The Weir Group PLC

Good morning everyone, and many thanks for joining the call today to discuss our results for the first half of 2026. Before we start, I'd like to draw your attention to the usual cautionary notice on forward-looking statements. We have a lot to share today, but before we dive into our results for the half, I'd like to hand you over to Andrew Neilson, who will be taking over the reins as CEO next week, to say a few words. After we hear from Andrew, I'll start with some of the key highlights of the first half performance, and the progress that we've made against our key strategic priorities. Brian Puffer, our CFO, will then run through the numbers in more detail and finish an outlook, after which I'll give you some closing remarks before taking your questions. So with that, I'll hand over to Andrew.

Good morning, everyone. I'm very excited to be picking up the baton from John and leading a business of Weir's quality, heritage and potential. I've been with Weir for 16 years and I've worked across all areas of the business from strategy and M&A to integrating and leading ESCO and most recently heading up our minerals division. That experience has given me a deep understanding of our markets, our customers, our operating model and the rich capabilities that differentiate Weir from our peers. It has been a privilege to work so closely with Jon over the last decade. helping transform Weir into a focused mining technology leader. Today, our strength is underpinned by a stronger, more resilient portfolio that now comprises both hardware and software solutions. That is opening up more and more opportunities to help customers all around the world respond to the rising demand for critical minerals, sustainable practices and responsible capex. As Chief Executive, my focus will be in seizing this multi-decade opportunity. My priority will be to build on what we have started, driving our performance with strong execution and delivering on the recent investments that we have made, whilst continuing to unlock operational efficiencies and deploy capital to accelerate our future growth. Weir is a proud engineering heritage, but what excites me most is the future. We have the customer relationships, technology platforms, operating discipline and deep capability to help shape the next generation of mining. If we execute well, we can support customers in producing the resources the world needs while delivering sustainable compounding value for shareholders. So it's a big opportunity ahead and it's one I'm very excited to lead. I look forward to meeting you in the months ahead But for now, let me hand you back to John and Brian to take you through the results.

Thank you, Andrew. You're certainly taking on the CEO role at a very exciting time for Weir. I look forward to seeing the business continue to flourish under your leadership. I'm going to start today's presentation with a summary of our performance and strategic progress before we go into a deeper dive specifically on our growth drivers and competitive positioning. In short, our financial performance for the first half reflects a real acceleration in Q2 orders amid strong market activity levels, putting us exactly where we need to be to deliver on our full-year guidance. Brian will take you through the details shortly, but let me provide the headlines which sets the context for the remainder of my presentation. First to orders, where we've grown 8% year-on-year on a constant currency basis, and that's against a very tough 2025 comp which included the £40 million to Labras order and a heavy first half weighting to aftermarket orders last year. Original equipment orders grew by 10% year on year, supported by a high bid conversion rate on projects, over 90% success rate in pump trials consistent with our historic average and excellent progress with new product penetration, particularly in comminution. Aftermarket orders grew by 8% with strong activity in our largest minerals exposures of copper, gold, iron ore and oil sands. And we saw the expected bounce back from the weather related disruptions of the first quarter. The key point to highlight is the Q2 aftermarket organic orders of minerals up 8% year on year, back in line with our expected mid to high single digit range. and Esco saw similar organic growth in Q2 and together that puts us on track to meet our full year growth expectations after the slow start in Q1. Revenue increased by 5% on a constant currency basis as contributions from acquisitions were partially offset by the effect of some deliveries being deferred into the second half following our last round of production transfers within Performance Excellence. Just to give you a little colour on that, you'll recall that late in 2025, we commenced relocating rubber parts to production to Malaysia and India, as well as castings to the Americas and Africa, following capacity reductions in Australia and the UK. Now as you see on the map, these relocations involve transfers between multiple individual sites within our global operations, with several complex movements across continents. As we progress with the transfers, unusual demand patterns seen in Q1 and early Q2 created a shift in product mix relative to our planning assumptions, which pushed out production and deferred deliveries. But with production re-planned and a return to usual demand patterns, we exited June with strong operating momentum, which will allow delivery of delayed orders over the second half. With a book-to-bill of 1.12, we've grown our order book in the first half by circa £150m, and with continuing strong market activity levels entered the second half with strong top line momentum underpinning our full year guidance. Dunnings of profit where on a constant currency basis adjusted operating profit was stable and resulting operating margins were 18.8% against a very strong comparison with mixed effect and the delivery deferrals I just mentioned more than offsetting first half performance excellence benefits. However, with the first half headwinds largely reversing over the remainder of the year and good line of sight on delivery of the remaining savings within performance excellence, we continue to expect operating margins above 20% for the full year. And finally, free operating cash conversion of 41% reflects an increase in working capital, supporting second half order book delivery and production transfers, as well as the on-market purchase of shares for our LTIP awards during the first half. Again, these effects will unwind or normalize over the balance of the year, and we expect to deliver a cash conversion of between 90% and 100% in line with our established track record. Now, just a few comments on current market conditions. In terms of mining capex, we're seeing accelerating growth and activity in our project pipeline, particularly in North and South America, where permitting is becoming more supportive of new mining activity. We've seen early packages awarded in North America, and more are coming in South America over the next 12 to 24 months. The industry grapples with the delivery of new mines, the challenges of capsule efficiency, mine productivity and social license to operate are acute. So it's really pleasing to see the increasing customer focus on innovative hardware and software technologies as projects move through feasibility into the planning stage. Meanwhile, the focus on improving the efficiency, productivity and sustainability of existing resources continues unabated. Looking at OPEX, as I said earlier, we've seen a normalisation of demand patterns since Q1 and see healthy underlying production growth in our big four exposures of copper, gold, iron ore and oil sands. One other bright spot is the planned start-up of mothballed hard rock mines, particularly lithium in Australia. Geopolitical activity has affected some of our smaller markets, but overall we expect the current positive conditions to continue. supporting continued growth in orders over the course of the second half. Now turning to strategic progress so far this year, the foundation for everything is the safety and wellness of our people. And while our total incident rate is stable so far this year, we're gaining traction with the improvement priorities I recently set out, which is reflected in fewer first aid cases and lower severity rates across the business. Beyond physical safety, we've again been recognised by CCLA in Tier 1 of their Employee Mental Health and Wellbeing Benchmark, placing sixth among the largest companies in the UK. We're making great progress on technology to expand our addressable markets with new solutions, but also to protect and extend our competitive advantage in core products. New solutions brought to market include the OptiMill Vertical Stirred Mill, or VSM, and in core products we launched our next generation mill circuit pumps and construction GET, both of which will deliver step changes in efficiency for our customers, which I'll talk about in more detail later. On sustainability, we released our updated climate transition plan earlier this year and our leadership continues to be recognised with CDP awarding Weir an A score for climate transparency for the fourth consecutive year. Our progress with acquisitions continues at pace. Deals completed in 2025 continue to perform in line with expectations, with Micromine on track to deliver growth in annual recurring revenue of more than 25% this year, supported by our global cross-selling initiatives, which I'll also insert a little later. In March, we completed the acquisition of the remaining 50% share of our Chile-based joint venture, ESL, unlocking the opportunity to grow market share by direct sales in the world's largest copper-producing region. Longer term, and as we set out of our capital markets about last December, our focus is on delivery of the growth potential that's been unlocked by the transformation of Weir over the past few years. And we're making good progress. Our new products are driving the core business toward higher market shares and creating new market leadership positions as we expand our flowsheet solutions. We're positioned strongly with new foundry capacity in the fast-growing North and South American markets and Micromine is at the heart of what is becoming a very exciting end-to-end digital value proposition. While the 2026 focuses on integration and delivering, we're actively building the pipeline of new acquisition opportunities to compound future growth. So, with that context set, I want to turn into a more detailed review of the growth prospects for Weir, starting with the outlook for the mining market. Now across the business we're actively pursuing more than 2,000 projects across all commodities and regions with copper and gold across the Americas being the standouts. This is going to be supportive of robust future OE order intake and will drive ongoing growth in our installed base and therefore aftermarket opportunity. Likewise, the projected production trends which further underpin aftermarket growth are positive. On a revenue weighted basis, we expect to see growth in copper, iron ore and nickel drive overall demand for aftermarket spares and expendables, with coal the only negative, but now a very small market for Weir. Declining ore grades will also be an ongoing factor as new lower grade mines come online. So our markets are growing, and within those markets our core pump and G.E.T. businesses retain their market leadership and competitive position, both of growing market share. Maynard's remains the clear number one in processing and mill circuit pumps, with more than 50% market share, well ahead of our competition, driven by our differentiated technology and customer intimacy. Our market share grew in the first half where we won over two thirds of new large pump tenders and maintained our aftermarket capture rate. Our success extended to competitive mill pump trials where we won 13 of 14 campaigns, taking our total success rate above 90% for the year, while our recent acquisition of Tony only adds to the opportunity pipeline in North America, which is currently the fastest growing mining market. Likewise, ESCO is the global leader in ground-engaging tools for mining, again with clear technology leadership and embedded customer relationships which deliver the industry-leading total cost of ownership. In the first half, ESCO won over 100 net major bigger conversions, an increase of nearly 40% year-over-year, including three with new customers in Chile as we drive our Go Direct model in that market. Our competitive success continues to demonstrate the value of our industry leading total cost of ownership, combining leading edge technology with world class service. And that's particularly true for our mill circuit pumps, with their well earned and long standing industry reputation for running harder and longer than any of our competitors. and that's the essence of how we've been successful in over 90% of competitive trials consistently gaining market share against all of our competitors. And here are the examples. Trial wins in Latin America in large copper and gold applications where we deliver the performance when competitors fall short. Landmark wins in China against local competitors when customers see the advantage of total cost of ownership. and Wins in Africa and Australia, where customers invested in step-change technology to deliver the performance they needed. Delivering technology today is important, but as with any competitive advantage, you must invest to retain leadership, and that's exactly what we're doing. And I wanted to highlight two next generation iterations of our core products. Starting with the newly released MCR squared mill circuit pump which delivers a step change in operational efficiency of 20% compared to our existing offerings, further extending the lead over our competitors. This significant increase in performance demonstrates the powerful combination of our leading material science, hydraulic engineering and digital capability and the results have been proven at three trial sites as part of product validation. The MCR² is protected by eight patents and Dayworn Next digital enablement, fitting seamlessly into our existing mill pump business model. And ESCO has developed Vertisys, a next-generation G.E.T. solution for the construction industry, after trials at six customer sites. Vertisys incorporates a unique vertical integrated locking system, which significantly reduces installation time and keeps machines out in the field. Borrowing on the material science from our Nexus suite of mining GET solutions, several field trials have validated a 15% increase in wear life compared to other offerings and generated significant excitement at the recent product launch. Beyond our core products, we continue to invest in bringing new technology into our broader solution set and recently introduced the new Optimal BSM, the latest addition to our Endura line of comminution products. The engineering team has done a fabulous job bringing a new concept for serve mills through product development and into the market in less than 12 months. We've now received orders for 10 VSMs already, across the product range, based on the expertise and credibility of our team, and there's more to come. What sets the OptiMill apart from other comminution solutions is the proprietary grinding mechanism, a media, which improve energy efficiency and increase wear life, Reducing Maintenance Frequency and Delivering a Lower Total Cost of Ownership. As with MCR2 and Vertisys, this technology includes integrated digital automation, has significant patent protection and fits perfectly into our aftermarket intensive razor blade business model. And when combined with the Enduron HPGR on the comminution flow sheet, we see energy savings of up to 40% compared to traditional technologies. So as you can see, our understanding of what customers need and delivering the right solutions are what keep them choosing Weir for their most mission-critical needs. Our innovative solutions reach across the flowsheet and lower total cost of ownership by providing greater uptime and higher utilization, reducing energy and water consumption. In a recent example in India, a major iron ore producer chose Weir for both their comminution and tailings flowsheets. Led by our optimal VSM and GIHO positive displacement pumps, these flow sheet solutions will both increase the energy efficiency of the mine and increase the tailings capacity of the operation, allowing the concentrator to process more rock. India is an exciting market for Weir, with domestic iron ore expected to grow five-fold over the next decade, and having this great case study is a strong first step in positioning Weir as a market leader in the country as future projects come to market. Finally on the strategic growth roadmap is software, where Micromind continues to deliver in line with our expectations. MicroMine is widely recognized by our customers for its value and performance. And year on year, we've increased our customer retention through the release of new feature packages. As we integrate our suite and offer more solutions through the cloud, more customers are adopting recurring licenses, increasing the quality and visibility of our revenue streams. Our qualified pipeline from warm introductions through the Minerals and ESCO networks has increased by 300%. Over the last six months, with the vast majority of these opportunities originating outside Micromind's home market of Australia. We are matching that pipeline growth with dedicated software sales recruitment to ensure we can convert into new licensed sales, and have seen new business at Tier 1 miners in Brazil and Chile as a result of warm introductions, as well as significant wins in Kazakhstan and Africa. The team we're building is a great fit for Weir, and we maintain voluntary employee retention above 90% as we scale sales force. With strong growth in licensed sales year on year, we're on track for our full year expectations of annual recurring revenue growth above 25%. Taking a step back, Weir offers compounding growth and resilience through the cycle, and we're well on track to achieve our annual commitments to shareholders, to outgrow markets, sustain industry-leading margins and cleanly convert earnings into cash and returns, all while doing the right thing for our people and the planet. I'll return in a few minutes to share some final closing remarks, but will now turn over to Brian to go through our detailed financial performance and the outlook for the full year. Thank you and over to you, Brian.