Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Adbri 2023 half year results briefing. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Mark Irwin, Adbri's Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for the presentation of Adbri's first half results for 2023. I would like to commence today by acknowledging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional owners of the lands and waters of Australia. We recognize their continuing custodianship of country and culture, and pay respect to the elders past, present, and emerging. Joining me today is Jared Gashel, our Chief Financial Officer, who started with us in July, Felicity Lloyd, our Chief Sustainability and Innovation Officer, who had spent 18 years of her career with Adbri and recently rejoined us, and Dianne Mong, our General Manager of Finance, who until recently was our interim CFO. Our first half report and presentation have been lodged with the ASX this morning. The slides will also be visible via the webcast for this briefing. We will begin with a brief snapshot of our business before getting into the first half highlights. Jared will take you through the drivers of our performance, including cash flow and capital expenditure. I'll then take you through the priorities for the second half and our outlook before opening up for questions, which Felicity and Dianne will join us for. We wanted to very briefly provide an overview of Adbri's footprint today. As you can see, we have a combination of geographical diversification, with our business stretching across all Australian states and the Northern Territory, as well as product and customer sector diversification. This geographical reach, together with our vertically integrated model, underpins our position as a supplier of high quality and low-cost construction materials and lime to customers in the commercial, residential, mining, engineering, and infrastructure sectors. Importantly, this strong diversification helps our business withstand changing market conditions. Our strategic pillars of safety, customer focus, inclusivity, and sustainable growth are core to how we do things at Adbri as they guide our decision making. Our financial results for the half year ended 30 June 2023, represent my first full six-month period as CEO. Adbri has delivered a strong first half performance. We have refocused the business, delivering double-digit revenue growth and improved earnings. Our refocus has seen the implementation of key initiatives which have strengthened Adbri and improved cost and operational management disciplines. Overall, we experienced continued strong demand across most of our product lines, and our disciplined approach to pricing has seen us achieve a 14% increase in revenue compared to H1 2022. The earnings performance of the business has significantly improved, with underlying EBITDA of AUD 149.1 million, up 20.9% on the prior year, and underlying NPAT of AUD 52.1 million, up 12.8%. You will note that we have moved away from including property in our underlying measures in order to provide greater transparency around our core operating performance. Statutory EBITDA was AUD 145.8 million, up 15.6% against the prior period, while statutory NPAT was AUD 49.8 million, up 3.5% on H1 2022. While earnings and cash flow improved, the company recorded an overall net cash outflow during the half. This was driven by elevated investment in the business as we progress upgrading Adbri's Kwinana cement operations in Western Australia. The capital investment required to complete the Kwinana upgrade and the elevated leverage position has been central to the board's decision not to declare an interim dividend for the half. We will take you through the drivers of the result in more detail shortly, but first, I want to address safety and sustainability. Safety remains of utmost importance at Adbri. I'm pleased to report an improvement in safety across the organization, with our total recordable injury frequency rate improving 19% from December last year. We have also seen a significant improvement in our lead indicators, such as visible leadership walks and critical control verifications. In addition, we are continuing to focus our efforts on psychological well-being and contractor engagement, with a revitalization of our Take 5 Program across all work sites.... We also made positive strides on sustainability during the half, progressing towards our goal of net zero emissions by 2050. We delivered against our three action areas to reduce emissions, create new products, and collaborate. We completed a trial to increase the use of refuse-derived fuel, or RDF, at our Birkenhead cement facility. If the regulator approves our license change, this could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately another 13,000 tons annually. We recently branded our range of lower carbon concrete products as Futurecrete. These products can use up to 65% supplementary cementitious materials to reduce the embodied carbon in concrete, and we are seeing good demand from our customers for this type of offering. The Safeguard Mechanism reforms saw us collaborate with government and other parties on the proposed changes. We are confident the legislation, as at 1 July 2023, will not have a material impact on our broad earnings. We also welcome the government's recent announcement to review how best to implement a carbon border adjustment mechanism for cement and lime. Moving on to our financial performance. This slide presents a snapshot of key financial headlines with pleasing improvement in all metrics. Return on funds employed, or ROFE, was 8.1%. Adjusting to exclude property transactions included in H1 22, this is a 90 basis point improvement. This slide shows the revenue contribution of each major product category to the group. Pleasingly, each product category lifted revenue contribution during the half. Cementitious materials revenue increased by 8.4%, reflecting improved pricing across the mining, commercial, infrastructure, and residential sectors. We saw strong volume growth in New South Wales, offsetting mild declines elsewhere and enabling overall volume growth of 1.7%. Price increases implemented in 2022 resulted in an increase in the national average selling price of cement. Production costs, however, continued to be influenced by higher energy and raw material inputs. New lime contract pricing and existing lime contract escalations allowed us to lift revenue by 4% in spite of marginally lower volumes. This has helped offset higher input costs, particularly energy, which remains a challenge. Concrete revenue increased by 23.1%, with strong demand across all sectors, especially infrastructure, where key projects secured during the half year included the Gold Coast Light Rail project, the M12 Central package in New South Wales, and the Tramways contract in Victoria. Strong pricing disciplines have been maintained, helping us to mitigate rising raw material and operational costs. Strong pricing and record volumes resulted in aggregates revenue rising 30.3% and volumes up 12.5%. While inflationary pressures impacting our quarry operations have shown signs of moderating, production costs remain elevated. Improved pricing and an increase in contracting revenue helped masonry revenue grow 11.2%, notwithstanding the 3.3% decline in overall sales volumes due to softer retail demand. Our joint ventures are a critical part of our business, and we are focused on providing increased insights to our shareholders about their value. As you can see on the slide, we have noted the group's look-through underlying EBITDA. This metric demonstrates the underlying performance of Adbri's joint ventures. We saw improved joint venture performance in the first half, with revenue growth for all businesses and higher earnings contributions from all, excluding Sunstate Cement. Overall, the earnings contribution from joint ventures was up 12.1% on the prior comparative period, while EBITDA was up 8.6%. I'll hand over to Jared to now give you more details on our first half financial results. Thank you, Mark. Turning to slide 16. Pleasingly, we've seen strong margin recovery in the first half after 4 successive halves of margin decline. The underlying EBITDA margin increased 90 basis points to 16.1%, driven by strong pricing traction and disciplined management of controllable costs. The 14% growth in revenue to AUD 926.4 million reflects pricing discipline and continued strong demand across most sectors, as well as a full 6-month contribution from Zanows, a business we acquired in the first half of FY 2022. Turning to slide 17, the EBITDA bridge highlights the elevated inflationary environment in which we're operating. With demand relatively stable on the whole, be it with a mix shift between the products, the key lever to offset inflation was price. This delivered a AUD 97 million benefit. This benefit was partially offset by more than AUD 67 million of cost increases, primarily inflationary driven. In addition, the prior year benefited from the Rosehill plant and equipment gain of AUD 8.4 million. Sharp cost increases were felt across raw materials, energy, freight, and labor. The most significant being the AUD 35.6 million increase on raw materials. In addition, higher energy expenses, particularly gas costs in South Australia and Western Australia, contributed to the elevated inflationary impacts during the period. Turning to cash flow on slide 18. Operating cash flow increased by AUD 10 million or 14.7%, primarily driven by strong operational performance, partially offset by increased debtors, given the strong revenue result. Elevated investment levels totaling AUD 167.7 million more than consumed this, resulting in negative free cash flow of AUD 91.7 million. As noted in the table, nearly half of the investing outflow related to the important Kwinana upgrade project. A significant focus for the balance of the year will be improving our cash generation. Turning to slide 19, net debt increased by AUD 96.5 million during the half to AUD 672.9 million, with leverage at 2.3 times, which is, as expected, outside of the target range of 1-2 times. Pleasingly, 53% of the group's bank debt is fixed rate, partially mitigating the impact of rising interest rates. The substantial debt covenant headroom, no significant bank debt maturities until late 2026, noting that AUD 50 million does mature in late 2025, and more than AUD 360 million of liquidity at 30 June. Turning to capital expenditure on slide 20. As expected, and consistent with the guidance provided earlier this year, investment outflows for the first half of FY 2023 were elevated to support long-term earnings growth. This has seen capital expenditure rise AUD 57.9 million to AUD 173 million, split between stay in business capital of AUD 75.4 million, and development capital of AUD 97.6 million. Stay in business spend mainly related to the Birkenhead maintenance and construction of the Rosehill batching plant, while the development CapEx primarily related to Kwinana. On that note, I will hand back to Mark to provide an update on Kwinana. Thanks, Jared. As you know, the Kwinana upgrade is a critical project for Adbri that will strengthen and consolidate our cement milling operations in Western Australia. As at the end of July, the project is over half complete, with AUD 203 million of our revised total project cost estimate of between AUD 385 million and AUD 420 million spent. The project economics continue to remain strong. We achieved a number of key milestones during the half, with 98% of procurement now complete. This slide provides an overview of key project milestones. As you can see, we are targeting key commissioning activities to commence in Q2 2024, with being operational in Q3 2024. In late 2024, our Munster cement facility is planned to cease operations, with the Kwinana upgrade supplying our entire West Australian customer base. Turning now to the near-term priorities across our operations, which are focused on driving earnings growth from our integrated business model. I've touched on some of these initiatives in cement already. In addition to the Kwinana upgrade, in the second half, we expect to complete negotiations with ICL on a multi-year supply agreement with a start date of January 2024. We are also progressing a feed study for a new mill in Birkenhead, which examines the merits of increasing milling and blending capacity as we enhance our product offering. In lime, we have commenced reviews of our operations to improve asset performance and customer offerings. These interrelated reviews are expected to be completed by the end of 2023. Our concrete and aggregates business is pleasingly outperforming. We are focused on continuing to grow supply to match demand in both concrete and aggregates. In masonry, we're continuing to see strong growth in our contracting business, which supports an attractive pipeline of commercial and multi-stage residential projects. We are focused on continuing to develop and deploy lower embodied carbon products, such as Futurecrete and Type GL Cement, which we expect will make our products more appealing to carbon-conscious customers, particularly across the infrastructure and mining sectors. During the second half, we'll also continue to progress our property strategy to realize value from land surplus to operational needs, such as Badgerys Creek in New South Wales and Batesford in Victoria. Finally, in closing, we expect demand for our products to remain strong throughout the second half of the year, with trading conditions similar to the first half, notwithstanding a slight softening in some parts of residential and retail sectors. The benefits of price increases and cost discipline are expected to continue in the second half of the year, in an environment of continued elevated inflationary pressures. And as such, we anticipate H2 2023 EBITDA to be moderately higher than the first half. From a capital expenditure perspective, we expect total spend for the year to be between AUD 330 million and AUD 350 million. I'd now like to hand back to the operator and open up for questions. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star, then two. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. We ask that questions be limited to two per person to allow all the opportunity to ask a question. The first question comes from Brook Campbell-Crawford from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question. There was a comment in the materials just talking about Birkenhead milling capacity, and that the business is looking to basically increase that. Can you just talk through sort of the rationale there and, and what you're looking to do, at the asset, please? Yeah. Morning, Brook. Mark here. Thanks for your question. So what we see there is that the plant is largely at capacity at the moment. So we see a few things with Birkenhead. We see the ability to continue to produce a type of a GL cement, which actually has a lower embodied carbon. In order to do that and to increase to the demand that we'd like, we think there's the opportunity to sort of add some grinding capacity and some blending capacity, which will, yeah, so it will actually enable us to produce more GL cement and also to increase production at Birkenhead itself. The second thing, however, is we are at the point of a feed study only. So we've done high-level economics. We're comfortable that there's the technical solution. It's not complex technically. So now it's just a matter of actually doing the engineering study, which will take a number of months. Thanks for that. Just a question relating to the single customer revenue of AUD 151.4 million on page 18 of the 4D. It looks like it's a good sort of 25% increase in revenue to that customer year-over-year, which seems a much stronger increase compared to the 8% step-up in your cement business revenue. So just wondering if you can sort of provide a bit of color there to why there's such a difference there in the revenue step-up to that customer versus the overall cement business. Thanks. I'm just on page 18, just trying to find your point. My apologies. Can you just hang on for a second? Just a second. Yeah, sure. It's just below the table there, AUD 151.4 million. Oh, okay. Right. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yep. So, it's one of those tricky ones, right? It's a well-categorized topic, but it's not one that we really feel overly comfortable calling out with, in terms of a particular dependency on a customer. So, I'd prefer not to sort of answer that, if you don't mind. Okay. That, that's fine. Maybe I'll get back later. Yeah. Thank you. The next question comes from Shaurya Visen from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Good morning, Mark. Morning, Jared. Morning, team, and thank you for your time and taking my question. I just wanted to go back to your comments on, on pricing and input costs, right? So for the first couple of months of second half 2023, can you give us a sense of how your costs are trending? And, and perhaps a related question is, if the costs have somewhat moderated, how has the pricing been holding? Like, is, is that still holding the pricing, or you're giving some of that back? And, also, just a second question would be, I'm just keen to understand if the pricing has been strong across all your end markets, or is there, are there any pockets that you want to call out? Thank you. Yep. Thank you. No, thanks for the question, Mark, again. Y ou're asking a question on both revenue and costs. I think in terms of costs, you really started to see that in H1 and H2 last year, yeah, come through, and that compressed our EBITDA margin, a nd then we responded to that via sort of pricing solutions. To your point around costs, which I'll address first, we still have seen inflated costs. We do, call that out, b ut what we are saying is that our revenue increases are above those costs. We saw a little bit of that towards the end of the last reporting period, but it has continued this year. S witching now to revenue, yeah, the revenue initiatives are bearing fruit. They are across all of the different disciplines that we have, whether it's cement, lime, concrete, aggregates, or masonry. Y our question is, will they maintain? Certainly for us, we think our pricing discipline is really important. We have improved, and we're comfortable with our level of controls internally as we're thinking about understanding the market and thinking about our pricing position. So, we think that discipline will remain for some time. Thanks, Mark. J ust a quick follow-up. Like some of the competitors have noted that clearly the industry seems to have moved towards a more rational pricing, and you know, most companies are participating. Would you sort of agree with that comment, or you would have different thoughts? Yeah, some of our competitors are listed and some of them aren't, s o, I saw the listed comments that you spoke about, and certainly, like everyone else, read them with interest. Certainly don't know, what the private companies, you know, what positions they're advocating, so I can't really comment on that, b ut the one thing that I would say is that everyone has been impacted by, some higher raw material costs, as well as costs in areas such as diesel, coal, electricity and gas. E veryone is determined to make sure that those costs are passed through, and also, where possible, if the market can accept and understand, a price above that, that cost recovery, yeah, people are looking to do that as well. Y eah, it's a, you know, it's a, it's a good question, and I did note those comments. Yep. Thank you, Mark. Very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Lee Power, from UBS. Please go ahead. Hi, Mark. Hi, Jared. Mark, just on your guidance for the second half, can you maybe give us an idea of what's being factored in, in terms of volume seasonality, 1H to H, and then whether there are additional price increases needed to achieve that guidance? Or is that just kind of the rolling benefit of lag price and mix coming through? Yeah. That's a great question. Thank you. The first thing is, this is my first set of six monthly results. You know, I've been with the company only for a couple of months beforehand, so it's been a bit of a, bit of a, a learning curve for me, b ut the second half of the year is always as, well, as traditionally a stronger period of time than the first half, for a few reasons. One is, it's actually just mathematically working days. The second reason is that January tends to be a slow month for the industry, you know, post-Christmas, s o it is traditional that, the second half, just net-net, does have stronger, has more days and has stronger demand. T hat's why we say the earnings will be moderately higher, and traditionally, that has been the case. The other thing that I would say is that, you know, the discipline that I've mentioned before around pricing, those pricing arrangements and changes have been working through the system from sometime last year, but particularly late last year, and have continued into this year. So we have continued to reprice in the market this calendar year, Lee, and I think we'll just assess what the market is looking forward. But we do expect demand to continue to be strong, right? We do expect strong, strong demand. Okay. T hen a follow-up. I mean, you appreciate that color. You just answered a question around pricing. We're talking about price above cost. I know that you're kind of finalizing negotiations for a multi-year agreement with ICL. Are they the type of themes that you want to have in that longer term agreement? Yeah, so it's a great question. W e put together a 1-year agreement last year, which was, I think if we all would have done it again, we would've had a multi-year agreement, but it just, given it was off the back of a 10-year agreement, a lot had to be renegotiated. So, we're very advanced in the process, and the primary, and there's quite a few structural changes in that agreement. W ithout going into the full details of it, so we believe that we're looking to maintain and build off the shape of last year's agreement. It is an important agreement, so I think once we clearly have executed that, we'll announce that to the market. W e've got a little bit of time to go on that yet at the moment, b ut yeah, we're looking to rebuild or build off last year's shape of the agreement versus the prior ten years, but yeah, Yeah, so good, good question. I can't answer much more at the moment where- No, appreciate the color. Thank you, Mark. Thank you. The next question comes from Peter Steyn, from Macquarie. Please go ahead. Hello, Peter? Apologies, Peter dropped off. We'll go with Daniel Kang from CLSA, is the next questioner. Good morning, everyone. Just, in terms of the lime business, great to see positive price traction come through in the period, but clearly, you know, volume came off on a year-on-year basis. Can you talk us through your expectations for full year volume? Any contract renegotiations that may shift, either way of that, of the expectations? Yep. No, thank you. Actually, the lime business is one where you have a fairly high concentration of customers. You don't have as many as you do in aggregates or as an extreme example, s o we've had a series of renegotiations this year, and they're largely and it doesn't appear to me that there will be as much in the second half of the year. A ctually the pricing that we've that we have largely secured in the last number of months will roll through for the calendar, for the calendar year, bar one one contract, s o that's as it relates to the contract renewal process. The second thing, back to your point around tons, you know, why tons down a little bit, is primarily because one of our customers had an unscheduled shutdown. That just put demand back a little bit. So that's just all it was, us matching supply with demand. Mark, your expectations for the full year, volume-wise? Yeah. In terms of volume, Western Australia and the Goldfields have had, I know East Coast hasn't, but they have had an inordinate amount of rain. The lime is used for different reasons by different customers. I n the Goldfields, it's ostensibly used through the process for a neutralization process, a nd the Goldfields mines in the last couple of months have been able to refill their tailings dams, and so they will actually run water through their system, which they've captured from the rainfall. O ur demand for lime has been down relative to last year, over the last couple of months. And that will just work through the system. H ow it pertains compared to last year's second half, I can't tell you at this juncture, but I think, yeah, what we are seeing is we are running kiln six, and we don't have to run kiln five at the moment, but that will ramp back up in due course. Okay. Just my follow-up question in terms of property. Do you expect the sale process for Badgerys Creek and Batesford to be completed in the second half? Just if you can comment on expectations of any likely property profits for second half 2023 or even 2024. I think historically, prior management provided estimates of around AUD 10 million per annum. Yeah, that's. I'll hand over to Jared for that one. I'll leave that one to you. Thanks, Jared. Yeah. No worries. Morning, Daniel. Couple of things. I guess, from the property perspective, Batesford is probably, we're progressing it, but I don't expect anything to sort of come to fruition before the end of the year. From a Badgerys Creek perspective, we're working through the process. I'm sort of a bit more optimistic that we will have the process complete before the end of the year. From a quantitative perspective, we obviously haven't given that guidance, and I think you might remember from my past life, the per annum approach to property just is wrong fundamentally. W e'll sort of shift more to that surplus property, thinking of what is the surplus pool worth and how do we bring that to monetization over time. Great. Thanks, guys. Pass it on. Thank you. The next question comes from Peter Steyn, from Macquarie. Please go ahead. Good morning, Mark. Can you hear me this time? Yes. Thanks, Peter. Yep. Ah, there we go. Apologies. Just wanted to explore a little bit more on your volume commentary. New South Wales, obviously better because you had a lot of weather disruption. Comments that things are a little bit softer across the rest of the market. What's your sense, what's driving that softness? And specific comments on residential as we move towards the back end of the year and perhaps into next year. Just some of your expectations there, please. Yes, I think, as a general comment, and I'm looking, we were a little bit softer than H2 last year, but we were up compared to, you know, the prior period, right? Like for like. Yep. T hat's the first comment. I think the second comment is, we actually feel that we're in a very good position on concrete in all of our jurisdictions, s o yeah, there has been a little bit of timing, with some larger projects being pushed back a little bit, and Queensland's an example. T he other thing we've had is, we are still looking in a number of jurisdictions to recruit, you know, key drivers., so we actually do have a driver shortage from time to time. e're very confident that our concrete demand will hold up, you know, for the forward period. So yeah, I'd probably leave it at that. And, you know, we've good degrees of confidence. And in resi specifically, given that you called that out as being slightly softer? Yeah, residential and retail have an effect, definitely to see with lower sales in masonry, s o there's a little bit in there. A s it's looking at concrete and residential, as opposed to masonry residential. When we look at it state by state, the concrete demand does move between industrial, commercial, and residential. T o the extent that you do see elements of softening, and we think there's more elements, that's been taken up by demand elsewhere from a concrete perspective. A s you can see, we largely supply ourselves outside of Victoria, largely sell to the external market for aggregates. A ggregates, to me, is a good indication of the health of the market. Now, aggregates production, which we sell, as I say, internally and externally, is up, and so we see very strong demand for aggregates. Gotcha. T hen just on a second note, just working capital, if you wouldn't mind just outlining the key focuses there and what the opportunity is before you to unlock some additional cash there? Yeah. Jared, would you like to take that one? Yeah. I mean, I think the one thing is t here's a couple pieces to it. So the first thing is the first half result, the cash conversion is, it was, is obviously a little bit soft compared to the full year run rates. I t's a focus for the second half of getting that back to sort of a, you know, let's say, the annual run rate basis, s o we need to do that for sure. On the debtor side, we've been quite good about managing it proactively to keep the DSO down, with, you know, relatively, I'd say, few scars from the builders falling over through this sort of this period, and that'll remain a focus. As we have the increased demand, we just have to manage the debtor basis to keep it from growing really. Then outside of that, it's just the improved operating performance to drive conversion. Great. Thanks, Jared. Thanks, Mark. Thank you. The next question comes from Sam Seow from Citi. Please go ahead. Good morning, team. Thanks for taking my question. Just a quick one on the outlook. You're expecting EBITDA to be higher sequentially. Just wondering about NPAT. It's just that fifteen million just seemed a bit low compared to the six hundred and seventy-two million odd worth of net debt. I can take it. Thanks, Sam. I think from a perspective of how to think about it, we've sort of focused the guidance on EBITDA, one, because it's a bit of a more common measure, and two, because of the leverage being elevated. If you carry down through the P&L, I mean, what I would say is the debt level increased from AUD 577 to AUD 672 over the half, so you will see a bit of an increase of interest expense over the second half versus the first half. In saying that, we do expect, as I just sort of talked about, the cash conversion to improve in H2, and we do expect EBITDA to be a bit higher. I f you think through where debt level's gonna sit, I think you can sort of form a view off of, you know, EBITDA, less the capital guidance, less what you make an assumption on property proceeds and net working capital improvement conversion. That sort of gives you a range of where you're, you know, coming up with a net debt figure and translating that back to interest. I think we would say quite confidently that the EBITDA number forecast to be an improvement, and same with NPAT. Got it. T hen, so you just touched on there with, the property proceeds, so you're expecting something to drop in the second half that will bring you back down? Yeah, well, there's obviously- Again, around. There's two pieces to the, w ell, there's three pieces, but on the property perspective, you have two properties that were previously, the contract was signed, and they have settlement in the second half. T hen you have Badgerys Creek, and then, as I mentioned earlier, I don't think anything will come through from a cash perspective, from Batesford. Okay. Got it. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thanks, Sam. Thank you. The next question comes from Rohan Gallagher from Jarden Group. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, Mark. Good morning, Jared. Good morning, everybody. Most of the questions have been answered, but in relation to the CapEx, in particular, Kwinana, could you just outline the contingencies implicit within your CapEx guidance? And then, second of all, a related question to that, is where do you see a pathway back towards your targeted range of leverage and resultant resumption of your dividend, please? Thank you for that, Rohan. It's Mark. I'll talk about Kwinana, and as much as I'd like to talk about the pathway back, I'll leave that one to Jared. In terms of Kwinana itself, we put a range out, which I think was between AUD 385-420, and that range does include our assumption about what a contingency could be in terms of CapEx. P robably that's the best way I can answer that. The one thing I would say is that, yeah, the project now, we said procurement's 98% complete, so all the kit's on site. What we're really talking about now is the views around the workforce on site and the work to assemble, for want of a phrase. T here is an element of, it's primarily an assembly process, structural and mechanical, and electrical, work, and to the extent that there's rework, a nd for that reason, you can be, you usually make assumptions around productivity, you're therefore much more confident around what your contingency needs to be. Y eah, we think, given the reviews that we've had, and we've had a couple of reviews, much more confident, and we are confident that we will be within that range. That's probably the best way to answer the first part of the question,a nd that's why we're comfortable around the dates that we gave for the commencement of key commissioning, as well as when we're thinking about, operational readiness and ramp up. I'll just get Jared to answer the second question, and then let's see if you've got any further follow-ups. Yeah, I think from the pathway back on leverage, Rohan, I think it's not gonna be one silver bullet, it's probably a couple of things. The first thing is clearly the improving underlying performance, so improving EBITDA performance, which you can see we're forecasting that year-over-year, so that will be just a natural benefit from that piece. T hen the second piece is working through how do we improve cash conversion, and obviously, sort of six weeks into the job, that's sort of priority one for me, is focus on cash and cash conversion. Crystallizing some of the property proceeds that we mentioned, a nd from there, just disciplined management of capital the rest of the way into FY 2024. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. The next question comes from Keith Chau from MST Marquee. Please go ahead. Morning, gents. First question is a follow-up on the single customer revenue point. If you look at that, it looks like, you know, some of the recovery of the cost issues with ICL have been recovered this year relative to last, which is to expectation. If you strip that single customer out from total external cement and lime revenues, it looks like X, that single customer, revenues were actually slightly down, maybe flat. Mark, can you give us a sense of why that is the case or the reasoning behind that? Or, you know, perhaps if my logic is wrong, can you please correct me and where I'm going wrong? On cement, is your comment's attributable to cement, you're saying? Yeah, correct. I f you strip out that single customer revenue from cement and lime revenues, external, looks like excluding that single customer, the revenues for cement and lime were pretty much flat. Yeah. I think, what we said, I think lime is up about 4%, I think. Which is a combination of, 'cause the volumes are down a bit, but price is up, s o that's sort of that's lime. I n terms of cement, we actually have had price increases come through this year, s o I'm just gonna actually see, just look through this material and ask you, Jared, if you wanna make a comment on it, as well, about the cement revenue. Yeah, Keith, your observation's not incorrect. I mean, we have seen some softness in certain pockets of that business on the volume side. But, the math is correct. Okay. D oes that mean Adbri is either losing share or you're just in unfavorable parts of market? It doesn't quite seem to square up with other commentary in the industry, where volumes are probably flattish or staying elevated. A ny color on that would be useful. Thank you. No, okay. There's a few things there. I think we'll break it, if you break it into segments, I think our revenue, and we'll just get this to check while we're talking, but I think our cement revenue is up in New South Wales compared to last year, s o that's the one thing. A s you correctly say, that's a combination of, yeah, selling to ICL in some respects. As it relates to cement, just generally, Birkenhead is running at close to full capacity. You know, its reliability rate is high, its uptime is high, so there's not a lot of excess capacity at Birkenhead. So in some ways, our revenue is dictated by, you know, by tonnes. Mm. O ur tons are largely as it relates to us producing our own clinker and then converting that at cement. It's fairly stable. Shouldn't that mean, Mark? So, sorry. Shouldn't that mean that volume should be flat rather than down? Because if, you know, what the numbers are suggesting, that price is up and underlying revenues are flat, doesn't that imply volume's down? The actual volumes are up on last year, so on cementitious, we're doing cementitious, concrete, we can come back to. But on cementitious or, you know, cement, which is actually cement, slag, and clinker. Mm. Okay? T iming issues about this as well. So we include in those numbers the production of cement and the sales of clinker and the sales of slag. So that's sometimes put down to timing. Mm. But the stats I have, and so there's a mix of that. W hat I can say to you, and you'll see it in the raw material costs. The revenue is higher, but also it's, as it relates to clinker, that's one of the components of the raw material costs that are higher than last year, a nd clinker is just ostensibly everyone else imports clinker. T hat market has that market and the demand for that product in Southeast Asia has increased, s o, it's not an easy it's not a. It's a good question, and it's not the easiest answer to be, to, to try and clearly articulate, on what I tried. Okay. Maybe if I just dial it down a bit. E xcluding that single customer, are volumes up or down for cement and clinker? Volumes are up. V olume, when we look at, let me break it up for you for a second, to your point. T his is the subset for comparing H1 2022, so comparing to this time last year. So slag is up marginally. Clinker is ostensibly the same. Cement is ostensibly the same, s o the last year we're at sort of 2.0 all up, we're at 2.4 million tons, and this year we're at 2.5. Okay, maybe I'll take that offline, with you, Mark and Jared- Yeah, we can. - after the call, if that's okay. Sure, we can. We're happy to do that. Okay. Thank you. Then just to follow up on the Birkenhead strategy. Increasing clinker grind with this capacity there seems like a pretty interesting move. Can you help me understand strategically whether that is to enable Adbri to compete more aggressively in South Australia, or is it to replace existing imports by Adbri into Victoria from offshore? T he increasing capacity is primarily for slag. T he focus on the increasing capacity is to... And then what that does, it gives us the ability to blend product.T hat's actually something that the mining market wants, s o mining mindset. We actually provide a lower carbon embodied cement, and it's also something that the market in Victoria wants, s o it's a highly desirable product for CO2 reasons, a nd it does actually increase throughput through the plant. T hat growth project is around the ability to increase slag and also the Altona facility gives us the ability to blend our product, s o there's two components to that study. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate the answers. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Kai Erman from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi there, just one from me in relation to the JVs. T here was low earnings last year, and the improvement was quite notable in the result. What were the main drivers of this, and what further improvements can we expect from JV earnings relative to the rest of the core business? W e think the JV is a really important part of Adbri. I mean, they're closer to sort of circa, you know, getting close to 30% of the revenue. W e think it's actually important to sort of call it out and talk about how they, you know, contribute to the business in terms of cash in, for want of a better phrase, a nd I say that because there is a unit structure, which means it's not just a straight NPAT. Y ou know, why are they up? ICL is the market leader for distribution of cement and supplementary cementitious products in Victoria, and it's had a very strong year. And I think that'll continue. T hat's a really important customer for us and of which we are the 50% JV partner. In terms of Mawsons, it was actually affected by that, by the rain events, you know, in northern Victoria and southern New South Wales last year. A s a general comment it's just probably had, you know, better weather, as well as a, and also when you go back and look at its earnings over 10 years, it actually has grown exponentially in terms of its own EBITDA. So it is a growing business. I n terms of Sunstate, I mean, that's a joint venture we have, and, you know, we supply clinker to Sunstate. It's not running at full capacity, but we think when we look at the next 5-10 years, you know, Queensland is going through an infrastructure boom regardless of the Olympics. Sunstate, we think, is very well-positioned, even though its earnings are down, and down relative to where they were a few years ago before we lost volume. You know, it, it's, it's well-placed, it's got a lot of capability, it's got some excess capacity, so we think it can absorb natural growth over the next coming, the next coming years. And I think in terms of- Perfect. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you. The next question comes from Lisa Huynh, from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi, morning. I guess I just had a question around cost savings. I guess you've alluded in the past that you've implemented a decentralized business model and also talked about office consolidation. Can you just talk about what's changed and, you know, whether we should expect any of those cost savings to fall in the second half? Yeah, okay. I'll start it, and then I'll hand over to Jared. T he focus, there's been many different areas of focus, I think, since I joined last year. But one of them is actually just around, yeah, how the business is being run. Not so much with the view to just simple cost outs, but actually making the business more efficient, making it leaner, and improving probably the transparency of our systems and our reporting. So what are we seeing from that? What we are seeing is the uptick in revenue that you've seen, you know, which is very significant. I don't think we would have achieved that, but for, some of the, reshaping of the business that we've done the last period of time. The second thing that we've done is really change how we think about risk. Again, that risk is helping us on a number of fronts. It's helping us on the revenue, but it's also helping us understand an element of cost as well as business opportunities. So what do we think about cost out, for want of a phrase? You have seen costs that we can't control. We are thinking about how we better manage them, but and those large costs, such as raw material costs and energy costs. Now, I think we've got work to do. We are starting to see stabilization. We are, we are seeing stabilization in terms of the volatility of those prices. But what I would say to you is that, yeah, we have reduced headcount in corporate functions. We have consolidated a number of offices, and that journey will continue. And I think one of the things we are thinking about is, how do we demonstrate that in the full year results, the benefit of our initiatives? And I think we'll take it under notice, because we haven't quantified that in the past, because I think the opportunities have been more around the revenue and reshaping the business and growing our earnings, as opposed to cutting our way to success. But maybe, Jared, you'd like to share some thoughts. I mean, the only thing I would add to that, Mark, is that Lisa, we've contemplated in our guidance or our outlook statement the sort of views of what we think are the savings benefits. Okay, sure. I guess just following on from that, Mark, or Jared, what type of hedging do you have for costs over the next 6-12 months? From the hedging perspective, I'd look at it a couple of different ways. So one, on the debt facility side, so we have interest rate swaps in place that hedges about sort of north of 50% of our debt to fixed rate. From the commodity side of the house, it's a mixed strategy in terms of, you know, you have fixed term contracts that extend multiple years. You have some sort of instruments in place from a currency perspective. So I would say we, each commodity has a different approach, and it's really some of them are back to backs to make sure that the risk is mitigated. Okay, sure. Thanks. I'll leave it there. Thank you. The next question is a follow-up from Brooke Campbell-Crawford, from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks for taking the, the quick follow-up. Just one on price. At a high level, just looking for some additional color on explaining the, the gap between cement prices up, call it 6% or so, and concrete up, up 20%. So it's just a pretty, pretty large gap there. Can you, can you just provide some color really on, on, on the difference between the two, please? That'd be great. Yeah. So there are two parts to it. With cement, we also sell to ourselves, so there's an internal element of selling to yourself in cement, as well as selling to the external market. So that's one structural change, well, one structural difference with concrete. The second thing is that some of those cement contracts are for longer periods of time, and they have different formula linked to them. And in terms of cement, yeah, cement is, you know, completely external sales process, maybe an element to masonry, but it's effectively, and it's about market forces and market dynamics. So we've done a lot of work in understanding where we think the market's at in concrete and taking advantage of market conditions. So it's a much more dynamic market. We need to have better disciplines, better controls, better outlooks, and better measurement. So that's one of the big changes that we've made in the last 6-8 months. And you're seeing that in terms of the benefits that we've articulated and also what the competition has articulated as well in terms of their uptick. Makes sense. Thanks. Thank you. Once again, to ask a question, please press star one on your phone. The next question is a follow-up from Keith Chow from MST Marquee. Please go ahead. Hi again, gents. I'll be brief this time. Jared, just going into the seasonality of earnings, so guidance is for moderate improvement in earnings in the second half versus the first half. So just trying to square that up with qualitative guidance. So volumes expected to be broadly in line, yes. Price momentum carrying through into the second half? Should mean that your seasonality should be quite similar to prior periods, I would have thought. So perhaps a bit of color on, you know, what your definition of moderate is, or, you know, is it possible to get back to historical seasonality for second half EBITDA versus first half? Thank you. Yeah, I think the one thing that I would, I'd sort of pause on that thought, Keith, is just that the seasonality could be tempered, or we're sort of taking a view that it's likely to be tempered by some of the softening that we're seeing in residential and retail. And then, as Mark pointed to a bit earlier from the lime perspective, the first few months we've seen the softening demand from the Goldfields. So I think it's a combination of those factors weighing into why it's a bit, you know, the moderate guidance. Okay. That's great. Thanks, Jared. Thank you. At this time, we're showing no further questions. I'll hand the conference back to Mark for any closing remarks. Okay, now, thanks for that. Now, I just want to thank everyone today for the time to participate in our half-year result presentation and also for your support and interest in the company. You know, I think we have delivered. Sorry, I know we have delivered a strong first-half result, and we've had double-digit revenue growth and improved earnings. What we're also doing is actually saying that we believe H2 will be at that level as well, and that's a positive, particularly when you can go and compare it to the prior period last year. So our business focus is building a resilient Adbri. It does have a strong cost and operational management disciplines, and delivers value for our shareholders. T herefore, I think on behalf of Adbri, I look forward to meeting with many of you over the coming days as part of our Investor Roadshow. So thank you for that. Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.