Rotork plc (ROR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. I appreciate you joining us today as we discuss our 2021 half year results. It is great to be able to discuss these in person. With me today are Jonathan Davis, our Group Finance Director; and Andrew Carter, our Investor Relations Director. Also joining us today are Martin Lamb, our Chairman; and Lily Heinemann, our Head of ESG and Sustainability. We'll follow our usual format for today. I'll begin with some opening messages and touch on our financial highlights. Then Jonathan will walk us through our financials in a bit more detail. I'll then return and discuss our purpose and strategy, and I'll say a few words on how we at Rotork enable a sustainable future. I'll also spend a few minutes reminding you of our growth drivers. And I'll finish with a summary and our outlook for the full year. As we progress today, if any of you that are joining via teleconference, have any questions, we would ask that you please send those questions via e-mail to Andrew Carter, our Investor Relations Director. And as we get to the Q&A session, we'll be able to relay those openly. Before we begin the formal presentation, I'd like to say a few words regarding our second RNS that you will have seen this morning regarding next year's CEO transition. I've had a great 3.5 years at Rotork so far, and I'm pleased our team has accomplished a great deal. Our returns are ahead of plan, and we've resumed our growth as evidenced by our H1 results. It's with heavy heart that I announce my intention to return with my family to the U.S. next year. But I would say, this has always been the plan at some point. The last 18 months with the global pandemic has added to our feeling of isolation and distance from our family. As my daughters are now approaching school age, we feel next year is the right time for us to relocate back home. I do certainly feel Rotork is now well positioned for the years ahead. We've built a great team, and we've improved the core processes within all aspects of our business. This, while also embarking on our multiyear operational and commercial excellence journeys. You'll still have me at the helm for up to a year from now, and I've committed to our Board that I'll support a very orderly transition when it has appointed a successor. Now let's get on to today's agenda. As you know, Rotork's purpose and sustainability vision are one and the same: keeping the world flowing for future generations. We want to help drive the transition to a cleaner future where environmental resources are used responsibly, and we have a major role to play. We do this as one team, one Rotork, with three shared values, which are listed on this slide. I would like to thank all of my colleagues worldwide for their extraordinary efforts in the first half. Thank you all for your dedication during this unpredictable and challenging time. The next slide is a reminder of how Rotork creates value for all its stakeholders. We couldn't do what we do without our customers. It's about engaging our customers and channel partners and identifying their challenges. It's about innovating and developing solutions to these problems and providing market-leading application engineering, manufacturing excellence and driving life cycle services. At Rotork, we are committed to sustainability and we are positioning ourselves to play our fullest role in enabling smart solutions to take on global sustainability challenges. We'll do this whilst providing a great working environment for our people around the world, celebrating diversity and promoting inclusivity. We're known for our financial strength, which enables us to make market-leading returns through cycles and positions us to take advantage of targeted acquisition opportunities as they arise. Let's move on to the first half performance highlights. Despite an extremely challenging operating environment, we made good progress in the half and achieved a welcomed return to growth. Our strategy of focusing our sales team on specific end markets and investing in targeted geographies and in the aftermarket activities is driving results. We were solidly cash generative despite increased investment in our facilities, IT systems and tactical inventories, and we finished the period with GBP 144 million of net cash. Despite supply chain disruption, including significantly higher logistics and commodity costs, we made further progress on our return on sales and capital. Margins rose 20 basis points to 21.8%, and return on capital employed was above 32% as we focused on continuing execution of our GAP program and responded early to inflationary pressures. We made encouraging progress on our ESG agenda, including commitments to operating responsibly, enabling a sustainable future, and making a positive social impact, as laid out in detail in our inaugural sustainability report published in June. Now let's have Jonathan walk us through our detailed first half financial results.

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everybody. 2021 continues to be affected by COVID-19, albeit in different parts of the world and in different ways from last year. And this year, its effects are combined with continued disruption to global logistics. Against this, we're pleased to report growth in orders, revenue, profits and EPS on a constant currency basis compared with the first half of last year. We're also reporting a further increase in margins and return on capital employed. Order intake in the period was 3.2% higher than H1 '20 on an organic constant currency or OCC basis. Q2 orders grew sequentially as did orders for the first half of this year over the second half of last year. Revenue was GBP 288 million, 5.7% ahead of the comparative period. Adjusted operating profit was of GBP 63 million or 6.5% higher than 2020, and margins on an OCC basis were 20 basis points higher. Adjusted operating margins were 21.8% compared to 21.6% in H1 '20 and 70 basis points higher than the pre-COVID impacted H1 '19. Adjusted earnings per share was 5.5p, a 6.4% increase. OCC results are adjusted to restate the 2021 results at 2020 exchange rates. Currency was a circa 4% headwind in the first half, reducing revenue by GBP 11 million and operating profit by GBP 2.5 million. Cash conversion was 94%, lower than in recent years, reflecting the very good working capital position at the beginning of the period and the strong trading towards the end of the period. Return on capital employed increased 150 basis points over last June to 32.2%, continuing the progress made over recent years. Following the disruption to timing of dividend payments last year, we are now back to the normal pattern. The 2.35p dividend is a 2.2% increase over the interim dividend of 2019. Revenue was up 5.7% and once again, the 3 divisions fared quite differently. CPI performed best with revenue up 15.4% after being affected most severely by COVID-19 in H1 last year. Water & Power is next with a revenue growth of 10.1%. These were partially offset by a 1.9% decline in Oil & Gas, which fell to 45% of group sales. You will recall that Oil & Gas was least affected by COVID-19 in H1 '20. Within Oil & Gas, the more resilient midstream, downstream grew in aggregate on an OCC basis, with midstream growing strongly and downstream a little lower, whilst upstream fell the most. From a regional perspective, Asia Pacific grew the strongest, up 22% with growth across all divisions. EMEA reported the largest decline in revenue, largely driven by Oil & Gas. The Americas was slightly ahead of the first half of 2020 on an OCC basis. Access to customer sites has remained patchy with COVID-19-related restrictions affecting different countries at different times through the period. Site service sales, therefore, remained at 19% of group revenue as they were in the full year 2020, but billable utilization has increased 15% and revenue per head is 14% higher. The adjusted operating profit bridge highlights the higher costs of moving components and finished goods around the world. The volume bar shows the profit generated by the 5.7% increase in revenue. This time, I'm showing the specific logistics and transaction effects column to highlight the GBP 3.9 million headwind from logistics costs and GBP 1.6 million headwind from lower transaction FX gains. The FX gains last year were exaggerated by the step change experienced by sterling as the U.K. entered the first lockdown in March 2020. Price mix then reflects the impact of commodity cost increases, net of sourcing savings and sales price increases plus the normal elements of product and geographic mix, but these were less significant in this period. In both direct costs and overheads, there was a small net increase in costs compared with the comparative period. Headcount this June was 6% lower than 12 months earlier with reductions from footprint optimization and sales back office consolidation within GAP. However, we've seen an increase in temporary and contract staff as activity rebounded in some areas. As a result of this and the acceleration of the 2021 salary increase to 1st of January from 1st of April, total people costs are fairly similar to the prior period. Many of the temporary costs identified last year, including office cleaning, PPE and other costs to manage COVID-19, have continued at similar levels. Travel costs are slightly lower than the comparative period, but this is offset by the small levels of government support received in H1 '20 in parts of the world where it couldn't be repaid that aren't repeated this year. In total, gross margin is now 46.2%, a 70 basis point decline. Adjusted operating margin is 20 basis points higher at 21.8% and 70 basis points higher than H1 2019. The OCC flow-through on an adjusted operating profit is 25% due to the impact of logistics costs and transaction FX, without which it would have been 59%. We started the year with net cash of GBP 178 million, and this reduced to GBP 144 million in the period after GBP 55 million of dividend payments with a cash conversion of 94%. Working capital in the cash flow was a GBP 6 million outflow with inventory the largest driver. This compares with a GBP 10 million inflow in H1 '20 and accounts for the lower cash conversion. Net working capital as a percentage of sales fell from 27.5% last June to 23.2% in December 2020 and is now 22.9%. We've deliberately increased inventory in some locations as a response to the logistics disruption experienced in the period. Inventory and balance sheet rates increased GBP 1.6 million in the period, and trade receivables reduced GBP 8.5 million. Reported as days sales outstanding, trade receivables were 57 days despite June being a particularly busy month. CapEx was GBP 14 million as we continued to invest in various IT and facility optimization programs, including the expansion of the Rochester factory in the U.S. The dividend payment of GBP 55 million was the combined interim and final dividend in respect to 2020, and this is the reason behind the larger-than-usual decline in cash balances in the first half of the year. Currency was an GBP 11 million headwind to revenue and GBP 2.5 million headwind to profit in the first half. If current rates of around 1.38 for the U.S. dollar and 1.17 for the euro, which we apply for the rest of the year, the full year headwind would also be around 4%. Most of the GAP initiatives have delivered the expected benefits in the first half and will continue to drive value in the second half. Footprint optimization is progressing, and we have recently announced the closure of 2 medium-sized facilities, which were the main focus for this work stream in 2021. Whilst footprint savings will be higher than 2020, our plans have been delayed in some cases by government restrictions connected with COVID-19. For procurement, the logistics and commodity cost headwinds have continued to build through the first half. Despite the efforts of the global strategic sourcing team to mitigate those headwinds, the net benefits anticipated from procurement have been eroded. The price increases and logistics recoveries, which have been implemented during the year, also helped mitigate these increased costs but are not reflected in the GAP scorecard. New product development continues to gain momentum, so benefits will be higher in 2021, although disruption to supply, where smaller batches of components are required for R&D projects, has hampered progress in some areas. Continuous improvement and lean initiatives remain on track to deliver similar levels of savings to last year. In terms of restructuring costs, we anticipate these still being in the range of GBP 4 million to GBP 5 million for the full year. In the first half, the GBP 4.1 million restructuring charge reflects GBP 5.6 million of costs, largely related to footprint optimization activity, offset by a GBP 1.6 million gain from the disposal of 2 properties. Forecast CapEx at circa GBP 25 million is expected to be similar to last year. In the first half, GBP 7.1 million of the GBP 13.7 million CapEx and IT spend has been related to ERP development costs as we build up to the first implementation later this year. We've noted the IFRIC Interpretations Committee paper on cloud computing arrangements under IAS 38. This requires certain software implementation costs related to Software as a Service to be expensed as incurred. Whilst the timing and quantum of the cash flows is unchanged, there may be a material level of costs that will be expensed and treated as exceptional like other GAP-related costs. We, in common with others, are assessing the impact of the change, and we'll update you once this is certain. Finally, tax rates have moved higher in the period for the first time in many years. The geographic mix of profits has the largest influence on this. The headline effective tax rates have increased 100 basis points and adjusted effective rates 50 basis points to 23.9%. Now turning to provide a little more detail on the divisions. Total Oil & Gas revenue was 1.9% lower than the prior period. In Asia Pacific, revenue grew overall, but were strongest in downstream. Upstream was modestly lower. Downstream growth was led by India with an increase in refinery and tank storage projects, followed by China where the spend was in refinery projects. In the Americas, sales were flat overall, but growth in upstream and midstream was offset by a decline in downstream. A focus on pipelines in North America has been gaining traction and upstream included customer spending on emission reduction related projects. EMEA saw growth in midstream, but more significant falls in both upstream and downstream meant this was the weakest region for Oil & Gas. There were no large projects to replace the relatively large ones on onshore and offshore storage, which completed in the Middle East in H1 '20. Adjusted operating profit for the division as a whole was 3.6% lower than the prior year, and margins fell 30 basis points to 21.1%. Higher logistics costs added to the headwind from lower revenue and whilst partly offset by GAP benefits and a reduced proportion of shared costs, this wasn't enough to stop margins declining. Water & Power is the most consistent division last year and has once again reported good growth in the period. Revenue was up 10.1% and all 3 regions delivered growth. EMEA saw the strongest growth, largely driven by water, but power was also positive. Water sales grew in all subregions within EMEA. Asia Pacific saw similar rates of growth in both power and water. Power sales were most positive in China, including waste-to-energy projects, but this was offset by a decline in Korea related to a refurbishment project in 2020. In the Americas, whilst water grew, power declined. The growth in water included a major water treatment works and the decline in power was the result of the being a refurbishment project in the prior period, which wasn't repeated. Adjusted operating profit climbed 5.8%. Margins fell 110 basis points to 27.1% on product mix and as Water & Power suffered a disproportionate amount of the higher logistics costs and product mix was a headwind. It also bore an increased share of common costs, reflecting higher sales. And all of these factors combined to produce a fall in net margins despite continued savings from various GAP initiatives. CPI had a very strong first half. Revenue grew in all regions and in all subsectors, producing a combined 15.4% increase compared with H1 '20. Asia Pacific saw the strongest growth for CPI with most end markets ahead. Control valve OEMs in China serving process markets, mining and the chemical sector throughout Asia Pacific all grew. In the Americas, revenue grew double digits in all 3 subsectors despite naval and marine markets being subdued. EMEA sales grew a fraction with COVID-19 continuing to impact some customers. Adjusted operating profit was 27.8% higher and margins improved 250 basis points to 25.4%. The higher revenue, combined with a positive product mix and GAP savings,, was more than enough to offset the higher share of common costs and a slight logistics headwind. With GBP 144 million of net cash at the end of the period, it's probably worth a word or 2 about our capital allocation framework. The priorities for use of cash are, firstly, to reinvest in the core business for growth. Secondly, to maintain our progressive dividend policy. Thirdly, to make targeted investments in the flow control space in order to expand. Secondly, to maintain our progressive dividend policy. Thirdly, to make targeted investments in the flow control space in order to expand our core. And lastly, and after consideration of future needs where we consider cash to be excess, to return it to shareholders. Our preferred method of returning excess cash in the future is currently via share buyback. We have been actively looking at M&A this year and have been involved in a couple of processes. However, multiples remain escalated, particularly when a target has started an auction process. And by maintaining our fiscal discipline, we've not been successful to date. We continue to favor proprietary conversations as the best approach to M&A. So in summary, we've made good progress in the first half and seen growth in revenue, margins, dividends and return on capital employed. We have net cash of GBP 144 million and look forward to continuing to develop Rotork for the benefit of all its stakeholders. Areas of focus for the second half are clear with the need to manage the supply chain and mitigate cost pressures paramount whilst continuing to grow. I'll now hand back to Kevin.

Thank you, Jonathan. Before we turn to the near and midterm outlook, I wanted to talk more about our purpose and strategy and how Rotork is working to enable a sustainable future. This slide shows how our purpose, strategy and targets fit together. To deliver our purpose, we want to enable a sustainable future in collaboration with our customers and suppliers. To deliver our purpose, we need to build on our strengths, our industry-leading position, our brand and reputation and our product and service offerings. We're building a great organization who believe in our purpose, share our values and passion, and who strive to excel as part of a winning and high-performance team. You'll recognize this as one of the pillars of our Growth Acceleration Program: talent and culture. Of course, we would not be successfully keeping the world flowing for future generations if we couldn't grow over time whilst delivering higher returns and building the cyclical resilience required to operate in the markets that we serve. This is where the other pillars of GAP come in: commercial excellence, operational excellence and IT and core business processes. Finally, we have our capital allocation strategy, which Jonathan has just spoken about. Putting it all together, we strive to play our part in improving the world by seizing opportunities to progress sustainable development, helping our customers improve their environmental performance, and continuing to focus on our own environmental footprint. We believe we can do this and deliver mid- to high single-digit revenue growth over time through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions. We also continue to target mid-20s adjusted operating margins through simplifying our core business, manufacturing improvements and development of our global supply chain. Our Growth Acceleration Program, which we began to implement in the second half of 2018, is designed to deliver these targets, and we have made further good progress in development of our global supply chain. Our Growth Acceleration Program, which we began to implement in the second half of 2018, is designed to deliver these targets, and we have made further good progress in 2021 so far. The 5-year program is about refining how we do things, building on our strong foundations through people, processes and systems. Next, I'd like to describe some ways Rotork can enable a more sustainable future. This slide highlights 4 major areas where we can help. There are plenty more, and I'd point you to our recently published sustainability report if you'd like to explore further and read through some really great case studies. There are numerous ways that Rotork products can be used by customers to reduce emissions. One emission that has been in the spotlight recently is methane. Methane causes more global warming than CO2, and methane emission avoidance using capital equipment such as ours, in many cases, has a near immediate payback. I'm pleased to report that we're already seeing a pickup in sales related to emissions reduction, notably from U.S. upstream customers. The Oil & Gas sector itself is a major generator of greenhouse gas emissions. Electrification is key to reducing these gases and Rotork is the world's leader in electric actuation. The most modern electric-powered facilities have significantly lower emissions and are big users of electric actuators. One example is the giant Johan Sverdrup oil field off the coast of Norway. This oil field emits a tiny fraction of the CO2 of a traditional oilfield through being electrified. Rotork is proud to be the sole provider of electric actuators to the project, which is now moving on to phase 2. Hydrogen has long been seen as having great potential as an alternative fuel. It appears its time has come, and we have a big part to play as hydrogen processes are valve and actuator intensive. We are working with a number of hydrogen production equipment manufacturers around the world. Hydrogen production requires equipment, which is explosion-proof and provides precision control such as Rotork's. Finally, a sustainable world will have to significantly improve its management of precious water resources. We can help here in many areas, including safety and quality, leak reduction and water treatment and recycling. Electrification is a mega trend in the water sector as well. Earlier this year, we won work modernizing and electrifying 3 large water treatment plants in New Zealand, upgrading expensive to maintain and inefficient pneumatic actuators with our electric IQ3s. As a father of 3 daughters, I'm hugely passionate about the role we can play to support sustainability, both in terms of the opportunities it presents to accelerate our growth, but also on a deeply personal level. I do want to personally feel I've played my part in helping solve sustainability challenges for future generations. Turning then to our market outlook for the remainder of the year. Starting with Oil & Gas. Hydrocarbon prices have recently made multiyear highs. Up until less than 60 days ago, prices were largely supported by supply-side controls. In the last few weeks, the situation has changed with prices now supported by returning demand as economies come out of lockdown. It is important to recognize that industry spend is driven by the demand or consumption side of the equation. Our Oil & Gas division is well positioned to respond as any sustained pickup in demand will lead to increase in customer spending. In the meantime, service work is coming back and we are starting to see environmental-related activity picking up, such as project to reduce methane emissions. Water & Power is benefiting from increased global water infrastructure investment, which is expected to continue. In Power, we continue to see opportunities for refurbishment of the installed base as well as good activity in smaller but high potential markets, such as waste-to-energy and district heating. CPI, now our second largest division in terms of sales, has good momentum entering H2 with emissions and environment-related sectors active as well as targeted end markets such as basic materials and technology. Although visibility is less than in our other divisions reflecting CPI's smaller order book and higher proportion of short-cycle sales, CPI delivered an outstanding first half. We introduced this slide to you in March, and I think it's well worth sharing again. It shows the medium-term drivers of growth we have identified and are striving to secure. The foundations of our growth are the mega trends of automation, electrification and digitalization and in being easier to do business with. There is no point having great automation solutions if our lead times are too long. The growth drivers we have identified remain end market alignment, the aftermarket, high-growth regions, innovation and new product development and adjacencies. All of these have contributed to the resumption of growth in H1 and the momentum we are seeing in the business, most evident in Water & Power and CPI. Turning then to our summary and guidance. We made great progress in H1, including a welcomed return to growth and an improvement in margins and return on capital despite supply chain disruption and the significant headwinds of commodity costs and logistics. We also made great progress on the nonfinancial side, committing to our purpose and to enabling a sustainable future and publishing our inaugural sustainability report. Work continues at pace on additional nonfinancial reporting such as TCFD and on developing our net zero target. Our growth acceleration program is on track with the benefits of work continues at pace on additional nonfinancial reporting, such as TCFD and on developing our net zero target. Our Growth Acceleration Program is on track with the benefits of earlier commercial excellence actions such as end market alignment focused on high-growth regions and the aftermarket, apparent in our H1 revenue performance. We kept the momentum on our operational excellence with the step-up of supply chain initiatives, the announcement of further footprint consolidation and additional investments in our U.S. and U.K. operations. These targeted investments will drive dramatically reduced lead times for our customers whilst further reducing the environmental impacts within our supply chain. Investment in our IT and core business processes continued at pace and our first ERP deployment is scheduled for Q4. We remain committed to delivering mid- to high single-digit revenue growth and mid-20s adjusted operating margins over time. Before answering your questions, I'll read you the guidance we published today. We anticipate 2021 to be a year of progress on a constant currency basis, whilst mindful of the risks of additional COVID-19 disruption and of continuing component shortages. With this, Jonathan and I would be delighted to answer your questions. And for those of you in the audience live today, if you would, please stand up to the microphone as we, for COVID reasons, can't pass microphones between individuals. That's very helpful.

It's Andrew Wilson from JPMorgan. I'm sure you can hear me now. I've got 3 questions actually all about end markets. You mentioned on Oil & Gas, obviously, the oil price being a bit more supported by demand and supply. And I was just wondering if that was coming through in the conversations and, I guess, indications that you were getting from customers maybe towards the end of the quarter, just thinking about kind of what that might imply for when we see an improvement in orders, if I start there.

Will we take it?

Yes. I think the answer, Andy, is, yes, we're beginning to see those conversations recommence. We're beginning to, as you say, the fact that the price is now being supported by demand not just throttling back supply, the customers are beginning to think about initiating or restarting some of the projects that maybe were put on the back burner. But it is, I think, at this stage, it is conversations rather than orders. Back earlier in the year, we said we anticipated Oil & Gas to be something that would potentially pick up towards the back end of this year rather than as we've seen with CPI much, much quicker. And that's really the judgment in terms of this year is when those conversations will lead to orders and we will see a pickup. Will it be soon enough this year to affect revenue this year or will it be later in the year and, therefore, really just carry forward into 2022.

I think one of the things you'll also see, Andy, is that there's this artificial lag created by the fact that we've got to reprice a lot of that business. right? If that business was put on the shelf a year ago, as you've seen that escalating commodity, we have to take that time to reprice that business to be effective, right? So I think that's part of the thing that will also drive a little time delay here.

Maybe just to clarify. I mean, you're not seeing any change in kind of competitive dynamics there. I mean, this is just taking time for this to basically [indiscernible] and projects to be started, et cetera?

That's correct. We do keep a key -- keen eye on our competitors, and we feel, again, we're gaining rather than losing at this point.

And then I wanted to ask on Water & Power and I guess more specifically on Water, given that, that business didn't really -- didn't really have much of a bad period. It's surprising to me, at least, how strong it's been in the first half of this year. And I guess on Water, more generally, kind of can you talk a little bit about sort of competitively how you feel your positioned? Because it feels like for a long time, we sort of talked about Rotork making progress in water. But over the last few years, particularly, it feels like kind of gone over the top a little bit in terms of what you've been out there. So just interested in kind of, I guess, if that's a fair interpretation.

Yes. I think there's a few contributing factors. The first being that end market alignment. And we've talked about this before that as we've pivoted to have water experts within our domain here at Rotork, we're learning how to sell better to those water customers and how to sell on overall cost lifetime value, right? And we have really great advantages over the competitors in this area. So as we go and sell on that lifetime and that 5-year cost of ownership, we're significantly better off than our competitors. And as we begin to win, we're taking those wins through our database. We mapped those, our value-selling database, and we then transfer them all over the world to our water teams now. And that's really driving some momentum in the Water business for us. We've also spent a lot of time understanding the positioning of our products within the Water business and understanding where the IQ and the premium position fits with some of the other actuators we have in the portfolio. So clear delineation of the value propositions at each level within the Water business has also helped. We've transferred some manufacturing of some of these into low-cost regions for consumption in that region to take advantage of the fact that in India and China, quite often, they want that actuator to be made in region. So there's not one thing driving the Water business. There's a lot of things that we've done in the last several years. We've added lots of resources to targeted water markets. Certainly, we've done that in the Middle East. We've done that in Latin America. And certainly, throughout Asia. So it's about adding resources, understanding better value propositions and seeing that through and communicating in all regions of the world how we're winning, and that's just driving the acceleration.

And third question is just actually -- it's a similar kind of thing to what you just mentioned towards the end there. If you sort of go through the release rather than the presentation, quite a lot of detail on some of the, I guess, we would almost say like new or adjacent markets for Rotork kind of outside of what we've sort of talked about for last 10, 15 years or so. Just interested in terms of resourcing and the need for you to invest more and the ability to invest more in some of those areas? Because it feels like some of those areas, if we look at the numbers that come improved quite strongly. So interested in just in terms of how much incremental investment or how much incremental investment you want to make in some of those areas?

Look, you're really talking handfuls of individuals, and this is about the separation and putting in place people in the business development role. So we've done that in Asia. Within each one of our markets, we now have heads of business development. So within each 1 of those 3 market segments, we've put in place business development leaders that their entire job is to find new applications that Rotork wasn't in 3 years ago, 4 years ago, 5 years ago. And I'm pleased to say that as we just recently presented our strategy to our Board back in July, we were able to articulate very specific wins in waste-to-energy and battery manufacturing in data centers that we weren't in 5 years ago, right? And it's really as a result of putting additional front-end resources into the business in many regions around the world that we felt were going to be the higher growth ones and then translating that to great value propositions and getting the order. And then frankly, pleasing the hell out of the customer to get that next order. Waste-to-energy is a great example because I would say this time last year, we probably had 1 and then we got 2 and then 3 and then 4. And now we're expect is the largest waste to energy manufacturer. So we feel really good about that, that planning the seed through business development and then once we get the Rotork value proposition in, we're able to maintain that and grow it.

Mark Davies Jones at Stifel. Can we move from top line to margins, please? Can we have a little work through the bridge, likely bridge, for the second half in terms of the moving parts? Obviously, some of the pricing benefits should be greater in the second half. But how about some of the mix issues, specifically in Water & Power, you said lower refurb activity in the U.S., and I think you've cited that as a big margin driver within that division in the past. So is that temporary? Does that come back? What are the moving parts should we think about?

There are a number of moving parts for sure, Mark. I think the big ones are obviously, as you rightly say, we have the benefit of price increases that we've made midyear this year that will come through more substantially in the second half. We still have elements of commodity cost headwind that will come through offsetting some of that. Obviously, as we see that lag between the implementation of a price increase amongst our supply base not coming into inventory and then the way you account for the inventory, that flow into P&L at a later stage. So those -- the aim of those price increases is to continue to balance that as we go through the rest of the year. I don't think we're anticipating any change in the environment as far as logistics costs go. So they remain escalated in all probability through the remainder of the year. Price/mix, as you talk mix in terms of Water & Power, the second half comps still have some element of those power station refurbishments projects in, but we don't currently have any of those in the second half of this year. So that's a headwind for the Water & Power division once again in the second half. And then in terms of investment in other areas, we've talked about new ERP system going live in second half of the year. We will see some ramp up in terms of people for that implementation program to start as the one this year is the first of many to come, as well as, in all probability, some level of amortization of the cost of the development, which will kick in when we get to that going live as well. That piece is the bit that's covered by the IAS 38 and changes the...

That's going to be exceptional for you, you think?

The whole rejigging of what that looks like in terms of balance sheet and P&L, yes, will be exceptional. And I think in all probability, the scale of the numbers at any point when you're investing in Software as a Service as part of our Growth Acceleration Program, that will be going through exceptional. We'll come back to that one when we're clear what it means in our particular cases. We have quite a complex mix within the 365 of some Software-as-a-Service, some on-premises elements to it. So it's why it wasn't possible to quantify at this time.

Fair enough. And the positive mix effects in CPI, is that ongoing through the second half as far as you can see it today?

There's a lot of moving parts in terms of mix with CPI, both in terms of the breadth of end markets and the breadth of our products that go into it. I'm not sure I see a dramatic change in mix, either positive or negative, for the second half.

Okay. Can I ask one slightly different one, perhaps rather longer term one for Kevin. Oil & Gas, you're talking about things picking up, investment increasing as demand increases, which is fair enough. But in the mining sector over the last year or 2, we've seen commodity prices move up hugely, demand moving up hugely and spending remaining very curtailed, particularly those big miners refusing to do the big CapEx programs they might normally have done. Was the risk we see something similar in Oil & Gas and the sort of sustainability agenda holds back those big investment decisions?

I'd split that into two parts, right? I think, if anything, the sustainability agenda will spur investment. A great example is Canadian firm TC Energy, right? They just did an announcement about 48 hours ago, talking about a massive investment in electrification of their pipelines, right? They're currently using pneumatic actuation on those pipelines and venting gas to the air. And that gets dramatically more expensive as [ the fines ] for doing that triple and quadruple over the next couple of years. So they put out a press release 48 hours ago that talked about the need to dramatically use renewable energy, wind and solar to drive electric actuation and change their pipelines from that pneumatic piece to dramatically reduce that because the cost and the payback, while it will cost them billions to do that, the payback in cost avoidance from the fines is just a great payback. And obviously, they'll wrap that in a very green wrapper, if you think of it that way. I think what we've seen so far in the Oil & Gas rebound, and certainly in North America, has been a CapEx-like rebound, right? And you can imagine, when you took a lot of capacity off-line, when you shut a lot of rigs down, the rigs that you put back on first are your most productive newest equipment, right? You don't start putting back online everything. It is the stuff. So what you've seen is, while Oil & Gas -- and remember, the U.S. North American Shale certainly are profitable above $40 a barrel. So you're trading at $70 a barrel. That's really good business for them right now. So they put on their most productive assets. And frankly, they're using a lot of that great cash flow, record cash flow, by the way, right now to pay down the debt and to get themselves out of the issue that they had encountered last year. So they're not spending a great deal in CapEx in the short term. As that demand continues, and continues to support that price consumption, as they put the rest of that equipment back online, that's when you'll start seeing a more meaningful CapEx spend. The second area you'll see it is in the takeaway capacity. If you remember, when we entered into COVID in 2020, there was lots of articles that detailed the dramatic need for additional takeaway capacity in the Americas, lots of pipelines needed. We did really, really well in midstream in the Americas last year. We're doing really well in midstream in the Americas this year. And that pipeline capacity is certainly coming online and will continue for the next several years. There's some great data out there, the number of additional pipelines required for the Americas, and it's a massive amount of new pipelines for takeaway capacity. So again, that's an area in midstream that we really participate in. So I think we feel overall really good about what's ahead of us in Oil & Gas despite still this short-term pause in spending. It's just starting. I think we're seeing good sequential improvement through the first half. And hopefully, that will continue into the second half and then be overlaid with some of the larger projects finally getting released.

We've got a handful of questions from the analysts that couldn't make it so I'll run through those perhaps directing it, if I may, to who I think perhaps is best to answer. So the first 2 questions are from Xingzhou Lu at UBS and perhaps the first one for you, Jonathan, maybe partly answered. But the question on power. Xing asks, "It seems to be flattish in both Europe and Americas. And I think you are still delivering on some orders you took in 2019. If you look at your current order backlog in pace of recent orders, how should we think about growth in the next couple of years."