James Cropper PLC

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the James Cropper PLC Interim Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab that's just situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and will publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the InvestorMeet company platform. Before we begin, we would just like to submit the following poll. And if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from James Cropper PLC. David, Andrew, good morning.

Good morning, everyone. My name is David Stirling. I'm the chief executive here at James Cropper PLC. And we have Andy Goody, who is our chief financial officer. Pleased to meet you on investment company platform. Let's get into some of the detail. So where we'd like to start is just a little bit of a discussion about the overview of James Cropper. It's a business with two main divisions, advanced materials and paper and packaging. Paper and Packaging is the larger of the two divisions. It's where the business originated and came from. And Advanced Materials is a technology-based division involved in a series of more technically demanding markets with products which are in essence somewhat similar to paper using non-natural fibers the advanced materials business also has a coatings division so that's making effectively metallized mainly coatings on the fibers and on other surfaces particularly in the hydrogen fuel cell space I joined James Cropper just under a year ago and after an initial review of the business, set three main strategic priorities for us. One was that the advanced materials business, while profitable and well run, hadn't really grown significantly and growth became the number one driver for advanced materials paper and packaging it's a long-standing business well documented that paper markets are in general slow decline around the world and had not been profitable for some time the paper packaging division so getting that division back to profitable business was the priority there and thirdly the group had a large-ish debt position and that was something that felt uncomfortable and so third priority for the business, generate cash, increase the earnings, pay down the debt and get to a more comfortable position there. So we've made very good progress on all three. We'll take you through the detailed financial outcomes in the next section of the presentation by Andy, and I will just run through a bit of more detail on the divisions so you can see what we're talking about as we explain the financial results. So I'd like to start with the group. we can see that we have the two main divisions paper accounts for about 70 percent of revenue advanced materials about 30 percent and then we have a group function which looks after as well as the plc elements things like the it systems and finance etc um the Advanced materials, as I said, the advanced materials, the strategic imperative there is growth. That's something that we have got a number of different things to do. We'll talk in more detail about that later. But effectively, we have a good product portfolio and the markets that we're operating in are, you know, are growth markets in some cases and really possibly very high growth markets in others. So we're thinking about how we actually deliver growth there. The papers and packaging is a very different proposition. It's a business that has been around for a very long time. And I think operational self-help is the number one priority to deliver there. The group overall, in the first half, delivered just over 50 million revenue, which was very similar to the previous year, and a much improved EBITDA performance. Now, we've made EBITDA, which is earnings before tax depreciation interest, as the primary financial measure for the group. So it is a very close proxy to profit. If you look at our trading update, you can see how you get from profit to EBITDA. But it is in some ways a cleaner metric, given some of the exceptional items, et cetera, happening in the group. And that is the number one metric we're looking at. around a 50% growth in that measure of profitability in the period and that's a very pleasing start to my first year. Let's look at advanced materials in a bit more detail. Advanced materials i've got a series of different technologies but the largest one is non-woven wetly non-woven fibers so we create a paper-like structure more open than paper so it's more like a veil on a veil used in a huge variety of things but quite often the biggest applications are in the composite technology areas and we think about those as well as our coated products so the metal coated products in two different segments really or types of market the first one is established market so Things like defence, aviation, construction, medical, sports and leisure are all established markets that people know well. There is growth there in some of them, but it's not transformative growth. So generally more stable and we can go in and the business that we win there is not completely new. It's probably come from an improvement on someone else's solutions. The nascent markets are much more developing in themselves, so we talk about battery technology, we talk about fuel cells, carbon capture, hydrogen generation, drone technology, these sorts of things. The markets are potentially very high growth, they are potentially very game changing, but also much more difficult to predict. And will there be markets and who will be the technological winners? It's much more difficult to understand those. And we think about those markets differently and how we approach them and how we invest against them. So advanced materials as a division, we had about 13% growth in there. some of the material goes to North America there so we have the tariff situation and the top line is boosted a little bit by tariffs but also we have an exchange rate situation top line taken down a little bit by the dollar exchange rate and overall I think that's slightly higher than double digit growth in advanced materials is a good performance in the period If we look at the established and the nascent markets separately, we're seeing growth about 9% in established markets. That's probably slightly higher than we think the long run average would be there, partly due to some customer timing. And in the nascent markets, 21% growth. Again, that's probably in line with where that growth could be subject to the technology positions in those markets unfolding in a sensible way. So we do risk in those sorts of markets a little bit potentially boom and bust because of the nature of them. I think the underlying position, 20%, seems about right. If we'd grown by 30 or 40, I wouldn't have been overexcited by that because likely that would not have been sustainable. And similarly, if we'd grown by 5% in a six-month period, I wouldn't have been particularly downbeat about that because that would have been probably just due to time of order. So we need to be very aware of the higher volatility in some of the nascent markets. Overall, a really good six months in a business which is well positioned and operationally well run, making decent margins. strategically as i said the different markets are um have different characteristics and we can see that as well as growth we think about complexity and risk on the markets and you can see on the map there that the higher growth markets are those probably nascent markets they are more complicated they are risky our route to market our investment our focus is different from both. But both types of markets have got growth opportunities. I think certainly in all cases, our technology can be sold to more customers in those markets. We are putting a decent amount of money into operational costs. commercial technical and marketing to deliver higher pipeline flow into the business so all very positive but feels like a slightly more front foot approach than we've been adopted in the past and we are hopeful that that growth can be delivered in the pipeline over the medium term If we turn to paper and packaging, we see a slightly different position. The key markets we have are the European and UK particular craft papers, art, binding, special display, print packaging. um and the the packaging instead of premium and what they call mass stage mass prestige um packaging for high-end consumer goods and um there's also a small amount in the paper and packaging division at this point of recycled fibers card etc um these markets generally as i said have been in decline um the interesting thing though is james cropper relative to the markets is a small player and so the ability to take market share in all of those is something that we are we have to we have to do um if we look at our uh what we call finished and added value products um about 40 odd percent of revenue our core markets are just over 50 of revenue both with drift down um characteristics in the market and a better customer service a better um more agile uh approach to you know pricing in the market etc will be necessary to win business and that's something that we are making the transition to. The other thing we're doing is picking up more of the commodity business. And why is that important? Well, We are a speciality mill. When we make paper, we will make waste, and when we make waste, we need to do something about that. Having products which use that waste, having products which fill up the capacity of a high-cost asset, always important. And these are markets where we can make money by growing in the more commoditized products. um substantially paper uh is about getting uh the operations right though um you know when i joined it was very clear to me that we had a business which was losing money and the primary reason for losing money was the operational uh way of working so if we think about the costs of operations of what we're trying to do we have got to cut costs those costs are primarily pulp and raw materials so we just waste energy so run the machines efficiently and shut down the power plant when we're not running the machines and people and that we've gone through a couple of restructuring programs which should be completed in January, fully effective January, to take overheads out of the paper business and to group to a certain extent and restructure the operational approach in paper and that's something which while not completely happening in the first half, is going to get to the point where we expect to be breakeven on an EBITDA basis at some point in the final quarter of this financial year. So that's a very important milestone. We also have in the paper business something called Colourform. That's a molded fiber operation. We have structured that so it's not a separate operation, doesn't have a separate overhead and management cost, and that's absorbed into the paper business as one of the product lines within paper. If we look medium term strategically, where do we think we're going? Well, as I said, priorities, operational effectiveness, knowledge management to become better at doing what we are doing and embed the know-how of our people more in the processes of our business. Market positioning, really important. Our core products, what we call peak two, You know, there are markets which, as I said, are declining, but also can exhibit a bit of volatility, a bit of up and down, particularly in the monthly or quarterly basis. And we want to fill our factories. So we can fill those more with the more commoditized business. and over time develop new products to change the product mix in our business and ultimately change the value proposition. I think Jim Cropper has some machinery which is quite old, which more people would be negative about. I'm not particularly negative about that. I see that as giving us real flexibility because machines that were made a while ago were designed to do a large number of different things and we can take those and create new products from them in a way that can't be done with more modern paper machines that are designed to make one or two things very very efficiently um so i think that's a that's a that's a journey we are on um it's a very interesting uh time in james cropper and we are i think doing we've made a good start you know six months under a belt made a good start and i'm going to hand over to andy goodie who's our cfo to talk to the financial highlights

Thank you, David. First thing I want to highlight on this slide is the second row adjusted EBITDA key measure of profitability for us, for the reasons David has mentioned before. And in the first half of FY26, so that's the six months to September 2025, In that period, our adjusted EBITDA was just over £4 million, which was £1.4 million up on the same period in the previous year. So we've made strong progress. That was driven, that growth in EBITDA, by two things primarily. One was the revenue growth that David talked about in the advanced materials business. And the other was the improvements that we've made to the operational structure of the paper and packaging business, which has seen the EBITDA loss in that business narrow over the last six months. Adjusted profit before tax, the third line in the table, that's improved by £2.3 million against the same period last year. Part of that was the EBITDA growth I've just talked about. Adjusted profit before tax also benefited from a significant drop in our depreciation charge that was driven by the asset impairment that we booked at the end of the previous financial year and that just washes through in terms of a lower depreciation charge moving forward. Another thing I want to highlight on this table is the bottom row, net debt to adjusted EBITDA over the last 12 months, a key measure of the sustainability of our debt levels and the health of our balance sheet. If you go back to September 2024, that ratio of net debt to the last 12 months EBITDA was 3.3. That is a high figure. It was flashing red on our dashboard, needed to be attended to. We've made strong progress on that. I'll touch in a little bit more detail on what we've done, but that ratio dropped to 1.3 times at September 2025. So a much stronger, more sustainable position for us. Barry's touched on some of the key revenue trends in the businesses. The chart on the left hand side shows you the revenue in our advanced materials business by half year for the last five half years. And I think the key thing that I want to highlight on here is You can see in this chart that in the second half of our financial year 2024, so that's the six months to March 2024, we saw a drop in revenue. That's the second bar in the chart. There was a notable drop in revenue in the advanced materials business. driven primarily by the timing of what was going on in some of the nascent sectors. David referred earlier to the fact that we do expect to see some volatility in the trajectory of those kind of sectors. We did see a drop in that period. What the graph shows is that we have since then returned to revenue growth in the advanced materials business. There's positive momentum in terms of the top line, more to do for the reasons David talked about. But we have seen growth over the last three or four half years there. If you look at the chart on the right-hand side, the paper and packaging business, again, we saw a drop in revenue in the six months to March 2024. You can see that in the second bar on the chart. What's happened since then is that revenue has stabilized, and that obviously is important for us. It provides a more stable backdrop for the operational improvements that we're driving. In the half year that we are reporting on now, so the six months to September 2025, we did see a notable drop in revenue with one of our merchant customers and that has largely been replaced in the period with revenue growth elsewhere. which has been particularly encouraging to see the way that we've offset that with some new customer wins and some stronger revenue with existing customers as well. In terms of our net debt, the grey line on here is showing you that net debt to last 12 months EBITDA ratio that peaked at 3.3 times in September 2025. You can see a significant drop since then. And that's, as David mentioned, has been one of our key three strategic objectives is to manage our cash and reduce the net debt. The things we've done to deliver that, we've improved disciplines in terms of cash management, both capital expenditure and working capital. That's been important and helpful. uh we have reprofiled uh our debt repayments on our uk facility um to reduce the amount of debt repayments that we make over the uh 18 months that run out to next september uh that has not affected this particular metric but what it does mean is that the level of debt that we have on the balance sheet um is more sustainable in terms of the repayment profile so we've done that In the first half of this year, we sold some intellectual property rights that we developed internally around decarbonisation within manufacturing facilities like ours. That generated some one-off income that was very helpful to reduce our debt levels. And so we've got the business into a much more sustainable place. The growth that we've seen in our underlying trading performance and EBITDA also of course has helped as one of the key parts of this metric. In terms of the balance sheet, the most important thing on the balance sheet is the fact that the net debt has dropped. And I think there's a number of ways in which you can see that our balance sheet is more resilient now than it has been over the last couple of years. During the six months that we're looking at to September 2025, we've seen a drop in net debt, as I mentioned, because of the actions that we've taken. We've reprofiled the repayments of our main UK debt facility. We've seen a drop of just under £3 million in our pension fund deficit, largely due to movements in market interest rates and inflation. We've benefited as well from strong equity markets over that period. So it's helpful to see that deficit coming down slightly. And because of the growth of our profit during the six month period, as well as the exceptional income, we've seen net assets increase by just under £4 million. So if you look at our debt levels relative to our net assets, that metric as well So there's more to do in terms of balance sheet health, balance sheet resilience, but we have made significant progress over the last six months. In terms of cash flow, I mean, we've touched on most of this already by talking about the profit and loss account and the balance sheet. We've repaid one point six million pounds of debt over the first six months of this year, which we've fully funded by the cash that we've generated within the business. We've benefited as well from those exceptional uh intellectual property sale that i mentioned for from some tax receipts recession development tax credits that's helped there uh as well and then finally for me on the pension schemes If we just move the, there we go. Yep. So on the pension scheme, this is an ongoing challenge for us, the deficit in our pension schemes. As I mentioned before, the deficit has dropped. You see in the black, the black bars in this chart showing that the deficit has dropped over the last couple of half years, a notable decline over the last six months, which is very helpful. The green line is showing you the funding level within the scheme. So that has ticked up to around about 83%, 84% funded at the moment. It's going to take probably, if we're honest, about 10 years to get these schemes back to fully balanced. I suspect that the three yearly evaluation that's going on at the moment is probably going to come up at a similar level to where it was three years ago. And so we are going to have to continue as a business to make deficit reduction payments into the scheme and probably similar levels to what we've been doing over the last. three or four years at a little bit more than £1 million a year. That is manageable. It's clearly important that we honour our obligations to this scheme. That is manageable in terms of the cash flows that we see in the business. The investment strategy for the scheme that is set by the trustee with some input from us, that's being reviewed at the moment. It's not going to be changed fundamentally. There's one or two things I think we can do to make sure that the scheme continues to improve as we move forward. I think David will take you through the current trading and outlook for the business.

Yeah, I will. Before I start that, if I could just encourage all listeners, we have the ability to ask questions. If you have any questions, please put them in the chat box. You know, very happy to run through and answer as many of those as we can. Where are we right now? Well, you know, we've got a plan. We're executing the plan. You heard what the main elements are growth in advanced materials that's happening a return to profitability in paper and packaging that is happening and an improvement in the balance sheet and financial cash situation and debt profile that has already happened so you know very good progress within a six-month period as we look forward uh the business is trading well uh since the end of the half year um it's about been about seven or eight weeks or so um very good uh you know progress and trading in both divisions during that period um And if we look slightly further ahead, we see continued growth in advanced materials, maybe not at the rate we've seen in the first half, that's fine, but certainly exiting the year with a growth consistent with a medium term guidance. Paper and packaging, we do expect revenues to be slightly down on where they are or where they were in the first half, but with the benefit of the operational restructuring and other efficiency savings, we should be much more profitable than we were last year and on the road to a consistent profitability within the paper business and I'm very pleased to be doing that on lower volumes because if you can do it on lower volumes you can definitely do it on higher volumes and we expect to see a return to growth in the paper business you know coming out of the end of this year. And finally, our expectations for profit growth are unchanged. The stockbroker's forecast, market forecast, are for an increase in EBITDA of around 20% to 8 million, which is a much improved position on the previous year. It feels like we're doing what we said we'd do and we're just getting on with it. So thank you for listening to this part. I'm now going to move to cover some of the questions. If we can just leave the slides up because I think some of the slides might be beneficial in covering some of the questions. So the first question I have is around about customer concentration. So how concentrated are revenues within aerospace defense and energy transition? And are there any single customers above 10% of revenue? In both our divisions, our top five customers in each, account for around about 50% of divisional revenue. Now they're not always single applications and certainly in the paper business, we have merchant customers that supply, you know, a number of different areas in there, but that's roughly the concentration. And if we look at, here we go, let me just find the right page on this. You can see here in advanced materials that there is a breakdown in a bit more detail, and that was the end of last year. It's in our annual report if you want to look there. You can see the breakdown in a bit more detail of the energy transition, defense, et cetera, customers within advanced materials. So thank you for that. I have a related question. In fact, a series, two or three questions. with the same theme around defence and our position there, and in particular in relation to what's going on in Israel-Gaza. This has been a recurring theme from a number of people that was brought up at the AGM. We made a fairly detailed statement at the AGM not long ago. That statement is on our website and available for everyone. Essentially what it says is we see defence as a core part of the business that we are in. And we're very happy to see that used as a deterrent. And like everyone else in the world, I think we feel that if conflicts can be avoided or ended, that'd be great. um so our thoughts are with all those people involved in actual conflicts um but we see defense as a key deterrent in the difficult modern world and that statement is makes that clear on the website uh next question uh is would we consider divesting the paper and packaging division to focus on advanced materials um well the answer to that is you know, we are paid to run a business and to do that you have to consider a whole range of strategic options and certainly the future of the paper business is something that has been uh and continues to be a topic of conversation um i think it's very clear to me that there is the opportunity and uh clearly within our control to vastly improve the paper business operating and financial performance and uh i think if we can do that then that question becomes a lot less less relevant because we are making money I think when I came here, that was one of my personal thoughts is if we can't have a business that's constantly draining money from the rest of the business, One of the things perhaps that's not visible to shareholders is the fact of the synergies between the businesses. We have things like energy plants, effluent plants, IT systems, et cetera, the costs of which are shared across divisions. And when we report the division of performance, know paper packaging takes a larger share of all these costs because we do it on activity and there's more activity in paper and packaging it's the bigger divisions if paper ceased to exist those costs would fall on advanced materials and so I think that the best outcome here is a profitable paper business and covering some of the overhead costs in the business and both of the advanced materials and paper growing and contributing to the business so that's something that There's no current plan to close down paper or sell paper. However, it is something like all of these things that we keep under a reasonably regular review and we have annual strategy processes that ask these types of questions as well as how do we get the best growth out of the businesses and are we in the right types of markets, those sorts of things. Next question. So let's just pick one at random. What's happened to investments in green energy sources? And is this going to have a significant impact on your energy costs? If I understand that correctly, it's about, you know, previously announced plans for a different way to effectively decarbonise, that would have been a significantly higher cost if we proceeded with it, as well as requiring significant capital investment. So it's something that We are not giving up on the decarbonisation strategy, but that particular approach we felt wasn't going to deliver what we wanted. Our energy costs will move in line with UK energy prices. However, we also expect to use less energy going forward. partly because of the way that we are structuring the business to use the power plant and partly because we have energy saving activities going on. So a bit of both, you know, it's a complicated situation within energy, but I don't see other, you know, a unclear position from the government on which way carbon taxes are going because in some cases they say carbon tax are going to rise to pay for energy transition and improving the electrical grid and in some cases they say we recognize that this is harming potentially large industrial energy users and we are going to give discounts or relief from some of those taxes. I'm not sure where the balance of that's going to land, but certainly we feel that we are doing a lot to control and reduce our underlying energy utilization. So I've got another question here about how we think about our resilient coating technology. That's used primarily in hydrogen electrolyzers and a few other areas. And the question is, have we ever thought about using it in other places? Let me take that question and expand it out because the principle behind that is, look, James Cropper, what technology do you have and where can that be used? And I think that's a very valid question that can be asked about the coatings technology, about the nonwoven technologies across both carbon fibre as well as some of the glass and polymeric fibres. So we are looking at that sort of application, replication, or moving into the markets with adjacent needs, or adjacent markets with similar needs, would be a better way of saying that. And that is a fundamental part of the growth plan for advanced materials. Next question is, how's Colorform performing and what is the future for this part of the business? So Colorform is the molded fiber business. It's something which is interesting technology, but is not something that is, you know, necessarily cost effective for larger volume customers. So it's found its way into a smaller volume niche. As a result, what we've done is we have structured that business to be part of the paper business and therefore reduce the overhead and costs, etc. It is something that we still believe in that we can get volume going through there and we're looking at how we make it more responsive how we make it lower cost how we make it able to pick up some of the larger volume pieces of business and how we think about that as a technology growth platform because Even though people have tried to copy it, they've tried to copy it in a way that perhaps is less flexible. They've made it more efficient with more refibre technologies, but it's not quite as flexible as what we have. And there may be opportunities there to leverage that technology into slightly different areas. So it's something to watch, but it's not going to be something I'd expect we would be talking about as a main growth driver for the business in the next six months. When we look at 12 months and beyond, I might have a different view on that, but it's certainly something that's still part of our portfolio for now. Next question. How would you describe current customer demand conditions compared to last year? Well, I wasn't here last year, but as far as I know, these seem to be similar. You know, as I said earlier, we've got about 50% of each business concentrated in the top five customers. And so, you know, sometimes we see those customers doing very well or increasing their inventory levels or decreasing their inventory levels. So there's a bit of noise that's very customer centric. I think the markets generally are pretty similar. So I don't expect much help from the markets in the businesses we are in. And so other than the nascent technologies for energy transition, which might do very well and might do nothing, or might do very well with other people's technology, the markets in general are not something which are super high growth for the areas we are in. A similar question, I guess, is how much of the improved performance is from structural cost actions versus short-term demand tailwinds? There's been a little bit of a demand uh you know improvement because of some of the specific customers that are doing well um we've also had the situation we were announced in july every merchant customer in the paper business deciding to use another mill to source the product and we've explained that very clearly that that that dropped revenues in the paper business in the first half by about 3.8 million. Now the fact of revenues in the paper business being very similar to last year means that we gained 3.4 million elsewhere. So that's, you know, I think that's testament to the strength of some of our other businesses. And certainly as we look in the second half, um that we're not serving that merchant customer with those products but we have signed an exclusive deal with a company called winter and co we're an existing customer very very professional in this marketplace to act as a partner exclusive partner and take those papers to market so that's something that that we are um you know expecting to uh start making inroads in you know in certainly uh from november onwards when the products were launched um if we think about the cost side uh certainly the cost side has been a big factor in the paper and packaging group to a certain extent taking some costs out of the group structure as well um so more of more of the improvement in paper uh in the first half and pretty much all of the improvement in paper and packaging in the second half will be coming from those internal cost focused actions and efficiency drivers such as, you know, reduction of scrap, et cetera. As we move into next financial year, we should see some over the course of the year benefit from sales growth there. And I think this could be the final question. Let's see. With a manufacturing site that's connected to the USA, how important is the US market to the three to five year plan? You know, we have paper customers in the US and North America in general. We have a decent amount of advanced materials going over to North America. Schenectady facility is more about coatings technology. So it is an integrated part of what we are doing. Sometimes they are sending us products that we are then making into non-woven and sending them out. Sometimes we are sending from the UK products to Schenectady, which then go out. So the Schenectady is part of a global integrated supply chain more than a kind of market bridgehead into North America. but the North American market is reasonably active for us and it's about somewhere between 25 and 30% of revenue, something like that, is that right? Yeah, pushing 30%. Yeah. So that answers all the questions. Thank you very much for participating in this. The recording will be available. There is a lot more information on the website. We did a capital markets day back in June. Presentations for that are on the website. We'll talk a lot more about some of the strategic positioning, et cetera. But overall, I think six months, good progress towards what we said we'd do. And that's what we need to be about over the next six to 18 months is delivering on these three core objectives of growth, profitability, and capital management.

So thank you so much. Thank you. Perfect. David, Andrew, if I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the management team can really better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of James Cropper PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good afternoon to you all.