The Weir Group PLC (WEIR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. So welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Before we kick off, I'd just like to start with a few safety and housekeeping points. So the fire exits are here at either side of the stage. And there is no planned alarms. So if one sounds, please follow the instructions from our host at UBS. And can I also please ask you to put your mobile phone to silent for the duration of the event. . So thank you for joining us at our first of 2 capital markets spotlight events that we are holding over the remainder of the year. It's great to see so many of you here in person after so long. Today, we are focusing on growth and our performance excellence transformation program. And at the end of November, we'll come back and talk about technology and sustainability. Our purpose today is to demonstrate that Weir is a very different group to the one of the past with a compelling value creation opportunity. Over the past few years, we've completed the transformation to become a focused mining technology leader and sold our businesses in other verticals. So why did we do that? First, it positions us strongly for long-term sustainable growth. Mining is going to offer high growth potential for decades ahead driven by demand for metals that will enable the global transition to net zero, such as copper, nickel and lithium. Our aftermarket, which represents around 75% of revenues, is driven by tons of ore processed and is largely inelastic to the mining CapEx and commodity price cycles and therefore highly resilient. Our special culture of customer intimacy and entrepreneurial mindset means we'll continue to expand our addressable market over time through multiple organic growth initiatives, which will only accelerate as the mining industry embraces new technologies. And second, we can focus solely on further strengthening and leveraging our unique capabilities and high barriers to entry, which are significant differentiators. We bring world-class engineering, innovation and manufacturing capability to solve our customers' most difficult challenges. We're deeply embedded within our customers' operations and supply chains with local day-to-day relationships complemented increasingly by strategic global collaboration. The combination of our intellectual property, leading brands, customer intimacy and vertically integrated regional operating platform means we benefit from a large captive installed base of trusted mission-critical equipment. So we now have a focused business. We're playing in the right spaces, and we have the right to win. The last couple of years have presented challenges, but they're now behind us, and I believe we're at an inflection point where we're poised to deliver on the great opportunities that we've created as the new Weir. Our commitments are simple and clear. We will grow faster than our markets, delivering compounding growth in mid- to high single digits through the cycle. We will deliver operating margin expansion through operational leverage and our new performance excellence program, which in time will take us beyond our 2023 target of 17%. And we will clearly convert our earnings growth into cash and returns and deploy it in line with our capital allocation policy. At the same time, we'll remain highly resilient, as demonstrated by the 7% CAGR in our minerals aftermarket since 2011, and we'll deliver all of the above in the right way, eliminating harm in our operations and communities and with clear commitments to emission reductions in our end-to-end value chain. With that introduction, the agenda for the rest of the session is going to demonstrate how we will deliver those excellent outcomes. First, I'll provide a little bit more color on our positioning, the long-term market fundamentals and our strategy. Then Andrew and Ricardo will spotlight some of the growth opportunities in ESCO and Minerals respectively, before John sets out how our performance excellence program will underpin our continuing operating margin expansion journey. We're going to be sharp and focused with our prepared comments, leaving plenty of time for Q&A. And for those in attendance, there'll be an opportunity to mingle and ask further questions of the team informally at the end. So metals power the world. They are the backbone of modern society and critical to a low-carbon future. Everything you see around you in this room was either dug out of the ground or grown. Recycling will have a part to play, but the extraction of significantly more resources from the earth will be utterly essential to avoid the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change. But for that to happen, the mining industry needs to evolve to become ever more smart, efficient and sustainable. So our purpose as a business is really clear. We're going to be a leader in enabling this journey for our customers and our world. Today, we have a great business and a fantastic platform for growth. We're now focused on mining and focused -- focusing our engineering expertise on solving our customers' most important challenges. We have built-in resilience. Our razor/razor blade business model means predictable growth in revenues right through the cycle. 77% of revenues are from the aftermarket, which is -- as we've seen over the years, is highly inelastic to CapEx and commodity price cycles as it's driven by tonnes of ore processed. We are truly global embedded in mining operations and supply chains all around the world and serving thousands of different mines. And we have strong exposure to the future-facing commodities that will drive the net zero transition accounting for about 50% of revenues with today, the majority of the world's copper being processed using Weir technology. Market drivers for our mining-focused business are very strong. The forces of population growth and urbanization continue, but will be overtaken by the increase in demand for metals needed to generate, transmit and store renewable energy on a massive scale. These metals will need to be produced using more sustainable technologies to reduce the environmental and social impact of mining. But that's against the backdrop of ore bodies that are more challenging to develop and declining ore grades leading to ever higher demands on ore handling and processing equipment. Of course, our customers know this. And in this cycle, are starting from a position of strength as they lean into these challenges, pursuing expansion to fill supply gaps after almost a decade of underinvestment, focusing on technology to help drive productivity. Recognizing water is a critical issue in both water-rich and water stress locations and driving emissions reductions by replacing diesel and other fossil fuel energy dependencies but also reducing energy intensity in load haul, the mill circuit and transport and tailings. We hope that we'll see large-scale expansions emerging and accelerating to meet the need for more supply. But if that's not the case, we'll see an even higher intensity on brownfield, which is the sweet spot for our aftermarket and integrated solutions and an equally significant market opportunity. So however the supply side deficit is resolved, Weir is in a win-win position. Now I've shown you this graphic before that shows where our products and solutions operate in the mine, but a flat image like this doesn't really do it justice and so we wanted to bring it to life. Mines are big, really big. Some of the large pits are over a kilometer deep, and the material is transported huge distances to the concentrator and tailings ponds. Most operate 24/7 with an average copper mine running 150,000 tonnes of ore per day. That's 1,500 passes of the cable shovel, 500 haul truck round trips and a nonstop process to keep the process plant running every day. The process plant is a finely tuned continuous operation that requires constant monitoring, and it's hugely disruptive to stop it, which creates a level of operational stress and intensity that is just really difficult to imagine. And that's why Weir is a mission-critical partner to our customers, and we've tried to bring that to life in this short video. [Presentation]

So I hope that gives you a good sense [indiscernible] how from pit to plant our smart, efficient, sustainable solutions are there, keeping production going, 24 hours a day, every day of the year. So that's what we do now on to how we do it and a reminder of our razor/razor blade business model. We focus first on mission-critical equipment, equipment that's reliable and keeps production running. If our equipment stops, the mine stops. We bring innovative engineering, building leading brands that create an installed base and secure aftermarket. And proof of that is our 90%-plus customer retention rate. We choose highly abrasive applications in the harshest environments on earth. And while we have the toughest equipment on the market, it does eventually wear out, creating an attractive and stable aftermarket revenue stream. We offer the best service network. So we're there for our customers, and they know they can 100% rely on us. Taken together, this creates a resilient and predictable business with inherent pricing power, insulating us against inflation and operating in markets with highly attractive drivers. And here's that business model in action, delivering 7% CAGR in minerals aftermarket revenues over the past decade. We've seen phases of growth and phases of resilience. In growth phases, we benefit from a step-up in installed base. And in resilience phases, we see the benefit of stable ore processing even when CapEx and commodity prices declined significantly. For example, between 2014 and 2016, the price of copper gradually fell to below $2 a pound, and all that happened was that our aftermarket revenues leveled off and our operating margins increased. It's proven and it works. And I'm also extremely pleased with the way that ESCO has proven similar resilience since acquisition. Our go-forward strategy is very clear and simple and sets out to deliver excellent outcomes for all stakeholders. For people, our laser focus is on safety and creating a culture that attracts the best people and makes them want to stay and do the best work of their lives. For customers, staying embedded in their operations and going the extra mile to solve their biggest challenges and helping the industry to deliver on its priorities; in technology, investing in the transformational R&D that will enhance customer value propositions, including digital and new business models; and on performance, delivering excellence across everything we do, driving quality and earnings for our shareholders and the best outcomes for people and the planet. So, we have huge conviction in the significant opportunity that Weir has to create value for all of its stakeholders. And for the rest of today, we're going to demonstrate that by focusing on the building blocks of our growth and margin expansion targets. And as I said earlier, we'll have a follow-up event in November, focusing on technology and sustainability. But first, let's put the spotlight on ESCO's growth initiatives. Over to you, Andrew.

Okay. Thank you, John, and good afternoon, everybody. Having led the acquisition and integration of ESCO back in 2018 prior to becoming division President just over 2 years ago, it's fantastic to see the business deliver and the potential, we could see it had. We achieved cost synergies ahead of schedule, increased margin in the region of 600 basis points, and we'll have grown revenue at an average rate of over 6% in the 5-year period to December. So ESCO has delivered, and there's much more to come. The next phase will be to deliver on our transformation from a GET parts provider to a production partner, which I'll explain in detail today. But first, here's a reminder about ESCO. ESCO technology makes customers more sustainable and productive. We focus on the load haul cycle, one of the most energy-intensive parts of the mine, and we're establishing ourselves as an enabler of our customers' net zero ambitions. We are experts in metallurgy and our products are differentiated by their extended wear life, reduced carbon footprints and lowest total cost of ownership. And we've added motion metrics fast-evolving digital capability, giving customers data-driven insights to optimize their operations. We are a critical partner for our customers. Our sales and service network, often now shared with minerals, gives them access to mining expandables and our highly qualified experts to keep their operations running. We are the global leader in mining and ground engaging tools, or GET, with a share of 45%. Building from our routes in North America, we now lead in every major mining region of the world. However, there's still lots to do as we continue to win share and address geographical gaps in our footprint. With our other mining products, we have strength at regional or product levels, and each offers expansion opportunities. Within infrastructure, we serve customers in the quarry, aggregates, dredge and large construction markets with particular strength in North America and Europe and opportunities for further growth in Australia, Latin America and Africa. So turning to growth, where I'm going to focus on opportunities in mining. We have a number of initiatives, which will support our ambition to outgrow our markets, which we expect to grow at an average rate of 3% per annum over the next 5 years. Firstly, geographical expansion as we fill in the gaps in our footprint and equalize our market share in each region. Secondly, technology, where we continue to develop new materials and explore expansion into new areas such as underground mining. And third, our product growth initiatives, packaging our core mining GET, mining buckets and digital capability as we transition from product supplier to production partner, unlocking a significant market opportunity. This is what I'm going to shine the spotlight on today. The load haul cycle involves loading ore from the pit to the haul truck and transporting it to the process plant. This is hugely energy-intensive. Each part of a large cable shovel carries around 100 tonnes of rock while each truck carries 300 tonnes and can travel tens of miles each cycle. ESCO's GET and buckets can maximize throughput, improving truck utilization, reducing idling times and the number of trucks required, all of which drives down emissions for the customer and increases our profitability. Our products are designed to address our customers' biggest priorities, including dig efficiency, using as little energy as possible to achieve a full bucket load in each pass; maximizing uptime through enhanced durability and wear life; and Pass matching, matching the bucket capacity to truck body capacity to reduce fill times. I might play you a short video, where my colleague, Kevin, talks about how our unique capabilities in this area are unlocking opportunities.

Hi, I'm Kevin Stangeland, Vice President of Global Products and Engineering at Weir ESCO. Mining attachments and ground engaging tools are critical components in improving efficiency and optimizing the load haul dump circuit within the mine. Each component is highly engineered to help make mining more sustainable. At ESCO, we are helping the industry address this challenge. Unlike many of our competitors, our focus is exclusively on the front end of the mining machine and its effect on the overall mine efficiency, Weir ESCO has a leading position in GET. Our highly skilled engineers design a packaged bucket and GET solution that are optimized to suit the specific processes and digging conditions at any mine site in the world. In doing so, we maximize dig efficiency, minimize maintenance and provide lower total cost of ownership for our customers. So what's our approach? We continually analyze rock, soil and digging conditions at many mine sites and model how the bucket digs and fills. This approach allows us to maximize the payload of each digging machine while also looking to optimize the complete load and haul system by accurately matching the capacity of the bucket with the truck body. Given load and haul is one of the most energy-intensive parts of the mine with diesel trucks accounting for over 40% of energy used in a typical iron ore mine, this is critical for both efficiency and sustainability. We use digital analytical tools such as discrete element modeling and finite element analysis to optimize the geometry, minimize weight and maximize capacity of our buckets to reduce dig energy and increase payload. Using these tools, we have seen up to 15% improved dig efficiency over other providers' buckets. One of the ESCO's greatest strengths is our ability to model stress and wear on a bucket and correlate this to real-world conditions. This capability means we can engineer buckets that are lighter, more efficient and longer lasting. With the acquisition of Motion Metrics, we're also bringing digital insights to improve bucket performance with tailored monitoring, fragmentation analysis and boulder detection. Combining these digital insights with our leading GET and bucket designs has created packaged solutions that significantly increase the productivity for our mining customers. In summary, at ESCO, we have more resources looking at this part of the process than anyone in the industry. And our deep-rooted mining knowledge and engineering capabilities put us in a unique position to help our customers make their operations smarter, more efficient and sustainable.

So putting all this together, we're now starting to work with our customers in different ways and having different conversations with them, understanding our biggest challenges and collaborating with them to develop and provide solutions which address these issues. This is, however, unlocking the opportunity to move to production partnership model rather than selling individual components. And that means we financially benefit from the productivity gains we deliver and embed ourselves further in the customers' operations as a critical partner. So we're uniquely placed, and with an estimated addressable market of around GBP 1.7 billion, we're excited about the opportunity. Breaking that market down, around half is GET and GBP 400 million is buckets, both of which are well established, while we estimate over GBP 500 million is digital. Looking at each area in more detail, in GET, as I said earlier, we have around 45% market share. This compares the combined share of around 30% with the major digger manufacturers or OEMs and a 25% share for independent. We win in that market due to our superior technology, ensuring the lowest total cost of ownership, alongside of exclusive focus on the front end of the machine and our differentiated global sales and service offering. In buckets, the market is different with the OEMs serving around 55%, largely reflecting first-fit buckets on new machines. The remaining 45% is highly fragmented between ourselves and independents focused on the replacement cycle. It's in this space, where we win by growing quickly to our 5% share today, leveraging our technology and global reach. This differentiates us from these independent players who focus on me-too offerings. In digital, within the load haul space, the market is fast emerging. Our estimates are that, today, it's a potential GBP 500 million opportunity for our offering. It's growing fast, and with our leading artificial intelligence capability and early mover advantage, we believe we're well placed. Looking across the combined landscape, no other supplier offers the same combination of market-leading hardware and differentiated digital technology. Our leading position in GET, ability to package our offering and the sizable proven benefits this delivers for our customers gives us confidence in our ability to win. I'm now going to showcase our recent success in buckets which has been a strategic priority for us since 2019. Our revenues this year are forecast to be double that of 2019, and our ambition is to double again by 2025. Our success has predominantly been in the replacement cycle, and with over 9,000 buckets in use and a replacement cycle of around 5 years, this represents hundreds of opportunities each year to convert the competitor bucket, turn into our digital side and Motion Metrics. We'll tell you much more about the technology later in the year, including how we're exploring its use in the Minerals division. But today, I want to pre-tail some of the commercial highlights. The reason Motion Metrics first appealed to us was the world-class artificial intelligence and 3D rugged camera technology and the clear productivity benefits this could deliver for customers when integrated with our existing offering. We can see the potential, and we have not been disappointed. Being year 1, it's clearly early days, but the customer response has been fantastic. Since acquisition, we've grown our pipeline by more than 70%. And this year, we're forecasting revenues to be around GBP 20 million, which is more than double last year. So now on to a case study from a large platinum mine in Africa. We were putting the production partnership model into action. We've been providing GET to the customer for over 12 years. However, back in 2020, we started to look at the process optimization in the load haul cycle. Through our detailed understanding of the customers' operations and the knowledge we've gained from supplying GET, we designed and delivered 3 buckets with increased load capacity and improved wear life and a low weight ESCO LIP, which has significant dig efficiency benefits. They came into operation earlier this year, and the statistics speak for themselves. Pass matching has reduced from 4% to 3%. Average bucket payload has increased by over 20%, and our latest generation of GET is delivering over 10% longer life and we've become the sole supplier of GET to the mine. And all this is being delivered with availability over 95% and bucket campaign life matching the customers' targets. Earlier this year, we also integrated Motion Metrics fragmentation analysis and GET loss detection. Combined, these systems continually capture performance insights and are delivering tangible productivity benefits. Through our production partnership model, ESCO is financially rewarded for delivering these benefits, and we're also embedding ourselves deeper in customer operations as they come to rely upon us as a critical production partner. So in summary, ESCO is a fantastic business and is delivering against the great potential we saw at the time of acquisition. We've won market share, growing revenues and expanded margins. Our products are market leading, and we've complemented that with Motion Metrics' leading digital capability. Our differentiated offering is making our customers more productive, and we're being rewarded for delivering those benefits with our new production partnership model. Looking forward, I'm really excited about our growth and confident in our ability to outgrow our markets. Thank you. I'll now pass you on to Ricardo.

Thank you, Andrew, and good afternoon, everybody. I've been in this business 42 years. And I am incredibly proud to be part of the team, which has built our world class business. Third time, we will -- I've lived through numerous mining cycles and seen many changes, but never have been more excited about the growth opportunities which lie ahead. Innovation is in our blood. And today, I'm going to shine a spotlight on how we are redefining the mill circuit. Let me start with the remainder of the division. Minerals uses mining expertise and differentiated technology to make mining more efficient and sustainable and is driving growth ahead of our markets. We predominantly support the mining processing plant, normally called the mill circuit. Our equipment is used in the combination process, which involves dry crushing and the wet part of the process from mills through rotation and tailings to concentrate. This is the most abrasive part of the mine and is hugely energy-intensive. We respond by providing customers with equipment that's more reliable, lasts longer, has a lower carbon footprint than our competitors. We are the global leaders in slurry pumps with our Warman brand, have leading positions across other parts of the [indiscernibles] including cycles, rubber liners and dewatering pumps. Within combination, our business today is corporately small but represents a significant growth opportunity. Weir's razor/razor blade business model is at our core with every sale of original equipment, creating a large aftermarket annuity revenue stream. Our aftermarket is mostly driven by demand for spare parts, which is linked to ore production. Put simply, as long as the process plant is running, mines need spare parts. Our unrivaled global service network gives customers access to mission-critical spare parts and expertise 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We have a number of gold leading brands. The biggest today is Warman, represented around 50% of our revenues. Our growth to become global leader has been underpinned by our customer focus, technology and global presence, and we have grown the installed base by many times since acquisition. Warman pumps are used to move slurry in all processes from the mill through the tailings. Slurry is a combination of water and rocks, and it's created when water is added during grinding. This is the only way to move rocks when they come out of the mill. Slurry is abrasive. It is about 40% water than 60% stones and weighs 3x to 4x more than water on its own. That's why it has a significant impact on the life of key components. When we move through the inside of the pump at 4 to 5 meters per second, the stores get abrasion and eroding internal components of the pump. The hydration drives demand for aftermarket spare parts, mainly liners and impellers. Our philosophy and achievement with Warman give us a strong framework and great experience as we build other franchises and pursue our growth ambitions. Looking at our growth initiatives, we have several geographical expansion opportunities, mostly in Central Africa, the Australia Pilbara and in Central and Southeast Asia. We have digital and technology opportunities. So look at ways to redefine and control existing processes and make them more efficient. However, what I want to talk about today is how we are redefining the mill circuit. This is one of the most energy-intensive part of the mine. Through our sustainable solutions such as the high-pressure grinding roles, coupled with digital insights on the Synertrex, which is our proprietary digital control and data acquisition platform, we are redefining the process, increasing throughput and reducing waste and energy consumption. This slide shows a simplified schematic of a standard mill circuit. The process reduces rocks to 0.10 of a millimeter, so minerals can be liberated in the rotation source later in the process. The rock flows from left to right across the ship, first being crushed with the site then reducing the SAG and ball mills. The process is inefficient with 40% to 50% slurry, which already been reducing size being returned back to the mill. This is called recirculated load and reduces capacity and throughput of new ore. Recirculated load is bad news for the mill operator. Water is also lost in the mill due to evaporation during this pass, and the mills themselves are the primary energy consumer in the circuit. Here, we have a redesigned reconfigured mill circuit. The SAG mill has been replaced with a more efficient and reliable high president role or HPGR. This uses less energy, reduces recirculated load and increase more predictable ore output. The ball mill has been replaced with an innovative vertical stirred mill. And while small in the screen, this is about 20 meters in height using gravity toward grinding. This latest addition to offering to the site in new alliance with STM, which we announced earlier today. With the refined circuit, the amount of recirculated load is reduced threefold, significantly increasing throughput as more fresh ore is processed and the energy consumed per tonne is reduced. On the right-hand side, you can see Warman slurry pumps cover cycles, both of which have critical roles in the mill circuit as the first slurry is sharper and more abrasive. On the far right, you see coarse particle flotation technology, which reduces grinding by enabling coarser, thicker particles to be floated. We are bringing this technology to our customers for our recently announced partnership agreement with Eriez. This is the resolution which we can offer consume around 40% to 50% less energy than traditional circuit. It reduces circuit in load to increase throughput, but it avoids also water lost in operation. We know from our customers these are their key priorities, and this drives towards more sustainable mining. So now to shine the spotlight on HPGRs. Traditional pumping mills which HPGR replaced are inefficient and have a large carbon footprint. As you see from the video clip on the side, the compromised large [indicernibles] are now filled with steel bolts called grinding media. As the grinding media falls, it strikes the rocks with [indiscernible] the size. The energy required to lift the rocks and the grinding media is significant and the output is unpredictable. HPGR stomps the process on it's head, an energy saving of 40% per tonne process. It's also a dry process. Water is applied immediately after avoiding evaporation and friction in the mill. Our Synertrex platform gives us detailed process control to ensure consistent output. HPGR offers a low cost of ownership for our customers. They are more efficient, reliable, controllable and more sustainable than the Canadian mills they replace. My colleague, Peter Lempens will now tell you why we have the best HPGR technology on the market.

Hi, everyone. It's great to be able to join you at today's event. My name is Peter Lempens, and I'm the Director of Sustainable mining Technology at Real Minerals in Venlo. As you have already heard from Ricardo, HPGRs are more effective and energy-efficient way to grind rocks when compared to a traditional tumbling mill. I would like to take a moment to explain how they work and why we have the best technology on the market. HPGR is comprised of 2 driven rollers to which rocks are fed between. As the minerals enter the rollers, they are subjected to a high press force that exceeds the strength of the rocks. Individual particles in the feed transfer these stress forces to each other, and that causes them to break. This mechanism is called interparticle grinding. As I just mentioned, thanks to our innovative engineering and leading technology, we believe Weir has the best HPGR in the market, providing customers with a predictable output and the highest machine uptime. Our uniquely designed rollers have the ability to skew or tilt, ensuring a consistent pressure is applied to the whole feed. This is essential as, in the real world, feed characteristics are never uniform. Our self-tracking cheat plates minimizes losses at the edges of the rollers, which, in turn, improves throughput and provides enhanced reliability and uptime. Another feature is our superior bearing arrangement. For other HPGRs on the market, the bearing supporting the rollers are prone to excessive premature failure often requiring replacement every year. However, thanks to Weir's proprietary mechanical design, the location system and fitment mechanisms are bearing come with a 10-year guarantee. That means reduced maintenance, more uptime and improved efficiency and sustainable credentials relative to competitor machines. Our HPGRs are gaining strong traction in the market. We are the market leader in large format HPGRs for hard core applications, securing around 80% of the available orders in that category, since 2019. This is a testament to our differentiated technology and our ability to deliver best-in-class aftermarket support through our global server support network. We expect further reduction of HPGRs over the years ahead. The need for new technologies within mining is compelling. The world needs more metal to get to net zero, but the mining industry needs to extract that in a more sustainable and efficient way. And that's where our HPGRs play a key role. Thank you, and back to you, Ricardo.

Now let me tell you how the redefined mill circuit will drive growth. We're really leaders in the pumps and wet processing. The biggest growth opportunity, therefore, comes from comminution, which is our portfolio of HPGR, screens, crushes and rubber. And combined, the [indiscernible] market is around GBP 2.5 billion. Comminution depending on the flow of large OE projects is around 5% to 10% of our revenue. And this year, we expect to be in the middle of that range. Through redefining the mill circuit, together with our global footprint and Internet solutions strategy, our aim is to travel inside by 2027. Our comminution proofs are suitable for new mines and expansion rates and also to the debottlenecking existed assets, which in the current market represents the biggest opportunity which we are well placed to our integrated solutions strategy and customer intimacy. In a similar way to how we work with Warman as we grow installed base, then the aftermarket opportunity will also expand. With comminution, with every 100 a customer spends on original equipment will generate about 30 to 40 of annual aftermarket revenue. This provides an underpin to our growth ambition. In HPGR for orders recently won, only half of the machine have been commissioned. This means we have sizable aftermarket annuity stream to come as the balance of machines start to operate. This includes the high-value contract for Iron Bridge, which we won in 2020. From that quarter alone, we'll generate GBP 50 million each year for the next 7 years. And by 2025, we expect to generate similar levels from other machines currently being commissioned. In summary, we have strong customer interest in our differentiated sustainable solutions, which is driving growth in our pipeline. And with an expanded aftermarket annuity, we are well placed to grow and deliver our ambitions. Now, a short case study. In 2018, we started working with a gold mine operator in Turkey. Their legacy equipment still at the mine was limiting gold recovery as grades decline and, hence, limiting the life of the mine. In partnership with the customer, we developed options to create finer particles, which will improve gold recovery without requiring significant CapEx or particle reconfiguration. Our solution to replace 5 legacy crushing system with Weir HPGR technology, simplify the process, reduce energy consumption and increase uptime by 10%. This delivered the customer a 4% increase in gold recovery, meaning a payback of less than a year while growing with installed base to deliver future aftermarket revenues, a win-win for both Weir and the customer. So in summary, Minerals is a world-class business with leading brands and technology. With our different technology, we will refine the mill circuit, making our customers' operations more sustainable and productive. And with our market-leading experience, we're well placed to win. Looking forward, I'm confident in our ability to outgrow our markets. I'm excited about our potential. Thank you, and I will now pass on to John.

Thank you, Ricardo, and good afternoon, everyone. As you know, we've been in a transformation journey over recent years. This has all been with a view to creating a high growth, high margin and highly cash-generative business. You've heard from Andrew and Ricardo about our growth ambitions. I will now share how we are refining the way we operate as we move from a multi-end market, diversified portfolio company to a more focused and integrated operating company to deliver performance excellence and associated margin enhancement. The fundamental quality of our business is unchallenged. Margins have been and will continue to be underpinned by our market-leading positions, which drive growth and margin resilience as well as our underlying focus on continuous improvement through the Weir production system. It is these factors that will ensure that we deliver 17% operating margin next year. However, with the significant simplification of our portfolio and recent systems investment, we see a step change opportunity beyond that as we rethink how we operate. We have excellent visibility to initial GBP 30 million benefits from our Performance Excellence program and are optimistic that further benefits can be realized thereafter. The Performance Excellence opportunity covers 3 areas. Each of these represent an evolution of the journey that we've been on over the last few years but can now be actioned in a more meaningful way given our business focus and systems investment in SAP and Workday, amongst others. Firstly, capacity optimization. Some of our manufacturing and service centers region by region can be optimized to better serve our customers. Secondly, while we have our underpinning Weir production system, lean process is about continuous improvement. For example, as some of our manufacturing operations pushed the boundaries ever further, we want others to keep pace. And this technology continues to evolve, new opportunities present themselves, especially across global value streams. And thirdly, we have support functions such as HR, IT and finance, undertaking relatively standard non-customer-facing transactional activities region by region. While we've started the transition to global shared service or business services, now is the time to accelerate that. You can see here how we plan to deliver the GBP 30 million of savings over the coming years. The most significant contribution comes from global business services, reflecting our legacy highly devolved structure while the opportunities in lean and capacity optimization are smaller, reflecting our greater maturity in those areas. In terms of phasing, the earliest opportunity comes from capacity optimization while global business services represents a multiyear journey. GBP 30 million of run rate savings will be delivered in 2025 with the full end year contribution in 2026. Now turning to a bit more detail on each of the elements, starting with capacity optimization. As a brief reminder, we're a global organization. And while we have market-leading technology, an additional key differentiator is our global service network and regional manufacturing footprint. We've seen more than ever over the last 18 to 24 months during the pandemic, an associated supply chain disruption as well as geopolitical tensions that this regional close to the customer operating model is absolutely the right one to reduce risk and drive excellent commercial outcomes. We do not propose any changes to that. But as our customers continue to evolve, we can see some very specific opportunities to fine-tune that footprint to deliver GBP 10 million of savings. On the manufacturing front, we have some locations which have historically been more focused on non-mining end markets. As those markets have declined and we focus on mining, it makes sense to exit some of those facilities which are increasingly underutilized. While we continue to add service centers to support our ever-increasing global footprint, with some geographies where we have service centers starting to overlap geographically or be subscale as new mines have opened or expanded. Australia is a good example of it. You can see a degree of clustering on this map. By consolidating and moving to service supercenters, we have clear opportunity to reduce cost and enhance service. These plans are well advanced and will be executed over the next 24 months, reflected in the front-end loading of the benefits from this initiative. Turning now to lean processes. As you know, we are relatively mature in our operational excellence journey, which is one of continuous improvement and has been underpinned by the Weir production system for many years. In Minerals, our high-mix, low-volume product portfolio and associated regional manufacturing model has caused us to focus on local foundry and machine shop excellence. Many of our facilities are world-class. While in ESCO, the more standard nature of the product, resulting in low mix, high volume has caused initial focus to be on global value streams, supply chain and demand planning, where we're utilizing some great digital technologies to optimize operations on a global basis. Looking at our 2 businesses side by side. It's now increasingly clear that we can share some best practice from each with the other. In the case of Minerals, now that we have SAP across most of the division, we're increasingly able to look at value streams on a more global basis to optimize cost and inventory for more standard products. In the case of ESCO, while our global value streams are in a great place, we still have some inconsistency in local operational performance across our foundries. Getting all of our foundries to a consistent world-class performance level will yield meaningful benefits. Together, these actions across both divisions will drive shorter lead times, allow inventory optimization and reduce overhead under recoveries and manufacturing variances. It is these factors that will drive the GBP 5 million of savings over the coming years. I'd now like to introduce Anna Thames, our VP of Operations for ESCO, to share her plans for how we get all of our ESCO foundries to operate at the world-class levels that we're achieving in certain regions.

Hi. I'm Anna Thames, Vice President of Operations at Weir ESCO. As one of our over 1,300 Weir ESCO operations employees, I'm honored to share with you a bit about what we do and the journey we're on to pursue operational excellence. Our position as the global market leader in ground engaging tools is underpinned by the combination of our GET designs, our material science and our proprietary manufacturing processes. These processes are demanding but produce industry-leading superior GET. Across the division, we operate 5 foundries, including Portland's Plant 3, where I'm at today. Our facilities produce over 38,000 tonnes of product each year. Each foundry must produce castings that meet our engineered designs, tightly specified and tolerance fit geometries and the material properties of our alloys, which are balancing the hardest GET steels with [indiscernible]. So we deliver Weir parts that perform in some of the earth's toughest and most abrasive conditions. To produce our GET, we need to have high degree of process control and a highly skilled workforce, employees who train and cross-train in our operations. As John outlined, following the acquisition by Weir, we are on a journey of operational excellence across all of our foundries. Putting that into context for you, our most efficient foundry is, on average, 10% more predictable than our other foundries. We can measure predictability by heat attainment. Our melt furnaces are the pacemaker for our foundries. And we try to melt batches of metal with a regular cadence. This directly correlates to the cost of running the foundry, the energy used and the production time. Therefore, by replicating the performance of our most efficient foundry across the network, there's a sizable operational and cost benefit to us. And we're unlocking that opportunity by applying process variation reduction and lean process methodologies. We're also focused on attracting, growing and retaining talent, so we have the right expertise and level of experience in the workforce, supported by technical and frontline leadership training. We're investing in digital tools that allow us to monitor the condition of equipment and key foundry metrics like energy usage. With real-time data, we can address inconsistencies and issues at an earlier stage in the process. And as we progress on our operational excellence journey, we expect to transition the use of our digital tools for predictive applications, which will yield further efficiency and cost benefits. In summary, our foundries are the beating heart of ESCO, delivering the products with the features that our customers really value. We've already come a long way on our journey, and I'm confident and excited about the next stage as we continue in our pursuit of operational excellence.

Turning now to the largest component of our Performance Excellence program relating to global business services. This slide shows how we operate today. Critically, we've got regional teams focused on serving our customers. This encourages entrepreneurialism and accountability that is critical to our success. However, our historic operating model has placed not only customer-facing and commercial roles close to the customer, but also associated support functions, such as finance, HR and IT. Since the sale of oil and gas, we've started on a journey to move some of those activities into shared services. We have finance and HR shared service centers in Texas and Manila and IT core services laid out to Glasgow. However, these shared service centers are single function and largely focused on low-end transactional activities. Global business services have developed a lot in recent years. And against that backdrop, we've worked with third-party specialists to undertake a detailed benchmarking exercise of all of our functional processes to assess the opportunity for further efficiency and service gains, similar to the long-term journey we've been on with the Weir production system. This review has looked at process cost, head count, cycle times, accuracy rates and service levels amongst many other KPIs. The results are consistent with a highly devolved structure. In essence, no individual country or region has the scale to have individual process specialists but rather has generalists covering multiple processes. In fact, only 10% of functional teams focus on a single process. The analysis shows that there is a significant opportunity to reduce cost and enhance service levels by introducing more standard global processes through a multifunction global business services function while retaining critical support for our business leaders region by region. We have granular plans to deliver the savings and are in the process of standing up a change management team to lead the program. Given the scale of the change, this is a multiyear program with the majority of the benefits coming through later in 2025. As you would expect, this will be the most costly program to execute, and the cost will include change management, some further systems development and restructuring costs spread over the next 3 years. Our senior leadership group have been engaged in this process and are fully committed to driving these changes through the group. And on a personal level, it's exciting to be embarking on this journey and starting to realize the operational benefits of the portfolio transformation that we've been focused on over the last few years. Pulling today's presentation together from a financial perspective. Regarding growth, we have a clear track record and future-facing plans to outperform our markets to deliver mid- to high single-digit growth through the cycle. Specifically, for 2022, our guidance is unchanged. We expect to see strong revenue and profit growth with margins increasing sequentially in H2 supported by revenue growth and operating efficiencies. For 2023, we continue to target a 17% group operating margin supported by revenue growth and regional efficiencies, perhaps with a small contribution from the Performance Excellence savings principally related to capacity optimization. After 2023, the benefits of the GBP 30 million Performance Excellence program will flow to margin, taking the group above 17%. As you have heard, these savings have been developed on a bottom-up granular basis, giving us high confidence of delivery. Of course, as we progress throughout the program and our teams start to really engage, I would be disappointed if we don't realize further efficiency and cost benefits beyond that initial GBP 30 million. We expect any reinvestment of the savings to be minimal, given we're already close to our target R&D spend of 2% of revenues. Finally, on capital allocation, I believe we have the right policy for Weir and remain committed to our 80% to 90% free operating cash conversion this year and the next as CapEx is slightly elevated, supporting investment in systems and our new ESCO foundry in China. From 2024 onwards, as CapEx normalize, cash conversion will increase to 90% to 100%. Of course, the work we are doing in each of our 3 performance excellence initiatives will be critical in underpinning our cash conversion targets. Optimizing service centers and facilities will help reduce inventories. Lean processes, especially in Minerals, will allow inventory management for standard items on a more global basis, while world-class functional experts will help optimize cash collections and payables. This will ensure that we remain in our target leverage range of 0.5 to 1.5x and secure a fully investment-grade credit rating. As you've heard today, our business has a fantastic outlook, and therefore, we will not be short of attractive investment opportunities. Our priority will be to invest organically to support our growth. But where we can accelerate that with M&A, which fits our business model and financial hurdles, we will do so. Of course, we will continue to keep our discipline of returning 1/3 of earnings to shareholders by way of dividend. And to the extent leverage were to sustain at the low end of our target range, we would consider special returns as appropriate. Thank you. And I will now hand you back to Jon.

Thank you, John. And of course, thank you to Andrew and Ricardo. So I think back to where we started. We are positioned for long-term sustainable growth with exposure to strong market fundamentals and an array of compelling internal growth initiatives. We have unique capabilities and high barriers to entry that we continue to strengthen every day. That means we're positioned to deliver excellent outcomes for all our stakeholders, compounding growth, margin expansion and strong cash conversion through the cycle alongside best-in-class resilience and with a compelling sustainability road map. I'm really proud of the business we've created and of what my 11,000 colleagues across Weir do every day for our customers. And I'm incredibly excited about our potential as we make mining smarter, more efficient and more sustainable in deep partnership with our customers. So that ends the prepared comments. Thank you for that. And we're now going to move on to Q&A.

I'm going to ask my colleagues to join me at the front here. for people in the room. If you'd like to ask a question, please raise your hand and state your name and organization. There is a microphone in the arm of your seats. So please use that. And as you operate the mic, you need to press the button on the side. So I see that Andy Douglas is in with the first question.

And three questions, please, if I may. Can you talk about -- and this is to Andrew. On the ESCO side, you said that you're being financially rewarded for improved efficiency. Can you talk about how those contracts work and how you're getting financially rewarded? Secondly, again, mainly for Andrew, but maybe Ricardo wants to chip in. You talked about geographic infill. Can you explain to us how you're doing that, how much it's going to cost? Will you have to have manufacturing globally as well? And why hasn't that happened before? And then last but never the least, on the service centers that you're reducing number, do you expect to lose sales? And is that reflected in your guidance?

Do you want to go first, Andrew, and then I can just pick up the?

In terms of that new model as we go forward. I mean, it's evolving and as we go and we have a variety of models coming through, and ultimately, it's about us time too could be performance conditions around equipment around production volumes produced back to [indiscernible] if we keep our equipment up there longer producing more -- the case at [indiscernible] , for example, we're producing ultimately in the same time, 20% more over for the customer. So there's a variety of metrics to get back to showing that our success is tied to theirs, taking again conversation away from what was the per unit cost. And really now we've had the ability to sort of package with digital and actually monitor some of these items. It's opening up the opportunity for us to actually do a lot more. In terms of geographical expansion, I think that we have been doing that over the last 3, 4 years, since it's an ongoing process. I mean, in our high growth or high share regions, we will be into the 60s and the low ones were high 30s, and we're doing it a number of ways. Primarily, we have been thus far leveraging with our Minerals colleagues. Typically, they have a more global presence. We're able to, therefore, leverage that use a lot of the infrastructure you can see on the map. We've now got pushing towards 20 sites that are shared and progressively as we expand. We're doing it off in the back of that. So really, it's not been -- it has been an ongoing process. It's something we continue to focus on. And over the last 12 months, as you expect, the way we measure this is we track global market share quite closely. So we have theparkdb database. We don't have our own internal -- so we talked about 9,000 attachments. We know that because we monitor those closely. And we can, therefore, see our share growing over the last 12 months, for example, we've added about 1% share, we think, across that global base. So it really is a journey.

So just a quick follow-up to make sure I'm understanding. So on the -- you being financially awarded, you're not reducing your price and then kind of making it up plus a bit from the efficiency gains? This is whatever it was GBP 100 is still GBP 100, but maybe you can make it GBP 110 if you kind of make it?

No. We've not reduced our prices at all, lower our margin.

So -- and I think, Andy, the broader point is this is not about fundamentally changing our revenue model. It's about adding new revenue-generating models, which supports the growth that we're trying to achieve across both hardware and software. And just the general point on geographic infill, both Minerals and ESCO have certain markets where we have very, very high market shares, and we have some countries where they're more modest. And the opportunity is really in the countries where it's more modest to sort of get to the same level that we are in the markets where we are a very, very clear leader. So that is places like Central Asia, parts of Asia Pacific, parts of Central Africa and so on. So it's just -- it's sort of a continual journey of just sort of trying to get our market shares to the say, very high level everywhere. And on the service center point, absolutely, we're not going to shut a service center if it loses any sales. So it's all about, as Jon said, optimizing our overheads to support the customers in that region and we can consolidate in certain cases, but it's actually it's fundamentally about supporting those customers better and growing sales, not doing the reverse.

There's one in the front there. Klas Bergelind.

Klas Bergelind from Citi. So a couple of questions. So first, we know about the GBP 30 million benefit to operating profit. But can we talk about the shared services and what I can do to inventory turns because obviously, you said that CapEx will peak that will benefit the cash conversion, but a lot of investors obviously focus on the net working capital turns. I'll start here.

John, do you want to take that one?

Yes. I mean, as I said in my speech, the -- each of the initiatives in terms of the capacity optimization, the global business services and the lean processes, all will contribute to optimizing working capital and, therefore, participating in our journey towards the 90% to 100% free cash -- free operating cash conversion. The global business services, I mean, it's just about having functional expertise. So as I said, having people focused on process, be that from order through to engaging with the customer, ensuring documentation is right to ensure your collections are on time. There's so many opportunities to get standardization that will mean that cash comes into the business quicker on the inventory side, that we're optimizing that on a global basis as opposed to region by region. And that's all consistent with us getting to what I've said previously, which is working capital to sales for this business overall should be between 20% and 25%. And in the short term, I think we'll be at the 25% end. As we go in this journey over the coming years, then each of these initiatives, together with other many other initiatives, I'm sure Andrew and Ricardo could give you lots of detail in due course will drive us towards the 20% and so that's sort of broadly how we're thinking about it.

Okay. No, that's helpful. And then a question on the combination. Obviously, strong growth ambitions there as well. And when I look at the aftermarket opportunity, we can understand what the wallet is out for the equipment. But the replacement cycle, we might not have greenfield, but you will have a lot of brownfield, as you said, Jon. How should we think about the energy costs going up for the miners? And can this kick start some sort of replacement in your view? And are you hearing about miner thinking more about upgrading to more energy-efficient equipment?

Yes, absolutely. I think as we look at the opportunity for combination and high-pressure grinding rolls, I mean, the numbers that Ricardo was talking about are stark in terms of the energy saving potential. So I think it started out very much as a sustainability story and driving their -- helping support their drive towards lower emissions, reducing their CO2 footprint. But it's increasingly obvious that there's a really big cost component to it in terms of energy as well. So we think that should drive transition and change in the installed base over time. Any modular expansion that customers want to do, why would you do anything other than do it this way with HPGRs and low energy, low water sort of approach to it. And there's a big installed base out there of competitor equipment, which is mature and has the opportunity for us to take advantage of some of the things that Peter Lempens was talking about. So we think it's a multipronged sort of driver for our customers, if you like, that should accelerate the transition. One word of caution is that it's been a long journey with HPGRs, and customers have been slow to convert to new technologies. But we just feel it's a burning platform today, and all of those factors mean that we're very positive about it.

And a very quick one for you, John, on the financial side. Have you said anything on potential cash out for the shared services in terms of restructuring charges to get to that GBP 15 million benefit?

The overall cost of the program to get the GBP 30 million benefit is 1.5x, so it's GBP 45 million. I said in July that we would incur about GBP 10 million this year in terms of initial restructuring activities. And then the vast majority of the remaining element of the GBP 45 million will be spread over 2023 and 2024 with a little bit still to come in 2025.

I think Mark was next.

Mark Davies Jones from Stifel. Can I take you back, Jon, to your starting point -- sorry. slightly creaky microphone, which is the long-term sustainable growth prospects in the pit mining as an industry. I absolutely get the growth opportunity in copper and lithium and all the renewables-related minerals, but that's just over 1/4 of your sales base. Can you address the rest of it? You've got oil sands in there. You've got some coal in there. You've got some iron in there, which may not be growing if Chinese construction trends are not what they were in the past. So how do you balance the growing bits and perhaps the areas where you might have rather greater challenges?

Yes. That's a great question, Mark. So I mean, if you break it down, it's obviously the battery metals, the future-facing metals are exposed to, which I think we're all probably incredibly bullish about it. There's then a proportion of things in there such as iron ore, which are more driven by GDP growth and population growth and infrastructure rather than this sort of electrification theme. So I think there's strong support there, in my mind, for that. And I would also say on things like iron ore, where we are positioned is primarily in Brazil and the Pilbara in the low-cost locations. Low-cost, higher grades, that's where we work in iron ore. So in a sense, to the extent that -- if there are challenges going forward in terms of steel demand, then it's going to be the high cost, high on the cost curve mines that get into more difficult, and that's not really where we play or play to a much lesser extent. So it's really the high-volume, low-grade iron ore places that we operate. On the others, I think coal has been -- which is now sort of low to mid-single digits in terms of our revenues. It's been managed in managed decline for a long period of time in our business. It was a much larger proportion of our revenues going back 5, 10 years. And obviously, that decline has been more than replaced by the growth that we've seen in the other commodities. And I think that journey will continue. And then oil sands, which is also sort of mid-high single digits in terms of our revenues, I think that is -- we're going to need oil and gas for a long time to come. I don't think there's going to be much expansion in oil sands, but it's a business. There's a lot of invested capital there, and it's a business that will run and run for many, many years to come. So I think it's a position that we will continue to have in our portfolio over time. But as the effects of copper and some of the other metals sees more growth, then even though that business will be stable in absolute terms, it will probably shrink in percentage terms as a percentage of our revenue. Yes. Jonathan.

It's Jonathan from Barclays. Just a question for Andrew, please. I think obviously, when you were speaking, you said there was a GBP 500 million digital opportunity within ESCO. Can you just talk us through what the margin potential of that digital opportunity is? I think, obviously, when you bought Motion Metrics, it was like high single digit, possibly sort of 10%. Ultimately, as that starts to develop, does that become high-teens, maybe low 20s type margin business and ultimately accretive to ESCO margin?

Yes. I mean I think the margins are made on gross margin, the business are higher than the average of the rest of the portfolio. So over time, I would expect it to become accretive to margin. already, we're seeing the business margin improving quite rapidly as we get growth coming through. So we'd expect to see that help and support in that margin growth in the coming years.

So just in terms of a rough ballpark, would you expect sort of the software side or the digital opportunity to be sort of twice the current rate of ESCO in terms of margin? Would that be a fair assumption?

What, sorry?

Sort of the digital opportunity margin, would that be sort of twice what ESCO is doing? Would you think if you try to.

In terms of the gross margin, it will be almost around about that kind of level of gross margin. Obviously, there are higher levels of investment and support for R&D and support that goes on. So it's not quite as at that level at the bottom line, but as we grow definitely, the net margins will be better on gross margin. It's a good proxy as roughly double.

We said that when we acquired Motion Metrics, it would be accretive from 2023, and that's still the case. We've had a great start. So yes.

Harry.

Harry Philips from Peel Hunt. A couple of questions. and slightly interlinked, I guess, really in [indiscernible] I can only say crushing, I'm afraid. In crushing, just when you think about your market position and you think about some of the very big players out there, that scale is being so much greater than yours, how do you sort of take share away beyond obviously the sort of niche areas where you currently sit? And do you have any appetite for some of those big players because I'm sure 1 or 2 might be possibly where the dollar is now maybe not ideally but just might be more interesting? But then you talked about expanding the addressable market across the business as a whole and you're running at 2% of R&D. Just sort of, one, does that have to go higher as you sort of take this sort of evolution still further? And then two, in terms of potential M&A, but sort of John, you laid out very clearly the parameters around leverage and what have you. But clearly, there are an awful lot of opportunities so the sort of speed of ambition, if you like, and the translation of that. And then very just lastly on ESCO, obviously dominate the one niche. GET very high market share and so on. Is -- and you've got a relatively small market shares elsewhere. Do you worry? Is there a sign? Is there a trend towards some of the OEMs reverse engineering back into your area saying, let's go one-stop shop rather than the sort of ESCO model the other way from its demand commanding niche?

Yes. Okay. I think that was more than 2 questions, Harry. let me sort of start big picture with crushing and ask Ricardo to comment on the various products and then I'll deal with the R&D; and Andrew, GET. So I think when we look at combination, I think what Ricardo was showing with his 2 slides there was how the technology works today and how we see that mill circuit working in the future. And within that, we're not trying to compete with some of the more established peers on the sort of primary tertiary crushing. We compete where we can with the trio product line. But what we're trying to do is put together a package which really drives and enables growth with HPGRs and enable an ancillary crushing where we can but also enables us to offer a really compelling proposition to our customer through these new partnerships that we've just announced with STM and Eriez which offer a totally different flow sheet compared to the competition, and that is potentially transformational for our customers, and we will use that to drive growth in HPGRs, in pumps and cyclones and the other product lines because that is a compelling proposition for a customer, and it should turbocharge all of our existing product lines in terms of sales. So we're not trying to necessarily compete with some of those guys. Indeed, on the Iron Bridge contract, we didn't manufacture with the crushers for that. We worked with one of the other guys in partnership. So I think what we're trying to do is just create a really, really transformational compelling proposition for customers, which boosts the sale of all of our product lines. So if you -- Ricardo do you want to mention maybe where we are with crushers and screens and grinding?

So before going as an explanation, today, given the good work that geologists and people I ask who's doing in the pit, there's more ore to mine, but the mill plants have a limited capacity. So we found in the last 1 year, 1.5 years that most of them are saying, you know something I can improve my production 50%, 20%, not big enough to put another mill, but what can it do with -- how can I process this. So we have seen most of the sales from HPGRs in the last 2 years have been on the once-off production capacity increases. And that's a sweet spot where our people are really good because we talk to the customer directly. We don't talk to an engineering firm. We just -- it's a face-to-face with the operator. So then to do that, you need to add a crusher, an HPGR and a screen. Actually, about a month ago, we're starting up with John, one of the biggest American mines, and we are starting there watching some screen activity. And you can see absolutely that they are pushing everything they can on those poor machines up to the limit. So we -- I think we'll give back with an order for another couple of crushers for that mine. So this, we call small brownfield. So de-bottlenecks is going to be the sweet spot of our business for the next couple of years because as you know, the greenfields -- the big brownfields are taking more time. So the combination of our trio crushers [indiscernible] and ENDURON now that we announced today the steel mill, the vertical mills is going to give us a really good end-to-end process for the mines to do that mini expansion with the way or de-bottleneck and get another 10%, 50% production with the same plant today. And that will be probably our biggest way forward in the next 2 years. Does that answer your question?

So I'm sure Harry will come back if it doesn't, but I'll try other bits first, I think. So on the 2% R&D, I mean, we -- in absolute terms, our R&D is ramping up very significantly. So if you go back a year or 2, then we're only sort of spending 1.5, 1.6. We're now up to 2%, but that's 2% of the top line, which is growing very significantly year-on-year. So in absolute dollars, our R&D is really ramping up. We feel that on balance through the cycle, 2% is probably right for us in terms of the opportunities that lie ahead. And we're funding that in the margin expansion targets we talk about. But if we see a real opportunity to invest in something that opens up a new market, further growth potential, then we'll certainly not restrict ourselves if we can do that while hitting the margin targets. So I think that's the R&D point. And then the ESCO GET.

All the major OEMs have had for a long period of time, their own GET system against that basis that we have continued to grow and increase our market share and hold our market position. So it's something we've been contending with for a long period of time. We don't see any change there. I actually think a lot of things we talked about today in terms of as we broadened into capital in the buckets, digital offering, creating that as a solution. I think that actually embeds us further and reduces that risk further. And I think also our -- we are OEM-agnostic as well. So again, we'll supply GET against Caterpillar machines, on Komatsu machines, on Hitachi machines. And for that reason, we find that the customer recognizes the value we bring are ultimately pulling us in. So even if Weir -- an OEM on a new machine delivering the whole machine center packaged with their own GET then after a period of time, basically work with the customer to convert that to us typically as in being their preferred supplier.

Max?

It's Max from Morgan Stanley. Just my first question was on the GBP 500 million digital opportunity. I guess if I look at the size of motion metrics, I think it was, correct me 9 million-ish. So it's quite small relative to that opportunity. So I'd love to understand kind of what goes into that assumption? Is that GBP 500 million today? Is that in a few years? And what is the rest of it and who does it? Just understanding that a little bit would be great.

Yes. So we expected around GBP 500 million based on our current offering, assuming if all major wins in the world effectively we're adopting these solutions. Some of them have a mixture. Some of them, for example, have other belt metric solutions. A few have some payload solutions. A few may have some GET solutions, but it's a minority, I would say, by far. Right, as we said earlier, I think we expect Motion Metrics revenue this year to be about GBP 20 million against that GBP 500 million. And so it's really about adoption back to why we're really pleased with how we've seen customers really open to filing and finding out more about the technology because a lot of this wasn't available before. So GET loss, GET wear, for example, being able to monitor payloads accurately and shovels and provide that information live or our -- and our PSG solution, for example, allows you to an almost live basis, track particle size or about traditional models, we have to take offline in sample. So I think that's why we're quite excited as we've seen customers really buying into it. And so based on right now the existing offering, looking at what we are, where we're doing packaged deals with mines, that would get you to roughly that GBP 500 million number.

Okay. And just to be clear, the rest of the GBP 500 million, your GBP 20 million Motion Metrics is kind of your market share of that GBP 500 million. Is that correct?

Yes. Effectively, what we're seeing is GBP 500 million isn't a market today in totality. It's our estimate customers went to and adopted to the various digital offerings that are out there. Some do have parts of it in components but not all. And it's based on major mines, not all mines, trying to size that market. So it's fast growing, and it's hard to really estimate because in this part of the mine where ESCO operates, digital solutions are really almost new to the market in a way that people have really started to try and grab that opportunity.

And just a follow-up on the comminution side. So you've talked about kind of the growth there. Is there any part of your existing offering that maybe substitutes out? As kind of the world sort of things are ground more finely, we hear a lot about kind of dry processing in Brazil. Just are there any parts of the portfolio which do kind of worse as that kind of some of those comminution technologies evolve?

No, I think as Ricardo said, if there's a shift towards coarse particle flotation, then those particles are much sharper. They create much more abrasion inside our products. So it's more wear life, which obviously is a positive for us. I think it creates a bigger opportunity for us on the tailing side because with larger particles, they sink much more quickly than very fine clay particles. So some of our dewatering kind of capability actually comes into play where it didn't before and if I think about the core of the business, slurry pumps, cyclones and so on. Then as Ricardo said in his speech, once you've done the grinding, the only way you can move the powder is with water. So that whole part of this is just you're adding water later in the circuit, but that whole piece of adding water so that you can then float off the copper particles, of course. That is the technology. There is no other technology and that requires lots of slurry pumps, and obviously, there are hundreds of thousands of slurry pumps around the world doing that today. So that's the -- that's where it is. So we actually see it as more opportunity rather than sort of cannibalizing anything that we have in the portfolio today.

Vlad Sergievskii here from Bank of America. I'll start with 1 question of the 2. First one on growth. Obviously, you highlighted the perspective to grow at mid- to high single digits. And it looks like HPGR is growing above that rate. What are the parts of the business which are growing potentially below to make this mid-to-high single-digit growth?

Well, I think as we look at all parts of the business are growing and businesses -- mature businesses will grow more slowly than emerging technologies. So if we look at the sort of bridge for our growth, then the market through the cycle, and this is all through the cycle, is going to grow at 3% driven by all production trends, as it has always done. We're going to see the benefit of declining grades and more ore being processed. And then on top of that, on top of the geographic expansion, we have a range of other growth initiatives. Comminution and the HPGR product positioning is -- we're at a very early stage with that. So it's going to grow very, very strongly. The slurry pump business is a very well-established, mature business. So it will grow a little bit more slowly, but there's still opportunity, going back to the geographical expansion to grow from where we are today.

Just the way the math works by, I mean 10% of the Minerals business today is comminution. So yes, that's growing, as Ricardo said, quite significantly. But of course, you've still got the 90% of the business that has to grow close to 7% to get the arithmetic to work. So I mean I don't think it's a big factor in terms of the -- anything significant below that level.

That's brilliant. And I can ask -- if I can ask on the financing part a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about the currency composition of your debt. Any exposure you guys have to the floating interest rates and how could it play out? And also, any potential early plans of how do you plan to refinance the upcoming maturity on the -- in early next year, if you have it?

Sure. Thanks, Vlad. So I mean, I would start with the business that we have. So our earnings are circa 50% U.S. dollars today. So clearly, that's a benefit for the Weir Group as we have that translated into GBP. Our assets also are predominantly U.S. dollar. You think about our businesses with ESCO and many of our overseas businesses. So the majority of our asset base is also U.S. dollar. For that reason, -- our debt today is predominantly U.S. dollar. So you remember last year, we did our $800 million sustainability-linked bond in U.S. dollars to match our assets, to match our cash flows. In terms of the interest rate, that sustainability-linked bond, $800 million, we fixed that in May last year for 5 years at 2.2%. So the vast majority of our debt is fixed for the long term. Our revolving credit facility, which we also refinanced this year, another USD 800 million facility, is on a floating rate. But of course, the drawdown on that varies depending on working capital cycles, et cetera. And finally, the upcoming maturity on our private placement debt, which is currently paying about 4.5% fixed, that's $200 million. So it's the smallest tranche of our debt, which matures in February next year. And we have plenty of liquidity headroom as we stand today without doing anything else. If we choose to try and get some longer-term debt, then we'll clearly pick our timing for that, but there's no immediate pricing liquidity need of any sort to refinance that immediately. So that's how it all fits together in broad summary from an earnings perspective, very positive from a strength of the dollar perspective and our debt is well matched to our assets, which is, from my perspective, a sensible place to be.

Sorry, Mark.

Mark Fielding from RBC. Really mainly sort of a couple of follow-ons for the questions. And I'll admit that you've largely answered this in sort of your response to Max's question. But just as you think about that redefining of the mill circuit, obviously, you've outlined 7 areas and 3 of the 7, you've pointed out a meaningful technology change that improves it. So how do you monitor and make sure there's not something coming along those lines for slurry pumps? Because obviously, it's such a big part of the business for you today. And therefore, if we can see shifts elsewhere, why can't we see it there? And then linked to that, equally, are there other places here where along the line of the new partnerships, there are things you are thinking about and targeting for the future.

Yes. No. So I think we're not -- on slurry pumps, we're not complacent, but the technology and the way that copper and many metals is produced is very, very clear. Directly to your point, what we do is we have a sort of blue sky technology team looking at advanced research, academic research. We use artificial intelligence to scan tens of thousands of academic papers, articles where venture capital is putting money. So we have our tentacles everywhere using AI, looking for new and emerging technologies that either could be additive and enhance what we do today but equally where there might be an emerging threat. So I would say, in terms of the way that we think about it, we've come a really, really long way in the last 2 or 3 years in terms of how we do that. And that means that we're looking for the threats, but we're looking to other -- some of the other things that the miners are talking about and how we can use that such as how you use micro waves to soften rocks pre-crushing to help that process, things like self-healing polymers. We're doing research across a whole bunch of areas, which are potentially very exciting in terms of further enhancing the portfolio that we have today. And one of the things we've tried to do over the last 3 or 4 years is really to balance our R&D spend. So there's an equal amount between incremental enhancement of the existing product portfolio. There's a sort of second horizon of well, how might that -- our solutions and some of the technologies evolve like some of the things that we've been talking about today and then a real blue sky arena of what are the transformational things that are potentially very, very exciting and accretive for our business in the future. The partnerships that we announced, the one that we announced this morning and areas that we announced a couple of weeks ago, we've trailed them. I think what we're showing there is real discipline in terms of adherence to our business model, where we want to have products and solutions in our portfolio where -- which have that razor/razor blade characteristic. It supports the resilience. It supports the high margin potential of our products and therefore, sort of resilience through the cycle. But where it makes sense to partner with others where perhaps the solutions don't necessarily fit completely with our business model but enhance our proposition to our customers without being dilutive, then that's the way we're going to go. So I think what we've done today with the STM announcement has really sort of demonstrated what we said we were going to do. And if there are opportunities to acquire assets, which fit with our business model and accelerate our strategy, we'll do that. Equally if we can do more alliance that's similar to the one that we announced today, then that will also be an option.

If I may add also, I know that the concern from the audience is 50% of the business is Warman. What about the future. We track every single project that is going to happen in the next 1, 2, 3, even 10 years. And we don't see any actually, we see that as more use of pumps going forward, especially because most of the tailings dams, most of the concentrate are going to be far away given the socialized operator of the mine. So we're pretty sure that the technology is taken to use more pumps, not less pumps going forward.

Can I just follow up and ask on the partnerships, what the actual economic structure of those is? And if they're very successful businesses, how do we think about the impact on things like margins for the group?

Yes. I mean they're slightly different. One is a marketing agreement. One is more of a representation agreement. But in the case of the one that we announced today, then we will be marketing the solution -- the combined solution together with STM. we each get our own revenues from the -- what we're taking to market, but the key for us is that the aftermarket opportunity is because we've got the footprint they don't, the aftermarket opportunity is one that we'll get. So these agreements will support growth, and there's no margin dilution in anything that we're back to what I said about disciplined about the business model. We're very clear on delivering the margin expansion story, and we're not going to see 2 things which will dilute that in any way.

Peter Lampert from [indiscernible] Investment Management. For the presentation, I think the initiatives that you outlined today to improve margins and working capital make a lot of sense. Just curious why are they happening now? Why wouldn't they have happened already?

Yes. I think what we're talking about today, I mean, we've been on a journey over the last 5 or 6 years. And -- we've done a lot of heavy lifting, if you like, to get the portfolio -- the bookends of our business and that opportunity to where it is today. Alongside that, we've invested in a lot of foundational activity with the systems 5 years ago. Minerals had, I don't know, 20 different ERP systems around the world. We're now sort of just finally getting to almost being on one. So I would say it's really just a stage of maturity. And over the years, under my tenure, we've kind of worked through the issues and driven towards the opportunities one by one. And this is the next thing to do. I mean I think over the last 2 years, I think we have demonstrated progress with margins, for example, but now it's time. We have the management bandwidth. We have the focus. It's the next leg of our journey to really drive even harder than we've driven before about these -- after the potential that lies ahead of us. Another one for Max?

Could I just use this opportunity to ask a bit about the cost side? Because obviously, inflation is very different to when you gave these targets. So I guess I just wanted to understand, when you look at aggregates across your costs. Raw materials are going down, components, wages, energy, all going up. So do you have any sense of if we look at sort of cost increases this year versus -- sorry, next year at spot rates for 2023 compared to kind of what we're seeing today? What kind of price increases do you think are going to be required next year to offset that? Or are we at the point where you may be -- you may actually be seeing some sort of tailwind going into next year?

Yes. It's a little bit difficult to predict the future, particularly in today's world. I think all of the things you mentioned are in the mix. We've clearly seen a significant decline now in freight rates. Some of the raw material metals inputs in terms of the raw materials that we buy have come off. We will probably see more wage and salary inflation as we move next year. And one of the things we're talking about is we got to make sure that we look after our people, in what is probably going to be a tough couple of years. So I don't -- I can't sit here and say net-net, what that's actually going to look like. But what I would just point to is the way that we have managed that over the last 2 years, we moved very, very early last year in terms of starting to move price increases up. We've covered off the input cost inflation and more so that our gross margins. As we sit here today are exactly the same as they were last year and the year before and the year before that. So I think the business, the guys have done a phenomenal job in terms of getting the pricing that we needed to cover the input cost inflation. And I think given where commodity prices are and given how active our markets are and given how focused our customers are on continuing production and meeting some of the demands and challenges that we talked about today, I don't see the pricing environment sort of changing significantly from where we are today. So I think we're just as well placed as we ever were to -- if we do see a mix of inflation that is in any way significant again next year, then we're well positioned to deal with that.

It's Bruno from Exane, BNP P. I was just wondering if you could expand on your margin targets at all. So how do you think margin oscillates over the cycle? And secondly, how far above the 17% target could we end up having in 3 to 5 years?

So I think -- well, I'll talk about the oscillation point, and then maybe John can sort of pick up on the second point. I think -- if you look back over history, then one of the big drivers of the movements in margins in the mineral business has really been the mix between original equipment and aftermarket because, as you know, the margins are much higher in the aftermarket, but it's actually been relatively stable. Mix has been relatively stable over the last little while. And because we don't see a big wave of CapEx coming, we don't see big brownfield and greenfield expansions coming, I mean we'd like to, but we don't, it's being very slow to move. I don't see the mix moving very much over the next 2 or 3 years. So I think to my mind, we're dealing with a sort of pretty stable original equipment aftermarket mix as we look forward. And that means that the moving parts on the margin expansion story will essentially be the ones that John talked about. So that's the way I'm thinking about it at the moment. And so John, I don't know if you want to give a bit more color on the upside point?

Yes. The -- I mean, I think the key takeaway is that lean philosophy is deeply embedded within how we operate. At Weir, it's part of our DNA, it's all about continuous improvement. And that builds on a foundation of phenomenal resilience in our underlying business, as John has just described. So gross margins rock solid. And then with our continuous improvement, you're going to see not only operating leverage but further upside beyond that. So hopefully, firstly, we've got a clear specific 17% operating margin target for 2023. First point. Today, it's been about showing you that, that continuous improvement journey is just that. It keeps going. And so after 2023, I've just given you 3 examples of what's next. And everyone in the room can do the math as to what GBP 30 million on our revenue does for margins, but I'm not intending to jump from short-term target to short-term target. What I want you to see is that with Weir, you've got phenomenal resilience, which means you're not going to see much cyclicality in the margins. We know in economic downturns, there's huge resilience. And on a go-forward basis, we're going to see a continued upward trajectory, and that starts with next year at 17 and then goes beyond.

Got it. And just on the mining market and sentiment within the space. What would you say is different about the mining investment cycle to date relative to what you've seen in historical periods? And where -- in historical periods where you've seen macro uncertainty. So how do you assess the risk on, say, mining CapEx budgets fall for next year and the year after?

Yes. I think if you look back over history, you've probably got to feel pretty good about where the mining industry is today and where our customers are. Compared to the end of the super cycle, they're in a much, much stronger position in terms of their balance sheets and leverage. So they have far more options, should I say, when we got to the end of that challenging period. So I think our customers are in rude health. They've benefited from very strong commodity prices over the last few years and obviously used some of that to return -- make returns to investors, but also plenty to invest in technology and strengthening our business. So I think our customers are in good shape. And I said I think you can see them leaning into the challenges that we, as a sort of system-wide industry, have to think about, which is how we do get more production, how we do increase production from existing mine sites, where expansion is going to come from and how we do that in a much better way and focus on energy reduction and water reduction as we discussed. So I mean, I think the industry is in good shape at the moment. The second point I would say is they think very long term in terms of planning to allocate capital and think about large CapEx. So they're not particularly worried about what the copper prices this week versus next week. It's what they think is the long run incentive level for copper prices. And I think that coincidentally happens to be roughly where the copper price is today, not that, that matters too much because they're thinking if my long-term forecast out for 20, 30 years is copper is going to be $3.20, $3.50 then that means I'm in a good place to invest. So I know it's always -- sentiment is a thing, obviously. And -- but we've been in a period where expansion has been just quite slow to come through for other reasons, which has really been about licensing and permitting and local political issues. And so I think any sort of short-term sentiment, if you like, is just -- is really not something that they're going to be too bothered about. So I think to summarize, generally speaking, they're in good health. They see opportunity ahead and they're thinking long term. And that's a good thing for us, obviously.

Adding to that, you forget that the ore degradation is advancing really quickly. So as an example, Cidelco, around GBP 25 billion investment in the next 5 years just to maintain the actual production level. And the same is happening with Escondido. This is happening with most of the mines in Central Africa. So the ore degradation is picking up really quickly. So I don't think -- probably the minus -- compared to last cycle, we have in 12 and 10, 11. They build these mega plans. I think they're taking a more prudent way and going to go slowly and building capacity and learn how to run the plants more than just making this big plants they built 2 years ago.

And then perhaps just a final one, just on the combination market and come back to it, how do you think your competitors will react to what is essentially you taking share in these new markets or these energy-efficient solutions? Do they come back with a more competitive pricing offer? Or how do you think that develops over time?

I mean I would say I think we all understand -- all the suppliers understand what the problem is. They understand what our customer imperatives are. We're all trying to help them become more efficient, use less energy use less water. So that's what we're all trying to do. And I think we've talked today about how we're doing that. I'm sure our competitors will have similar views on what they're trying to do. In particular, on HPGR. I think we've built a very, very strong bridgehead into that market, and we're ahead. And as we have done over many, many decades with the Warman franchise, once we get ahead, we stay ahead. And so we're not sort of -- having got that market position saying, we're now going to stand still. We're going to continue to evolve the technology, continue to invest in research and development, continue to think about other alliances and how we can improve that. So almost back to John's point on the sort of internal continuous improvement is exactly the same in terms of staying ahead of the competition. A slurry pump today looks quite similar to the one of 10, 20, 30 years ago. but it's fundamentally different in terms of its capabilities from a performance point of view. They get bigger, they get stronger and new alloys. There are any ways of doing things in terms of liners and so on and so forth. So we just -- our deep, deep culture is to continue to improve and stay ahead of the competition. And that's what we're going to do. Okay. Any more questions from anywhere? Any questions online? Okay. Well, look, thank you very much. So thank you very much, everybody, for coming along today. Really, really appreciate it. Again, good to see everybody in person after such a long time. Good to be back in this room after many, many years. And because we're going to stay around. And I think there'll be a some refreshments outside. So very happy to have some more questions and informal chat as we finish. But thanks again for attending today. It's much appreciated.