The Weir Group PLC

Good morning everyone and welcome to the call. I appreciate you all joining at short notice. As you've seen, we've announced a very exciting acquisition this morning and in conjunction decided that we should pull forward and deliver our 2024 full year results announcement at the same time. Please note the usual cautionary notice on forward looking statements. Today I'm joined by our CFO Brian Puffer and after the presentation will run an extended Q&A session. The presentation will consist of an introduction from me, then Brian will take you through the detailed 2024 financial results. I'll then give a quick overview of our strategic progress in 2024 before covering the acquisition of Micromine in detail. Brian will discuss the financial effects of the deal before I wrap up. So let me start with a reminder of our transformation journey to deliver on WEIR's compelling long-term value creation opportunity. Firstly, through our portfolio transformation, we created a focused mining technology leader with unique capabilities. Our world-class engineering solutions, combined with intensive global aftermarket support, keep our customers' minds running and solve their biggest challenges. we are deeply embedded in their operations and have a large installed base of mission-critical equipment with high barriers to entry. The combination of these elements have underpinned our track record of consistent delivery both financially and strategically. Secondly, through performance excellence, we have optimized our business, creating an ever leaner and more efficient weir, reducing cost and complexity in our operations, and driving margin expansion. We have now created the scalable platform that will deliver compounding growth in the future. And we're currently ahead of plan on those ambitions, and so in turn have upgraded our target for absolute cumulative savings in 2026 by another 20 million to 80 million pounds in total. And thirdly, we're now moving into the growth acceleration phase of our strategy, underpinned by one, the energy transition and global demographic trends, two, the adoption of new technologies to deliver critical minerals in a more sustainable way, and three, our own strategic growth initiatives, which we are significantly embellishing today with the acquisition of MicroMine. In 2024, we performed strongly against our commitments to shareholders. Despite several mine-specific challenges in the first half of the year, conditions strengthened meaningfully in the second half as aftermarket demand accelerated, driven by good activity levels in mining markets and the commissioning of new installed base of original equipment. On revenue delivery, we accelerated growth in the second half along historic seasonal trends, though constant currency revenue decreased by 1% year-on-year, principally driven by re-phasing of OE deliveries in the order book late in the year. Over the past three years, our revenue growth has averaged above our three-cycle target, as the compounding benefits of our growing OE pipeline convert to an ever-expanding install base of mission-critical equipment. We executed very strongly on our performance excellence program with the acceleration of savings supporting our operating margin expansion of 170 basis points to reach 18.8% as we close in on our initial target of 20%. We grew free operating cash conversion to 102%, a 17 percentage point increase from last year and above our target range. We demonstrated resilience with growth in our constant currency operating profit of 9%, supporting another year of dividend growth. And actions we've taken delivered further reductions in absolute CO2 emissions from our operations, now at 27% lower than the 2019 baseline and getting close to our 2030 target of 30%. Taken together, the power of our Transform platform was evident in our strong execution in 2024 and reflects the outstanding efforts of our teams across the globe, to whom I am extremely grateful. In Micromine, we're making the next strategic leap for WEIR with our vision to create a sector-leading digital optimisation platform for the mining industry. The acquisition draws us a step closer to unlocking the full potential for digital technology in the mining industry by connecting the full value chain from exploration to mine to mill under one digital umbrella, deepening valuable insights at all stages of the mining process. By combining MicroMind with our world-class ESCO and minerals businesses, we are creating a global leader across engineered hardware and software demanded by the mining industry to address their most critical challenges, optimizing for a smarter, more efficient and sustainable operation across the mining value chain through a suite of clearly differentiated and competitive solutions. And in Micromine, we've identified a truly unique, high-quality asset, which is accretive to its revenue growth, operating profit, and earnings in the first full year of ownership. Micromine today is a digital business at scale, active on 3,000 sites, with an impressive history of growth at sector-leading margins, well beyond those achieved within our core hardware businesses today. With that, I'll now hand you over to Brian to take you through the full year 2024 financials in more detail, after which I'll share more on our strategic progress and on the exciting micromine opportunity.

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. As John noted, we are very happy with our financial results in 2024, which reflect the positive conditions in our mining markets combined with progress in delivering our performance excellence program ahead of schedule. In the following slides, I'll walk you through the highlights of our performance, noting that the appendix to this presentation contains more specific details on where we landed in 2024, as well as some additional data points on our 2025 expectations. Orders for the year were 2.5 billion, an increase of 2%, supported by 67 million pounds in relation to the large OE order received for the RICO-DEC and OCP expansion projects. Aftermarket orders grew by 4%, reflecting positive conditions in mining and the benefit of installed base expansion. Revenue decreased by 1% to £2.5 billion, reflecting OE delivery phasing and the non-repeat of revenue from oil sands to stocking and the exit of our Russian operations. Operating profit was £472 million, an increase of 9%, with a strong step-up in operating margins of 170 basis points to 18.8%. Margin expansion was driven by incremental performance excellence savings as we delivered a cumulative 29 million pounds of savings, 14 million pounds ahead of plan, in addition to a benefit from minerals revenue mix shifting towards aftermarket and normal operational efficiencies. Profit before tax of 428 million pounds was 17 million pounds ahead of last year, despite an FX translation headwind of 25 million pounds. Our increased profitability delivered an increase of 4% in EPS at 120 pence per share. Free operating cash conversion was above our target range at 102%, reflecting the positive actions we have taken in improving working capital management. Our strong cash generation resulted in net debt to EBITDA decreasing to 0.7 times. All of the above delivered an increase of 130 basis points and return on capital employed to 19.3%. Taken together, our strong financial performance in 2024 underpins our increased full-year dividend of 40 pence per share. I will now provide some commentary on each of the divisions, starting with minerals, where we delivered a year of good strategic progress, including the award of two large orders for our market-leading products and strong execution in the business, leading to record operating margin. Across our key commodities, market prices remain well above miners' cost to produce, and we saw particularly strong demand in copper and gold markets. Ore production growth, combined with installed base expansion, drove increased demand for our spare parts, resulting in 5% growth in aftermarket orders. And OE orders decreased 3% year-on-year, driven by delays during the fourth quarter in project awards, as well as market conditions in certain commodity markets, such as nickel and lithium. We saw continued momentum and demand for deep bottlenecking and small brownfield projects, and we won further market share, converting over 90% of our competitive field trials for large mill circuit pumps. Revenue decreased by 2%, driven by phasing of OE deliveries at the end of the year, combined with prior year comparables, including restocking in the Canadian oil sands and the final revenue recognized from our exited Russian operations. Despite these headwinds, strong underlying mining markets and the annualized benefit of price increase drove aftermarket growth of 3%. There was particularly strong growth in both South America and Australasia, reflecting the benefits of installed base growth in these regions. Product mix moved towards aftermarket, which represented 75% of revenue, up from 71% last year. Operating profit increased in kind by 9% on a constant currency basis to £383 million, and margins increased by 200 basis points to 21.1%. This was underpinned by incremental performance excellence savings, a shift in revenue mix towards aftermarket, and operational efficiencies. Moving on to ESCO, where similar to minerals, we saw the benefit of positive underlying mining conditions with good progress in our strategic growth initiatives. This included the commercial launch of our next generation LIP and GET system, Nexus, and the opening of our new foundry in Zhuzhou, China. orders decreased by 1% in the year, with strong demand for our core G.E.T. products and dredging solutions, offset by a reduction in mining attachment orders against a strong prior year comparator. Turning to revenue, which grew by 1% to 688 million pounds, reflecting growth in core G.E.T. mining and dredge solutions, with strong regional growth in the Middle East and APAC from our increased strategic focus in these regions. Operating profit at 129 million pounds was 9% higher than last year on a constant currency basis. Operating margins increased by 140 basis points to 18.8%, driven by incremental performance excellence savings, our foundry optimization program, and operational efficiencies. Now bringing things together to look at the group operating margins, where on a constant currency basis, year on year, margins increased by 170 basis points to 18.8%. The main drivers of underlying margin growth in the year were as follows. Firstly, minerals revenue mix shifted four percentage points from OE to aftermarket, resulting in an 80 basis points increase on margins. Performance excellence contributed an additional 80 basis points, having delivered the incremental savings during the year of 23 million pounds, well ahead of plan and highlighting momentum in the program across the group. As 2024 illustrates, and as we expect in future benefits from our improved operating model, will more than offset fluctuations in our aftermarket mix as we approach our 20% operating profit target. As expected, operational efficiencies, including cost discipline and pricing, contributed an additional 10 basis points to our margin. Now briefly touching on adjusting items, which in total amount to a credit of 6 million pounds, largely driven by 69 million pounds of previously unrecognized deferred tax assets arising from the disposal of the Oil and Gas Division in 2021. Exceptional items were 55 million pounds, 36 million pounds of which was associated with our Performance Excellence Program, with a related cash outflow of 28 million pounds being below our full year guidance due to phasing of spend. Other exceptional items, including 19 million pounds relating to the impairment of intangible assets due to the phasing out of some brands as part of our alignment of combination products. Other adjusting items reflect the normal amortization of intangibles, which is broadly in line with last year, and charges relating to our asbestos provisions, which has significantly decreased compared to the prior year. Turning to cash flow and returns, we delivered another year's performance in line with our track record of strong cash conversion. Cash generated from operations was up 12% to 591 million pounds, driven by increased profitability and improvements in working capital efficiency. Working capital cash flows improved mainly through process optimization and phasing of payables and receivables, and as a percentage of sales improved to 20.7%. CapEx was lower than last year at 1.1 times depreciation, the reduction driven by lower spend following the opening of our new ESCO foundry in China. Our strong execution resulted in an increase of free operating cash flows of 484 million pounds, a 92 million pound increase over last year, and 42% increase since 2022. Taken together, free operating cash conversion was above our target range at 102%. an increase of 17 percentage points year-on-year. Our net free cash flow of £328 million compares to £238 million last year, with the increase mainly driven by the favorable free operating cash flow just described and the non-repeat of special pension contributions. This funded our increased dividend and further deleveraging, leaving net debt to EBITDA at 0.7 times on a lender covenant basis. While new debt relating to the MicroMine acquisition will raise our leverage later this year, given our strong track record of execution, we anticipate deleveraging of this additional debt at pace, in total reducing below our 1.5 times covenant range by December 2026. I'll now summarize the key messages from this section of the presentation. Conditions in our mining markets are strong. Through our strategic growth initiatives and our customer focus on improving efficiency and sustainability of their existing operations, we are seeing high levels of activity driving ever resilient aftermarket demand. We are seeing continued momentum and demand for our brownfield OE solutions and our pipeline of large greenfield sustainable solutions is growing. In 2024, we executed strongly against the group delivering performance excellent savings well ahead of plan, growing profit and achieving a significant step toward our 2026 target of operating margins sustainably beyond 20%. We achieved our highest level of cash conversion at 102% beyond our target range. We continue to deliver on our track record of growing returns, deleveraging our balance sheet, growing road sheet and increasing our full year dividend. Looking ahead, we have great momentum across the group and are confident in delivering another year of financial performance in line with our shareholder commitments. We expect another year of margin growth supported by additional savings to our performance excellent program and cash conversion within our medium target range of between 90 and 100%. And finally, our performance will allow us to de-lever acquisition debt related to the micromine acquisition at pace, falling below 1.5 times by year-end 2026. Thank you, and I will now hand back to John.

Thank you, Brian. In this next section, I'll share more details on our strategic progress in 2024 and set out our view of market conditions and the outlook for 2025. Our strategy, as set out in the We Are Weir framework, is clear and enduring. It's fully embedded through the organisation. We have top-to-bottom alignment our priorities and strong engagement across our global team. Its familiar pillars of people, customer, technology and performance continue to guide our decisions and position us strongly to take advantage of the opportunities which lie ahead. Our refreshed sustainability strategy lies at the core of our framework and focuses on what we can do internally to deliver sustainable weir and externally to accelerate sustainable mining. So let me take you through our progress in 2024. So looking first at our people initiatives, the health, safety and well-being of colleagues remains our top priority. And we've taken steps to reinforce and reinvigorate our zero harm culture, particularly following the tragic fatal incident suffered by one of our colleagues in April last year. Since then, we've held safety stand downs across our businesses to discuss the learnings and re-emphasize that safety must always come first. Overall in 2024, both our lost time accident numbers and our total incident rate were flat year on year. Across the group, we continue to prioritize wellbeing and talk openly about mental health. And we were very pleased to be recognized by CCLA as a top improver for mental health in an assessment of the UK's largest companies. Our employee net promoter score of 47 remains in the top quartile of manufacturing companies, while our refreshed ID&E steering committee, made up of representatives from our senior leadership team, is supporting our efforts to accelerate the benefits that come with having a vibrant, purpose-driven culture. We continue to invest in our people with a focus on talent and succession planning, for example, through a new global mentoring program launched during the year. And we continue to invest in future talent, too, through programs around the world that encourage careers in STEM and the mining industry. turning next to our customers where we are shaping innovation that will enable the mining industry to scale up and clean up. During the year, we secured a £53 million order to supply an industry-leading fine grinding solution to Barrick Gold's Ricodeak copper gold projects in Pakistan, capitalising on growing industry acceptance of our redefined mill circuit and supporting our customers' need to use less energy and water at this remote mine site. We also secured a £25 million order to supply an energy-efficient separation solution to OCP's Benguria and Lutafosfate projects in Morocco, leveraging our market-leading Warman Pump and Cavex hydrocyclone brands. In minerals, we won 92% of our head-to-head mill circuit pump trials, and in ESCO, we won 118 net major digger conversions as we continue to drive strategic growth initiatives. We've continued to work in partnership with customers to accelerate sustainable mining. In January of this year in Saudi Arabia, we agreed an MOU to form a joint venture with Oli and Saudi Holding Company, which will extend our expertise and sales in the sustainable mining technology solutions to this exciting growth region. The progress we've made with our redefined mill circuit is one of the highlights of the year, and particularly the Ricodeek contract win. This project is located in one of the hardest to reach locations in the world, making energy a premium on site. Our redefined mill circuit solution requires up to 40% less energy than other alternative methods of crushing and grinding, and so is especially suited to this project. Ricodeek is another real-world reference of the power of this solution and illustrates its versatility across geographies from magnetite at Ironbridge to copper gold at Ricodeek. Turning next to technology, where we introduced both our next generation Nexus GET technology and our Enduron Elite screens to the market at Mine Expo in September. The Nexus system increases tooth and adapter wear life by 15% compared to our previous system, in turn leading to less plant downtime, and we've already received multiple orders for this next generation technology across four continents. In Minerals, we launched our new digital brand, Next, integrating our existing digital offerings such as Cinetrex and Sentient AI to offer customers an integrated platform to help their operations run safer and more efficiently. And we now have over 100 sites utilizing our digital platform. We also launched our latest motion metrics shovel metrics payload monitoring solution, which provides optimized truck loading and improved haulage efficiency for customers. Both systems provide valuable insights to our customers on how their equipment is operating and how best to optimize those assets in the field. So together with the acquisition of Micromine, WEIR is really accelerating how these insights can be combined with essential information from upstream in the mining value chain, moving closer to solving that critical missing link between mining operations and the process plant, so further enhancing productivity and sustainability for our customers. Let me expand now on the ESCO Nexus GET system. This is our latest technology advancement and case studies continue to come in from the field as the solution is now sold across all four major mining regions. Results from the studies all support our original data collected during the initial trial over thousands of hours. Critically, the Nexus system reduces the overall lit maintenance time by 40% over a five-year projected period. And this in turn leads to less plant downtime thanks to reduced adapter failures and is unmatched by any competitive solution. Finally, turning to performance, where progress within our performance excellence program continues at pace and is ahead of our targets for cumulative absolute savings. During the year, we opened our new ESCO foundry in Suzhou, China, giving us more capacity from the most efficient in the ESCO network and therefore supporting gross margin progression in future years. In minerals, we consolidated several sites in the US, LATAM and APAC, bringing us closer to customers and driving fulfillment efficiencies. We also completed the establishment of WIR business services and are embedding new ways of working through transformation across our finance, HR and IS&T functions, the benefits which will be reflected in the years to come. Completion of our journey to implement SAP across the minerals division now provides truly global capacity management and inventory optimisation capability. And adoption of our Refresh LEAN programme in minerals contributed to the largest amount of savings during the year, driving a reduction in overall material cost as well as quality improvements. With these examples, the Performance Excellence Programme is already running well ahead of plan, and therefore we've upgraded our total savings target to £80 million in 2026, with a further incremental £20 million expected in 2025. This is supported by additional capacity optimisation and lean process opportunities that have been identified as we progress with the programme. We anticipate additional exceptional one-off costs of £30 million to complete these projects, taking the total expected programme costs to £120 million, or one and a half times expected annual savings. The savings will help us to deliver operating margins sustainably above 20% in 2026 and beyond. Turning to Outlook, where we have a growing pipeline of opportunities on high levels of activity in our mining markets as customers look to invest in projects that address structural critical metal demand. Supported by favorable commodity prices, customers continue to prioritize maximizing ore production and improving the efficiency of the existing mine sites, which, together with ongoing installed base expansion, provides a strong underpin for demand for our aftermarket solutions. This continued favourable backdrop in mining underlies our strong opening early order book and demand growth expectation for aftermarket. Combined with execution of performance excellence, we enter 2025 with great momentum and confidence for delivering another year of growth in constant currency revenue, operating profit and operating margin in line with current market expectations driven by mid-single digit revenue growth and around 50 basis points of further operating margin expansion. We expect free operating cash conversion of between 90% and 100% in line with our medium-term guidance, as CAPEC continues to settle in line with depreciation and our lean operating model delivers further working capital efficiency. Okay, I'll now talk more about our other announcement today, the agreement to acquire Micromine, which presents a unique and really exciting opportunity to create a sector-leading digital optimization platform for the mining industry. As mentioned earlier, this acquisition is a significant step in accelerating our strategy to enable smart, efficient, and sustainable mining. By combining WEIR's deep customer insights and domain knowledge in extraction and processing with Micromine's leading mining software solutions and upstream data, we can unlock the potential for digital technology to deliver end-to-end productivity and sustainability solutions in mining for our customers. It will position WEIR as a global leader in engineered hardware and software solutions for the whole mining industry, enhancing our existing market-leading solutions across extraction, comminution, processing and tailings with insights from mine development and planning. Insights that are essential to make decisions better, faster and safer for our customers from extraction to mine to mill. Uniquely, Micromine offers WIR shareholders a compelling value creation opportunity to acquire a top-tier digital business of scale that is highly accretive to our already leading aftermarket-focused business model. As a global leader in mining software solutions, Micromine's products compete directly in a growing addressable market of around £2 billion, which is inelastic to the mining capex cycle. This additional market expands WIR's existing opportunity, creating a total combined and more resilient addressable market of £9 billion. MicroMind has four decades of experience solving customers' critical challenges. This gives its software solutions a strong competitive advantage as its deep library of proprietary plugins and functions help customers quickly and confidently turn their data into valuable insights. Like our market-leading ESCO-GET solutions, Micromind's software is hardware agnostic, meaning that regardless of the exploration, drill, blast or haul equipment, the Micromind suite of solutions will bring efficiency and add value to our customers' operations. Through the acquisition, we'll benefit from Micromind's highly talented specialist software sales engineers, deep product knowledge and an established track record of driving growth in sales at sector-leading profit. Micromine's revenue is heavily biased towards future-facing commodities such as copper, gold, iron ore and the battery metals. These positions will complement WIR's existing exposure, adding to our multi-decade opportunity to enable a sustainable future for our planet. In terms of reach, Micromine Solutions are already present on every continent across over 90 countries and 3,000 sites, with significant opportunity to grow outside of its home market of Australia, including the copper and gold rich regions of North and South America, where weir is particularly strong. Combining forces with Micromine will position us to create a leading digital platform of scale from exploration to mine to mill. Its suite of software solutions are highly complementary to WEIR's existing digital architecture, adding strength in data integration from one phase of planning to the next and updating forecasts real time to optimize mining operations. Starting at the mine exploration stage, Micromine's Geobank and Origin software solutions are used daily by thousands of geologists to manage and define their resource models for future investment and construction decisions. Customers with existing mines or sites under construction rely on Micromine's Beyond software to develop life of mine models and infrastructure plans using the resource shape already developed in the Geobank and Origin software. They use these life of mine models as the basis for investment and financial planning. Moving downstream, Elastree, Spry and Advance are Micromine's planning tools. Customers use them to manage their medium and short-term plans, an intelligent and insightful replacement for offline tools such as spreadsheets. And as we get to the pit and underground, Micromine's software solutions start to overlap with WEIR's motion metrics offerings. PitRAM, Micromine's software solutions for minerals extraction operations, takes data from the various mine and geology plans to optimize fleet management and mine control. In time, through the integration of WIRS motion metrics and NEXT intelligent solutions, we will be able to bundle solutions and pursue our vision of creating the critical missing link between mining operations and the process plant, offering real-time optimization based on live data, enhancing productivity and sustainability for our customers. MicroMind's deep customer value propositions and established global footprint means it is a top tier software player. And as I said before, it's a unique asset. It was clearly the best option to enable the pursuit of our strategic vision. It has industry leading financial performance with a track record of high growth underpinned by sector leading software as a service, recurring subscription revenue. Over the past three years, Micromind has consistently grown at a rate of approximately 25% per year, of which circa 90% is recurring subscription revenue. But not only has Micromind grown, it's growing profitability with sector-leading margins. Its subscriptions are largely paid up front, meaning that cash conversion aligns to WEIR's own 90% to 100% range, and working capital is low. Ongoing software upgrades provide upsell and pricing opportunity while customers are sticky. Over the past several years, MicroMind has retained over 95% of its customers from one subscription renewal to the next. So, it's a great business today, and by leveraging WEIR's direct global distribution channels in mining, we expect to further accelerate the growth of the current micromine business. From day one under WEIR, Micromine will have access to our existing network of service centres, which are located within 200km of every major mine on the planet. Through WIR's boots on the ground model, Micromine's specialized software sales team will have access to relationships and decision makers across our combined £9 billion addressable market. So you can see that armed with deeper customer insights and expanded domain knowledge afforded by Micromine, WIR has a tremendous opportunity to enable smart, efficient and sustainable mining. This acquisition will be terrific for our combined customer base too. Putting Micromine's software suite together with WIRS, Motion Metrics and Next Intelligent Solutions to create a digital optimisation platform will enable them to make better, faster and safer decisions about the performance of their operations. This starts with real-time insights that help miners determine what to mine, where to mine and when to mine. This is used to support decisions about their short and long term planning and helps them build a detailed understanding of how their geology and how to maximize the value from it. Making smarter choices upstream and in the pit can deliver compounding benefits through the processing plant, potentially leading to 10 times the savings and using less energy, water and waste. But it works both ways. Insights from the process plant can be used to optimize upstream operations in the mine as well. And that's why we're extremely excited by the potential of a digital optimization to transform productivity and sustainability across the whole mine. Brian's now going to take us through some of the key details of the transaction.

Thank you, John. As John has already mentioned, the acquisition of MicroMind is a unique opportunity to acquire a proven top-tier digital business at scale, complementary to our highly resilient aftermarket focused business model. Micromind is a high growth, highly profitable business with an attractive valuation. We plan to acquire Micromind at an enterprise value of 657 million pounds. Given the quality of its revenue and growth and the composition, the acquisition enterprise value EBITDA multiple is around 20 times, excluding synergy, making it extremely attractive. In line with our capital allocation policy, the transaction will be EPS accretive in 2026, with ROIC beating WAC in 2028. The deal will be materially additive to the group's revenue growth and margin profile. The transaction will be financed with a combination of existing cash and new acquisition debt, which will be refinanced in due course. Post-acquisition, net debt to EBITDA is expected to be below two times at December 2025 and below 1.5 times by year-end 2026, again in line with our capital allocation policy. We estimate the transaction will close in Q2 this year, subject to clearance by the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board. And with that, I will hand back to John for his closing remarks.

Thank you, Brian. So as Brian just highlighted, the acquisition of Micromine is additive both strategically and financially to our existing franchise, and it will only enhance our proven track record of delivering against our commitments to stakeholders. Micromine's strong growth will be immediately accretive to WIR's business performance. Its complementary addressable market and geographic expansion opportunities underpin our confidence in accelerating this growth as a combined company. Likewise, MicroMind's sector-leading margins will also be immediately accretive to WIR, and it becomes a critical foundation for the acceleration of WIR's digital strategy and platform for transformational future revenue models that leverage WIR's market-leading hardware solutions. As I mentioned earlier, Micromine's subscription-based revenue model means that cash conversion is well within WEIR's own range, and our financial discipline exercised in negotiating this deal will see Rocky ahead of WAC by year three, in line with our well-established capital allocation policy. Micromine's subscription-based revenue is complementary to WEIR's own aftermarket-focused business model, enhancing our resilience and providing returns that are inelastic to mining capex cycles. Finally, Micromine and its software solutions align strongly with our own core mission to enable sustainable and efficient delivery of the natural resources essential to create a better future for the planet. Its solutions help miners move less rock, use less energy, use water wisely, and create less waste, all enabled by world-class software engineering expertise. So, bringing all of this together, the long-term opportunity for WEIR is tremendously exciting. As a mining-focused business, we are building an impressive track record of consistent delivery, underpinned by attractive markets and growing demand for our differentiated, mission-critical hardware and software solutions. We're executing strongly against our performance excellence agenda, raising our ambition for absolute savings and moving our operating margins sustainably beyond 20% in 2026. And with our strong operating platform, we're well positioned to deliver compounding financial benefits while remaining resilient and doing the right thing for our people and the planet. And that starts with our positive outlook for 2025. And finally, bringing Micromine into WEIR will accelerate our strategy to create a sector-leading digital and hardware solutions provider that is uniquely positioned to deliver compelling value creation to our stakeholders. Thank you very much for listening. And Brian and I will now be pleased to take any questions you have.

a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If for any reason you want to remove your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question is from Lush Mahendra Rajah from JP Morgan. Your line is not open. Please go ahead.

Can you hear me?

Hi, Lush. Yes, we can hear you. Hello.

Oh, sorry. Just three questions on my end. Firstly, on Micromine, can you talk a bit about what the sort of competitor landscape is to this kind of business? You know, who's out there? Is anyone else really doing this? I guess what's the sort of the moat and sort of what's differentiating about Micromine versus what else might be out there? The second question is just on comment on the multiple pre-synergies. I guess what sort of, and this sounds like a, you know, more like revenue synergies than cost synergies, I guess, is your base case sort of a continuation of that sort of 25% growth that the business has done, or do you have that accelerating? And then thirdly, just on performance excellence, obviously, you know, increased the total to 80, the key into saving has gone up as well. And is that just sort of there's more to go for than you thought or the benefits are sort of higher than you thought? And I guess, you know, just something we should expect sort of just ongoing sort of incremental sort of upside there, just in terms of finding more and more as you go through this process.

Yeah, thanks very much, Lush. So I'll hand over to Brian to come back to the performance excellence question. But let me take your first two questions on Micromine. So I think, first of all, to say the reason that this business was so attractive to us is that it is absolutely a top-tier player in the mining software space. And we think competitively it has the broadest range of individual solutions across the mining value chain. So in terms of support for our vision of creating an end-to-end digital optimization, if you take the breadth of what MicroMine does today, we put that together with our existing motion metrics capability in the mine, and then the next intelligent solutions capability that we've organically built together with Sentient AI in the minerals division, you create a really, really unique platform of software solutions that will enable digital optimization for our customers. And we think create the kind of missing link that really exists today in the mining industry between the mining operations themselves and then what happens in the process plant So we will be bringing together domain knowledge from both of those areas that will allow value creating feedback, data, and insights to flow each way from the mine into how to optimize the process plan and from the process plan back into how you then optimize mining operations. So we think that's a really, really exciting and unique proposition. And the breadth of the competitive position that Micromine has means that it was absolutely the best asset for us to bring into the portfolio to enable that technology. Now, there are other competing point offers out there across the mining space. I won't get into the detail of all of them. But I think end-to-end, Micromine has a much broader offering, deeper in certain spaces compared to some of the competition. And as we said in the presentation, comes with sector leading revenue growth, a sector leading margin profile, a sector leading proportion of annual recurring revenues through subscription. So it's an amazing asset and I'm really, really excited to be bringing it into the WEIR portfolio. From a synergy point of view, this is all about growth. It's not about cost synergies. In fact, we're going to have to add cost into the business to accelerate the growth, albeit that cost will be in line with the revenue growth. So we'll see the margins kind of maintained where they are. As you said, it's a business that's grown at 25 percent CAGR over the last few years. We think we can at least deliver that going forward as we plug the business into our global distribution channels. Remember, we're within 200 kilometers of every mine on the planet. We are particularly strong in the Americas, which we see as one of the most critical growth areas. for Micromine. So it's really all about protecting the strong capability that exists in the business today, building on that foundation and then really driving the revenue growth. And I think, you know, as we said in the announcement, that will really deliver some very, very compelling financials and deal metrics which are very, very accretive to both our revenue growth and our margin profile at the WEA group level.

With that, Brian, on the performance excellence update. Thanks, John. And thanks, Les, for your question. When we announced the performance excellence back in December 23, we had good insight of how we were going to deliver the 60 million of savings. And as we've gone through the project, we've identified additional savings that will come out of it. And that's great from a project standpoint. But what you always hear me talk about is this is not a one and done. When we complete this project, it doesn't mean we're done in this area. What we've created is the muscle and the mindset of constantly thinking about lean manufacturing, looking at our capacity optimization. So we built this mindset that's going to be enduring. So while the project will end in 2026 and we see clear sight for that $80 million, this is something that's going to continue on as just business as usual. We're very excited. Big thanks to the teams because they put a lot of work into this. And we're very confident in the number and look forward to continue to build on it after 26.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is from Jonathan Han from Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Good morning. Just three questions from me as well. The first question actually was just on mix. So if you look at 2024, you had a positive mix in the margin bridge. If we look to 2025, you know, you're calling out that mix to turn negative and to be a headwind. The question I have is that in terms of that sort of OE aftermarket sort of mix, Is that sort of negativity just centered on 25 or do we expect that sort of headwind to the margin bridge from mixed continuing in 26? That was the first one. The second question was just on gold. favorable dynamics in gold mining right now. You called out strength coming through in orders for that. Just wondering if you could sort of drill down a bit and give us a little bit more color in terms of what you're seeing from gold customers, the rate of growth and how you see that developing through FY25. And then the third and final question was just on micromine. I assume in terms of the revenue, there's both a sale of sort of the original software package and alongside that probably software upgrades at some point. I wonder if you could just sort of split out that revenue and the mix between sort of original software sales and essentially software upgrades. Thank you.

Thanks very much, Jonathan. I'll take those. So yeah, on mix, clearly we had a very positive experience in 2024, albeit that was partly enhanced given a couple of shipments of OE slipped into 2025, as you'll have seen from the press release. So it was really an incredibly strong year in 2024 in terms of aftermarket revenues as a proportion of mix, which was really beneficial from a margin perspective. Based on what we expect to be shipping in 2025 from an OE perspective, most of which is in the order book, and obviously the stuff that slipped from last year is already out the door. So we have a very, very clear line of sight of where we expect to be in terms of the mix in 2025, which is a modest headwind. But as you've seen in terms of our overall operating profit margin, we expect to see probably another 80, 100 basis points of benefit from performance, excellent savings coming through and pricing and other efficiencies. And that being sort of 50 percent of that being offset by the mixed headwind that we, as I say, we've got a really clear line of sight for in 2025. Difficult to predict 26 at the moment. We need to see what comes through in terms of the OE orders through the course of 2025. But rest assured, we are really, really clear that in 2026, we will be above 20% group order operating margins. We believe that is sustainable and we have built into that sufficient capacity to deal with further mixed headwinds should they come through. So I feel really, really good about being able to deliver a step up in 25 and a further step up in 26, taking us beyond 20%. And of course, as I said earlier, micromine is going to be accretive to those margins at a group level as well. On Gold, look, our Gold customers are the happiest they have ever been in my time at Weir. Our conversations with our Gold customers all over the world are very, very positive. It's one of the real hotspots in the business at the moment. We've got a range of conversations going on with our customers all over the world in terms of how we can help them produce more, accelerate production. given where the commodity price is today. So I would say it's a, you know, it's a very, very strong space for the group at the moment. Well, among others, of course. But we've got a lot of very active conversations at the moment and quite a lot of the OE pipeline is around de-bottlenecking and small brownfield expansion projects. Plus big greenfields, as in the case of the Ricodeep project that we're supporting Barrick on. And then in terms of your final question on the micromine revenue, I think I would say that the vast majority of the growth is going to come from new sales. And that's a combination of going into new territories or accelerating revenue growth in existing territories. Micromine is already in, but we are has a stronger presence. leveraging our platform. As I said earlier, a much smaller proportion will come from upgrades and pricing. But obviously, as we said, the revenue of this business is very, very sticky and pricing will be an element of the revenue growth. But probably, you know, more than 50% is going to come from new sales, leaning into that, you know, what we think is a £2 billion addressable market. So a really, really big area of growth to lean into as we bring the business into the WEA group.

Perfect, guys. Thank you very much for it, Cliff. Thanks, Jonathan.

Thank you. Our next question is from Ben Heelan from Bank of America. The line is now open. Please go ahead.

Yes, guys. I had a quick question on the deal. So just looking at your transaction summary and the kind of 10 times EB sales and 20 times EBITDA, kind of getting the impression it's a roughly 50% EBITDA margin business. Can you help us understand where you expect the business to be around? around EBIT. And I think you kind of answered it, but your 2026 comments about being above 20% margins, that is excluding MicroMind. So MicroMind would come on top of that. Just a quick clarification there. And then a kind of second question around ESCO. Can you talk a little bit about the trends you're seeing? Obviously, destocking has been a big component of the last couple of years. Where do you think you are on that? And geographically, what are the trends that you're seeing? Thank you.

Yeah, well, let me deal with the ESCO question then, Brian, if you want to pick up on the margins. Look, I think we're seeing good momentum in ESCO, particularly in the core ground engaging tools business. You know, although the orders were sort of flattish year on year for ESCO, we saw really, really good growth in the core mining G.E.T. And we've got strong momentum there. And you see that in the net digger conversions of 118. that we won in 2024. So good momentum in that part of the business, partly offset by a decline in oil sands and some other of the more lumpy elements of the business. And I think those kind of headwinds that we saw during 2024 fall away as we come into 2025 and we're already seeing that as we begin the year in terms of the order profile that we're seeing. So I think Good trends on the mining side and actually infrastructure. And as I said before, among our peer group, different people have different kinds of infrastructure exposure. But we actually saw very modest sort of low single digit growth in that in 2024 in the ESCO business. And actually, the outlook is probably looking a little bit more positive there as well, given the you know, what the Trump administration is talk about talking about in terms of boosting the US economy more broadly, but also I think what's going to happen in the mining and infrastructure industries. So I think we feel positive about the trends that we're seeing in ESCO. And even though we saw a bit more momentum in the minerals business coming out of the fourth quarter and into January, I think in terms of the growth rates that we expect to see across both divisions in the aftermarket, they'll probably end up being broadly consistent as we go through 2025.

And thanks for your question. I think there's one thing we really want to be very clear on the 20% operating margin target. We do not need this transaction. We have not factored in that transaction. We are extremely comfortable that we're going to deliver beyond that 20% by 2026 on a standalone basis. The great thing with Micromine is that, as John said in this presentation, it's immediately accretive to our margins, and the margins are quite good on this. A simple calculation got you to 50%. I think there's more complexity than there, but we're not given the actual margin number. But it is significantly higher than WIR's existing margins, and it's a growth business. And that's why we're very excited, because we're growing. Our revenue, we're growing our margins. It's accretive in the first full year of operation on an EPS basis. And one of the things we always told the market is that we're going to cover our WAC within three years, and this transaction does that. So we're very excited and looking forward to welcome our Mike and mine colleagues into WEIR.

Okay, thank you. Thanks, Ben.

Thank you. Our next question is from Edward Hussey from UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I guess this first one, in terms of the 25% growth that you've talked about for the acquisition, is that sort of representative of software growth in mining in general, or has the company been taking market share? And then just secondly, on revenue growth, Seems like it's a little bit lower than expected in Q4. I'm just wondering, is this going to be a phasing issue? And are we going to see the revenue potentially come through in Q1 that was expected? And then maybe do you mind giving a bit more color in terms of the really strong aftermarket break you had in Q4 in minerals and essentially what's driving that? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks very much for the questions, Edward. So I think on the revenue growth question for MicroMine, as we've been through the commercial diligence on this, we think that is sector leading growth. I mean, mining software generally as a category in mining is growing strongly, but we think MicroMine leads the pack in terms of the revenue growth that it's delivered over the last few years and has been taking market share across several of its solutions. and for very good reason in terms of the capability of the software, the user-friendliness of the software, the thoughtful pricing of the software. So we think it's leading the pack and I think we can only enhance that by bringing it into the WIR family as we move forward. In terms of Q4, I mean, we had a really, really strong quarter in terms of revenue growth. It was always going to be a big one. As you saw, we didn't quite just get to where we wanted to be, but that was very simply down to a couple of large OE shipments that literally got stuck on the dock and not on the boat. And therefore, we didn't meet the INCO terms to be able to recognize the revenue. And as I said, you know, those things have now gone out of the door so that revenues coming through in 2025 very, very early on. So we've had a really, really strong January reflecting that and reflecting the more broader momentum that we've seen in the business, you know, which gets to your aftermarket question. I think It was the growth that we saw in minerals in particular in the fourth quarter was phenomenal. Fifteen percent growth in the fourth quarter, four or five percent of that obviously coming from the second piece of that multi-period order. But even without that double digit growth in the aftermarket, driven by very high levels of activity, particularly in copper and gold and even iron ore where the prices stayed above 100 bucks, which is kind of a psychological level for the industry. So very supportive trends there. The other fact to call out was that we said in the first half of the year, we had an elevated level of mine specific challenges which was holding us back. And several of those challenges fell away as we went through the second half of the year. And then the final point I would make is that, you know, we've been talking about the fact that our order levels, even though it jumps around from quarter to quarter, historically is that relatively elevated levels compared to historic trends. And that means the new installed base that we've got coming through being commissioned, you know, kicking off then in terms of aftermarket opportunity really accelerated through the second half of the year. So that was another big factor in the momentum we're seeing. And of course, that continues into the beginning of 2024. So I think when you look at the pattern over the course of the year, it was a bit of a tougher first half, but it really accelerated through the second half of the year. driven by those trends, and we expect that to, by and large, continue as we move through 2025, which underpins our positive outlook for further revenue growth and operating profit growth and further progress on margins.

Brilliant. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Edward.

Thank you. Our next question is from Harry Phillips from Peel Hunt. The line is now open. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Good morning, everyone. Just a couple of questions on MicroMine, please. And it's trying to just understand how you get MicroMine sort of across the broader WIR group. I mean, in essence, you're creating a software business within broader WIR, and that's part of your portfolio. Or does MicroMine get sort of tucked into the operating businesses and their routes into the customers? And I'm just trying to work out how does the software subscription business, and this is my ignorance, fit into a sort of global product business like yourselves? And then secondly, is this sort of with micrometrics, micromine, all these double M's, are you setting out to ultimately create a sort of software platform family within Wear as a sort of, you know, you've got sort of ESCO, you've got minerals, and now you'll have a sort of, you know, years to come, a software platform to boot as well so customers can sort of take across the piece.

Yeah. Hi, Harry. Thanks for those questions. Really good questions. Maybe I'll just kind of explain the overall thinking and hopefully that will answer the two aspects of where you're coming from. So I think firstly, stepping back, you know, as a traditional engineering capital goods company and provider of hardware, my view has always been that, you know, we need to embrace software, digital, AI as we move forward. not only to accelerate the growth in our business, but to continue to protect the core and add to the barriers to entry that we have in our existing businesses. So digital has always been a core piece of our strategy. With Micromine, we are taking a huge leap forward in accelerating that strategy in terms of what we're going to create here. And the value creation that should come from that is really, really exciting to us as a team. How we're thinking about the integration is that for the first six months, we are really just going to leave Micromine standalone. We want to do the core basic governance integrations from a cybersecurity point of view, a finance and internal control point of view, just to make sure we've got all the core bits and pieces right. But in terms of the business, we're not going to do any integration beyond that, other than the key first step is to plug it in, to the WEA global distribution channels in ESCO and minerals to help accelerate sales. So as you know, we have a pretty unique platform around the world in terms of key account managers, service engineers, relationships at all level across all the mines that we operate on around the world. And we're going to use that platform to open doors and make warm introductions for the software salespeople of Micromine. Our pump engineers are not going to be able to sell software, but those people who sit in the Esco and Minerals division will help open doors and accelerate opportunities into the Micromine sales pipeline. So that's how we're thinking about it initially. Then over that first six months, we're going to be working on how to bring micromine and motion metrics together because we see that as the sort of first phase in having an integrated solution, taking the vision recognition technology that comes with motion metrics and adding that to the micromine capability in planning and particularly scheduling and operations in and around the mine. So that's the sort of first phase. And then slightly longer term is how you then bring the whole thing together with next intelligent solutions in the minerals division to create that end-to-end optimization platform. And I think once we get there, we will have a separate business. It will probably be an externally reported division of WIR, WIR Digital or WIR Software, which will be providing not only the point software solutions, but end-to-end optimization opportunities, which we'll be building organically and potentially through other smaller bolt-ons into that digital platform as well. So in the first phase of that integration, and we thought very carefully about this, the numbers, the MicroMind numbers are just going to report through ESCO. Then we'll do that work in the background to very thoughtfully build the two phases of that integration and then create that end-to-end business that will probably be reported externally. So back to where I started, I think, you know, For a business like we're leaning into the opportunity that exists in mining, digital and software capability is going to be a huge growth driver for us as we move forward. But not only offensive, it's also a defensive play as well in terms of, you know, strengthening the barriers to entry that we have already around existing platform. but accelerating growth with digital solutions. So that's how I'm thinking about it, Harry. I think that covered both of your questions, but if you want to just shout if you want a bit more clarification anywhere.

That's great. That's really helpful and many thanks for the clarity.

Thanks, Harry.

Thank you. Our next question is from Christian Hinderaka from Goldman Sachs. The line is not open. Please go ahead.

Yes, morning, John. Morning, Brian. Maybe just to change attack from my side, I just want to ask a question on pricing. One of your peers recently talked about pricing pressure in heavy equipment categories, particularly where there's steel castings. I wonder if you've seen that in your business. And secondly, how do we think about your pricing dynamics as we enter 2025? Thank you.

Good morning, Christian. Yeah, pricing, you know, as we said before, we had a couple of fantastic years from a pricing perspective post-COVID as the industry scrambled to deal with inflation and get back to normalised operating levels, inventory levels and lead times and so on. You know, that's really moderated as we expected. Obviously, inflationary pressure across the board for us has really gone down very, very significantly. So we are back to more normal through level through cycle levels of pricing at the moment in the sort of low single digit sort of category, which is from my perspective in terms of our thinking into how we protect gross margins. that level of pricing is perfectly sufficient to keep us where we are on gross margins. That's what we're expecting for the current year, for 2025. And a lot of those price increases have already been pushed out and agreed with customers. I'm feeling pretty good about where we are on pricing. Obviously, the thing that we're watching and remodeling almost every other day is the impact of tariffs coming from the new administration in the US. Wherever that ends up, we expect to be able to mitigate that in the round, as we did with the previous Trump administration. through a combination of moving imports and exports throughout our network of foundries around the world. You remember we have that very diversified platform of manufacturing facilities that means we can shift production around to avoid tariffs. And to the extent we can't do that, then, you know, we will be adding price increases where we need to. But, you know, I expect us to be in the pack on that. And many other industries will be in exactly the same place. So, you know, in summary, feel very good about what we can achieve from a pricing point of view this year to protect margins. And I think, you know, whatever happens and it will be different next week than it was this week. I expect we'll be able to manage any tariff inflationary pressures.

Understood. Thanks, John.

Thanks, Christian.

Thank you. Our next question is from William Mackey from Kepler. The line is not open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thank you for squeezing me in. And good morning, John, Brian. Two question areas. One on Micromine, actually. Could you provide a little more color around your comments about investment needs in the business? And when I ask that, I'm sort of thinking, do you need to expand the software portfolio to reach the full $2 billion addressable market that you're talking about? Or do you see more investments required around the sales channels?

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the question, William. Yeah. So I think I was principally talking about the sales channels. And what I'd like to clarify there is that Micromine has an extremely professional and capable sales team around the world and a very established model whereby they bring in talented people. Those people are trained up. They work alongside existing sales professionals. And then they're sort of released into the market as it were. So it has a very, very established process for building out sales capability, which has supported the 25% revenue CAGR that we talked about earlier. So all we need to do is to continue with that model. And that means to the extent that we have ambitions for higher revenue growth, we need to just accelerate the investment in that established process of building sales capability. So that's what we need to do. But obviously that's sales expense. we'll grow in line with the revenue growth and we'll obviously work hard not to get ahead of ourselves in doing that and just kind of balance the investment with the growth that is coming through. So that's what I meant in terms of investing in the business. But so it's to support the growth and not dilute the margins. The broader sort of step back question in terms of you know, capital allocation is that, yes, that is also going to be something that we will be thinking about. So as I said earlier, with Micromine, you've got a very broad suite of software solutions today. It doesn't do everything everywhere across the mining value change chain, and it has had itself an M&A strategy, which would be to bring in other smaller software plays into its portfolio. And as we've got to know the business and talk with the team, actually, our views are quite aligned on what those might be, which is quite interesting. So that is definitely going to be a feature. Obviously, the scale of this acquisition is pretty unique given its top tier status. So we would expect potentially smaller software Boltins to broaden out that portfolio as we move forward. But alongside the organic development that we will be doing around the end to end optimization. we will be putting together teams of people out of micromine motion metrics and the next intelligence solutions piece in minerals to start to envision how you get those data flows to work back and forth between the mine and the process plant to real-time optimize operations in both arenas. So that will be an organic development, which will need to invest some R&D in that. But again, it's not going to be something that's dilutive to our overall expectations for accretion.

Thank you very much for the color. The second area was related to your comments on tariffs and perhaps broadening it into critical mineral strategies on a national basis. You mentioned America as being a positive area, but maybe could you flesh out any thoughts you have from your customer feedback about where you might expect localization or accelerated investment in brownfield or even greenfield through permitting and licensing that would open up more opportunities across the minerals business?

Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question and I think as I sit here today I feel much more positive about the evolution of the answer to that question compared to what I did 12 months ago. So if you sort of dot around the world a little bit for sure, you know the US Drill baby drill applies to mining as well. And we're already starting to see some project awards coming through in the US off the back of that. So I think we're going to see a loosening of the some of the restrictions that have been politically put in place in relation to permits and licenses. That's already happening in the US. And so I expect that part of the world to be positive. If I go to South America, which for the last two or three years has been a bit more challenged in terms of the relationships between our large customers and local governments, given the sort of the political sort of sway that we've seen there in certain countries. I think that's changing. I think that's loosening up as well. So we're starting to see much more positive conversations about investment in Latin America now. I think China is doing what China is doing in various regions around the world. Nickel in Indonesia, for example, even though the nickel prices have come down, China is still supporting further expansion in nickel in Indonesia. So that's a little bit of a hotspot. And then this broad super region that the Saudi Arabians are calling the super region with the Middle East and Saudi at the core of it through North Africa up into Central Asia, Pakistan. We see that as an area where there's going to be a lot of investment as well. There already is a lot of investment. Our Ricoh-Deke order win with Barrick in that northwestern Pakistan region of Balochistan is a great example of that. And we expect to see acceleration of Saudi investment in the mining industry. We've got a lot of great stuff going on in phosphate across Morocco and North Africa. And then in Central Asia, lots of activity on expanding copper production there as well. You know, Australia has been an area of really, really strong growth over the last few years, you know, with nickel and lithium coming off a little bit. That's probably plateauing a little bit. And and, you know, in Europe is weak and continue has been for a while and continues to be. The only other final thing I'd say is that, you know, the governments are really sort of getting it now in terms of critical minerals. It's really encouraging to see, you know, several policies now being published and announced. There's more to happen in terms of how those policies are enacted and enabled. But, you know, I feel that, you know, when you take everything I've just said there, it's a more positive environment than it has been for a while. in terms of the industry now starting to lean into more investment and more expansion of critical minerals and the energy transition materials. That's great.

Congratulations.

Thanks. Thanks, William.

We have a question from Michael Harlow from Morgan Stanley. Michael, your line is now open if you are ready.

Thank you very much. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for taking questions and thank you for squeezing in. Just one more on the cost-cutting and the margins. You were very clear before on the fact that 60 million and 20% was not going to be the end of it. From a conceptual point of view, is it fair for us to say that as far as we're concerned, we are seeing a convergence of margins between the midstream and the upstream. And then on the micro-mine deal, obviously what comes to mind is the ESCO acquisition. You've done a fantastic job with this one. So if you could tell us what you've learned and what you can apply to the micro-mine deal in terms of how you reintegrate these assets. Obviously, I'm referring to the fact that this time around, it's not a cost-cutting story. Thank you.

Yeah, I think the answer to the first question is probably quite simple. Yes. That was the plan and now we're getting there and we will get there. On Micromine, I think the reflection, I would say two things. I've talked about how this is just a top tier asset. It is highly professional, established, very, very capable business. And all we want to do is enhance that. One of the things that's been sort of really striking as we have got to know the business better and worked with the team, with the owners and the management of the business, is there is fantastic cultural alignment between the MicroMind team and the WIR team. And I've learned in my M&A experience over the years, that is absolutely the most important thing. If you can find a quality business that has got cultural alignment as well, that makes it a hell of a lot easier. And we find that the micro mind people to have really similar values to where folks really innovative mindset, great customer focus and intensity. And that's exactly what we need to work together to be able to create the vision that we've been describing today and why I'm super excited about it. And that sort of cultural and values based alignment, I would say, has a great parallel with the way that the Esco acquisition was brought into Weir. And you just look at how successful that has been in terms of delivery of the synergies, the integration, where the margins of that business is today compared to, you know, 11% operating margins when we bought it. I mean, that's been perfect execution from beginning to end, not that we're in the end. And I think MicroMind is going to be exactly the same. Thank you. That's very helpful. Okay. Thanks very much, Michael. Okay. So thanks everybody for the questions. And I really appreciate you scrambling to join the call this morning, given this was a little bit of a surprise announcement relative to when you were expecting to hear from us. I really appreciate everybody making the time to be able to join us. If there are any further questions through the day, please get in touch with our IR team. We'd be happy to help and support that. Once again, thank you very much for your interest and questions today, and I look forward to speaking to everybody over the course of the next week or so. Take care.