Ansell Limited

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Ansell Limited FY25 half year results call. All participants are in a listen only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Neil Salmon, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you. And thank you to all of you for your continued interest in Ansell as we update you on our progress over the last six months. And let me begin with a slide that summarizes the content we'll cover today and also what I hope you will find are the key takeaways from our current performance as a business. Firstly, in terms of performance overview, and I'm very satisfied to report double-digit top and bottom line growth, and that's come as a result of meeting or exceeding all our FY25 first half year performance objectives. Significant as part of that are results from the two major investments we've made, the acquisition of the KVU and our productivity programme. Both those are on or ahead of the goals that we previously communicated to you. Also significant to the result is our continued focus on what we consider to be our drivers of long-term growth and sustainability, and I'll outline how we continue to invest behind those. I'll then hand over to Zubair, who will summarise how that comes together in a strong financial performance and also in increasing balance sheet flexibility, all of which gives me confidence today to increase our overall EPS guidance range for the year. Having summarised that will then give you an opportunity to ask us questions. So to that performance overview, and as is our pattern, on the left-hand side of the page here are the goals that I communicated to you at the beginning of the fiscal year. In the middle is my progress assessment against those with summary financials to the right. So key as we begin And the year was to maintain improved organic sales growth in industrial and see healthcare return to organic growth. So certainly accomplished both those goals, very pleased with a 16% organic growth in healthcare and the 8% growth in industrial. Healthcare clearly showing evidence that the de-stocking effects of the last couple of years are firmly behind us. But we also saw some benefit from the catch up of delayed surgical orders that we communicated to you six months ago had been deferred from June fiscal year 24. Industrial success largely driven by new products. The KPU business is performing very well. 7% sales growth, strong performance in the KimTech range in particular. The APIC programme remains on track to the elevated goals we communicated a year ago, and that together resulted in very satisfying EBIT growth, 21% on an organic basis and significantly more on a reported basis. Strength in the first half, plus my confidence in the second half, for reasons I'll outline in a moment, are behind our increase in the guidance range. On the right-hand side, I also want to point out the net debt to EBITDA leverage at 1.6 times, which is well below where we thought it would be at this stage. Strategic investments at the bottom of the page are critical, but I'll cover the details on those in a moment. So to the next slide and a focus on our business unit performance. And what's particularly pleasing to see here is how every business unit has contributed and every part of the Ansell portfolio is performing at or above our best available benchmark of what market performance is in the current environment. Very satisfying to see above 10% growth in mechanical, but also that that's really been driven by the success of new products. We've talked to you before about our very promising ringers impact protection range, but also our high flex ultra lightweight cut protection products are also showing some of the fastest growth we've seen after the launch of new products. Within chemical, the performance is coming across the range, both top-end and bottom-end, hand and body protection ranges. But it's really that higher margin, high-end chemical portfolio, which is gaining traction with markets, that is most important and most promising for the future. And Ansell Guardian is also critical to the success, as I'll cover in a little more detail in a moment. Another strong half for the exam single-use business, and again, growth coming from the more differentiated products, largely made in-house. And then you can see here for both surgical and clean room, we're seeing strong growth in comparison to the half year last year, which was really the last period in which we saw the stocking reduce demand on Ansell. So overall strong delivery across our business units. Turning now to delivery against those key investments we've made. The KPU business has performed above our expectations, very satisfying to see the organic sales growth of 7% and also strong margins across the business geographically and in terms of portfolio. And that coupled with good progress against integration means we're well ahead of where we thought we would be in terms of value creation from the business case. Some more specifics on integration. So the key milestones are in the second half of fiscal year 25. But as I stand here today, I'm confident that we will be able to cut over from Kimberley-Clark transition services to Ansell integration ahead of our original target of the end of fiscal year 25. We will do that in a phased manner, beginning with our larger territories in North America and EMEA, and then followed by our operations in Latin America and APAC. As part of that, we are midstream in transferring responsibility for selling the Cleanguard industrial safety products that until today have still been supported by the Kimberley Clark sales team. And now we're in the process of transferring those to the Ansell general industrial sales team, which is very important to the focus and support required to get this business growing. So overall, we're on track to complete integration and exit transitional services before the end of fiscal year 25. I'm holding to our net pre-tax cost synergy target of $10 million. It's still a little early to revisit that view, but I do expect now an earlier delivery of the first part of those savings in the second half of fiscal year 25 versus my previous expectations. On the APIT program, And a relatively straightforward update for you here. We're on track to achieve our fiscal year 26 pre-tax savings target of 50 million. And we're also on track to deliver within fiscal year 25 the savings we targeted for this year. I won't go through these details as they're largely in line with previous communications to you. I would say, though, that from fiscal year 26, the focus of this programme moves to our ERP upgrades. We've had continued success rolling out this platform to our manufacturing sites, but from fiscal year 26, we begin rolling it out in our promotional operations. So success is coming, as I said before, through consistent focus on the drivers of long-term growth. And we group those under six headings. Today, already, we have leading positions in growing markets, and we look to build on that. And I'm clear that the new customer-focused organic organization structure that we put in place about 18 months ago has been effective in strengthening our connection to the end user and ensuring that is the core of how we drive growth. But I also see improved emerging markets results. We streamlined our operations there. We're operating more as one ANSEL in those markets. And I see that enhancing growth and therefore building ANSEL's further geographic diversification. I've already commented to how our comprehensive product portfolio that we continue to innovate is key to our current success. I want to say a little bit more about the service solutions. And these are increasingly valued by our customers. We've expanded Ansell Guardian now to cover our medical operations as well. And using the Guardian methodology, we're able to communicate clearly to hospital systems how, for example, in converting standard to more advanced synthetic products, they can achieve overall productivity savings as well as improved patient and healthcare worker outcomes. As another example, we've continued to invest behind Chemical Guardian. And remarkably, this tool is now used approximately 200 times a day in support of customers, which is either our sales teams querying the database on behalf of customers or customers themselves gaining direct access to this very valuable data asset. I'll talk in a moment about our resilient supply chain, which is fundamental to our ability to navigate through the next period of time. One specific highlight for now is the construction of our surgical facility in India. I'm very pleased that we chose India as our site for the next major expansion. Construction is largely complete and we're in the lengthy validation phase necessary for surgical glove products. Sustainability leadership remains important to us, and we're focusing particularly on how when we introduce new products or when we look at rejuvenating existing products, we can do so in a way that features more sustainable materials while also improving product performance and with minimal cost expense either to answer or to our customers. A further aspect of our sustainability leadership is the right cycle recycling service, an aspect of the KBU business that's now a service within Ansell, and we're looking to expand that more broadly. But all of this is only possible if we stay focused on generating cash flow. Again, our improved demand and supply planning processes are critical to a good cash flow result in the hearth, and everything we do here needs to ensure that we continue to generate good cash returns out of our business. So those enablers of value create shareholder results through the four boxes at the bottom of this page, but they won't go through specifically at this time. So to that global diversified supply chain, you know, and you've seen before that we have 14 different manufacturing plants. Perhaps the more important statistic though, is that they are in nine different countries and that's supported further by an extensive outsource partner network. And really, that's what you need at this point in time. You need a flexible supply chain. You need options. And certainly, we believe that creates competitive advantage for Ansell at this time. Our largest combined manufacturing and sourcing locations are Malaysia and Sri Lanka. For some time now, we've been working on a strategy to ensure we minimize our single country dependence, whatever country that may be. Specifically for China, as part of our APIP initiatives, we've been scaling up production in Sri Lanka so that Sri Lanka is able to make the same products that historically we only were able to make in China. And that also, of course, reduces our dependence on exclusive China sourcing to the U.S. Overall, our best view of us versus the industry is that Ansell exports fewer China-made products to the US than the industry more generally. And of course, we've taken actions to reduce that China-Seoul country dependence. But we also know that other industry players are adopting similar strategies. Specific to Mexico and Canada, we have no Canadian-made products as part of Ansible's supply chain. We have a very limited number of products that are made in Mexico, but overall not a significant exposure. And then a general comment. I do believe, and these comments have been supported by others in our industry, that overall, should tariffs come into effect, our first step is to try to mitigate those through sourcing options. If that's unavoidable, then we do expect to be able to pass through tariff increases to our customers. So final word on sustainability before I hand over to Zubair. And generally I focus on this page more at the full year. So just a couple of comments. Firstly, you may remember last year, I was clear that the number of injuries we'd seen and our total recordable injury frequency rate had increased after many years prior to that of reduction. so this year it's very satisfying to see a substantial improvement in the tr ifr rate and that gets us back on or even ahead of our 2030 target there and secondly we're right in midstream onboarding the kvu suppliers onto ansel's very well established supplier management framework overall i'm satisfied with our initial assessment of those suppliers and i and i believe we can get them up to the overall rating that we expect of all answer suppliers within our targeted period of time to the right here we're generally on track to our sustainability goals uh particular focus in that last bullet point of how do we also ensure through product innovation that we're reducing the environmental impact of our pp portfolio So with those comments concluded, I'd now like to hand over to Zubair for more details on the financial results.

Thanks, Neil. And hello, everybody. As always, I'll add a bit more colour to that financial overview Neil's just provided. But before I do that, I just wanted to begin with my own summary of the half. And that's one where after many months, and maybe you could even say years without those external pandemic related hangover issues Neil has just referred to such as destocking. We were able to over deliver on our commitments and with that golden rule, I think clearly met saying what you're going to do and then actually doing what you said you were going to do. And it's very pleasing that first half EPS came in at just under 56 cents. as Neil outlined on an adjusted basis. You've already heard a comprehensive summary of the sales line, and so I'll start with G-Paid margins up 140 basis points versus that prior half. And when we were acquiring that KBU business, we did outline then we'd see a mixed benefit from that business, from their higher margins. And in our own business, we'd also expect operating leverage with a normalization in those healthcare cells, and then a further boost from APIP savings, and all of that combining together to improve G-paid and G-paid margins. Now, freight costs were a headwind to margins in the half, but some of that cost, however, was very intentional, and we see it rather as an investment because we used more expensive air freight than usual, building up channel safety stocks, and that was to support strong demand in some of those new product launches. Now, as Neil mentioned, within our strategic or refreshed strategic framework, I should say, our commercial teams are very judicious about using multiple levers such as air freight or higher safety stocks when they know that will secure competitive advantage and it will delight our customers. We also believe that's an extra point of differentiation, supplementing our very high quality product ranges. And last in terms of gross margin, we did continue to see inflation like so many businesses and a couple of key raw material items, but those increases are timing related and should be offset by pricing actions we implemented in January. Moving to that SG&A line, this was up 7% on an organic constant currency basis. And a couple of points to note here. Firstly, we've increased incentive accruals in the half, and that's commensurate with our better than target performance, evidenced by that upgrade in EPS guidance. And secondly, we incurred temporary higher KBU expenses associated with that transitional services agreement. And I'd say the final point to note here is that those incremental APIP savings have indeed partially offset some of this increased SG&A spend. And as you'll see in the appendix, overall foreign exchange, a big talking point is foreign exchange around the world. That provided just under $1 million of a tailwind to our earnings for the half. And although underlying currency movements were unfavorable to EBIT, our hedge program was always working as designed and that muted some of this impact and it left an overall modest gain in terms of foreign exchange. And so wrapping up all of that, we arrived at an EBIT increase of just under 21% on an organic basis. The significant items line, that's over $30 million, includes APIP expense and those KBU transaction and integration costs, which we signaled again on acquisition. EBIT margin was 12.5%, which is the best first half result, incidentally, in my time as CFO at Ansell, and that excluding the fiscal 21 year, which included that pandemic sugar hit. Moving to the net profit line, interest here was higher due to the incremental borrowings required to fund the acquisition. And then lastly, our effective tax rate came right in as guided at 23.5%. So overall, a good start to fiscal 25 and it's promising momentum in the business, which we're fully focused on maintaining through to that second half. Turning to the next slide here on the industrial segment, as Neil mentioned, we've got organic constant currency sales growth here of over 8%, and it's pleasing to see growth in both mechanical and chemical. And that was largely, as we've just heard, a better mix in mechanical, where we had very strong contribution from those great new products and volume growth and chemical where we're winning with our range of high-end chemical gloves and suits as neil mentioned and that's after multi-year program and targeting that exact type of product range now with ebit growing at a faster rate than sales clearly our margins in this segment are improving and now at uh 15 and a half percent with apip savings a key contributor, but also partially offset by those intentionally higher freight costs I mentioned earlier. Moving to the next slide, the healthcare segment. Now here, if you pull our comments from our call a couple of years ago at the end of fiscal 23, and that seems quite a while ago, but then we anticipated here in fiscal 25, we would see an end to customer destocking and end market conditions normalizing. With that, we're able to deliver strong top line organic growth with first half sales of just over 16% above the prior year. Now that was volume growth across each healthcare unit and in particular surgical and clean room, which both had those de-stocking effects in the prior comparable period. And as Neil mentioned, surgical also benefited from clearing those back orders from fiscal 24, which were worth about $17 million. Earnings were higher on improved sales. You've got better operating leverage and growing APIP savings. Now the magnitude of that organic constant currency EBIT growth in part is reflecting that soft comparative period. of earnings, no doubt in that, when we slowed our manufacturing production to prevent inventory buildup, but we also had the accretion from the KBU acquisition. So overall, it's good to see a return to those underlying fundamentals in the healthcare business, but we're certainly not done in terms of further improvements there in the months and years to come. Now, next, a quick word on input costs. Here, raw material costs, I think, is well documented externally as well. They're higher than expected. Both nitrile and natural rubber latex trending higher both through the half and against the prior year. But other raw material costs that we incur or that we use are broadly stable. We do continue to see inflation and conversion costs, and that's most notably in our employment costs driven by minimum wage increases across various Asian entities and some of our social compliance actions, which we're addressing or offsetting through various productivity initiatives. We also saw increases in some of our outsourced product costs, but we're passing them through to the market alongside these increases in key raw material costs. Now, moving to that all important cash flow slide, which again, cash is king. I'm pleased to say we delivered yet another strong result. First operating cash flow at just under $54 million with cash conversion, a healthy 104%. Our teams remain very focused on cash. and we're able to offset one-off costs from APIP and the KBU deal and the investment in working capital with improved inventory turns and tight management of receivables and payables. Net capex. was over $28 million for the half. And a big piece of that spend was funding the completion of construction of our new surgical plant in India. And of course, that last step there on the screen or on the slide there was the increase in net debt, which enabled that KBU acquisition at the start of the half. Switching now to the balance sheet. Again, very robust here, as you can see from the slide. And at the same time, we're now returning to that healthier trend in terms of our return on capital employed metric. When you strip out the closing inventory from the KBU acquisition, our working capital was broadly flat versus the prior year or versus June 2024. And we did say at the time KBU's outsourced manufacturing model, it requires lighter inventory carry. So we'd see some mixed benefit in our turns from that. And that increased to 2.4 turns. Now, again, this improvement is not just happening by chance, but rather is through a lot of effort by so many of my colleagues. And it reflects that supply chain continuous improvement that Neil referred to earlier. And wrapping up here, that roadsheet metric did improve. It's just over 11% now on the back of those strong earnings and the KBU acquisition. We're also seeing strong initial returns. so closing out my financial section here a couple of words on funding profile firstly adjusting for kbu our pro forma net debt was 1.6 times our ebitda at the half year which is a small reduction versus the end of fiscal 24. now with incentive insurance payments which we typically make in the first half Our cash generation is weighted usually to the second half. And so I expect this ratio to, or the net debt to EBITDA ratio to further reduce over the coming months. And also adjusting for the timing of the payment of the KBU acquisition at the start of year, that net debt number did reduce by about $27 million in the half. And that's a really pleasing outcome given our focus on de-levering as quick as possible. And as you can see on the slide, we have a very balanced maturity profile. The average tenor is just under five years and much of our debt remains fixed, driving a close to average interest rate at 5%. Now, with this kind of balance sheet headroom and that maturity profile combined with the strong cash flow generation, we remain focused on seeking out value accretive, both organic and inorganic investments. But as always, we'll remain highly disciplined with our capital allocation. Now, before I hand back to Neil, since this is my last results presentation as Ansell CFO, I did want to take the liberty of a few more seconds so I could thank everyone both on the buy side listening in here and the sell side for your very engaging interactions over the last few years and let's call it encouragement. But thanks especially to Neil and the board and all my colleagues across the Ansell world for your unbelievably generous support and, quite frankly, putting up with my high expectations and demands over the last six years or so. Now, Ansell is a top notch market leader. We have an amazing set of products combined with an amazing set of high quality people with a culture I'm delighted to have been a part of. And I'm very pleased to be able to sign off with the company in arguably the best shape it's ever been in under Neil's leadership. And with that said, back to you, Neil, for final comments and Q&A.

Thank you, Zubair. So I'm glad that we are finally meeting your expectations. And indeed, if we talk to the half two, firstly, yes, very satisfying to report on a result, which I think largely we can claim has come from our own hard work rather than any particular bonus or benefit we got from external market conditions. And I'll comment on that in the future. uh in a moment but we also know that in your minds we're only as good as our next result rather than what we have just delivered so let's turn our attention here to what's ahead So, and these are the objectives that I plan to report against to you in another six months. So firstly, keeping that focus on growth through differentiated customer solutions and maintaining the momentum behind new products, whilst also continuing to build that customer intimacy through Ansell Guardian, RightCycle and other services. Keeping focus on operational excellence is essential, and clearly the most important goals for the second half are firstly to complete the KPU integration without any disruption to customers, while also sustaining the productivity gains we are making, both from APIP and from continued focus on productivity. And then we must make sure that that global supply chain flexibility I referred to before comes to the table as we deal with a number of challenges related to cost competitiveness, including potential tariff impacts. My view at this time is we'll be able to mitigate and manage through tariff changes, but clearly there's a lot of uncertainty at this point as to what exactly will end up being the final result of that. And then we need to prepare for commercial ERP system upgrades planned for fiscal year 26. We'll stay very focused on capital allocation and wanting to invest capital for long-term competitive advantage. That means, of course, long-term shareholder value creation. So we'll maintain that inventory flexibility, that's what they're referred to, to ensure that we can service increased customer demand. We look to close out the surgical facility in India. And with the flexibility that the balance sheet gives, we're able to consider all elements of our longstanding capital deployment approach, including further M&A should the right opportunities present themselves. So more specifically to the reasons behind our increased guidance range. Firstly, with regards to market conditions, and here I would say I haven't changed my view significantly. Any changes that are on this page are moderately unfavorable versus how I viewed things at the start of the year. For healthcare, overall solid demand that we see, and as commented a couple of times already, destocking is clearly now in the rearview mirror. In industrial markets, manufacturing demand conditions remain subdued. Generally, PMIs have continued to be sub-50 in most major countries. Perhaps in January we started to see those improve, but it will be some time before any improvement in PMIs reflects in change demand conditions for Anselm. We continue to deal with elements of inflation, ocean freight rates remain elevated versus more historical levels, and manufacturing labor costs continue to increase as countries push through minimum wages in many of the territories in which we operate. And then tariffs are a factor also that we will clearly need to navigate. And then finally, a strengthening US dollar is unfavorable to our US dollar reported earnings, not so much, of course, for our Australian dollar share price. So what are the assumptions behind our increased guidance range? Well, overall, that we can continue to do well in terms of organic constant currency sales growth. But I do anticipate a slower growth rate in the second half. And that's partly as a result of those one time items we've noted in this presentation, which are more H1 specific benefits than continuing benefits into H2. Xavier referred to higher raw material cost increases that we saw in the first half. And as you've seen us do many, many times in the past, when we see high raw material costs become established, we then put in place pricing to offset. And we were able to secure more of a price increases that have just gone into effect that will offset that in the second half. Although market rates for freight remain elevated, our requirement for air freight should be less in the second half, as we don't see the need to deploy higher-cost freight options so extensively in order to meet customer demand. I do expect that we will start to see the KPU cost synergy realisation in the second half, and that's earlier than our previous view. With regards to tariffs, we have a number of strategies we're evaluating. And of course, those are subject to what finally happens with regards to tariffs. It's not only in the US clearly that we have to consider tariff increases. So either we mitigate through alternative sourcing options or we pass through the cost impact through pricing. Whether we are able to do in exactly the same time period as the period in which tariff costs first impact us is a question. But overall, I view any timing lag to be limited and not to be material to our second half results delivery. FX is clearly a headwind. We factored that into our guidance. Far too far out from FY26 to give any kind of longer-term currency exposure, but clearly at this point, the stronger US dollar is unfavorable to our underlying US dollar headwinds. APIP savings on track, and then one-off pre-tax costs overall to be the same as previously indicated, but with some timing adjustments given the acceleration of our key programs. And then cash flow and capital management, we're sticking to the CAPEX number of 60 to 70, which includes a large portion of investment in the India surgical facility. The dividend we've announced maintains our payout ratio policy. And as Abhay described, we see opportunities for further reduction in net debt EBITDA, subject, of course, to whether or not we find further investment opportunities to build that long-term value creation. And so in conclusion, with the satisfaction I have and the confidence that this gives me in INSOLE's underlying performance, that allows myself and the INSOLE team to think about what will the next sources of long-term value creation be. And so we come back to these six pillars again and some questions more related to where we can go with these sources of value creation. So leading positions in growing markets, we have those, but there's still opportunity to gain share in the markets in which we already lead. And maybe there are opportunities for product and geographic expansion so that we grow our addressable market. But we'll only pursue those strategies if we're clear that we're leveraging Ansell's existing core PPE expertise. I talked quite a bit about comprehensive product portfolio. I think the additional point to make is that what we've demonstrated is that customers are willing to invest further in PPE solutions. They're willing to pay for a higher price point product as long as we can clearly demonstrate that those solutions are solving pressing safety issues that they have. And we continue to innovate in products that are ambitious in terms of their safety objectives. They are also higher priced and customers are willing to make those investments. So we'll continue to focus on that driver of growth. I talked earlier about service solutions, and I think what's key to these is that they rest on data assets. And I think it's become clear that a core element of value creation into the future is companies that can generate proprietary data assets. And in a world of AI, AI is only as valuable as the data assets on which it can operate. So we're seeking to further augment the data insights that Ansell has and can bring to industrial and healthcare customers, again, against that central goal of helping them mitigate and solve longstanding unmet safety needs. The resilient supply chain is going to be tested over the next six months. We feel, as I've mentioned already, we're in a good position competitively. One question we have not been able to resolve yet is whether domestic production in higher labour cost countries could be economically viable. Today, we still view that as unlikely, but circumstances may change and we want to be ready to be the first should the economic equation change there. I view sustainability leadership as continuing to be an important focus of Ansell because our larger customers have themselves set sustainability goals. And as they look to deliver on those goals, they will be increasingly reliant on leading suppliers to deliver to them lower carbon solutions. And then all of this is only possible if we continue with wise capital deployment, focused on long-term sources of value through productivity and ensuring that all investments we make enhance our overall cash generation. So with success against those pillars, that should result in continued value creation through customer solutions, through our diversity of our geographic presence, through productivity and through wise capital applications. And now I'd like to hand it over to you, and I'm very interested in your questions. Thank you.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, you can use the question and answer tab at the top right of the webcast window. We ask today that you please limit yourself to two questions per person, after which you may then rejoin the queue. Your first question comes from David Lowe with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much. Thanks, Neil. The line was quite bad for us. I'm not sure if that was everyone, but certainly you were cutting out very regularly, unfortunately, which made listening challenging. Nonetheless, my questions. Neil, I noticed you said that the first half result was largely from your own hard work or the company's own hard work rather than market conditions. I guess the question I have is I'd like to understand what you think market growth has been and what you think organic growth at the sales line is likely to be going forward, please.

Thanks, David, and apologies if you've had some disruption to the quality of the call. So there are no specific market benchmarks that we can rely on to give us a figure that we could quote reliably to you as the market growth rate. However, as you've heard in the past, we've long said that we believe a base market growth rate to be around that 3% or 4% growth rate. I would say the industrial demand growth is probably a little lower than average at this time, and consistent with the PMI readings that we're seeing. Healthcare, if you include the unwind of the destocking effect, is clearly somewhat higher than that on a destocking adjustment basis, but in my view, still below the 16% growth that we recorded in healthcare. So that's the best directional answer I think I can give you at this time, David.

All right. Thanks, Neil. The other question I had is just coming to tariffs. And I get you to describe the competitive landscape as you see it, perhaps by division, just trying to understand where you think the competitors are sourcing and how much of an advantage Ansell's supply chain could be, please.

Yes, so let me begin first of all with medical products sourced from China to the US. These tariffs were flagged some time ago by the previous administration, and generally the industry has had quite a bit of time to prepare for those. So I anticipate that at this point in time, most people have found means of supplying medical products to the US that are no longer so reliant on China sourcing, and that's true for Ansell. I think it's also true for most other industry participants. The next phase of tariffs is clearly still uncertain. Generally though, if we look at industrial products from China, that's where our best read is that Ansell is less exposed to China as a single country source than the industry more generally. We know Ansel is already well advanced, as I said earlier, in reducing any sole country dependence for products that includes China. We also know, of course, that other industry players are doing the same. But there's a limited amount of capacity available in other markets to absorb the very significant manufacturing base that China has built up. So overall, we view ASL as advantaged in terms of industrial supply. But generally, the other advantage we have is options. And really, I think that's the name of the game at this time. In a hard to predict environment, you need multiple options so that you can pivot according to policies as they change. And that is also an area that I think we have an advantage over most players in the industry. So I think my answer may have cut out a bit for you, David, but I hope that you were able to get the gist of that.

Yes, unfortunately it did cut out, but thanks very much. I'll hand over to the next person. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Craig Wong Pang with RBC. Please go ahead.

Great, thank you. Just a question on KBU. The margins you achieved in this half, 24.7%, is ahead of where it's been historically. Could you just explain what has driven that margin expansion for KBU?

Yes, so I wouldn't say it's any particular specific strategy. It's more general, continued, strong execution by the KBU team in pricing and margin management. Overall, I would say, historically, I view the KPU business as having had a more mature, a more sophisticated approach to revenue management. Whenever we do an acquisition, we always think about what are the attributes of both businesses that we want to preserve in the combined business, or in summary, what's the best of both approach? And I would say KPU and the origin in Kimberly-Clark in terms of revenue management is more sophisticated than AdSource historical approaches. And so we're looking to learn from that and extend that more broadly into AdSource. So no specific factors, just generally good execution and continued recognition by our customers that the products served by KBU are premium products. And especially in those high specification clean room environments, having that consistency and quality of supply is vital to those customers.

The conference is now being recorded.

Not sure if the line cut out there, but I'll just go on to my second question then. On the Clean Guard industrial sales, that did decline. Are you able to share how much that declined in the period and whether that was kind of Salesforce related or there was other factors affecting that business?

So we're not breaking out performance into those two segments. I would say that although I'm disappointed in the decline of the Clean Guard safety portfolio, and I do believe that business has long-term growth potential, we did anticipate the risk of some decline as we have been navigating through this transitional period. And as a reminder, the sales team supporting that portfolio has still been the Kimberley Clark sales team, and we're only cutting over to the Ansell sales team in this current period. So I think it's hard to disaggregate exactly what the factors were. I think perhaps there was also some moderate destocking in that portfolio. But what I am confident in is that as the Ansell sales team gets their hands around Clean Guard products, they're excited to have them in the portfolio, having very positive customer conversations. We don't believe we've lost any material chunks of business. And so... Longer term, I view that the Clean Guard portfolio will also be a future source of growth, as well as the Chemtech scientific-oriented portfolio.

The conference is now being recorded.

I think you cut out the end there, but okay. Thanks for those comments. Thank you.

The next question comes from Saul Hedasson with Baron Joey. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning, Neil. And good morning, Zubair. Neil, just coming back to Kimberly Clark again. So can you just talk to, you know, this transitional sales arrangement that was in place or transitional services arrangement? I think our understanding was that would have an impact on the margin initially in this first half particularly, although the margin itself, as Craig acknowledged, is higher than the pro forma margin that you guided to last year. So can you just confirm... Have those transitional arrangements actually impacted on the margin? And as you move out of or step out of those, is the expectation then that the margin on those revenues will step up significantly into the second half? Or is this a reasonable sort of run rate on the margin that you expect from KCPPE?

So they've had some effect on the SG&A costs in the business. So if you're talking EBIT margin, then yes, in the first half, we have been carrying the elevated costs of transition services versus the base SG&A costs in the former prime period, which did not include the premium of transition services. They don't have an effect on GP margin. So, yes, as we begin to realize the SG&A synergy portion of our net 10 million number, we'll see SG&A cost of sales improve. That will begin in the second half, but the majority of that benefit we expect to still see in FY26. So, yes, that's how transition services expect to play through this period. The second consequence of transition services that we did talk to in the business case was that we did see some risk of short-term revenue weakness in the industrial safety business, the clean and guard safety business. And that's the effect that I said did come through, but only in line with the expectations we had, not different to those when we did the original business case.

The conference is now being recorded.

I'll just ask my second question because this line is very problematic. Just on seasonality of the KCPP revenues, so again, the $140 million for first half, would you expect sort of normal seasonality like we see in the broader ANSEL business to impact on KCPP, i.e. stronger second half, or is it different to the base performance of ANSEL?

KCPP is, I think, more evenly weighted, first half, second half. Of course, at Ansell, we have less experience of seeing that seasonal weighting. Overall, for Ansell, I would say we probably have a slightly higher weighting of earnings delivery first half to second half than historically, and that's mainly because of those additional sales contributions that I called out in the first half. So, yeah, that's what I would say about seasonality at this time.

Okay, thanks very much, guys.

Your next question comes from Andrew Payne with CLSA. Please go ahead.

Yep, morning all. You're just staying on Kimberley Clark. You've previously flagged some risks of sales leakage in that business. Just be good to know if you're seeing any of this post-integration, and if so, what's the magnitude of that impact?

On the KimTech scientific portfolio, we have not seen any of that eventuate at this point, but also we're only just at the phase of integrating our go-to-market through leading channel partners and leading end users. So I also think it's too early to say definitively we won't see some of that revenue leakage. And so that's one of the reasons why at this point I'm not changing my net 10 million cost synergy number. And an assumption behind that was included in that. So we've got it covered. assuming it does eventuate, and we're not seeing it yet, which is a good sign, but I think also too early to conclude that we won't see it in future. On the Kleengard side, that's where we have already seen, as anticipated, some revenue leakage. From here, we expect to turn that around and to get that business back to growth, and we're now moving past the high-risk phase as we integrate that business into Hansel fully. Clearly, we're going to deliver on that integration milestone successfully and without any customer disruption.

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I'm confident in the preparations that we've made to ensure that integration date goes smoothly, but there's still a lot of work to be done in order to navigate that successfully through the second half.

That's great. And just one other thing. Are there any risks in the first half, 25, that there was a pull forward of orders from customers due to tariff concerns, either for you or your competitors?

So we try to track consistently what our customers report as their sell-out rates, being our channel partners, and how that matches to our sell-in rates. And as we look at those two indicators of channel inventory, we see no major variation, which would indicate no significant early ordering by our channel partners. Of course, we can't see necessarily what's happening at the end-user level, but generally, destocking or restocking effects happen more materially at the channel level. The only exception to those two that we've already mentioned. So customers were, it's not linked to tariffs, but customers were building safety stock of our fast-growing mechanical new products. That's the $10 million figure we gave And then in surgical, the back orders we had at the end of last year meant customers were below their target inventory level, and we've caught that back up now in the second half. So those are not tariff-related, but those are two specific factors that we have called out in this presentation. But leaving those aside, then no, we have no evidence of any major pull-through in revenue in the first half.

The conference is now being recorded.

So just to complete my last sentence, if you missed that, we have no major evidence of any revenue pulled forward in the first half beyond the factors that I previously communicated.

Yeah, that's great. I was dropping out, but that's great. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Vanessa Thompson with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Thanks very much.

Thanks, Neil and Zubair. And I just want to wish Zubair well in the next steps. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to ask what the branding strategy might be going forward. You've noted that there's a very high regard for the Kimberly Clark product. Thank you.

Yes, good question. It's one we're working on currently, Vanessa. So yes, TIMSEC and CleanGuard will both clearly be long-term parts of the Ansell brand portfolio. Also, the APEX and RightCycle service solution brands, which are equally important. The question we're considering right now is to what extent we rebrand some Ansel products underneath Pymtec and Cleanguard, and we feel we have an overall round family that will be very logical to customers, will be clearly articulated between different product families, and will further enhance the value of the Pymtec and Cleanguard brands. So that's the current focus of ours, Vanessa, and I'll look to give you more details on that at our full year result.

Thank you. And then my second question, Kimberly Clark ran a fully outsourced model. You've noted they had more sophisticated revenue management, obviously profitable. I just wondered how you think that that was achievable and is that the additional benefit of the transaction in that you can insure some of that stuff on the highly differentiated products? Thank you.

Yes, so I think I've been clear in previous comments that our focus for this year is to get through the transition service phase to secure the SG&A synergy and to ensure we have no customer disruption. And it was wise, I think, at that time not to plan any major supply chain changes. But with the success we're having, Vanessa, certainly our attention now moves more to what the optimal supply chain will be for the integrated business. Today, still, we have no major insourcing plans. We do see some optimization opportunities across the combined Pimpley Clark and Ansell product networks. And potentially in the future, we will look to leverage insourcing as a source of allocation. And if so, that would be above the net $10 million cost energy number that we've previously described to you.

Thank you. The next question comes from Laura Sutcliffe with UBS. Please go ahead.

Hello, thank you. I'm similarly struggling very much with the audio, so apologies if you've already answered any of this in the bits I couldn't hear. Could you just maybe point us towards what would need to be true for you to be at the top and the bottom extremes of your guidance? What sort of conditions would we be looking at?

Zubair, do you want to pick up that question perhaps?

Yeah, so hopefully you can hear what I'm saying here, but nevertheless, I understand everybody can hear the comments outside of the conference call, so hopefully you can read back the transcript. But in terms of the top and bottom of the guidance range, Basically, continued strong sales execution is clearly the first and foremost item that would get us to the top end of the guidance. So we do have in our own guidance estimates some caution against sales execution, but we always look at that from a corporate perspective and can hedge down that number. But if we continue on the strong vein we have been doing from the first half, that clearly gets us there. Second big point of note is obviously the KBU integration. We're still cutting over into Ansell systems from that process. And if we have a very successful integration, which is what we expect, we should again deliver strong results. And then if end market demand conditions remain buoyant as they are in some of our segments, we again reaffirm and we'll end up at least towards the top end of that guidance range. Now, clearly, at the bottom of the range, it's kind of the opposite to all of what I've said. If we don't have continued strong sales momentum, if there's any challenges with the KBU integration, and then I think everybody knows that big elephant in the room, is the tariff situation and how that will deal with uh or how that will be covered around the globe but as neil mentioned we kind of have probably more of an advantage in that regard than other players that are very highly reliant upon the china side so hopefully you could hear some of that uh and answer your question yeah yeah

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I actually can't hear you at all anymore, but I'll have a go with a second question and maybe read the transcript for your response to the first. You mentioned earlier, or Neil did, that you're surprised and pleased by where your leverage has got to. Could I just ask why you're surprised by it, given that a lot of what you've flagged are things that you are reminding us you've told us before?

So perhaps surprise is too strong a term. I think it's just we've adopted, we had some contingency in our cash flow projections, knowing that there would be some pressure on working capital as with sales growth, of course. And so it's a question of teams delivering above target on a number of those objectives, which overall has contributed to that strong cash flow projection. So it's not that there were any major factors that came along that anticipated it, more continued good execution. And, of course, we continue that focus through the second half.

Thanks very much. The next question comes from Dan Haran with MST Marquis. Please go ahead.

G'day everyone, same problem, so I'll give it a go. Look, just a bit of a high level one. During the troubles, Ansel appeared to really struggle with visibility into the channel and who had the right level of inventory, etc. But today you sort of seem to have quite a bit of confidence that your channel partners are all seeing the right amount of stock. Just wondering what's changed there and what degree of confidence you've got today?

Yeah, so it's a very conscious approach that we've taken, Dan, and thank you for raising it, to be more mindful and disciplined in how we analyze the indicators we get from channel partners. And often this is a case of triangulating through a number of sources. And I should also say that we don't have complete visibility. So we generally have pretty strong visibility in the U.S. We only have partial visibility in other countries. but when you extrapolate from those trends plus ongoing conversations with customers including collaborative forecasting processes that we put in place with leading customers worldwide and that's what we rely on to give ourselves a read of channel channel inventory so it's not a complete data set the data set is not perfect but we're much more rigorous in reviewing the information we do have to then incorporate that into our business planning processes. And the fact that, as Yves reminded us a little while ago, that even 18 months ago we were able to call, and it turns out to have been an accurate call, when de-stocking would end, I think is an indicator that those processes are working for us at this time. So, yeah, it is a change that we've made, Dan, and it's proving very beneficial.

The conference is now being recorded.

So it is a change that we've made, Dan, and it is proving very beneficial to our long-time forecast confidence.

Thanks. That dropped out for most of it, but I may have read the transcript. Look, last question, just G-Paid organic margin was down. Can you just talk through the factors and the elements that drove that downwards?

Yes, so primarily I'll make one comment and then let Svea come in if he has anything further to say. But it's mainly that investment in high-cost freight options in order to support that elevated demand growth. And then also some of the often we see in new products in the initial growth phase, we don't make the same margin as we do on a much more mature product as we're still in that scale-up phase. So those would be the two reasons. Svea, would you add to anything on G-Paid margin?

No, other than I would say that we still expect and are managing towards operating leverage in that segment. So, as I said, we're not done in that business unit and we'll expect further improvement over the future.

And we also saw some raw material inflation in the first half, as Yvette described, and we have pricing going into effect in the second half. So I think those are the key points to G-Paid margin.

All right. Thanks very much, Vince.

Your next question is from Vanessa Thompson with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Thanks very much.

Just wanted to ask about your longer-run EBIT margin expectations at both the divisional and the group level. What should we be thinking in terms of modelling? Thank you.

Yes, so that industrial margin that we've printed consistently in the 15% to 16% is a margin I'm very satisfied by. I do see opportunities for further improving that, but also the option I'll take, if it's available to me, is to grow faster at a steady EBIT margin rather than only to drive margin in industrial. And it's good that we have both options, as you saw play out in the first half. The healthcare EBIT margin is still below where I would like it to be long-term. We made one good step along that journey today, but we're far from complete in healthcare EBIT margin. So I would like to get healthcare EBIT margin back closer to its long-run average. But as I said before, it's going to take a couple of years before we see healthcare EBIT margins improve back to that level. Thanks for the question, Vanessa.

Your next question is a webcast question from Matthew Cheviere and reads, based on your customer's historical ordering patterns, how much of the revenue growth is from restocking versus advanced purchasing?

So I think the advanced purchasing question I had before, and other than those items that I called out, we don't see any significant advanced purchasing in the half. And there wasn't any restocking. So the current sales level was a closer reflection of actual end use demand for our products. as compared to the prior period where the demand on Ansell was below the end-use consumption of our products as the channel worked through excess inventory. So I'd characterize the half as neutral with regards to destocking or restocking with the exception of those two items that I've previously commented on. And also, as far as we can tell, no significant buy forward ahead of either price increase or tariff potential implications.

You have another webcast question from Matthew Cheviere, which reads, you stated that in second half earnings will be supported by pricing. How much of that pricing has already been put in place versus what you're planning on implementing?

So all those price increases have been agreed with customers at this point. So they're not major increases in the historical context of ASO, but they are sufficient to offset the raw material inflation that we've seen in the first half. So already secured with customers, and I'm pleased with how our sales teams delivered that.

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

So apologies again, particularly, I think, to our analyst coverage for the disruption in the call, and we'll make sure the transcript is available to you. A word briefly on Zubair. So, yes, his last half year results with us. And what a pleasure it is to see Zubair to go out very much on a high. And so much of the value creation that we have reported on to you has been driven by Zubair, both his leadership of finance function and his embrace of broader supply chain strategies. But core to Zaver's value creation thesis is long-term deployment of capital for shareholder value creation. And that aspect, I can assure you, will remain a part of Ansel going forward. But secondly, I want to thank the overall Ansel team. There was a lot of work that went into this result. We set ourselves three goals to improve the base performance of the business to levels we hadn't seen before, and at the same time to deliver on two very significant and complex investments, the productivity program and the acquisition of the KPU. And so it's a great testament to the hard work and commitment of Ansell people around the world that we've been able to deliver on all three value drivers at the same time and with results that exceeded our original expectations. So I look forward to continuing this story with you through the second half. And for now, thank you for your time and interest in that talk today.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.