy rainfall in Queensland, which impacted demand. Dyno Nobel Americas, also performed well with underlying earnings increasing by $8 million, reflecting the net transformation program benefits delivered during the half. Following the strategic review of St Helens, we will be closing the fertilisers manufacturing facility in the first half of calendar year '26, in line with our strategy to exit non-core assets. Finally, we formally introduced the new DNEL business, which reflects our strategy to expand in Latin America, Europe and Africa through a capital-light approach, which will leverage the Dyno Nobel brand unique technology and strong customer relationships. On Fertilisers now. Phosphate Hill production increased by 15% compared to the prior corresponding period despite interruptions in the supply of sulfuric acid to the plant and the rail line closures following flooding in Northern Queensland. For Distribution, the unfavorable timing impact was driven by persistent dry conditions in the South and cyclonic conditions in the North, causing farmers to delay contracted fertilisers dispatch into the second half of fiscal year '25. Full gas supply to Phosphate Hill from the contracted third-party Power and Water Corporation was restored for a portion of April. While remaining variable, our current forecast expect supply will continue for the majority of the second half this year with incremental gas over the contract pricing for fiscal year '25 now expected to be in a range from $40 million to $80 million. Obviously, that depends on the gas supply mix from PWC and the alternate supply sources from the East Coast. It's always worth noting that there is no physical gas supply risk to support Phosphate Hill's operation. Finally, on sustainability and decarbonization. A number of years ago, we outlined a pathway to 42% reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2030. We are continuing to deliver on that plan, and we are increasingly turning our attention to mitigating our Scope 3 emissions. Our Electronic MPUs and our low-carbon TITAN Emulsion are prime examples of this. We have recently on-boarded a new management platform that allows us to better monitor and manage our greenhouse gas emissions, including Scope 3. And although we are yet to identify any viable green hydrogen or green ammonia projects, we will continue to actively pursue opportunities as they arise. I will now hand over to Damian to take you through our financial results.

Thank you, Mauro, and good morning to everyone on the call today. As Mauro outlined, our underlying financial performance for the half reflects the continued delivery of our transformation program. The benefits of $25 million are wide reaching across each business unit and further upside from the program is expected in the second half of the year. It is important to note that when presenting transformation benefits, this is inclusive of any financial impacts, which are part and parcel of the business we operate in. In the first half, we have seen some extreme weather conditions impact demand across our business, particularly across Australia. The $25 million benefit is net of these headwinds. This is also the first period where we are reporting DNEL as a stand-alone reporting segment. This segment includes the results of our EMEA and LatAm businesses and has been established to facilitate growth in these regions. With the fantastic news of the signing of the sale of the IPF Distribution business and Gibson Island land, these assets have been classified as held for sale and their results disclosed as discontinued operations for statutory purposes. Slide 24 provides an overview of our financial performance on a statutory basis. Overall, at a group level, we delivered EBIT of $174 million and EBITDA of $323 million, excluding individually material items. The headline result for the group and variance to prior year is largely a reflection of significant portfolio changes as the business transitions to a pure play explosives business and also the impact of turnarounds during the half. The first half of FY '24 included 2 months of nonrecurring earnings from WALA, prior to sale completion, while the first of half '25 includes 2 months of downtime from the Moranbah turnaround. The individually material items for the first half largely reflect the full impairment of the St Helens fertilisers plant, following the decision to cease manufacturing and a recognition of a provision for the cost to close the Geelong manufacturing facility. Cash generated from operating activities increased primarily through the increased usage of trade working capital facilities, but also a significant improvement in our underlying working capital position, which I will talk to shortly. Consistent with previous years and our focus on shareholder returns, we have announced an interim dividend of $0.024 per share, reflective of a 51% payout ratio. As I mentioned, our headline results are somewhat clouded by the impact of the sale of WALA last year. This view of earnings on Slide 25 provides a much clear review of our underlying results for the period. After adjusting for the impact of WALA earnings and FX, the Dyno Nobel business, excluding Fertilisers, decreased by $20 million or 11%. However, this includes a $42 million impact of the turnarounds. Fertilisers EBIT was down $18 million versus the first half of FY '24. This reflects the timing impact of sales of Phosphate Hill manufactured product, falling into the second half. This product has been manufactured and contracted for pickup by customers. However, the difficult farming conditions has seen this deferred into the second half. Importantly, Phosphate Hill produced an additional 40,000 tonnes of product when compared to first half '24 and the Distribution business delivered $18 million of earnings despite the tough agronomic conditions. On Slide 26, you can see the year-on-year improvement in working capital levels. I'm extremely pleased with our results over this first half, which is a reflection of the management focus to optimize working capital levels and improve our cash conversion. Trade working capital is a key work stream in our business transformation project as we aim to sustainably optimize our levels. And while the underlying reduction of $76 million versus March '24 is pleasing, the improvement across our key rolling metrics better reflects the fact that these improvements are embedded. Specifically, we have seen an improvement in our group trade working capital as a percentage of sales from 21.3% at March '24 to 20.6% at March '25. So well on our way to delivering our ambition of a 2 percentage point reduction versus FY '23. This improvement has been delivered across both the Explosives and Fertiliser business units and largely reflects strong data compliance and improved payment terms with suppliers. An important call out is our usage of trade working capital facilities. We do utilize these facilities to manage the seasonal nature of the fertilisers trade working capital profile. Upon completion of the Fertiliser separation, we would look to pay down these facilities utilizing the proceeds from sale. Moving on to capital investment. As part of our capital allocation framework and our strategic planning, we are constantly reviewing capital expenditure to ensure a suitable level of spend to deliver long-term asset reliability and maximize ROIC. As highlighted earlier, we completed the Moranbah and LOMO turnarounds in the first half on budget, with only the minor Cheyenne turnaround to come in the second half. As a result, we expect overall turnaround spend to be within the previously guided range of $120 million to $140 million, albeit closer to the top end, given the translational impact of a weaker Australian dollar. We also expect sustenance spend to be at the top end of the guided range of $180 million to $220 million due to the same reason. Our total sustainability CapEx is expected to be approximately $10 million in FY '25, and this is supporting our pathway to deliver our 2030 emissions reductions. Looking forward, we maintain a strict criteria for growth capital spend of 1.3x WACC, and our expansion strategy will be a capital-light approach as we walk towards our ambition of increasing ROIC above WACC. Slide 28 highlights our progression against our planned and committed capital return program in accordance with our capital allocation framework. This program entails returning $1.4 billion of value to shareholders over and above our ordinary dividends. In the first half of FY '25, we purchased shares valued at $88 million before suspending the program. This means we have $663 million of the buyback program remaining, and we remain committed to recommencing and completing this program now that we have a signed sales agreement for the Distribution business. As I mentioned earlier, we also announced today the $0.024 per share unfranked interim dividend, which will be paid on the 3rd of July. This dividend represents 51% of our first half NPAT of $88 million, which is in accordance with our dividend policy and reflective of our consistent approach to paying dividends at circa 50% of NPAT. Our net debt-to-EBITDA position has increased to 1.6x at March, noting that the comparative period of 0.5x was abnormally low given the receipt of proceeds from the sale of Waggaman in the first half of '24. This ratio is always higher at March given the seasonal build of trade working capital in the Fertiliser business, and we expect this to be below 1.5x per our policy by year-end. Turning now to our outlook. At a high level, we expect a continued transformation uplift in earnings in the second half with an exit run rate of 40% to 50% at the end of the financial year. Consistent with previous guidance, the full year impact of turnarounds remains at $45 million to $55 million. Our Dyno Nobel Americas business is expected to have an earnings skew of around 60% in the second half, and pleasingly, the mitigated impact of tariffs is expected to be minor. In the DNAP business, the phasing will be more pronounced given the turnaround in the first half and we expect a split of closer to 35% first half, 65% second half. Fertilisers earnings are always dependent on market conditions, which were difficult in the first half, having said that, a very strong contracted sales position at the end of March supports full year delivery of earnings within the normal $40 million to $60 million range. The production expectation for Phosphate Hill remains at 740,000 tonnes to 800,000 tonnes as previously guided. We also expect a fertiliser earnings skew of around 10% in the first half and 90% in the second half, noting that this will be dependent on gas and DAP price outcomes. This is in line with previous guidance. I would also like to reiterate that we expect to see the earnings benefits of the transformation program really shine through the results in FY '26 as we aim to exit that year on a 70% to 80% EBIT uplift run rate, without the significant turnaround impacts we have this year. Finally, on Slide 30, we have our overview of planned turnaround activities. In the second half, we will be completing the minor turnaround at the nitric acid plant at Cheyenne. The turnaround plan at St Helens in FY '25 has now been canceled, given the decision to cease manufacturing at this plant. The turnaround plan for Phosphate Hill in FY '26 is subject to the outcome of the strategic review, which is a key driver for the completion of this review this financial year. So that's it from me. Thank you, everyone. And with that, I will hand back to Mauro.

Thanks, Damian. Before we move to Q&A, I would like to thank you for stepping into the interim of CFO role, and the excellent work during this transition period. I know you'll be a great support for Nitesh when he starts the CFO role in 1st of July. In closing, I continue to be excited with the outlook of the business. We are delivering on our strategy. We have made significant progress on the sales of Distribution business and Gibson Island, delivering a great result with these combined transactions generating gross proceeds of up to $835 million. We are looking forward to a stronger second half with the bulk of the turnaround impacts behind us. Thank you for listening. And with that, I'll hand over to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Daniel Kang with CLSA.

Just two parts -- two points regarding your FY '25 guidance, if possible. Mauro, 10:90 split implies a strong second half for particularly Phosphate Hill. Can you just talk through your assumptions there? And then secondly, on DNEL, I realize that you've chosen not to provide a first half, second half split there. But looking at your -- the historicals, it's actually quite all over the shop. Last year was lower in the second half. Previous year was basically flat and the first half and the second half in the prior year was high. So any steer on how we should think about the second half variables? That would be great.

Thanks, Daniel. Look, on Phosphate Hill, probably the most critical planning assumption is the gas. And in the footnote, you find that, that 10%, 90% is predicated on continued supply from PWC, which would steer the gas outcome to the lower part of the band, which is the 40%. Obviously, it's subject to what happens with gas price, this could change. And we are considering now, with the drier period the continuation of what has been a quite smooth ammonia plant production in Phosphate Hill. As you know, we have had some disruptions on the sulfuric acid supply chain, which we don't expect to be repeated in the second half. As for the DNEL, it's really about the critical mass of that operation. As you appreciate, we've been very active in trying to win new business and we have active tenders in many parts of the world. So the swings and roundabouts of potentially winning contracts and growing are really difficult to predict. So we prefer not to provide a specific guidance for the second half, given the nature of the business and the critical mass. I don't think it will critically change the direction of travel for the broad Explosives business. But as you appreciate, this is a growing business with lots of moving parts, but we remain confident that we are in a trajectory of growth.

If I can just add a follow-up question, just on the sale of Fertilisers assets, it's great news there. Just wondering if you can provide some color on the estimated our medium cost -- the remediation cost liability. The duration of this liability just whether it is a capped estimate?

So we provided on the appendix a slide to hopefully facilitate any modeling you do, which gives us a sense of timing and quantum, not only of the proceeds, but also the liabilities. This is our best estimate now, and we're doing further work both in Geelong and GI to fully account for those. Fair to say, we've done lots of work in GI. It's been closed now for a few years. And as we have progressed the sale, we have higher levels of confidence in Geelong. We have done some work, and we understand very well the demolition costs, but we had to do further work to determine the full cost. But -- it's Page 34 on our presentation gives you the timing and the quantum of what we understand to be the liabilities.

Your next question comes from Ramoun Lazar with Jefferies.

Just a couple of questions from me. One, just on the decision to use the upfront proceeds from the Fertiliser separation to repay working capital and debt facilities. I guess just the thinking there against further capital returns and any potential net benefits of repaying those facilities, if you can maybe quantify those?

Look, I will pass on to Damian, who will more broadly talk about the proceeds. But I think the message here, Ramoun, is the same capital allocation framework discipline you would have heard us talking before. So our first priority will be to get us back to the 1.5x and keeping our credit rating. So this is our first priority, and that's how we're going to use the proceeds to accept to accommodate the company to what will be, in our view, a higher quality, but smaller EBIT compared to the pre-transaction world. But I'll leave Damian to give you more details and insight on how he's thinking about that.

Yes. Thanks, Ramoun, for the question. It's certainly something we've been thinking about quite a bit. To answer your question directly, the facilities have typically been used to manage the seasonality of the Fertiliser working capital profile. They have been a relatively low cost and flexible means to do so. But without that seasonality, there's less of a requirement for those facilities. So we look to pay them down, just use of proceeds more broadly. As we mentioned, we'll obviously be able to recommence the buyback immediately, which we expect to take probably between 12 to 18 months. And as -- and more broadly, as Mauro mentioned, now we don't have the cash in the bank yet. So once we get to separation point or completion point, we will use that capital allocation framework to be more definitive about the use of proceeds at that point.

Great. No, that's very clear. And then just on the guidance, Damian or Mauro, if you could help us out here on D&A, the contribution from Ag&IC in the first half was ahead of expectations, I think, just I guess, how does that 40-60 split account for any contribution from Ag&IC for the full year? I mean, can you give us some sort of indication of what you're expecting there? And then also just, I guess, tied in with that, with the closure of St Helens, are you going to continue supplying fertilisers into that market on a go-forward basis?

Look, let me start with the former, and I'll leave Damian to comment on the first half, second half split in the Ag&IC contribution. But the continuation of our exposure to Fertiliser in the U.S. will be limited to some byproducts we have at Cheyenne. But with the closure of the business in St Helens, that means that we'll no longer have an Ag&IC business as such. So all of our manufacturing capability in the U.S. will be primarily focused on explosives. And we'll have some byproducts that will still go into the agriculture market in seasonal times. But it's fair to say that all our capacity and all our footprint in the U.S. will be dedicated to explosives.

And with regards to the phasing of DNA, on Page 29, we have included a footnote that references Ag&IC. Within the 40-60 split for DNA, we take roughly 60-40 for the Ag&IC business.

Your next question comes from Owen Birrell with RBC.

Just I guess I have another question on the DNEL business. Just [ noting the ] earnings essentially went backwards during the period. And I know that there was a cost of establishing, I guess, the growth engine for that business during the period. I'm wondering if you could split out, I guess, what that upfront cost was? And can we expect anything into the second half?

Look, it was about $2 million to set up the cost structure for that business. It's predominantly made of the boots on the ground in places like Africa, Europe, and LatAm. We believe that's absolutely commensurate with the opportunity ahead of us, and we don't anticipate that to grow any further unless we start obviously winning contracts, which will come with their own cost to sustain those opportunities. Now we have -- this business is comprised by your typical mining customers, your -- similar stories to what we have in other parts of the world. But that's where we also report the business of our JVs in places like South Africa, which sometimes make the -- especially given the size of the business still being relatively small, makes the comparative half-on-half a bit different from other places where predominantly to do with the trading levels of our customers. Maybe Damian, you want to add more color to that?

No, I think you covered it, Mauro. I suppose, in addition, setting up a new segment, does come with more senior management looking after that business as well. So the $2 million is also inclusive of those costs.

And can I just ask, can we -- if assume a similar $2 million cost in the second half and similar, I guess, compression of the earnings? Or is that cycling, I guess, what we saw in the second half '24?

Yes. No, it will be cycling what you see in the second half '24.

Okay. And then just in terms of those boots on the ground, in terms of what you're seeing in those markets, we've heard from some of your peers around rising levels of competition, particularly in that LatAm market. Just wanting to get a sense of what you guys are seeing in the broader market space in Africa and LatAm and whether this has, I guess, changed internally the opportunity that presents itself to you?

Look, I have been there in LatAm only a few months ago and I can't help but be excited. You would have heard overnight, [ Filo del Sol ] now being the biggest discovery in copper in decades squarely in the jurisdictions we want to do business. I remain excited with that opportunity and different from some of our competitors, our approach there remains capital-light. So we're relying on things like Delta E and imported traded tonnes to win. We're trialing product in now 5 or 6 different operations across Peru and Chile. And I remain very confident that based on technology and based on our value proposition, improving fragmentation and improving outcomes in the SAG mills that we will eventually break into that market. It's a comparatively very small investment. We're talking about literally half a dozen MPUs and obviously boots in the ground, as I described. And I remain very confident that we'll break into that market very shortly.

The next question comes from Andrew Scott with Morgan Stanley.

Mauro, just on the Fertiliser divestments. Perdaman was put to us as basically a $45 million EBIT, essentially close to risk-free. With that in mind, $145 million or 3x EBIT seems relatively light. Can you talk to us about why that's the right number and the decision to sell is the right one rather than retaining a pretty valuable earning stream, I would have thought?

Thanks, Andrew. Look, I have to start by saying we're excited with the outcome because it's based on having scoured the market. We have left no stone unturned and the outcome, the price that we ended up transacting with Macquarie is a reflection of people's view on opportunity and cost and risk. So we're pleased that this is the option from all the options that we explored that gave us the best certainty and the best value. And I still think that the combined outcome for the way we transact Perdaman and the land properties with distribution gave us a good outcome overall. We -- I can give assurance to shareholders that there has been a highly, highly competitive process, and we have tested the market thoroughly. As for retaining the contract, our view is with distribution goals, our ability to trade fertilisers, then it would be inappropriate for us as an explosives company to essentially retain what's long-term urea contract. Once we no longer will have the trading capability to deal with that. So we were always thinking about that as a whole of perimeter sales. We had to make the design of the process such that would maximize competitive tension and maximize the ability to transact, which I think we've done. But we never had intent to hold on to the Perdaman contract.

Your next question comes from Brook Campbell-Crawford with Barrenjoey.

First one, please, just on the transformation program. Are you able to provide a sense of where the run rate benefits were, I guess, as you exited the first half, please?

Brook, I'll let Damian speak about the building blocks in a minute, but I just wanted to reinforce that this $25 million are the net benefits. We report and that's a decision we made since the get go. We don't want to overcomplicate. So when we report Ignite benefits, they are the net benefits with all the headwinds and tailwinds that we've seen in the period. We have had some contract wins, especially related to technology, where we gained some substantial market share in our electronic detonators in Australia. And we have also seen some of the benefits of recontracting washing through '26, that was partially offset, obviously, by the turnaround impact and also the impact of what was a very slow first half for Queensland in general. As you would have seen in each of our customers reporting Stanmore, BMA, Anglo, they all uniformly reported what was one of the wettest ever first halves they've seen. But this is temporary, and I don't think that fundamental changed the supply and demand for that region. I'll let Damian talk about the building blocks of our transformation in the first half with a bit more detail.

Yes. Thanks, Mauro. Hi Brook, it's really broken up into three major categories. So our commercial category delivered roughly 35% of the benefit, and that really reflects the ongoing benefit from the DNAP recontracting cycle but also repricing in the DNA business. A further 20% in the growth -- what we're calling our growth segment, or our growth bucket, which includes technology benefits, a key customer win in Australia in the DNAP business is included in that category. And then the remainder, roughly 45% is operational. So this includes operational -- benefits from an operational redesign and procurement and supply chain initiatives. For example, a renegotiation of a freight contract also here in Australia. So they're really the three categories, Brook.

Great. And just two quick follow-ups. Firstly, on remediation costs or expected cost for Phosphate Hill. I might have missed it. But was there a range that you can point us to or if, I guess, the absence of that comment in the release, does that suggest it's pretty minimal. And then the last question, just with respect to the outlook for coal in the U.S., there's obviously been some sort of support and policy announcements made relatively recently. Does that changed all your outlook for the coal end market in the U.S.?

Yes. I might handle the first one, Brook and then hand to Mauro for the second part of the question. We currently have a provision on our books for the remediation obligation at Phosphate Hill of circa $80 million. In the unfortunate event of closure there will be additional closure costs such as redundancies, which are not yet provided for. At a high level though, what we would expect to happen in that scenario is that, the tax benefit we would get from a closure would largely offset the total closure costs.

Now on the coal story, it's all unfolding, Brook. It's all very recent. And I have to say that we're seeing more positive vibes coming out of the Peabody in the Power River Basin that we've seen in many years. That's yet to materialize the physical demand. But if anything, there is some positivity in that market. I have to say that overall, despite the tariffs and all the moving parts, mining in the U.S. seems to be in a good space. You would have heard the announcement on Resolution getting approved, which obviously is something that we watch very carefully given that both Rio and BHP are very important customers of ours. So if anything, the recent winds of change have been seems to be positive for mining in the U.S. and we're watching that very closely.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from John Purtell with Macquarie.

Just a few quick ones, if I could. Just firstly, on DNAP there. Mauro, you sort of mentioned that there's a sort of long high-end position in the second half in the Bowen Basin. I mean is that -- is that all weather-related, if you can provide some more color there, please?

It is. It is. You would have seen the most companies reported what was somewhat stable coal productions, notwithstanding what was a very wet period. Our best marketing tell suggests that mines in general, had done some high grading in the first half, essentially prioritizing coal exports and we'll need to now play catch up on second half on pre-stripping, which is the main driver for us. Our driver is more pre-stripping than it is coal production itself. So we expect throughout the second half, that thing will normalize and we'll see a normalization of supply and demand in the region. So there hasn't been any fundamental change of import parity or any movements in where ammonia nitrate is being sourced from. It's really weakness coming from the fundamental material movement in the mines.

And just the second one. Obviously, there's no -- just related to tariffs. There's no material direct impact there. But any sort of indirect impacts to call out? It sort of looks like you're sort of expecting flat Q&C volumes for the full year, so probably only a modest pickup in the second half.

Yes. Look, we made some disclosures on our outlook, and they were very heavily caveated by a scenario because the scenarios have been changing quite dynamically in recent weeks, as I'm sure you'll be following. But with the 10% global and the 145% Chinese tariffs, our modeling suggest that we won't have any material impact to our earnings, post the mitigations that you would expect in terms of some inflation pass-through and some repricing. So the competitive position that we have in the U.S. being predominantly a manufacturer, there's no product that we sell in the U.S. that we don't manufacture in country. So we believe that when it's all said and done, if anything, having a strong manufacturing capability in the country should give us some benefit. But to your point, with the 10%, 145% we don't believe that there will be any major impact to our earnings.

And just the last one on Phosphate Hill gas. Obviously, Northern Territory gas has started you've given a sort of gas cost range there. Is there increased confidence in the bottom end of that range, but the range is still fairly broad. So that sort of reflects uncertainty on what the actual gas flow will be.

Yes. Certainty and Phosphate Hill contracts are the two words that sometimes in the same sentence. We're trying our best to give you a range that gives us some comfort. We are comfortable with the $40 million to $80 million. Since we had supply resumed in 10 of April, we already had a few days of interruption. So the $40 million, which is what speaks to the 10% -- 10% to 90% split first half, second half, is essentially relying on having full supply of PWC from now to the balance of financial year. As we speak, flow has resumed and the pipeline is on. And we hope that, that remains the case until the end of financial year. We've been very actively involved with the Northern Territory Government with the PWC team to try and constructively keep that outcome going. But it's difficult for me to say how confident I am and hence, why we provided, which is still such a wide range.

Your next question comes from Nicole Penny with Rimor Equity Research.

Could we revisit America again, please, where across the three main segments for Explosives, volumes were down. Do you believe this is in line with market? And could you please provide more color on what you're doing to position Dyno to win market share in the U.S.? And lastly, in the appendix of the presentation, why does DN Asia-Pacific have recontracting benefits in the waterfall, but there's no such disclosure in the Americas, please?

So the -- let me start with the latter, the $25 million and Damian will add to that. The $25 million does include recontracting benefits that flow on from what we've seen in the $64 million that we disclosed last year into '25. Maybe Damian can help me giving more color to that. In regards to the U.S., look, we've seen some weakness in coal, and that's not new. We have, as a team, over the last 4, 5 years, seeing that decline. And my recent comments about change of sentiment is yet to be translated into better volumes. But in terms of the general markets on Quarry & Construction pretty stable, and the metals and mining in general, outside coal with some consistent numbers over the first half and second half. So we don't expect any deterioration of Quarry & Construction in metals. And we are yet to see what will happen to coal. The model in the U.S. is quite unique and one model that I particularly like because it gives us exposure to the bulk customers as we call, the customers like Rio Tinto in Kennecott, that gives us access to providing bulk materials and initiation systems directly to the operations, but it also gives us access to literally thousands of customers that would be the equivalent of retail in our business. We have through our JV partners, a capillarity of serving the Quarry & Construction companies all over the U.S. That's pretty unique and difficult to replicate. And we hope that as the market picks up and more of that infrastructure investment starts in the U.S., they will be benefited from that.

And Nicole, maybe just to add to Mauro's point on your question on presentation, it was really just a question of materiality, given the recontracting benefit in DNAP is significant. We look to strip that out within the Americas bridge, the repricing benefit is within the $5 million transformation benefit.

Your next question comes from Nathan Reilly with UBS.

Would you mind just talking through your share buyback policy for me? So specifically, I'm just keen to understand how the ongoing ferts manufacturing divestment and also the due diligence process will impact your ability to buyback stock. Just noting you haven't really been active on that since January, just given what you've been undertaking with the distribution process?

Thanks, Nathan. Our advice is that now with the announcements we made today, we cleansed ourselves of any material price-sensitive information that we might have. And with that, we are confident we can resume our buyback tomorrow. Now I won't make comments about the future. We do, as a disclosure committee that consideration every day. And obviously, depending on how the conversation with that party that is doing due diligence unfolds, we may or may not in a position that we would have to change our position. Now naturally, you would expect that we would do everything we can to minimize the period of time of any interruption we need to make. But as we speak now, we understand that we cleansed ourselves of any materially -- any price-sensitive information, we are in a position to resume the buyback.

Your next question comes from Ramoun Lazar with Jefferies.

Just another follow-up on DNA, if I can. Just with the splits, I think your guidance for the second half for this core Explosives business sort of implying year-on-year second half will be down slightly on the pcp. Just if you could maybe drill down a bit more on sort of your -- what you're seeing in that market, specifically from a pricing point of view? You made some comments about the volume backdrop. Are you seeing pricing pressure coming through in recontracting or anything like that? If you could maybe give us a bit more color on that market. And anything specific in your second half that may be impacting your operating performance, that would be helpful.

Ramoun, we -- I'm happy to -- for Tom to give you the breakdown and help you work through. I think what's happening in your numbers may well be the fact that we extracted some of the DNA earnings and now are reported on the DNEL. So why don't we take that away and send you the workings of that. I think like-for-like when you strip the DNEL, we would see some growth on DNA. But why don't we send you a separate slide to give you the detail on that.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mauro for closing remarks.

Look, I just wanted to thank you again for your time. This has been a very interesting day for us as mix emotions with the decision on IPF. I wanted to thank shareholders in the IPF team for your support and for bearing with us. I'm very proud that we were able to deliver on that very important milestone for the future, what will be the greatest explosive company in the world. So thanks for bearing with us and looking forward to meeting many of you in the next few weeks in the roadshow.