11/1/2023

speaker
George
Conference Call Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Weir Group PLC Q3 IMS Conference Call. I am George, the College Call Operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be listened on remote and the conference has been recorded. The presentation will be followed by Q&A sessions. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star N1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star N0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. A fifth time, it's my pleasure to hand over to John Stanton, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, John.

speaker
John Stanton
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our third quarter trading update. I'm joined this morning as usual by our CFO, John Heasley, and after a short overview from me, we'll be delighted to take your questions. This will be the last update call for John at WEA, and he'll be leading us to join Anglo American at the beginning of December. So I'd like to take the opportunity to thank him for his 15 years of outstanding contributions to WEIR, and in particular his support for me as we have transformed the group. And I wish him all the best as he joins the board of one of the world's major mining companies. And you will have seen that we also announced this morning the appointment of Brian Puffer as our new CFO. Brian joins us from BP, where he's currently the Chief Financial and Risk Officer of their Trading and Supply Division. having previously served as SVP of Global Business Services and Group Financial Controller. I'm delighted that we'll have a new CFO of Brian's caliber with tremendously relevant experience as we execute on our performance excellence ambitions. Brian will join us in March next year. Turning to Q3, let me start with a few words on what we're seeing in our markets and current trading. In mining markets, activity levels are high, Commodity prices are well above marginal cost and our customers continue to be focused on maximizing oil production and improving the efficiency of existing mines. As a result, we're seeing strong demand for our spares and expendables and also our brownfield OE solutions. In parallel, our business has good operating momentum and we are executing well. With the additional underpin of a strong order book, we have high levels of confidence in reiterating our 2023 guidance. Turning specifically to Q3, where orders reflect the positive mining production trends I just described, though this is somewhat masked, as expected, by lower demand from our oil sands and infrastructure customers. Specifically, we saw growth in demand for our mining spares and expendables. Orders were up year on year, driven by a contribution from both price and volumes. and we saw continued good momentum in demand for our OE brownfield solutions with orders stable sequentially versus the second quarter. Operationally, the business also performed well. Our Q3 revenues were ahead both year on year and sequentially, and we saw strong flow through with operating leverage and process efficiency driving operating margin expansion. We also took significant strides in our performance excellence transformation program and I'm delighted with how the business is engaging. We're building really good momentum. The actions we've taken so far are already driving hard cost savings, with £6 million of benefit expected this year, and of course, much more to come in future years. Encouragingly, as we get into the programme, we're also seeing a snowball effect, with our teams increasingly identifying new opportunities. So we've got growing enthusiasm about its potential and the margin expansion it can deliver, and I'm looking forward to telling you more about our progress and expectations in December at our capital markets event. Turning back to Q3, now let me give you a little bit more detail on the performance of our two divisions, starting with minerals. In the aftermarket, year-on-year orders were up 1%. This reflects growth in volumes in hard rock mining and a contribution from pricing action taken in previous periods. This was partially offset, as we expected, by lower demand from customers in the Canadian oil sands, where orders were elevated in the prior year as customers built safety stocks to capitalize on strong energy prices and mitigate supply chain challenges. Demand for our mining spares was particularly strong in South America, given our strong installed base in copper mines in the region, and also in Australia, as production ramped up at a number of recently commissioned lithium mines. Turning to original equipment, we're in the quarter we continue to see good momentum with customers ordering wear solutions to de-bottleneck and improve the efficiency of existing mines. This trend is reflected in the Q3 orders, which were stable sequentially and within the range which we've consistently seen over each of the last six quarters. And as those orders convert to revenue and the equipment is commissioned, these orders will expand our install base and support future aftermarket growth. Operationally, Minerals is performing well. Strong execution, price realisation and underlying operational efficiencies drove revenue growth and margin expansion in the quarter. And we expect this strong operating momentum to continue for the balance of the year and into 2024. So why do we expect to see that continued momentum? Well, let me just briefly highlight Iron Bridge, the new magnetite mine in Western Australia. At the mine, we have pretty much the full suite of Weir integrated solutions, including our energy-saving high-pressure grinding rolls, currently ramping up after being commissioned in the second quarter. The HPGRs are the largest in the world, and the £15 million per annum multi-year service contract is scheduled to start later this year. We'll also start receiving orders for spares for the Warman's, Guiho's, ESCO and Motion Metrics equipment, which is installed at the mine, all of which will be incremental to our aftermarket. And when added to the spares demand from all of the OEM we've shipped this year, it provides a strong underpin for 2024. Now back to the Q3 performance and onto ESCO, where we saw good momentum in the mining-focused part of the business, though as expected, this was masked by trends in infrastructure. And looking at the trends in each market in more detail, in mining, which accounts for around 70% of ESCO's revenue, year-on-year orders were stable. High levels of ore production meant we saw good demand for our mining expendables across most regions. In mining attachments, differentiated technology meant we continued to gain market share. And as I talked about in our half-year results presentation, attachments have been an area of strategic focus. So it's pleasing to see progress come through in the financials, with year-to-date orders already exceeding our total order intake for 2022. This is encouraging as the market share in the segment is still small, so there's plenty of room for growth. Turning to infrastructure, where we continue to see dealer destocking in North America and a lower demand environment in both North America and Europe. This mirrors trends we've seen in our orders for much of the year, which year to date are down almost 20%. That said, with the visibility we have, we believe we're getting close to the end of the destocking cycle. Therefore, with an easier Q4 comp, and end-market activity stabilizing, we expect infrastructure headwinds to lessen for the remainder of the year and into 2024, and for the underlying strength of the mining franchise to become more visible. Turning to operations, where ESCO also performed well, operational efficiencies and price realization drove year-on-year margin expansion, and similar to minerals, we expect our strong operating momentum to continue for the balance of the year and beyond. Stepping back up to the group level and looking at cash flow and balance sheets, free operating cash flow for the quarter was positive. That debt was marginally higher than that reported at the 30th of June, predominantly reflecting the impact of translational foreign exchange on our US dollar denominated debt. Our leverage ratio was in line, and we expect this to reduce the balance of the year as we achieve our full year target of 80% to 90% free operating cash conversion. I'll shortly comment on the outlook. But before I do, I'd like to take a moment to remind you of our strategy and strong positioning. Earlier in the call, I mentioned IronBridge. And of course, the upside from the incremental spares is a nice underpin as we go into next year. However, more fundamentally, it's a reference site for the whole mining industry, proving that new energy and water-efficient technologies deliver both operational and sustainability benefits. Indeed, even in the few months the mine has been running, we've had a number of other customers visit to see the technology in action, and it's driving increased interest, not just in our HPGRs, but across our whole technology portfolio. Today, WEIR is challenging the industry to undertake a technology shift from our motion metrics vision technology in the mine, through to our energy and water efficient crushing and grinding solutions, including HPGRs and STM stirred mill technology, but also our terra-flowing solutions, which enable more sustainable and cost-effective tailings management. And as we look at the combined benefit across the whole flow sheet, we estimate our package of sustainable solutions can reduce carbon emissions by 50% relative to traditional technologies. So if all the world's minds converted, this would be equivalent to eliminating the global CO2 emissions of Argentina. This won't happen overnight, but the evidence of performance at IronBridge and the growing number of conversations we're having with customers are proof points of traction. So we're increasingly excited about the future. And this feeds into my excitement about our overall long-term positioning, which I believe is compelling. driven by three key factors. Firstly, we have structural tailwinds in our markets underpinned by growth in demand for critical metals, which are essential to enable the transition to net zero. Secondly, to unlock the supply needed, the mining industry must adopt more sustainable extraction and processing techniques. And our technology strategy will help customers achieve this. And thirdly, we're taking action through performance excellence to optimize our business which will deliver margin expansion and further improve our cash conversion. The benefits from these levers, together with the embedded resilience of our aftermarket focused business, positions us to outperform our markets and deliver compounding financial benefits over time. Now, focusing back on the near term and the outlook for the rest of the year. We go into the fourth quarter with a strong order book, which together with the operating momentum we have in the business, means our 2023 guidance is well underpinned. We therefore have high levels of confidence in reiterating that we expect to deliver strong growth in constant currency revenue and operating profit, an operating margin of 17%, and between 80% and 90% free operating cash conversion. And as I touched on earlier, with performance excellence progressing well, we remain on track to expand our margins above 17% in 2024 and beyond. Sticking with 2024, we recognize that everyone is looking to get an early read on our expectations. And the current macroeconomic and geopolitical environment does bring complexity. However, based on what we see today, all production trends in our mining markets continue to be strong. And as you know, our aftermarket focused business means we have embedded resilience, evidenced by the 7% CAGR we've seen in the minerals aftermarket over the last 11 years. Therefore, in our base case scenario for our mining-focused businesses, we're assuming that production trends, together with the effects of declining grades and installed base expansion, will support aftermarket growth rates that are consistent with our through-cycle targets, and will also support continued momentum in small and medium-sized OE projects. In infrastructure, which is a much smaller part of the portfolio, with the comparatives easing, our base case assumes demand is broadly stable. So to close, let me summarize the key takeaways. Our third quarter performance was in line with our expectations. We capitalized on high levels of activity in mining markets and executed strongly. Carrying a strong order book and good operating momentum into the fourth quarter and our 2023 guidance is underpinned. All production activities continue to be strong. And therefore, in our base case scenario for beyond 2023, we're assuming mining markets continue to be supportive. And finally, we continue to have a compelling long-term value creation opportunity supported by structural tailwinds in our markets and our technology-focused growth strategy and performance excellence. Thank you for listening. And John and I will now be happy to take any questions you have. So back to you, Operator.

speaker
George
Conference Call Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchscreen telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only headsets while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from Christian Inderacker from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

speaker
Christian Inderacker
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Yes, good morning, everyone, and thank you for the presentation. My first question relates to the comments around inventories and the dealer destocking that you've signaled at ESCO's North American Infrastructure Customers. I guess the first part of it is whether you can contextualize that against what we've heard from peers in terms of what is effectively high levels of ongoing equipment utilization in those markets, but a destock in the channel, and perhaps, therefore, a reasonably robust level of demand for consumables. And then the second part is whether you can remind us of the structure of your various distribution chains across both mining and infrastructure, inclusive of where you see the greatest and least risks in terms of customer inventory adjustments.

speaker
John Stanton
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, good morning, Christian. Thanks for the questions. Yeah, look, with the infrastructure, inventory and destocking question, I think, you know, first of all, let's just point out, be clear, you know, it's 30% of ESCO, so a relatively small part of the business. As I said on the call, you know, we're down approximately 20% year-on-year in orders in the third quarter across North America and Europe. We have, you know, really good visibility into what our dealers are holding, which is why we're sort of confident we're coming to the end of the de-stocking cycle. And remember, what we do is a bit of a niche in infrastructure relative to some of our other and larger peers. So through our dealer distribution network, we have very clear visibility. The de-stocking is ongoing, but we feel it's coming to the end. um you know demand has been weak but we see that stabilizing and you know in the long run particularly in north america which is the largest part of our infrastructure exposure you know we think demand is going to be underpinned by um spend through the inflation reduction act um and infrastructure bill and so on so um i think you know we're just for me we're just going through a little bit of turbulence with the comps at the moment and that will clear as we go through um the end of the year and into next year And your question on distribution channels, we use third party in infrastructure because it's obviously quite a fragmented market and it would be prohibitively expensive for us to have our own distribution. But in hard rock mining, our strategy has always been to go direct. And as you know, that is seen as a clear competitive advantage to be direct, boots on the ground, you know, intimate with customers, embedded in the mines or the mining towns around the world so that we're close to the action and available 24-7 to support our customers. It's a critical part of our business model that we are direct in hard rock mining. So that's absolutely the case in all of minerals. In ESCO, we still have one or two markets where... We have legacy third-party channels in mining, but we will be moving out of those as we go through the next two or three years.

speaker
Christian Inderacker
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Thanks, John. Maybe we can just turn to the demand drivers in terms of, I guess, commodity mix. You've touched on oil sand weakness and strength in South American copper. I'm curious what you're seeing in some of the other minerals like iron ore and gold and others.

speaker
John Stanton
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, look, I think... My overarching comment was that activity is strong in hard rock mining, and that is the case around the world. Copper is very strong. Our customers are trying hard to improve the production of copper. They're all forecasting increase in copper production next year. Gold, very strong. You would expect, given where we are in the cycle, that the gold price might be weaker, but given the geopolitical situation, you can understand why it's not. And so, you know, $2,000 an ounce is highly incentivizing for our customers. Iron ore, generally strong. As you know, we're mostly exposed to the low-cost iron ore producers in Brazil and Australia. And I think what we're poised to benefit from in iron ore is the increasing move to higher grade, particularly as uh you know the steel industry tries to move towards green steel electric arc hydrogen steel then higher and higher grades of raw material are going to be needed for that such as are being produced at the iron bridge mine which i mentioned uh in on the call and and those are going to be that's going to be a theme which supports our exposure and growth in iron ore so um i appreciate that some of the other battery metals we're going through um You know, a bit of a teething stage, if you like, in terms of commodity price volatility. But we know that the long term structural trends for lithium and nickel are good. So, yeah, as I look around the world, I look around the regions, then, you know, I'm very happy with our commodity exposure and the growth drivers for it as we move forward.

speaker
Christian Inderacker
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Thank you. I guess my final one is around interest rate sensitivity. We've heard comments across the sector really around slowness of customer decision-making as a result of higher cost of capital. Is that something that you're seeing in your business today? And can you just remind us what exposure you have to the smaller junior minor cohort?

speaker
John Stanton
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. I'll try and be quick, given that there's one to ask questions, Christian. I think we're not seeing an effect is the short answer. We do have exposure to junior miners, but it's relatively small compared to the whole rest of the complex. I think the current interest rate environment is just another unhelpful variable in the big Greenfield project sort of conundrum. But as I've always said, you know, we're in a win-win situation. If the big greenfields come through, fantastic. That's a big step up and install base. If they don't, you know, we're very, very happy in the brownfields picking up the small de-bottlenecking and small expansion projects, sustainability projects, which is evident in our OE orders where you can see the continued momentum growing. And I can tell you, you know, the Q3 orders for OE and minerals, we didn't get an order over £5 million. So it's lots and lots of small momentum projects, which our customers are very, very focused on at the moment.

speaker
Christian Inderacker
Analyst, Goldman Sachs

Thanks, John. And best wishes to the other John for his new role. Thanks, Christian.

speaker
George
Conference Call Operator

The next question, Councillor George Pinderstone from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

speaker
George Pinderstone
Analyst, Bank of America

Hi, morning, everyone. Appreciate the comments you just made there, John, on exposure to junior minors. But I just wondered if you could maybe put some numbers around it forward just so we can kind of understand what the split is versus juniors and majors. That would be super helpful because that appears to be where a lot of the focus on the market weakness is at the moment.

speaker
John Stanton
Chief Executive Officer

Hi, George. I mean, it's just, you know, we serve all of the major mines around the world. So that includes all of the majors, all of the Asian players. And we've got a tail of small customers that are on the more junior scale. So, you know, the reality is that our business is driven by production and the aftermarket. And they're all producing. They're benefiting from commodity prices and demand in the same way the majors are. So, you know, they may be finding financing a little bit more challenging at the moment, but that's not going to impact us in any meaningful way. I mean, when we look at CapEx forecasts for the industry for next year, it's going up. And actually some more of the majors are thinking about how they can accelerate exploration and development, um, given that, you know, some of the juniors may be a bit more challenged. So it's not a theme that we're worried about, uh, in the business, the aftermarket growth algorithm will work, continue to work next year. And we'll see, we'll continue to see momentum on original equipment is, as I said, that's in our base case, uh, in the speech.

speaker
George Pinderstone
Analyst, Bank of America

Okay. Thanks very much. Um, just on that point, um, We heard from a few of your peers that there's a bit of a delay in investment decisions, and I guess that's kind of where the formal question is coming from as well. So what's your level of visibility on this OE run rate that you're at at the minute and the sustainability of that?

speaker
John Stanton
Chief Executive Officer

As I said in the speech, we feel that the OE run rate that we're seeing at the moment will continue. We're not assuming a big step up in big greenfield, big expansion projects. There is a great pipeline and the pipeline is continuing to build, particularly as we take to market our sustainability solutions around redefined mill circuit and production optimization. So the pipeline's there. I just think we're in a certain world. So for the bigger projects, people are going to be a bit more cautious. But our pipeline of the smaller brownfield, de-bottlenecking, sustainability, tailings, remediation, the hopper is full. So we feel very good about continuing with the current momentum that we have on OE and minerals. And as I said on the speech, the capital and OE side of ESCO is also growing strongly. So

speaker
George Pinderstone
Analyst, Bank of America

um to my mind there's nothing that that we see on the horizon at the moment is going to uh you know is going to undermine that particularly with commodity prices you know broadly in a really really strong place thank you and then very last one for me um looks like you're expecting um to give us a little bit of a higher performance excellence savings target at the cmd and 2024 looks like there'll be a about more of a mixed shift towards aftermarket. So do you think you're going to be able to raise the margin outlook at the CMD?

speaker
John Stanton
Chief Executive Officer

Well, we have said that our first priority was to hit 17%, and I hope you take confidence from my comments today that we will squarely be doing that. And we've always said that with the benefits of performance excellence, we see potential to go beyond 17% over the next year. few years. That is very much our intent. And we will be talking about how we're feeling about that and what the next phase of our equity story, including margin expansion, will look like on the 6th of December at our Capital Markets event. And I hope to see you there.

speaker
George Pinderstone
Analyst, Bank of America

Looking forward to it. Thank you very much.

speaker
George
Conference Call Operator

The next question comes from Max Yates from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

speaker
Max Yates
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Thank you. Morning, everyone. Could I just ask a quick question on cash? Obviously, the sort of top end and bottom end of the cash range is now, well, it's around a sort of 50 million gap on free cash flow. And it looks like free cash flow will be less skewed into the fourth quarter than last year. So just wondering, could you provide, given it obviously is a pretty big range of outcomes for the fourth quarter, would you be able to indicate whether you think you'll be towards the upper or lower end of that free cash flow range?

speaker
John Heasley
Chief Financial Officer

Morning, Max. Thanks for the question. Yeah, I mean, listen, we were executing strongly across the board, as John said in his prepared remarks. So, you know, revenues, margins, cash as well. You remember at the half year free operating cash conversion was 22 percentage points higher than at the same point in the prior year. And that momentum has continued through the third quarter. So, you know, we're sitting here with positive free cash conversion through the third quarter. As we go into the fourth quarter, of course, there's always you know, some big shipments to go. So it's about getting those out the door. It's about getting the cash in the door before the end of the year. So at this point in time, we're not going to be more precise in terms of where in the 80 to 90 percent range we will be. But certainly we feel in a really good position that that is well within our control to deliver that over the next three months and given that strength at the half year and at the end of Q3. You know, there's a little bit less to do in the fourth quarter this year than we had in the last year, given all of the supply chain complexity post-COVID, etc. So no further specificity, but high confidence in being in that range, Max.

speaker
Max Yates
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Okay. And maybe just secondly, John, for you, I wanted to ask about pricing and I mean, I appreciate kind of minerals looks like it's had kind of another, in aftermarket, another sort of strong pricing quarter. But we have had kind of one of your peers talk about very specific product lines, which are quite sort of steel heavy. They've started to see price downs or quite significant price downs on those due to indexing. We obviously saw minerals perform very well in 2012 to 2016. held pricing, held gross margins, but I guess we have less history with ESCOs. Are there any parts of ESCO where you would be worried about price downs because of indexing, because it is a sort of more steel-heavy business, or are you quite confident that pricing holds an aftermarket across both businesses? Thank you.

speaker
John Stanton
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, no, we're very confident. Thank you, Max. We sell on total cost of ownership. That is the proposition for our customers in both businesses. As you know, we have been successful with our price increases over the course of the last two years. In the third quarter, actually, price has not really been a question. We got most of our pricing for this year locked in the first half of the year. And we're now seeing the benefit of that in terms of the gross margins coming through as we execute against that. So we're not seeing any pressure.

speaker
Max Yates
Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Okay, Santa. And maybe just one final quick housekeeping question. So on your aftermarket contract coming through for IronBridge, I remember it was sort of 95 million. It was over around seven years. So is that very simply how we should think about the uplift to growth? It's sort of 95 divided by seven years, and that's kind of the incremental revenues, kind of 13 to 14 million, and therefore maybe a percentage point uplift to aftermarket?

speaker
John Stanton
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, that's just for the HPGRs though. So there will be, you know, as I said in the speech, there is a number of other pieces of equipment. We have, you know, geos on the pipeline. We have warmers on the tailings duty. We have ESCO, GET and motion metrics on the machines in the mine. So it's not just the 15. There'll be a bit more of that as well. But the mine is kind of ramping up through the year. So, It can't count on all of that on day one in January, but it will ramp up to that level over the balance of the year. Excellent. Thank you very much.

speaker
George
Conference Call Operator

Thanks, Mike. Ladies and gentlemen, in the interest of time, we will take one more question from Jonathan Hurd from Barclays. Please go ahead.

speaker
Jonathan Hurd
Analyst, Barclays

Good morning, guys. Just a few questions from me, please. Firstly, the question is just on minerals aftermarket. I just wondered if you could sort of comment on the inventory levels of parts at your customers, if any one sort of, or do you see any sort of areas where you see elevated levels? And just sort of following on from that, just in terms of the oil sands, I think in your sort of opening comments, you said that there was a bit of an inventory build going there. When that starts to run down, do you think there's potential for oil sands aftermarket to pick up? That was the first question.

speaker
John Stanton
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Thanks, Jonathan. Good morning. On the minerals aftermarket, yeah, I mean, we obviously with our boots on the ground business model, we have a great degree of visibility into the inventory levels that our customers in the minerals division are holding. And, you know, it's not elevated. I think our customers kind of thought through the safety stocks that they wanted to hold and they wanted us to hold post-COVID. And that at the moment feels balanced. Of course, we're serving thousands of mines around the world, so there may be one or two here and there who've not got it quite right. But when you look at it in the round, I would say there are not excess levels of inventory in the system in our mining customers. And yeah, on the oil sands, the reality was we had an amazing year last year, post-COVID, very strong oil price recovery. our Canadian oil sales customers were very profitable and they probably overdid it a little bit in terms of buying parts and inventory and we're just kind of in the wind down phase of that through this year so the orders have dipped, revenues remain strong but I think that will just normalise as we go through next year particularly with the oil price as it is and also the Trans Mountain pipeline out to the West Coast coming online as well I think is a nice underpin for West Canada select. So I think, yeah, next year it'll just, yeah, we'll get through the kind of upstocking and destocking that we've just kind of seen through the last two years and it will normalize.

speaker
Jonathan Hurd
Analyst, Barclays

Very helpful. Thank you. And the second question was just essentially on sort of Q4 performance. Obviously to hit consensus revenue out there, you need a really sort of strong Q4 in terms of sales. I think probably your strongest quarters of pure play mining business. I mean, As we look to Q4, are there any sort of potential headwinds to delivering that uptick? Are there any sort of bottlenecks? Do you have enough capacity to deliver that essentially Q4 revenue?

speaker
John Stanton
Chief Executive Officer

The order book is good. The factories are full. We were in the Netherlands last week and all of the nickel orders that we took last year are in the final stages of being assembled. So they'll all ship in the fourth quarter. We have to continue to execute well, obviously, to get it all out of the door and recognize revenues. But we've been doing that consistently now for many, many quarters. The operating momentum in the business is good. We're going through a process, as you know, with performance excellence of getting more and more lean and eliminating complexity. So I think I feel really good about the way the business is executing and the cadence that we have in the manufacturing facilities and supply chain. So, you know, I'm very, very confident about delivering the Q4 numbers.

speaker
Jonathan Hurd
Analyst, Barclays

Great. And just the last question was just on aftermarket orders for the 24. Obviously, you've had that increase in the installed base in 23. As we look to 24, what kind of sort of magnitude of orders do you think comes through Q4? from that sort of increase in installed base in 23 for aftermarket? Is roundabout a sort of a 200 million number kind of the right sort of ballpark?

speaker
John Stanton
Chief Executive Officer

Well, I'm not prepared to give detailed guidance at this point, Jonathan. We're in the middle of doing our budgeting process at the moment. So, as you know, that will come later. But, you know, what we're trying to give you confidence in today is that the underlying hydroc mining aftermarket You know, the algorithm that drives that is robust because we see continued production growth. We see continued declining grades. We see increasing install base with Ironbridge ramping up and all, you know, the OE that we sold this year sort of factoring in as that equipment gets commissioned. At this stage, our planning assumption is that we don't get a huge amount of price next year, but obviously that will depend on what happens with inflation. So that's the way that we're thinking about it. And that means that, as I said in the speech, we're looking at the kind of through cycle growth expectations for aftermarket. All of the drivers of that are in place as we sit here today.

speaker
Jonathan Hurd
Analyst, Barclays

That's very helpful. Thank you, guys.

speaker
George
Conference Call Operator

Thanks, Jonathan. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Stanton for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

speaker
John Stanton
Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Operator, and thanks again, everybody, for participating. And I will close by reminding you of our Capital Markets event to be held on the 6th of December at the London Stock Exchange. There will be the option to attend virtually or in person. And we're excited to be sharing details of our future growth prospects and our expectations for performance excellence as we continue on our journey as a focused mining technology leader. So I'll hopefully see many of you there. Thanks again for calling in today.

speaker
George
Conference Call Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing ColdScore and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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