Kingspan Grp Ord

Good morning and welcome to today's Kingspan half-year results 2026 conference call. My name is Seb and I'll be the operator for your call today. If you would like to ask a question during the Q&A session, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw from the queue, please press star 2. In the interest of time and fairness, we ask that you limit yourself to two questions each. I will now hand the floor over to Jean Murtagh, CEO, to begin the call. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning everybody. Welcome to the Half Year Results 2026 here at Kingspan. We get straight into it on slide number three, which is titled H1 in Summary. Really quite a strong first half, bearing in mind that the first quarter was difficult worldwide and in our sector naturally. But for the first half, I think a very pleasing outcome with revenue just under 4.9 billion, which is 8% ahead of prior year. Our EBITDA was up 9% at 626, and our trading profits, our pure trading profit number, up 10% at 487 million, all of which is, I think, reasonably positive in the environment that we're in. Importantly, by business segments, the envelope business was up 4% at a revenue level and advances which is heavily focused on the data side was up 36% pre currency at a revenue level so both both extremely encouraging and we get into the order books in both businesses as we go through the presentation and we're holding back on our share buyback program and just to preserve dry powder for some opportunities that are out there right now and And the outlook for the second half of the year is even better again. We're upping our guidance to 1.125 billion trading profit for the year as a whole, which would imply second half trading profit growth of around 25%. So momentum is increasing and we expect that to obviously continue into 2027 as well.

So that's it in summary and I'll just hand you over to Jeff for some detail on this Thanks Gene and I'm speaking to the flash highlights on page 6 so going from the top group revenue up 8% half year and half year and I'll come to the conditions of that in a second EBITDA up 9% trading profit up 10% but I would highlight that this year's reported number 487.2 is net of 4.5 million of advances IPO exploration costs so actually stripping that out and adjusting for currency the underlying trading profit was up 13% half year and half year earnings per share up 5% as you recall the interest number in the first half of 25 was flattered by a one-off credit we would expect based on the guidance that we've given for the full year on trading profit of 1.125% that our earnings per share growth on a full year basis will be closer to mid-teens for the full year. Our interim dividend at 27.1 cents, up 3%. A strong free cash flow performance in the first half, 144 million, and I'll come to the components of that shortly. A decent trading margin performance of 10%, up 20 basis points. the margin performance continues to evolve positively we expect in the second half to be knocking on the door of 12% in the second half so our full year margin guidance for the year ought to be in the region of 11% on a full year basis from a debt and leverage perspective the balance sheet remains in good shape net debt to EBITDA standing at a little over 1.5 times Turning to page 7, just the bridges of revenue and profit, firstly to deal with revenue. Currency clipped 61 million or about 1.5% of sales half year and half year. Acquisitions contributed 125 million euro or about 3%. An underlying sales grew by 6% or $278 million, all combining to give us the $4.86 billion for the first half. From a profit perspective, currency shaved a little under 2% off the half-year number, $8.4 million. M&A contributed $14 million, which is net of that $4.5 that I referred to earlier. An underlying profit grew by $38.7 million. in the first half all combined to give the 487 for the first half turning to page 8 just on our sales by geography I think a couple of particular highlights on this would be that our America's business grew by a fifth in total half year over half year up 21% constant currency and our rest of world business grew by over a quarter half year on half year and the rest of the business The strongest component of free cash flow performance is EBITDA which was ahead in the half year. on working capital we typically build working capital in the first half our trading balance sheet is larger in June than it is at year end our working capital our working capital the sales ratio actually improved in the first half of 26 the working capital the sales ratio is 12.3% in June 26 compared to 13.1% in June 25 so a positive positive performance there CapEx a little over 156 million our capex guidance for the full year is 360 million and a similar number going into 2027 and the only other number I'd highlight on the page is our tax outflow 47 million slightly lower than the income statement charge that'll normalise with the income statement charge as we move through the year reconciling that to the overall net debt position on page 10 the only other item to note on that beyond free cash flow are a modest acquisition spend in the period of a little under 74 million and our dividend payments of 52.6 million on page 11 some highlights on our balance sheet balance sheet remains in strong shape net debt to EBITDA 1.56 times an undrawn component of 700 million of our green revolving credit facility which is committed to May 2028 with total outstanding private placement notes of 1.4 billion and public bonds of 750 million the weighted average maturity of all of our guest facilities is 3.7 years and with total available liquidity of 1.3 billion and what I would say is that the group remains strongly committed to its investment-grade rating, which means maintaining leverage sub-two times. And with that, I will hand back to Jane.