Dyno Nobel Limited ($DNL)

Good morning, and welcome to Dyno Nobel Limited's 2026 Half Year Results Briefing. This is Tom Dickson speaking, and I'm joined this morning by our CEO and MD, Mauro Neves and our Group CFO, Nitesh Naidoo. The materials will be covering today have been lodged with the Australian Securities Exchange and can be found on the ASX and Dyno Nobel websites. As usual, at the end of the presentation, we'll have plenty of time questions and an audio recording of this presentation will also be available on the company's website. I'll draw your attention to the disclaimers found on Slide 1 and Slide 2 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're coming to you from today, the Wurundjeri Peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to elders, past and present. Thanks very much. And I'd now like to hand over to Mauro.

Thanks, Tom. Good morning, and welcome, everyone. It's my great pleasure to be here to present our 2026 half year results. You see as we go through this presentation, the Dyno Nobel team delivered excellent financial results and also made the critical final steps in separating our fertilizers business as we successfully progressed towards an ambition of doubling our fiscal year '23 explosives EBIT. I'll say more on that later. I'll spend the first half of the presentation, take you through the highlights of our half year performance, how we're thinking about the year ahead and providing an update on our business strategy. At that point, I'll hand over to Nitesh who will take you through our half year '26 financial performance. And I'll then close our presentation with a discussion of Dyno Nobel's compelling investment proposition before opening up for Q&A. As the highlight shows, we have had a maximum year-to-date. I'm very pleased with the progress we made on our transformation program. We set ourselves an ambition of doubling our fiscal year '23 explosive earnings. We are on track to deliver. Our financial year '26 guidance remains unchanged despite various challenges. What's very clear is that Dyno Nobel is a highly resilient explosives business with strong growth tailwinds in our established markets in the U.S. and Australia. As well as delivering our transformation agenda, our privileged assets such as our gas-backed ammonium nitrate facilities continue to support our customers by providing them with security of supply. After completing the sale of the Perdaman offtake to Macquarie Group CGM as well as signing a binding agreement to sell Phosphate Hill in March to the Mayfair Group, we have now concluded the separation of the fertilizers business. Moving forward as a leading global pure-play explosives company. I would like to thank the team at Paseo for the considerable efforts and reach them every success with Mayfair Group. Our North American business has seen impressive growth, and we've seen some important customer wins in the emerging and core markets. particularly Ghana and 2 new sites in Brazil that are in final stages of negotiations. Moving now to safety, an area that is critical importance for me and every employee at Dyno Novel. Safety is and will always be our #1 priority. As I mentioned last year, there has been extensive effort undertaking to improve our safety performance. Safety is an area where we set high standards and in fact, it's a key factor why customer -- customers love working with us. Our total recordable injury frequency rate or TRIFR is above our ambitious targets. And disappointingly, this has lifted from the number we reported in November. But I'm pleased that we have seen no incidents classified as serious arm, loss working day severity is down with no Tier 1 events and 0 significant environmental incidents this year. A key driver of safety performance is the continued priority we put on safety leadership which focuses on creating and supporting a health risk management culture. We are continuing to focus on ensuring we have clear risk ownership and that our people feeling power to manage critical controls, having the right tools and training. This includes explosive risk reviews, delivering key manufacturing facilities and a strong focus on field leadership and proactive hazard identification. We continue to take an active leadership role in global groups like Safe learning from industry events and contributing to long-term improvements in safety across the sector. Moving to our financial results. I'm very pleased to report that despite macro headwinds and Dyno Nobel has delivered a very strong explosives business performance. At the statutory group level, excluding IMIs, EBIT grew by 39% to 243 million. Our NPAT of $161 million, excluding IMIs, is up 83% compared to the same period last year. Dyno Nobel has delivered a very strong half. We have delivered an 11% growth in revenue and our underlying EBIT, excluding IMIs, grew 28% with our North American business, in particular, achieving very impressive underlying earnings growth. We have also announced today our first half interim dividend of $0.46 per share on frank which represents a 50% payout ratio, consistent with our capital allocation framework. We continue to make solid progress on our $1.4 billion capital return program, having returned $1.058 billion so far, which leaves us for the $342 million to come. We expect to recommend buyback shares tomorrow once we cleared our blackout period. Despite the large capital return program, our balance sheet remains in great shape. Net debt to EBITDA sitting at 1.3x. Let's talk now about transformation. As the large shows the continued momentum of the program as a line shows, we have seen continuous momentum in the program with $49 million of benefits realized in the first half. As we have always highlighted, these transformation benefits are not purely cost-cutting. In line with the fundamental changes we are making to our business structure we're making important and enduring transformation to how we operate as a business. We continue to roll out operating model chains and this underpins our growth strategy moving forward. Dyno Nobel Americas has achieved a strong commercial performance, supported by robust end markets and a strong contribution from our JVs. Our resilient manufacturing base has also allowed us to capitalize on some additional spot sales as the end markets tightened during the period. We have also seen further effective mitigation of the impact of tariffs through negotiations with suppliers, customers and JV partners. After a very strong start to the year, we do expect some temporary headwinds in the second half. These will largely be related to the impact of the strengthening Aussie dollar against the U.S. dollar, stranded costs from Foster and the temporary impact of cost increases in raw materials and freight due to the geopolitical environment. We are expecting to see the continued tailwinds in our North American business, which is supported by a lower than previously expected tariff impact in 2026. The majority of the transformation projects that will deliver these benefits have progressed well past the development phase, and have either been approved for implementation or already being executed, leading to our confidence in the fiscal year '26 outlook. I'm proud to report that our strategy is delivering results and we continue to see positive momentum across our business units. Our Dyno Nobel Asia Pacific business has achieved multiple customer wins and renewals, which includes reentering the Northern Territory market. As I mentioned earlier, Dyno Nobel Americas has performed very well, driven by strong metals growth in Canada and Brazilian in key coal regions. Our progress into new markets continues through Dyno Nobel EMEA and LATAM. And we're now seeing the benefits of the AGA global agreement, starting with the Ghana contract awarded. We are also progressing with multiple opportunities in Brazil. The construction of our new emulsion plant in Peru is also progressing well and is expected to be in production late this year, establishing as well for growth in the region. Moving on to the outlook. Our Dyno Nobel Explosives business remains on track to deliver our fiscal year '26 EBIT guidance of $460 million to $500 million. The CapEx expectations for the year have come down due to phasing of customer and maintenance optimization. Pleasingly, we have lowered the expected tariff impact to around $2 million. Our corporate costs are expected to be at the upper end of the previously guided range as we include phosphate stranded costs during the year. We are expecting a reduction in borrowing costs with a lower net interest expense. At a group level, our transformation momentum continues, and we remain on track to finish fiscal year '26 with a strong exit run rate of 65% to 75% of the total $300 million EBIT uplift from the program. Let me now come back to strategy. Our strategy is designed to help us achieve our vision of becoming the world's leading global explosives player. Such ambition is supported by our people, our values and 16 years of experience underpinned by the 5 strategic pillars. The strategic pillars outlined how we differentiate ourselves in the market and what makes us a compelling partner for our customers. driving superior outcomes, whilst improving overall performance across safety, reliability, efficiency and bottom line financial results. Our innovative technology allows us to offer a full suite of products that bundled with our experience in talent DynoConsult people deliver superior offerings, providing solutions, tailored to customer-specific needs. We are a trusted brand. that has developed deep customer relationships over many decades across multiple geographies, allowing us to hold conversation as partners, not suppliers. Customers tells us that this is something that sets us apart. Our network of privileged assets strategically located near high-quality customer in mining regions have proven particularly important this year and critical to the resilient earnings we see today. I'll expand on this shortly. The last of our 5 pillars relates to smart capital deployment, Dyno Nobel's discipline in capital deployment, ensuring appropriate shareholder returns. I would like now to talk to you about our privileged assets, which drive our supply chain resilience. The impact of the war in the Middle East and subsequent supply chain challenges continues to lead the news. We have also seen extensive outages at major AN and ammonia facilities in Australia and the U.S., disrupting markets and strengthening supply chains. Dyno Nobel's privileged gas back manufacturing assets around the world have highlighted our resilience to global shocks. The gas-backed Cheyenne, Lomo and Moranbah facilities continue to deliver to our customers. At a time when businesses around the world are looking at whether their supply chains can be relied upon as market sizes and cost increase, Dyno Nobel have consistently delivered. Our leading vertical integration, secure supply chains and improves operational efficiencies. DNA's reliable manufacturing base provides the majority of our North American AN requirements with gas input costs recoverable in line with contractual mechanisms. Our unique JV distribution model also gives us access to an extensive network of customers, driving earnings uplift through both wholesale and retail participation. As we move forward with the TNT plant in [ Gray ] and Kentucky, we will further increase our vertical integration, securing a domestic source of supply for this critical raw material. The Moranbah plant in Queensland continues to perform reliably and we source 100% of our Australian ammonia nitrate domestically. Our domestic third-party AN sourcing is back-to-back with our sales contracts, removing exposure to cost input variability. And with majority of DAP revenue under medium- to long-term contracts, we're able to deliver a consistent and reliable earnings stream. Our innovate technology suite has seen continued growth in adoption as customers realize the efficiency, safety and sustainability benefits, this differentiate products and advanced solutions deliver. By leveraging our privileged assets in the first half, Dyno expanded our electronic manufacturing facility in Turkey as well as building and commissioning of a boosted plant in Indonesia. Our product offering underpin growth in the first half. As our customers continue to move forward with precision initiation, Electronic [indiscernible] sales reached 63% of the total detonator revenue in the first half, up from 60% a year ago. The launch of [ Navus, ] our new handheld electronic initiation system helps our customers move from legacy systems to modern solutions. Importantly, our technology focused on empowering our customers, maximizing value of their business through optimized material liberation using premium products of our service suite. Demand for DynoConsult has grown 20% year-on-year as we continue to optimize solutions and deliver value. We have also seen some excellent results realized by Agri to leach initiative. One of our gold line customers improved gold recovered by 8% leading to an estimated value of USD 250 million over 10 years. We demonstrate benefits like this, our technology continues to be an important part of the Dyno Nobel growth strategy. I'd like to take a moment to reflect on a pivotal milestone in the future of our business, securing a binding agreement to self-use Australian company may fair. For Dyno Nobel, this transaction concludes the group's exit from fertilizers manufacturing, allowing us to focus on explosives and blasting services where we have scale, technology leadership and resilient earnings. This transaction is EPV positive, but also importantly, marks refining our strategy to be a pure-play explosives business, enabling a clean exit with remediation obligations mitigating. Completion of the sale is on track to finalize by June 26, and we'll provide an update to the market when that occurs. As you will note, cost at manufacturing performance has been impacted over the last few months due to extended radio closures and disruption of net gas supply from alkiemines. To talk more about our half year financial results, I'll now hand over to Nitesh Naidoo, our Chief Financial Officer. Off to you, Nitesh.

Thank you, Mauro. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Dyno Nobel's financial performance was standout, not just for resilience in the face of global market volatility. But for the growth, which exceeded expectations, beating half 1 earnings split for explosives. We have also seen our established markets of North America and Australia benefit from integrated supply chains and a strong customer demand, delivering earnings growth of 28% year-on-year on an underlying basis after normalizing for turnarounds in the prior year. We've seen continued momentum in our transformation program, with $49 million of benefits in this half period. Our JVs continue to perform strongly, growing earnings 41% year-on-year. And of course, our capital return program has been progressing well with more than $1 billion returned to date. Turning to our statutory results on Slide 17. I'm pleased to report that our headline group EBIT grew 39%, driven by transformation growth and higher third-party sourced inputs in the prior year as a result of planned plant turnarounds. As expected, total revenue was impacted by the sale of the IPF distribution business in FY '25 as we've executed our strategy to be a pure-play explosives business. Dyno Nobel explosives delivered an exceptional first half result with operating margin up 17% to $495 million and 43% increase in EBIT to $224 million. Concluding the fertilizer separation has resulted in first half IMIs of $141 million after tax, mainly related to the impacts of the Phosphate Hill sale. A full breakdown of these items are included in the OFR materials. Moving to Slide 18 on business performance. Pleasingly, underlying earnings grew 28% year-on-year after normalizing for turnaround impacts in the prior year. We've seen strong earnings growth across established markets would stand out 42% growth in North America. This growth was driven by strong demand from our customers and JVs, together with benefits of trading surplus ammonium nitrate. JVs are a core part of the privileged assets in the Dyno Nobel strategy. They are a cornerstone to the market leadership position in the U.S. business and an important consideration in our growth. We've also called out the growing JV income line that reflects the after-tax income included in our EBIT, which is unique to Dyna Nobel. We continue to disclose this additional information Dynoas we feel it's material to the valuation of our business. DNAP reported a 16% growth in earnings from strong demand for its gas-backed ammonium nitrate and benefited from additional electronic sales from contracts awarded in the second half last year. And lastly, our D&E business continues to invest in capability with key contract wins opening the door to future growth. While strategic progress has been made across key growth regions, movement in foreign exchange, asset sales in the prior year and timing of contract renewals have impacted earnings in the first half. I'll now move to CapEx on Slide 19. At the full year, we announced our capital deployment moves away from turnarounds in FY '26 towards projects that are aligned with our growth ambition. This has included us investing in digital transformation. In the first half, these programs have progressed well. And this shift is evident with high growth capital spending -- with higher growth capital spending. The sustaining spend of $52 million ensures reliable operations of the group's manufacturing and distribution facilities aligned with long-term asset management plans. This is materially lower than prior year, which is typical following the successful completion of turnarounds at Moranbah and Cheyenne in the first half 25 and is reflective of our privileged assets operating well in the half. Our investment in upgrading our ERP to the latest version and our digital technology offering, Nobel Fire, will continue in the second half '26, along with other growth initiatives to increase our product capabilities. We will also see increased capital spend in support of customer growth, particularly in Africa and Lat Am. This spend relates to investments in additional MPUs and invention plans. This is expected to provide returns well in excess of our cost of capital and in line with our capital allocation framework. Our capital spend for FY '26 was skewed to half 2, and due to timing of activities, we have reduced expected spend to $250 million to $300 million for the full year. Moving on to the balance sheet. Our balance sheet strength is demonstrated by market improvement across key metrics shown on the left of the page. This has given us the opportunity to pay dividends at the higher end of the capital allocation framework of 30% to 60%, a full year unfranked dividend of $0.046 per share represents a 50% payout ratio ex IMI. The improved profitability with the delivery of our transformation program is seeing lot progress in the right direction. Our $1.4 billion capital return continues to progress well with on-market buybacks at an average price of $2.99. The buyback will recommence tomorrow. Our leverage at 1.3x this half remains low. And following the expected completion of the divestment of Phosphate Hill, our target leverage will increase to 1.75x to 2.25x, which is appropriate for a high-quality earnings and low volatility explosives business. I'll now pass back to Mauro for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Nitesh. Dyno Nobel's growth strategy has positioned us front and center to capitalize on the world's ever increased urgency for resources in critical minerals. Major commodities continue to surge with strong growth projected in copper, gold and iron ore over the next 5 years. The most relevant project growth is coming from Africa and LatAm. Dyno Nobel's growing footprint and momentum in these markets make us well positioned to harness this growth. In short, Dyno Nobel is enabling the sector, structuring resource more safely, sustainably and efficiently than ever before. and our growth strategy, both in relationship commodity and regions is right on the mark. To close out this half year presentation, I want to highlight why Dyno Nobel is a compelling investment proposition. We are one of the world's leading suppliers to the highly resilient resources industry. Our strategy move to become a pure-play explosives company is now completed, and we are well positioned to benefit from industry growth driven by demand for resources, including critical minerals. We hold market-leading positions in the 2 largest mining markets in the world, underpinned by a superior product offering. Our privileged assets with gas backed production facilities and highly vertical integration have demonstrated resilience at a time when customers around the world are looking to whether the supply chains can be relied upon and experienced market tightening and costs increasing. Dyno Nobel assets have consistently delivered despite the macro headwinds. With a long legacy of safety, reliability and innovation, we are a trusted brand and trusted partner for our customers, allowing us to build and retain a high-quality, long-term customer base and leverage such relationships into new growth regions and future-facing minerals. I just want to extend my thanks to the global talent team of Dyno Nobel that made those phenomenal results possible. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today. And with that, I'll hand over for questions. Operator, can you please remind or guess how to raise the question?

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

Good morning, Nikesh and Tom. Just a couple from me. Just on market conditions, given the Middle East contract and recent operational outages, can you talk about how you're assessing the current supply demand and pricing conditions both in the U.S. and Australia? You can also talk about the opportunity for Dyno to take advantage of this environment from contract repricing?

Thanks, Daniel. Good morning, everyone. Look, absolutely, the recent volatility in the world has proved that our portfolio of privileged assets is resilient. As much as we project on the second half, some volatility and some headwinds. We see those as absolutely temporary and builds confidence on the strength of our portfolio. we have seen import parity prices going to $11 to $1,200 in Australia. We have seen the markets raising to very high levels in the U.S. as well in recent months, which obviously, we benefited. But as you know, we are -- part of being resilience is the quality of counterparts in the length of our contracts. So we are pretty much 2 years away from the recontracting cycle in Australia. Our book is pretty much locked in. We also always have some few tons available for spot dealings that we use. And similarly, in the U.S., as you know, our book typically is short. We have anywhere between 80% to 85% of our volumes depending on our own production, but we also a net purchaser of the spot market. So short-term volatility, some temporary headwinds, but the megatrends are very favorable to our industry moving forward and Dyno Nobel should benefit from that.

Thanks, Mauro. Just with regards to the debottlenecking projects highlighted on Slide 13. How should we think about the growth CapEx required, the timing and contribution from the expanded capacity?

It's minor capital. Typically, we do those as projects around -- in and around the turnarounds. We've done that recently in last year's turnaround. You remember, I mentioned in previous periods that we have done all the tie-ins. So it's marginal capital. You shouldn't see that changing the levels of capital that we reported previously and as we look forward for the next financial year. And the gains are typically marginal. Think about anywhere between 5%, 5%, typically a production increase on our side. So we are continuously looking to the bottleneck and improving our capacity. We've done some of that recovering half of our lost tons when we seize the transport of GI ammonia into Moranbah. We lost about 30,000 tons. The recent debottlenecking allowed us to recover about half of that. And in the U.S., we keep working very hard to improve our capacity in Cheyenne. Much of that has to do with some investment we made to improve or a blue capacity. This is a by-product that is quite valuable, but also allows us to increase the availability of ammonia nitrate prill to the market. So look, we do so -- those projects, there as more capital programs typically attached to the turnarounds, but they're not material in size.

Your next question comes from Ramoun Lazar from Jefferies.

Maybe, Mauro, if we can start with the guidance. You've reiterated the guidance for the explosives business for the full year. I'm just wondering how to think about seasonality this year because the guidance does imply a bigger first half seasonality this year, the new typical sort of see seasonality in previous years. Is that largely related to the temporary cost impacts and the stranded costs that you see? Or is this something else?

Look, yes, yes. As we highlighted in our numbers, we see some one-off temporary headwinds coming in the second half, probably the one is obviously outside our control is the strengthening of the Aussie dollar against the U.S. dollar. So translation of U.S. earnings to Aussie dollar terms? We also had some phosphate divestment stranded costs coming through to the second half, all of which we intend to offset by next financial year. So in short, we would be probably upping our guidance if it wasn't for those temporary headwinds in the second half, but we remain very confident on the pace of our transformation program to offset those and bring us home to the $460 to $500 in guidance.

And Mauro, is that better performance or better underlying performance transformation led? Or is it market led or your sort of wins in the market primarily on the revenue side?

Look, all of the above, the underlying trading conditions were pretty positive, both in terms of volume of our core markets, but also in terms of the price opportunity of any spot tons that were available. We have seen the pricing discipline that we have implemented to the market plan to our advantage. Obviously, always looking to price our products against the next best alternative out there. This is not new language. You heard me saying that before. But obviously, when the market conditions turns, our teams are very attuned to take the opportunity when it emerges. And as I said, the megatrends are free in a world where energy ammonia becomes more cost commodity our industrial capability really sets us up for strength in the future.

Okay. Great. And just, Nitesh, to touch one quick one from me on the cash flow. Very noisy cash result this half. Maybe if you could give us some guide on what to expect from cash conversion into the second half? And any comments on leverage for the full year, just so we can size that up would be helpful.

Thanks, Ramoun. Yes, I agree with cash flow. I think historically, we've had the trade working capital facility that has helped us manage through some of the volatility of earnings from the fertilizers business. So largely due to that effect, the cash conversion for the half. So once fertilizers are no longer part of our business, that should steady up. In terms of leverage for the second half, you're seeing that I've given you some revised guidance in terms of our capital allocation framework, and we would see leverage post fertilizers where we don't have the benefits of the fertilizer earnings as part of the leverage and earnings for leverage calculations start to go a little bit higher than where we see our first half closing.

Your next question comes from Mark Wilson from RBC Capital Markets.

Just looking at the Americas results, just sort of wondering how much of that was really due to underlying strength in volumes and pricing as opposed to seasonal impacts year-on-year.

Look, typically, the first half, as you remember, not for different weather conditions, but also related to weather, that's the most difficult part of earnings typically. You tend to have those active regions frozen and some challenges with general mining conditions given the extreme weather through North American winter. So typically, you would see that as a highest part of the year. But what it does typically is also release more than usual spot tons. And that was obviously an opportunity for us to trade those spot tons at very favorable prices. So I don't think that there is anything unseasonal for the second half or something that gives us concerns about the trading levels of our customers. If anything, we're seeing some strengthening after many, many years of continued weakness of the core markets. The core markets are definitely picking up. [indiscernible] construction is doing very well. And probably the most noticeable one is everything to do with base metals in Canada. Both new customers come into the books, but also some brownfield growth experienced by some of our existing customers. So really strong Canadian base metals business.

Yes. No, that's very good. And then just on -- you do reference some of the customer wins that you've had through the period. Would you can just elaborate on the basis on which you've won those contracts?

Typically, value. We see 2 trends coming through, Mark. I think as people are really jumping on the board of critical minerals, speed to market and quality becomes really, really important. So our digital solutions in our electronic detonators have had a very good period. But also, I think there's an emerging theme when my conversations to customers happen more than ever person is asking about security of supply. I think they realized the strength of our footprint and the necessary requirement to have ammonia nitrate in domestic availability. Where we have proven to have a dedicated domestic source of supply for customers, we have had some strength in our ability to win new customers.

Your next question comes from Lee Power from JP Morgan.

Sort of like to the point just around the full year guidance. Like the 1H was a very strong result. Can you maybe help us with a little more color on what you kind of would need to see to bridge to the lower end of the guidance range for the full year? And then maybe how you've tracked to date versus that expectation?

Thanks, Lee. Look, it's really about the main, I would call, temporary volatilities that we are seeing to the second half. Remember, this is the first time ever that our company gave earnings guidance. So we're very careful to make sure that looking forward, we project not only the strong momentum of the business, but also the headwinds that we see in to the market. So probably the bucket, the challenge in 3 categories. The first one is exchange rates quite substantial. It's close to $13 million, $15 million. So it's quite a substantial one-off impact. The other one is about $5 million headwind coming from the Phosphate Hill divestment. We were very successful to not only announce what we're going to do in March, as we previously promised. But as you know, we no longer have the economic interest on the assets post completion. So the corporate cost, stranded corporate costs need to be dealt with. And then finally, we estimate some headwinds on cost more broadly to do with the Middle East conflict. So things like freight cost is in Australia and the U.S., fuel. So we're accounting for all of those things. That will be offsetting partially the strength that we're seeing in transformation.

And maybe how you've seen -- maybe just how you've seen things trading second half year-to-date?

Momentum continues. We see the commercial parts of the business doing very well, lots of interest in our business. So business is trading well.

Excellent. And then just a second one, like the outlook gets around a lot of the transformation benefits have all improved for this year, albeit like you said, with some of these temporary headwinds and offsets. Can you maybe just chat a little bit around LatAm in that backdrop because that was probably the one versus my numbers were maybe expected a little bit coming earlier. Can you maybe just chat a little bit about what you're thinking in that market?

Yes, Lee, and I'll second that on the same we would like to see more and quicker LATAM transformation. But we told you that we would be disciplined in our we approach it. It needs to be about value and needs to be about long-term relationships. So we are very active in those markets. As I noted in my comments, we are completing the construction of the Peruvian motion plant, which will be our first in that country. We're very near announcing 2 new sites in Brazil, which will be a whole new market entry for us with what I would call a Tier 1 premium customer, which gives us a platform for further expansion in Brazil and more broadly in LATAM. So the team is very active. We're proving the technology, we're trialing at the LTE, but we will be priced disciplining the way we go about trying to expand our presence in LATAM. And Nitesh keeps remind me about capital efficiency and capital discipline. So deploying capital and growth will be done on the basis of good return. So we want to grow. We're anxious about it, but we'll do that in the right way. But the long-term trend and the long-term confidence in that market remains unchanged for us.

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

Just wonder on the first half, you said benefited quite a bit from spot sales, which is understandable. It looks like the first half EBIT for the core business was about $30 million of EBIT ahead of guidance that you gave back in November. So are you able to maybe sort of talk about how much of that $30 million had [indiscernible] was due to better spot profitability on AM?

Thanks, Brook. Look, I don't think we'll go into the into the specific number. We have seen, as Mauro said, in the first half, we have some surplus in which we were able to capitalize on. I think I'd point you to the growth that we've seen in the underlying JVs in the U.S. business, where JVs had growth over 40%, which would suggest that overall, the demand products in the market was the key driver of our growth. So there was a more minor element of spot sales.

Okay. And you just develop making across your 3 assets, Cheyenne particularly quite a big one. Moranbah, you talked about before and then Lama. So overall, I guess, online numbers, it looks like about a 10% increase in your capacity relative to pre developing. Can you just talk about how much of that step-up is now sort of underpinned by customer contracts versus how much is, I guess, still to come in terms of work you need to do to find customers to absorb that additional capacity.

Thanks, Brook. Look, our contract book is typically long and we like having that book because that's what allows us to talk about stable earnings and hopefully keep rolling year-on-year growth of learnings that we can report, but also keep a stability of our outlook. Having said that, we always keep some position to trade on spot given the seasonality of our customer offtakes. So it's impossible to have a 100% contracted book because, as you would expect, think about [indiscernible] land, you have very rainy periods through summer which gives us some spot tons to trade and vice versa on the drier season. So we typically keep anywhere between 10% and 15% of our book not contracted, which obviously we can take the opportunity to trade at higher prices when they are available.

That's great. And maybe just last quick one for me. There's an impact you're calling out for the Middle East. Do you want to just provide something to color what's kind of driving that impact? And is it a bit of a lag where you have the impact in the second half? And let's say, for example, disruptions persist in '27, Hopefully, they don't, but I'd say they do, are you able to then recover that impact with actions and pricing, such that it's just a temporary impact on the second half?

The answer is yes, Brook, and I'll articulate a bit on that. We typically see that translating to -- you would have -- you would be familiar of some recent measures taken by the train government encourage companies to review freight contractors rates at a fortnightly basis given the pressures on fuel prices, just to give you an example, and that's not the only inflationary pressure we're seeing. So there's inflation coming from many sources of the business. Typically, our contracts will have quarterly or 6 monthly catching up mechanisms through inflation. So some of those cost factors come through inflation indexes, there will be a catching up. But as I said, there will be a temporary period of time, which is the second half, we'll see some of those inflation points coming through before we can fully pass them on to our contractual rights. So it's a temporary one-offs and then you should be able to catch up that through inflation.

Your next question comes from John Purtell from Macquarie.

Just had a few quick questions, please. Look, just further to Books question on North America there. just so we're reading that right now, would you expect to have the same level of spot sales in the second half versus the first? Or does that stronger seasonal demand effect in the second half means you like it to have less spot sales?

John, not so much because it's driven by our book position and as typically is the case when the weather gets better, our contracted customers do better, and we love that because that's why we work every day to serve our customers, which leaves us with a bit less of a spot position. But obviously, it's a daily trading position that the teams are looking every day. But in general, you would see not as strong second half spot volumes much driven by weather.

Second question on Moranbah. Look, I understand you've moved to a new gas contract in April and that had been previously disclosed. Is there any change in gas cost to call out? And if so, do you have past durability?

No and yes, nothing material to report. Is this being something that we're playing well ahead of time. And our contracts will have typically the ability be back to gas. So in other words, we will have pricing mechanisms that bring us back to the energy source. So again, typical -- similar conversation to what I was talking to Brook before in regards to inflation, there will be some -- there could be some lagging of 1 or 2 quarters, but this will wash through our results. So that's why we're not calling out any of that in our numbers.

Got you. And just the last one on Capital allocation, obviously, the buybacks, the key focus in the near term. Is there a potential for acquisitions? Or should we think about that once you further progressed on transformation?

More of the latter, John. As you would expect, we had our strategy back in '24 in South Lake, where we talked about separation, transformation and consolidation. We still believe in the theme of consolidation for the industry and improvement of the general market structure. But we are so heads down into our transformation and making this business as lean and efficient as we possibly can. But I have to say that, that is really the biggest opportunity in front of us really to run this business hard as we can. We have this whole opportunity of Energetics in front of us. So we really had to dining execution mode. But obviously, we keep an eye on what's happening outside the market. There's a few people in our business, they're not as distracted as have been trying to sell ateliers. They're now starting to lift their heads to what's out there, but there's nothing to report. We really heads down into improving the core business.

Your next question comes from Nathan Reilly from UBS.

Just a question just around your excess ammonia position under the CF offtake arrangement at Waggaman when you announced the transaction, you indicated your sort of net long on ammonia. Just can you give an update on what that position is and what you're doing with that position just given current Tampa pricing?

Look, we as you know, Nathan, we have a great relationship with CF, and these contract gives us opportunities to -- especially in the current market where ammonia became quite a scar commodity to really play that to our advantage. As you said, we are long, we have the full volumes of Loma supported by that offtake, which is still the case. But we have some extra ammonia that we typically use to cover our short position in -- can -- so not necessarily the same molecule travels all the way up north, but we use that as a trading position to minimize the cost of input ammonia into CheyenneTeshan. So really, it's a precious contract in this current period of time, because obviously, the ammonium molecule is very case in the U.S. market, but also because it's really great opportunities for us to build on the relationship with CF.

Got it. And in terms of how you'd expect to, I guess, support the increase of the debottlenecking initiatives in your [indiscernible] facilities how you'll support that with additional ammonia line?

Look, this is ongoing. So I'm not in a position to report any deals, but our teams are actively looking for new sources. We like the exposure to the gas market in the U.S. It's typically a very economic exposure. But I'm not in a position to discuss any specific negotiations. We would like a longer ammonia position, but this is something that is negotiation underway. Thank you.

Your next question is a follow-up from Daniel Kang from CLSA.

Just, if you can just talk about the competitive landscape, particularly in terms of technology products over here in Australia.

Look, we have seen and one that are particularly like because it doesn't touch the big end of town. We have seen the continuous improvement of our penetration of electronic detonators and that's probably combined with our Dyno Nobel people, it's probably the 2 things that are leading indicators on technology. We're actually recruiting more in training more DynoConsult people than they ever had because they are the spare heads of our technology implementation. It's all about people and the capability of our people. So the very high demand, we are hiring DynoConsult people in every place around the globe, and hiring is just part of it, but then training them on our technology suites really takes effort. So Doug and the team are busy doing that right now. And the other one is Navus. I really think that credit to the team coming up with the technology to enable the people that probably don't have the sophistication to have the full suite of digital solutions and timing mechanisms that we typically do with the big -- the high end of town. Navus is a handheld Think about this as a handheld device where you can do electronic tornado initiation, even if you are in a very basic mining situation. So it's really making electronic detonators available to every minor in Australia. So we keep bringing new things to life. We bring -- we keep our efforts in resource and development. But the most important part is really people. It's all about the technical capability, the training, and we haven't been in my time, there hasn't been a point in time that we have been more active in recruiting and training our DynoConsult teams.

And can you comment a little bit about your wireless status at this point.

Look, there is limits to what I can say given that is an -- it's in court. So we will have more to see when the proceedings finished. We had our hearing a few weeks ago. But again, I prefer not to comment on that. I have to say that in general, this doesn't affect any customers outside Australia. It's Australia only. And we agreed to stay where our current customers are and affected. So look, we haven't changed the current situation in Australia, and we remain marketing those products outside Australia normally.

Your next question comes from Belinda Moore from Morgans.

Could I check, were previously targeting was it $8 million to $15 million of EBIT uplift in 26 million from year I'm just checking, is that still possible? Or is that being pushed out? And also, any more sort of update on sort of the Recon JV, please?

It is possible, Belinda, but it's highly as an any growth. It's highly dependent on our success with customer wins. So we probably have more to say when some of those Brazilian negotiations finalized, but I'm excited about what it could mean in the medium and long term. So it's possible, but it's a challenging -- it's very discrete. When you think about DNA, where we have thousands of customers, you win some, you lose some and report on the balance of the portfolio. In LatAm, as we're growing, it's literally about 2 or 3 or 4 customers that we are working through every point in time. So I'm still confident, but there is an element of risk and hence, why we are we are referring to the guidance as we are. Look, in regards to the TNT joint venture, we are progressing on the definitization of the process, which is the next natural step with the Department of Defense in the U.S. and looking to start construction in calendar year '27. So we're progressing well in Natura joint venture in the United States, keep looking for more opportunities to grow our presence in Energetics. So we'll possibly have more to report on that, but for the time being, really working hard on the TNT.

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

Thanks, team. Thanks for your interest. I'll see you on the road in the next few weeks. And again, I just want to reiterate my thanks for the talent Dyno Nobel team and your hard work to bring those results to life. Have a great day.