Kingspan Group plc (KRX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody. You're all very welcome. We'll take you directly into the results presentation, if you don't mind, and we'll start on Slide #3, which is titled '24 in Summary. So just on that, actually, it was quite a positive year in the end. Revenue was ahead by 6% for the year as a whole, really resulting from a much stronger quarter 4 than might have been earlier anticipated. That resulted in a trading profit ahead by 3% and EPS ahead by 4%. In addition to this, our emissions in the year reduced by 27% like-for-like. And that brings the full year underlying reduction in real emission reductions to 80%, which is quite an extraordinary achievement. Just by business, the Insulated Panels, obviously, our largest business, was broadly in line with prior year. As we have previously highlighted, that really was reflective of a very strong Americas performance and naturally a little more subdued in Europe. And I think of note, our activity in Latin America now has reached about EUR 500 million in revenue, and that actually moves on again now with our recent entry into Chile and Paraguay. So some exciting new frontiers there as well. We're launching our PowerPanel eventually imminently. And that's on the back, literally, of Factory Mutual certification, which came through just yesterday. So that product will hit the market literally right now and should give way to some interesting growth over the longer term. Our Insulation business, obviously, we've got quite a mix across the spectrum of products and activities now in this area. A lot of progress made on the acoustic side, and we're building a -- gradually building a global presence in that area. And on the natural insulation piece, in particular around wood fiber insulation, we've taken the controlling stake in the market leader worldwide in this, Steico, based in Germany. And we also entered the stonewool business through the acquisition of a start-up backup plant in Germany. On our data business, it's been fairly spectacular revenue ahead by 36% in the year, more like 45% like-for-like in the second half. And that continues to soar in terms of order intake through the current year, a lot of it driven by, unsurprisingly, by the expansion of AI capability worldwide. And we see -- in fact, if anything, our issue here is being able to build factories at a fast enough pace to keep up with demand, which, I guess, is a good problem to have. Then on another of our new verticals, the Roofing + Waterproofing, it was really a breakthrough year for this activity. The profitability of the business doubled virtually, margin almost doubled, and we took a controlling stake in Nordic Waterproofing, which is now close to 90%. We also made our first acquisition, albeit small, in the U.S., IB Roofing, which gives us a front end as part of our onslaught into that market. And that would be followed up by the previously highlighted investments in Oklahoma and Maryland, both of which are running ahead of schedule. And we'd expect to be trialing product as soon as quarter 4 this year with market entry early next year in TPO and PVC flat roofing and obviously, polyiso insulation board. So very exciting developments on that front. And again, another year of progress in our Light, Air + Water business, particularly marked by margin improvement. Similar to the roofing, we see the Americas as an exciting frontier for opportunities of scale in this area. And even in Europe, we continue to develop with the announcement of the Mercor acquisition in Poland just towards the year-end. So lots of activity, lots of balls in the air and lots of areas to be excited about for the future. So just on the detail of the year, I'll hand you over now to Geoff.

Thank you, Gene. I'm going straight to Page 16 in the deck, financial highlights, just to set out some of the key numbers. Group revenue is at EUR 8.6 billion, grew by 6% in the year. Trading profit is at EUR 907 million, grew by 3%. Earnings per share up 4% to EUR 3.652. Our total dividend for the year, 54.8% (sic) [ EUR 0.548 ]. That's a 15% payout, which is in line with our policy guidance. So the dividend up 4%, in line with earnings. Strong free cash flow during the year, and I'll come to the components of that shortly, of EUR 509 million. The comparative number for 2023 was flattered by the high levels of stock at the end of '22, which flowed back into cash in '23. Trading margin down 30 basis points in 2024 to 10.5%, but a strong recovery in trading margin in the second half. So the second half trading margin was 10.9%, giving us the -- so well up on the 10.1% on the first half. Net debt, EUR 1.57 billion, bearing in mind that we invested EUR 1.2 billion in the year in terms of acquisitions and CapEx. And our leverage ended the year net debt to EBITDA of 1.47x. In terms of the -- just the trading profit trajectory and the deep margin, on the right-hand side of the page, you'll see the compounded growth since 2020, so growing by 15.5%. On the left-hand side of the page, you've got the margin profile by division. Insulated Panels, its trading margin was 11.5% for the year. So again, a lot more momentum in margin in the second half. The second half trading margin was actually 12%. So well up on the 11.1% in the first half. Our Insulation margin at 8.1% is very, very low by any measure. 70 basis points of that is accounted for by the commissioning of the newly acquired stonewool plant in Germany. That commissioning process is underway, but clearly, it is temporary and will complete during the current financial year. As Gene outlined, the division grew substantially during 2024. So a lot going on under the bonnet in terms of acquiring the majority stake in Steico, our entry into stonewool and so forth, all of that laying the seeds for future growth. Data Solutions, a very strong performance. Margins in the first half and second half at that 15% level. So going very, very well. Roofing + Waterproofing doubled its profitability in absolute terms and margins a little under 10% for the division. Light, Air + Water, a very solid performance, continues to incrementally add to trading margin. And 2024 just was a continuation of that trend. Moving on to the sales and profit bridge on Page 18. So the acquisitions contributed EUR 629 million of sales during the year, so 8% overall. Our underlying sales were down by 2% for the year but actually rebounded in the second half. So underlying sales in the first half, you'll recall, were down 5%. So underlying sales in the second half were modestly up versus the second half of 2023. From a profit perspective, acquisitions contributed a little under EUR 49 million and underlying profitability down slightly, down by about 2% during 2024. The geographic profile is set out on Page 19. No significant shift in the overall geographic complexion of the business. Europe overall, 70% of the business. The Central Northern Europe component grew during 2024, reflecting predominantly M&A activity during the year, and the Americas at 22% of the business, followed by rest of world at 8%. Free cash flow is set out on Page 20. So the EBITDA was EUR 1.14 billion. Our CapEx was EUR 334 million. Our CapEx guide for the current year is in the region of EUR 300 million. Our tax outflow was EUR 184 million. Our effective tax rate, both in '24, was approximately 17%, and that's our guide for the current financial year. That generated free cash flow of EUR 509 million. Reconciling that to net debt on Page 21, the single biggest component of that was our acquisition spend during 2024, 16 transactions in total, the most significant of which were Steico and Nordic Waterproofing. We also repurchased 1.5 million shares at a cost of EUR 134.6 million. And then our dividend outflow was EUR 97.6 million, giving us the net debt at year-end of EUR 1.57 billion. The strength of our balance sheet is outlined on Page 22. The capital market highlights for us during 2024 was the -- was our debut public bond where we raised EUR 750 million for 7 years at a fixed annual coupon of 3.5%. The weighted average maturity of all of our drawn debt facilities is 5 years. And our total available liquidity is a little under EUR 2 billion. And that is comprised of cash balances on hand and undrawn facilities that we have on hand. On Page 28, we thought it was worth reflecting on the last decade of Kingspan's growth. And you'll see that revenue has grown 16.5% compounded from 2024 to -- sorry, from 2014 to 2024. The absolute level of trading profitability has grown sixfold from EUR 149 million to EUR 907 million, and earnings have grown sixfold as well from EUR 0.626 to EUR 3.652 in 2024. So with that, I will hand back to Gene.

Great. Thank you, Geoff. So just on Slide 29, as we look ahead, we're up and running in 2025, obviously. It's a year that won't be without its challenges that are, I'd say, quite obvious worldwide. But that said, we've deployed EUR 1.2 billion of new capital in 2024, a lot of which will begin to deliver as early as this year. And even that aside, like our backlogs, generally worldwide, are quite healthy. Order intake continues to trend the right direction. And obviously, in our Data Solutions business, we have a fairly staggering progress in that area. So all in all, challenges considered, we'd be reasonably confident about the year ahead. And with that, we would be happy to open it up to questions, please.

[Operator Instructions] First question comes from Shane Carberry with Goodbody.

Well done on a great 2024. Two from me, if I may. The first one just in terms of PowerPanel. Obviously, very exciting in terms of the kind of imminent launch expected here. Can you kind of bring to life for us the next steps there? Are you actively marketing it? Should we see some sort of sales contribution this year? And am I right in thinking it's still the U.K. and Ireland just to start? The second question then, just in terms of U.S. roofing, it's actually been kind of 1 year since you announced the plan to step into the U.S. there, significant progress already made. Just wondering how things have kind of evolved there versus your expectations. And have you seen any reaction yet from kind of competitors in the region?

Okay, Shane. Just on PowerPanels, so yes, we literally begin marketing this product right now. I mean, literally, today. So the manufacturing process is almost ready. That's going to be based in Holywell in the U.K. for the time being. It's the first of, hopefully, many, which are essentially additions to insulated panel lines. The product will come to market first of all in Ireland and the U.K. And there's already -- quite a lot of excitement has been drummed up over the recent past in anticipation of this. So there would be ready-made roofs kind of ready for this application already. So yes, we would expect to be actually taking orders in the not too distant future. And we would expect to have projects of scale already on roofs probably by around midyear, certainly by the third quarter. So we need to build a bank of specification, which obviously, we didn't really push the green button on that until we were totally ready, but now we are. And then that obviously will be followed by other markets and market -- other market variations of the product beginning in Western Europe and then soon after in North America. So like I'd hope that within 9 months or a year, we'll be able to more meaningfully update on what the opportunity and progress is in this area. But it's very exciting. In terms of U.S. roofing, as I said, we're -- progress is actually ahead of expectation time-wise. We've got our front-end established. The back end is probably 3 to 4 months faster than we would have indicated. It's far too early to judge competitive reaction to this because we haven't really got going. But we'd be increasingly satisfied that there's room for us to take our position in this market. And as we outlined before, our ambition is to get to a 15% market share of the addressable market for the solutions we're bringing. And that hasn't changed at all.

We now turn to Paul Roger with BNP Paribas Exane.

Congratulations again on the results. So 2 questions from me then, please. First of all, can you give us some color on how group volumes performed organically maybe compared to underlying markets last year? And then secondly, what are your expectations for pricing and cost inflation in 2025, please?

Okay. Just on the volume piece, we're not getting into the value volume complexion of the business because it's a semi -- certainly in terms of running the business, it's a semi-meaningless measure bearing in mind the mix of markets, the mix of categories, the mix of applications. But what I would say is that if you look at the trajectory of underlying sales in the year, underlying sales at a group level were down by 5% in the first half and were down by 2% for full year. So that clearly implies that we had positive underlying sales growth in the second half of the year. And clearly, the early part of the year, what was evident was an element of price deflation that we had to contend with, in particular, in the early part of the year. And that was less of an issue in the second half.

Paul, as we go forward then, just in terms of cost inflation, obviously, it's a noisy environment at the moment, and that ebbs and flows, literally by the day or the hour. But what we would expect with a fair degree of confidence is that costs will rise in North America. Obviously, tariff-led -- like the ultimate result in all of this is prices in the U.S. go up. So steel, for sure, and as a direct knock-on, so too will the prices of our products, if and when that happens. So we've demonstrated in the past successfully an ability to do so, and we will do that again. I think in Europe, the picture is less clear. Underlying demand isn't wonderful at all in general for construction markets. So despite all of the tariff kind of threats and conversations, it's hard to see costs rise or certainly hard to see them rise by much in Europe. But if they do, we'll be passing it on.

We now turn to Arnaud Lehmann with Bank of America.

I have 2 questions. My first question is regarding the -- obviously, a strong finish to 2024. And it sounds like the tone you're giving us now is clearly a bit more upbeat than last time we discussed back in November with your Q3 update. So could you give us an indication of what has changed in the last 3, 4 months? Which regions have improved? Or how did you deliver above your own expectations from 3 months ago? That's my first question. And the second question is around the growth outlook. What is -- you've spent, I think, EUR 330 million of CapEx last year. You're going to spend another EUR 300 million this year. What sort of incremental growth should this be driving in 2025 in terms of your expansion CapEx and new factories? And related to that, could you please confirm the impact from past acquisitions on your 2025 earnings?

Okay. Well done, Arnaud. There's about 45 questions in there. So just on the first one, we obviously had a stronger finish than anticipated. Actually, weather didn't impact us in December really at all. And typically, it would or we'd expect that it would. I'd say momentum, actually, frankly, across all of the businesses, continued well through the fourth quarter. I wouldn't say there was anything that stood out, with the exception, obviously, of our data business. It's building scale. It doesn't bend it one way or the other for the group just yet, but it's building scale and becoming a much larger chunk of business. And as we highlighted a number of years ago, we expect that to feature much more prominently in the future, and it is doing. So I'd say if there was any standout, it was that business. And again, that is global. So -- and again, it's -- much of the attraction of our proposition is the fact that it is global. So that's going exceptionally well. But aside from that, really, it was just a generally encouraging finish.

Yes, absolutely. And also, Arnaud, I think we had indicated in the November trading update that we had -- we were seeing some signs perhaps of deferral in some cases. And that actually didn't really play out. We had a strong November and December pretty much across the business. Just on your other questions, in terms of acquisition scope, that ought to deliver in terms of the annualizing of acquisitions completed during the year between Nordic and indeed others, somewhere in the region of EUR 30 million, EUR 35 million in '25 versus 2024. And in terms of CapEx and the connection of that into growth in 2025, hard to be specific on that. That's going to be a function of how our end markets play out during the year. And clearly, many of these capital projects are to tee up opportunities for the medium term as well. But we'll be able to elaborate on that as we move through 2025.

Our next question comes from the Flor O'Donoghue with Davy.

Two for me as well. Firstly, just on panels in North America, just a sense now of the market share within the overall category? And is there parts of the sector that it's got kind of a really high market share? Just wondering about the mix of that. And the second is just on the data division. I think in the statement, you referred to looking at strategic bolt-ons. Just wondering about that. And also maybe you've kind of alluded to it already, but what are you -- is there any kind of capacity constraints as things stand in terms of the current order book?

All right, Flor. Just panels in North America, I'd say I'm kind of guessing penetration really at the point rather than market share. We have a significant meaningful market share, and that really hasn't changed a lot. Penetration would be around 20% right now of the addressable market. It's been boosted a lot in recent years with very large-scale tech-type projects. And that really is expected to continue. Although we'd have to say that -- and this won't surprise you, the general backdrop for commercial construction in the U.S. isn't actually wonderful at the moment. So we'll just have to continue to drive that conversion and see where we go. In terms of the data business and bolt-ons, there are -- as we kind of flesh out the business there and really get stuck into the channel, there are very obvious additions that can be made to improve the sale value per project. And that's happening. Part of it is in ventilation and more recently in liquid cooling, which some would have seen as a threat. We actually see it as a massive opportunity where we're going to be -- it's not going to replace air-cooling. It's going to complement it. And the more AI demand there is, the demand for cooling actually multiplies. It doesn't go up in percentages. It multiplies and multiplies significantly. So we are already integrating liquid cooling into our hacks. So that will be the structure, air cooling and liquid cooling, which is a very unique proposition. And yes, like that's early days but actually increasingly encouraging is what I would say as we flesh out that whole area. From a capacity perspective, like I said, literally, it's been a while since trying to build factories as fast as possible has been a constraint for us. But in this area, it is. As you know, we're trying to acquire existing vacated premises to try and accelerate that, and with a lot of success. We've done it in Europe. We've done it in Virginia in the U.S. We're underway in Arkansas, and there will be more to come as well as in Southeast Asia. So yes, probably I wouldn't quite say we're constrained, but there's a fair degree of pressure around. But the team is doing a magnificent job. And this year will be a year of serious progress in that whole area.

We now turn to Alexander Craeymeersch with Kepler.

Alexander from Kepler Cheuvreux here. So yes, Latin America is growing nicely. I was wondering how the reception of your panels are in this area and how do you price your stuff. Because I think cement prices are actually lower in this region. And second question would be on roofing. So yes, with the roofing and polyiso plants opening in Q4 2025 already, can we expect the margin in line with your peers when it's fully ramped up? And how much do you expect the ramp-up costs to weigh on your 2025 and 2026 margins?

So in terms of Latin America, Alexander, yes, there's been fantastic progress there over the last 5 or 6 years. Part of it is just general activity in terms of food and industrial applications. But in the most part, it's been conversion from the old built-up systems, polystyrene panels and even asbestos in Brazil, which continues to feature prominently as a product. So all of that has been attacked by us, and as you can see, with a great degree of success. Cement prices, one way or the other, wouldn't really interest us. It's not -- I'd say, unlike North America, tilt-up concrete is not a target market that we're after for conversion. It's entirely different. And then on the second piece...

Just how will the margin compare, in U.S. roofing, to existing incumbents?

Existing?

The incumbents, the peers that are there already.

Yes. I can't really speak for the incumbents. But we would expect that our operating margin in the U.S. will be significantly ahead of what you've seen so far in Roofing + Waterproofing. But obviously, it's going to take time to ramp up. This isn't going to be something that happens straight away. But there is more than ample space to make very attractive margins in the U.S. market.

Our next question comes from Gregor Kuglitsch with UBS.

So first question, please, on just -- if you could just walk us through the margin expectations ideally sort of by segment, what you're thinking sort of in broad terms, maybe short and medium term, please? And then the second question is sort of a broader one on returns. So if I look at your announcement, I think you're like 14%, 15% now. Clearly, some of those large investments you made last year like Steico, I guess, Nordic isn't fully in there, but nevertheless, probably won't really meet your initial -- I think you're targeting 15% on M&A, if I'm not mistaken. Just give us an idea how you think returns on those sort of larger deals, especially the more recent ones, sort of shape up over the coming years so we get to that 15% hurdle rate on new acquisitions, please?

Thanks, Gregor. Just on the -- if you like, the margin profile by -- just by division, I think what 2024 demonstrated across the business, but actually most particularly in Insulated Panels, is that it's a 12-month business, not a 12-week business. And the 11.5% that we made for the full year, that ought to be a reasonable margin percentage on a full year basis as we move forward. Insulation, as we've highlighted, at 8.1% in the division, that ought to be trough. It's clearly not anything like the plan we have for that business, an awful lot of very positive steps we've taken in that business during the year at the expense of margin in the short term, like, for example, commissioning the stonewool facility. That commissioning phase will come to an end during the current year. So margins in that part of the business and as a division, clearly, the medium-term ambition there is to get it back north of 10%. That's not going to happen in 2025. But nonetheless, that remains very much the target for us. On Data Solutions, as we ramp up, we've made 15% during 2024. That ought to be a run rate, at least for that business, as we go forward. Roofing + Waterproofing, we're very much in the phase of -- this is a new category we've made a lot of progress in a short space of time. And ultimately, when we're rocking and rolling in the U.S., we'll be in double-digit trading margins, but we're some years away from that. But I think the progress we've made so far just speaks to the quality of the proposition. And then Light, Air + Water, as we've outlined previously, the ambition and the goal firmly is to get this division into -- to be at or north of 10%. And we've been making steady incremental progress with each passing year on that. And we'll continue in that vein. As regards our returns, currently, our return on capital employed is in the region of 15%. That's a mix of our overall organic and inorganic capital deployment. For smaller bolt-on type acquisitions, those types of returns typically can be achieved in 3 or 4 years. For larger transactions where the capital deployment is larger, it's difficult to get mid-teens returns out of the box. But there's -- once they're grounded in a medium- to long-term business plan to get there, that's fine for us. We have been, over many, many years, very focused on healthy returns and capital employed and getting a healthy premium over our cost of capital. And that firmly will remain the case. We'd be deploying more capital as we grow but growing returns on that capital at a premium over our cost of capital.

Our next question comes from Elodie Rall with JPMorgan.

The first question is on the appetite overall for the industry, the building industry, across the different insulation products between foam, stone and glass. I was wondering if you've seen any changes lately, if insurance companies' requirements have changed as well. If you could give us a bit of color on that. And my second question is a bit more topical about your view on Kingspan's exposure in the event of a ceasefire of Ukraine and Russia. How would the group benefit from such a situation?

Thanks, Elodie. Just in terms of the general dynamic in the market, I think it's quite obvious from us and others what's happening, advanced insulation solutions versus foam or versus stone, rather, or versus glass or whatever. It's -- and what you can see from all of that when you get behind pricing is that there's not a dramatic shift at all in terms of the volume movement despite a lot of noise and a lot noisy competitors, to be frank. But when you peel it all back, I think that the general distribution of products in terms of market share is broadly stable. And that's particularly evident in our own insulated panel offering where we've -- we're the largest in the world, obviously, and as a result, we're the largest in the world in stonewool, [ stonecore ] insulated panels. And that really for the last 10 years has been between 10% and 12% of the distribution within that business. Now partly as a result of the developments in our own business -- and I'd say QuadCore, in particular, which is really a fairly spectacular product when it comes to overall energy performance, fire performance, over life, circularity, et cetera. So I think there's also -- there's a lot of, I'd say, kind of basic misunderstanding about the difference between combustibility and noncombustibility and whether that actually means the product is better or worse in fire. So you kind of -- and that's not nearly as straightforward as you might think. But where we have the opportunity to demonstrate that through testing and not just through lingo, we're generally having a lot of success. The insurance companies, I'd say, one area that they have are focused on interestingly is on roof solar. And you'll probably have heard like they have a preference for so-called noncombustible insulation on roof solar. But in fact, independent testing shows that, that doesn't stack at all. And the recent testing we've got from Factory Mutual in the U.S., it's actually the only full complete roof that's been tested, not just for fire but for window uplift, et cetera, as a complete solution in the world. So we -- I guess, we'll test that a lot more in the future. And our PowerPanel will be completely with a QuadCore insulation core and definitely not with a stonewool core because it's just completely inefficient. So I suppose all of this goes to highlight the need and the kind of long-expressed ambition of Kingspan to be able to offer the full spectrum. And it's for all of these reasons because there are regional preferences, there are regulatory preferences, there are cultural preferences, all kinds of things that we want to be able to satisfy whatever your requirement is or whatever your particular need is. And that's clearly what we're addressing as an organization. And no other organization in the world is actually addressing it in the same way. From a kind of Ukraine perspective, well, it's quite clear what we've been doing there for the last few years. We've acquired a 50-hectare site in Lviv. We have full planning permission for the campus that we actually just recently granted for the campus that we highlighted a couple of years back. And we'll be pushing ahead with all of that at the appropriate time, come what may.

We now turn to Yassine Touahri with On Field Investment Research.

Congratulations for the solid results. My first question would be on the consensus. I think consensus expect a trading profit of EUR 985 million in 2025. Is it a number that you would be comfortable with? My second question would be on -- when you look at the acquisition that you've done recently, what kind of growth impact do you expect on sales and operating profit for 2025?

Okay. Yassine, just to deal with the last part of your question first, the scope from a profit perspective of acquisitions made in '24 is about EUR 35 million of profit. Just as regards 2025, in any typical year, in February, we don't give prescriptive guidance for the current financial year. But what I would say, just in terms of signposts, is what we do know is that our insulated panel global order book is up versus this time last year. We do know that our Data Solutions business is growing very, very strongly with a longer-dated order book. And we do know about the scope increases that we've outlined there. So there's certainly a path to the consensus number, but it's very early days in the year. But we have a lot to be positive about.

We now turn to Brijesh Siya with HSBC.

I have 2 as well. So the first one is on the regional, or rather, country development. So I think in the statement, you talked about Germany is kind of showing positive signs. So -- and then France remained positive in insulated panel. So if you could just talk a little bit more about the Continental Europe as well as U.K., how the market has developed in the last couple of months and what you think about 2025. And the second one is on the kind of -- sorry, yes, if you can just answer the first one. I'll just come back on the second one.

Well, Brijesh, there hasn't been much of a change really from a kind of regional perspective. We -- our sense would be that Germany and the Nordics, in particular, that have both been operating at very low levels have bottomed out. But we don't anticipate any noticeable bounce in those in the near term, except to say we feel that they're kind of bumping along at the bottom. But that said, we still need to get on with life and get on with selling our solutions and growing penetration of our products. But yes, we don't expect from Europe any particular kind of economic lift. And then if you move across the water to the Americas, the -- again, I'd say despite all of the noise, the actual underlying market demand for both commercial and residential in the U.S. is nothing to write home about. A lot of our peers over those markets are profiting enormously just from price and margin expansion and nothing whatsoever to do with activity, which is quite remarkable and actually very attractive for us as we said in the past. And then in Latin America, yes, I think there are a number of the economies going in the right direction. And for us, that's positive in terms of adoption of our solutions. But yes, we don't anticipate any massive kind of regional change in activity.

Great. And the second one is on the panel order book and the order intake. If you could just give a little bit of flavor of how was the kind of order book is looking like versus last year. Is it up high single digit or double digit? Any kind of qualitative number around it?

It's up kind of mid- to high single digit.

[Operator Instructions] We now turn to [indiscernible] with Bernstein.

So I have 2. So on your Insulated Panels business, revenue was flattish, but trading profit was down 5%. So could you give us the different moving parts that led to this and how we should expect this to evolve in 2025? And my second question is on your rationale to invest in stonewool, I mean, given the business is probably more CapEx intensive compared to your other divisions. And you were also alluding to the low margins in the Insulation segment. Could you talk a little bit about your strategic direction on that?

Yes. Just on Insulated Panels, it was very much a tale of 2 halves. Our underlying sales in our insulated panel business were down by 6% in the first half but were up by 2% on an underlying basis in the second half. And the margin was a similar story, 11.1% in the first half, circa 12% in the second half. So overall, the trading margin of 11.5% for the year ought to be a reasonable run rate for the time being. And Gene has given an indication there as to the order book being up versus this time last year. So that ought to give some steer certainly on the very early part of this year in Insulated Panels.

So then from a stonewool perspective, we've highlighted forever, to be honest, the fact that it's not a particularly efficient insulation. That's well known. It's very heavy, it's massively energy consumptive, it's much thicker than advanced insulations and so on. But having said that, there is, as I said earlier, regional and regulatory preferences for this in some areas. We are the full spectrum provider of insulation solutions worldwide. So if, like to be quite basic about it, you're on a building and the walls are going to be polyiso and the floors are going to be polystyrene and the roof, for some reason, is going to be stonewool, as a business, we want to be in a position to offer the full gambit. And it's really as straightforward as that, and we're on with that. And of course, from an internal perspective then, we are the largest consumer of stonewool in the world. We're consuming something in the order of 2 world-scale plants full of the stuff into our insulated panel offering, again, for particular elevations and just depending, I'd say, on architectural references and so on. So there's obviously kind of a massive internal demand for the product. So over time, we'll be able to satisfy that. And then from a margin perspective, it's been challenging for us because it's start-up phase. And that's always going to be the way. But you'll note from some of our peers that when there is volume and scale in the sector, it's actually very attractive margins. So we look forward to having a proper go at that in time when we fleshed out the full product portfolio. But having said all that, we don't expect this to be a big feature in Kingspan. Scale-wise, even if we built this up to a EUR 500 million business over time, it will only be 3% or 4% of Kingspan at that stage.

Our final question today comes from Cedar Ekblom with Morgan Stanley.

I just had a question on the outlook for margins in the panels business. You've spoken quite a lot about some of the product innovations, QuadCore, PowerPanel, et cetera, which at face value seem to be products that should warrant higher margins, more pricing power potentially than the rest of the panels offering. But at the same time, over the last 2 years or so, we've seen pricing in panels continue to prove quite closely linked with your raw material basket. So I'd just like to understand how commoditized do you think your panels offering is today and how quickly that might change going forward so that we can look to a higher and more sustainable margin over the next couple of years.

Yes. So just if you look at the mix of our products, we have -- QuadCore has actually been hugely important in keeping margins healthy for this category worldwide. And we're always developing in new markets. And by definition, when we're developing and growing, whether that's in Latin America or whether it's in Southeast Asia and actually historically in Central and Eastern Europe, we're always operating at a lower margin as we have early expansion. And that kind of curtails things. But when we get scale in the sector and we get proper conversion to QuadCore in particular and even stonewool core panels, the margins are actually quite healthy. So part of it is the effect of growing. Now you might say we haven't grown a lot in the last year or 2. But if you take a longer view, we have. And that does obviously hold it back to some extent. And then from a PowerPanel perspective, like we -- okay, we had version 1. But in reality, we haven't really been on the market with that at all. So I'd say probably a more meaningful time to reassess that will be in 12 or 18 months' time. But for certain, we expect that to deliver higher net profits than normal. And you ask, is this commoditized? Like that's a terrible word. But I would -- I'd acknowledge completely in some markets and some applications, the offering that's acceptable can be quite basic. So yes, but that's obviously not the area that Kingspan focuses on or will focus on in the future.

This concludes our Q&A. I will now hand back to Gene Murtagh for any final remarks.

Excellent. Well, thank you all for being with us and contributing to the call today. And we look forward to meeting you all one by one over the coming days and weeks. Thank you.

Thank you.