Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Bodycote interim results presentation. I'm Stephen Harris, I'm chief executive, and I'm here with Ben Fidler, our chief financial officer. Uh, the order of play here this morning, I'll give a quick overview, and then we'll hand over to Ben. He'll do a financial review. I'll come back and do the business review, and then we'll go into the summary and outlook. So, um, performance in the H1, I think pretty strong, and it's always pleasing when you beat your own expectations, which is exactly what we did in the H1. Um, you could see revenue up 17.2%, 13.8% at constant currency. Now, what we'd like to do is focus on growth, excluding our energy surcharges, 'cause that's a much truer indication of what the underlying momentum in the business is. The energy surcharges, which we'll talk a little bit about in a minute, but effectively they're, um, just a pass-through issue. If we take the surcharges out, you get a much better view. Headline operating profit at 23% higher, at GBP 62.8. Operating margin, uh, excluding the surcharges, up 180-16.5 basis points. Headline operating margin is up 90 basis points to 15%. Very pleasingly, free cash flow, cash flow conversion is 90%, getting back to where it should be in this company. That's something that we've seen in the past a lot, and we'll be going there and further forward. Finally, on this slide, the interim dividend, we're talking about 6.7 pence, t hat's up 5%. So, um, H1, one of the great things about it is we've been progressing on all of our strategic priorities. This is a very broad-based set of performance across all metrics and across all our strategic priorities. Just to remind people what they are, specialist technologies, very high value businesses, emerging markets, civil aerospace, and electric vehicles. In half one, um, we've been investing in specialist technologies for a while, and they delivered a 13% growth with adoption and market penetration continuing to accelerate. These numbers I'm quoting here are all excluding surcharges, okay. Emerging markets, up 10%. Very good, and we continue to invest in that to further drive our capacity and follow the growth that we're getting. Um, we got 10% growth in civil aerospace. I'll say at this point, and I'll come back to it a bit later, a tad disappointed in that, and we'll talk about why it wasn't more, because we want to see that somewhere up in the teens. We recently secured some major electric vehicle contracts, which I will talk about quite a bit when we get to that section of the presentation. Our carbon initiatives carrying on very strongly. We'll probably talk a lot more about that at the final year, final results at the end of the year, but at this point in time, just to tell you that that is progressing and progressing well. Just a reminder on what we're doing with surcharges and price increases. So surcharges are there to cover the utility energy cost increases. It's not oil, it's gas and electricity. We made a decision, basically at the end of 2021, to be honest, that we would put through these. We did not try and get a margin on the surcharges. We should be viewed pretty much as an energy intermediary, so whatever costs we see on the energy side, we just pass them through. That protects us from the highly volatile energy inflation, I'm happy to say that our customers have accepted it readily. I mean, there's been no real problem there. One of the issues is they know that, when they go down, they will see the prices come down. What their customers are more resistant to is massive price increases to cover this stuff. When we've told them this is a variable surcharge, it's been well, well accepted, well adopted. We fully recovered our energy costs in the H1, which it wasn't the case, of course, last year, Ben will show a bit more on that. Price increases, um, It's, this is a nice one, actually. Somebody said, a re you getting any pushback on price increases? I've got to tell you, in my career, you always get pushback on price increases. I've never had a customer say, t hank you very much for the price increase. You always get pushback, but we always get them through. Bodycote is a company that actually does very well on its pricing. The price increases that we put through contain a margin, a good margin, and they're there to recover our labor and other cost inflation. They are permanent. We don't expect those to reverse at all. Looking at the impact on headline operating margin, the dark blue line is excluding surcharges, as you can see, a 180 basis points increase in that, this margin should and will exceed 20% over the medium term. You can do the math on that. It's quite straightforward. We took 30 million out in costs during the restructuring in 2020, if we get back to the same volumes, which we will do, we can see how that's coming through, that puts us over 20% on its own. Never mind the mix change that we're going through in terms of the movement to higher margin parts of the business. With that, I'm going to hand over to Ben Fidler, I'll come back and talk to you later. Well, thank you, Stephen, and just to add my good morning and welcome to all of you. Thanks for your time this morning, to go through the numbers. I'm now gonna spend a bit more time stepping through the financials in a bit more detail. On this first slide, a reminder just of the key metrics in one place as to our H1 performance. Revenues, as you've heard from Stephen already, GBP 420 million. Those were up around 14% on a constant currency basis. Exclude the energy surcharges, revenues of GBP 381 million, which was up 8% at constant currency. On that higher top line, we delivered strong headline operating profit growth. Operating profit up 23% year-over-year to GBP 62.8 million. Margins, as you've already heard from Stephen, on an ex surcharges basis, up 180 basis points to 16.5%. After broadly unchanged financing costs, versus the H1 of last year, and a modest 40 basis point increase in the tax rate to 22.5%, you see here EPS of 23.8 pence, which was 25% higher compared to the H1 of last year. I'd expect a similar 22.5% tax rate for the full year. On that, the interim dividend was raised just under 5% to 6.7 pence. Cash performance was very strong. Free cash flow up 77% in the H1 to GBP 56.2 million. We'll talk more about that and the other items now. Let's now step through the drivers of revenue growth, there's really three main elements I want to talk through to take you through that. The first, volume, price, and mix, which you can see from this chart here, added GBP 27 million to the revenues in the H1. That's that growth at 8% that we talked about on a constant currency basis. Secondly, energy surcharges. GBP 22 million higher than the H1 of last year, in total, at GBP 38 million of contribution to the reported revenue number. You'll recall that in the H1 of last year, we started to implement the surcharges in the Q1, therefore, there was a bit of a lag early in 2022 as these surcharges ramped up. The same effect wasn't in play this year, with surcharges in place for the full six-month period. Surcharges are now reducing from their peak, reflecting lower energy input costs, and will continue to move broadly in line with energy prices as we move forwards. Finally, thirdly, as the driver, FX. You can see here that added GBP 12 million from FX translation to our reported revenue growth in the H1 of the year, largely driven by the year-over-year rate movement in the euro and the dollar versus sterling. Worth noting that at current FX rates, and of course, who knows what's going to happen with FX rates, but if current FX rates are maintained, we'd expect that to potentially become a modest headwind in the H2 on a year-over-year basis of potentially GBP 15 million-GBP 20 million. Of course, who knows where those rates are going? Let's move to look at operating profit. Headline operating profit well ahead, 23%, up to GBP 62.8 million. Just over GBP 12 million of profit growth that we achieved in the H1. A strong performance, we think. Four drivers of that. Firstly, non-recurrence of that GBP 5 million profit shortfall we suffered in the H1 of last year due to the lag effect in implementing surcharges in 2022. Secondly, around GBP 12 million of additional profit that came from higher volumes and improved pricing and mix, and also that reflected non-recurrence of the GBP 2 million of inefficiency that had impacted the H! of last year, for those of you who may well recall us calling that out in H1 2022, from the unusually high level of demand volatility last year, that didn't recur. The third driver was a headwind of just over GBP 5 million from higher share-based payments and bonus costs. We'd flagged that in March with our full year results as an expected headwind for this year, and we've started to see that in play out as expected. Just remember, these had been unusually low in 2022, this year what you're seeing is the charge return to more normalized levels, reflecting improved business performance. The fourth item to mention is FX. Added GBP 0.8 million to profit in the H1 on translation. Again, that point about at current rates, if they're maintained, do just bear in mind that potentially that could be somewhere between a GBP 3 million-GBP 4 million of headwind year-over-year in the H2, if current rates stay where they are. Let's turn now to look at the divisions. AGI, which, as you know, is focused on automotive and general industrial sectors. That saw revenues up 5%, excluding surcharges. Good growth in automotive, more modest growth in general industrial. Stephen's gonna talk more about those trends and things later. Profit and margins at AGI were good, with operating profit up 24% to GBP 43.7 million. Worth noting that that level of profit is 10% above the H1 of 2019 level, despite revenues still being modestly lower than they were pre-COVID. That, we think, really highlights the progress we've made, the good progress we've made on delivering operational improvements and the benefits of that 2020 restructuring program that Stephen alluded to in his opening comments. AGI margins were just over 18%, up 150 basis points year-over-year, and now sit 210 basis points above their H1 2019 pre-COVID level. Margins excluding surcharges, were just over 20% in AGI. ADE, our aerospace, defense and energy focused. Good top line growth. Revenues up 12%, excluding surcharges, driven by very strong progress in oil and gas, and good growth in civil aerospace. Operating profit, 35% higher, with margins up again over 200 basis points to 17.8%. Margins just over 19% on a pre-surcharge basis. Excluding the impact of acquisitions, AD volumes are still well below their pre-COVID level, and we're confident of further strong progress here as civil aerospace demand growth continues for a number of years in the future. Cash flow. We achieved a significant improvement in cash flow in the H1, and I think this is an interesting and important performance feature in H1. With operating profit to free cash flow conversion back to our more normalized type of levels of 90% compared to 63% in the H1 of last year. Free cash flow increased from GBP 31.8 million, you can see on this slide, to GBP 56.2 million in the half. There were two main drivers that I'd call out behind that. Firstly, high level of profitability. EBITDA was up GBP 12 million year-over-year. Secondly, significantly improved working capital control, with a much lower working capital outflow of GBP eight and a half million, compared with GBP 18 million of outflow in the H1 of last year. The principal driver of that was better receivables management with DSO, Days Sales Outstanding, improving year-over-year. That improved cash flow is delivered despite a 15% increase in maintenance CapEx expenditure, up to GBP 28.4 million, as we spend more to improve our equipment uptime and our efficiency. Cash tax, always an interesting topic I know, was lower than normal in the H1, that reflected a refund of US tax relating to prior years. Note, that effect won't recur in the H2, when I'd expect a much more normalized level of cash tax to be paid in the H2 compared to the H2 of last year. After a significant increase in expansionary CapEx to GBP 12.4 million to drive future growth, after paying GBP twenty-eight and a half million of dividend in the H1, and GBP 12.2 million of share purchases by our employee-based trust to satisfy future share-based payment needs, our net debt fell by GBP 6.8 million to GBP 26.6 million, excluding IFRS 16 lease liabilities. With little leverage, with good ongoing cash generation, I firmly believe we've got really good optionality to drive shareholder value in this business. We'll continue to approach this in a disciplined way, where rightly, all users of capital will compete with one another, looked at through the lens of risk versus return. This will include increases in expansionary CapEx to drive growth and returns, dividends, acquisitions, or supplemental shareholder distributions if we find ourselves in an extended period with a level of net cash on the balance sheet that exceeds the business's needs. I'll now hand back to Stephen to talk through end market trends and outlook in some more detail. Thank you, Ben. I just wanna move on now and talk about specialist technologies to start with. This is a slide that's just to refresh people that aren't that familiar with the company as to what our specialist technologies are all about. Highly differentiated, high margin, high growth business and low carbon intensity, so all the plus points one would want of a business. If we look at how specialist technologies are performing, so we've got really good growth going on in the specialist technologies arena, growing across right across our end markets here. A lot of this is coming through increased sales and marketing efforts, driving the market penetration, but also increasing cost customer adoption as they become more and more familiar with what these things do. Good performance in terms of growth, for sure, in the specialist technologies. If we look at that, in terms of progression, you can see here from the bar chart, the progression over the years. Interesting to note that there are not very high surcharges in specialist technologies. The reason for that, there are quite a lot of long-term contracts, in this area of the business, and so you can't put surcharges through as a matter of course, or even though we have, in fact, now negotiated some going forward, that will improve the situation. Minimal surcharges going on there. On the right-hand side of the slide, you can see that the specialist technologies are actually well spread, and some people wouldn't have going to realize that the largest proportion of the specialist technologies is actually in general industrial. They aren't necessarily focused on automotive or aerospace and defense. A lot of presence in general industrial, and you can see the kind of growth that we're getting there with 17% growth in the general industrial piece. We are continuing to expand our investment in this arena. You know, here's some examples. S3P, our stainless steel business, expanding capacity in the United States and the Nordics. HIP capacity, we've got a whole bunch of HIP expansion going on in North America at several locations. Our Corr-I-Dur capabilities, this is ferritic nitrocarburizing, as it's known technically. New capabilities of that in China, and low pressure carburizing, particularly in Hungary, and we'll talk a bit more about low pressure carburizing when we come to the automotive slide. We've got new surface technology capacity going in the Middle East, specifically at the moment, in the Kingdom, Saudi Arabia. Moving on here, just a point, those of you that have studied the AGM statement, you'll note that some of these areas here are actually slightly lower growth. In May and June, you can pull that out for the numbers, but actually, that is really a case of lapping some stronger comps. The growth itself isn't weaker, it's just that they're compared year on year with some stronger comps. The emerging markets growth, excluding surcharge, 10%, pretty reasonable, and the emerging markets, they are well above the group average in terms of margins as well. This helps with the mix shift. Strong progress in Eastern Europe, up 20%. China, been a bit restrained, we were getting a bit overexcited, thinking China would explode after they took the COVID locks off, that hasn't happened to date. No reason to see why it wouldn't pick up going forward, so far it's been a modest growth in China. We're now expanding capacity in Slovakia and Hungary, quite strong expansion there. We've got additional facilities going down in Turkey and China. Somebody asked me the question, w ell, if it's slow growth in China, why are you putting in an additional facility? We put in facilities because we expect future growth to be very strong, and in fact, we've got 1 new facility going in in China right now. We would expect to put more, because the growth pattern in China will keep going. As far as we're concerned, it looks very good. You can see the spread there in the emerging markets as to where we are. Moving on to aerospace and defense. Civil aerospace revenue up 10%, and we've got ongoing increases in the OEM build rates on the aircraft, which is good. A good aftermarket, particularly out of the UK, out of Rolls. The only sort of downside on this whole thing is that North American growth has been pretty weak, compared to what we would have expected, and that has come through, you know, people talking about supply chain problems. We've done quite a bit of work to try and find out what that's about, and it seems to be two issues. One, t here is a shortage of casting capacity at the front end, so at the raw material site. That actually affects build rates something like 18 months to two years up out, in terms of the platform builds. The bigger problem that we've come across is that most of our customers have got acute labor shortages. They can't expand the labor. Now, we would expect to see that starting to ease in the H2. That's what we've been told, which would be a good thing. So far, North American civil aerospace not looking so great. A point on civil aerospace, even with this sort of huge growth ahead of us, we still are some 25% below pre-COVID levels on an organic basis. There's a lot to go for in the civil aerospace world, and we've got good positions on the platforms, particularly on the LEAP engine series. Automotive. This is a very interesting story. Somewhat stronger than we were expecting. We didn't really expect to see the kind of strength that we have seen, particularly in Eastern Europe and specialist technologies. Somebody asked me about destocking for automotive, and were we seeing it? The answer is emphatically no. I think what you see in terms of destocking, if there is any, is really at the raw material side of life. Where we play in the supply chain is far more near the finished goods. When you've got that much conversion costs in the products, people don't tend to hold stocks of that. There's very little inventory that's held in the kind of things that we do. If there is destocking, it's way, way back towards raw materials. The kind of stocking issues that we get concerned about are actually in finished goods. If there were lots of cars sitting on the lots, that would cause us concern. Truth be told, they're actually building. You know, the finished goods inventory is building, but it's still way below historic norms. No destocking issues that we can see at all or are expecting in this arena. Heavy truck and bus growth driven in Western Europe, for sure. European car and light truck being a little softer, North American, pretty strong, and Eastern Europe, really, really good. I just wanna talk a bit now about electric vehicles. We've won some contracts, major OE contracts, specifically for battery electric vehicles for Mercedes and Stellantis. They're in Eastern and Western Europe. We're currently in the pre-production stage. We would expect to go start a production Q1 next year, we will be seeing those revenues go up to an annualized GBP 15 million by the end of 2024, that's explicit contract for 5 years, we would expect extensions beyond that. Can't be exact with the number, to be honest, because it very much depends on how the models that the platforms are going, how well they penetrate the market. But provided the cars sell, we'll be selling quite a few components. What are these components? They're on battery electric transmissions, gearboxes. Anybody who thought there's not a gearbox in an electric vehicle, I'm sorry about that, but we do work on them. And I think there's some interesting points to draw out on this. Electric vehicles are becoming one of the most significant opportunities for this company that we've seen for years. Let me tell you why. It's Low pressure carburizing, one of our specialist technologies, with all the things that that goes with in terms of implied margins, and they're very good margins on this work. We are, by miles, the market leader outside of the in-house capabilities of the OEs in terms of low pressure carburizing, which is why people come to us for it. We knew that with battery electrics were coming through, or electric vehicles in general, because they favor low pressure carburizing for all kinds of technical reasons, we knew we should be seeing greater market share, and therefore it presented an opportunity. What we weren't aware of to the degree that we are now, is the fact that if you take a internal combustion engine transmission and, you know, 16, 17 components that we're working on there in the gears, and look at what that is in terms of a battery electric transmission, it's only four parts. So a simple, simplistic view might think that actually, you're gonna lose business. The truth of the matter is, the parts that are in the battery electric transmission require much higher torque. They've got to be really quiet, so low distortion, to a far greater extent than you see in an internal combustion engine. The net result is that there's five to six times the amount of heat treatment required for those four components than all the components that were in the internal combustion engine. That's a really good opportunity. Not only are we gonna get more market share, but the amount of capacity that's required in battery electrics is much higher. We've got the technology. It's really a really strong opportunity. Often, we've talked in the past about insourcing and outsourcing, and outsourcing is very difficult to do. I mean, people have invested, and it's very difficult to do. When there's a structural change in an industry, like this is, what you can do is catch it before it goes in-house. There's no great desire from the OEs to take this stuff in-house, and we know how to do it. We're sitting literally at the gates of quite a major opportunity on battery electrics, which is good news. Moving on to general industrial. General industrial, oil and gas and medical, yeah, 40% growth, very strong, expected, I guess. Don't see that reversing in the near term. Some very good business going on there. Two of the segments that we have talked about in the past as being leading indicators are tooling and industrial machinery. What we've said about tooling is it tends to be an early indicator for automotive production. What we mean by that, is that if you're gonna see an inflection point in automotive, you should see that inflection happening in tooling ahead of time. When tooling turns up sharply, 6-9 months later, you'll see automotive go up and vice versa if tooling goes down. We're not in that phase at the moment. Tooling's steady. It's not going up or down. That would suggest that we're not expecting an inflection point coming in automotive, so that's good. Industrial machinery is more of an indicator of the CapEx cycle, and industrial machinery has been fairly slow. That tells you that people are being hesitant on capital expenditure. Just make a point on that. In general industrial, we have seen destocking going on for about seven months. The question is, what's the outlook look like? Clearly, the industrial machinery would suggest there's caution out there. We do our own in-house PMI, for want of a better word. We survey our customers every month, and we don't ask them about us, because they never really tell us how much business they're gonna give us, you know, truthfully. They give us numbers, but there's no point in asking them for that. We ask them how their business is doing, and then we produce a heat map and see how the world is going from our customers' perspective. What we've seen lately, particularly in North America, is increasing confidence. I think there was quite a lot of fear of recession in North America, and that fear of recession is definitely easing. We should see industrial machinery start picking up, I would think, as a result of that. For us, of course, destocking is not a good thing, but when destocking stops, we don't necessarily need people to restock, but what happens is our sales shoot up to their production levels. An end of destocking would be extremely good news, if it comes, and as I say, there seems to be an expectation that things are getting somewhat rosier. Not terribly bullish about it, but certainly not negative. Just to point out that here, revenue is 9% above pre-COVID levels, already in general industrial. If we look at the key achievements, strong H1 performance, doing well with the energy surcharges, doing well with the pricing. Don't expect that to change. The test on the energy surcharges, people say, well, when are they gonna disappear? A lot of it's gonna depend on the winter. You know, we get a hard winter, we're gonna see energy prices go up in Europe, I would think. That means our energy surcharges will go up. We've got 8% underlying revenue growth achieved in the H1. That's being driven by Specialist Technologies, up 13%, emerging markets up 10%, civil aerospace up 10%. These are all high-margin areas of the business, led by Specialist Technologies. Oil and gas up a spectacular 46%. Automotive, not too shabby, up 8%. As I said before, we're delivering on all our strategic priorities. I see absolutely no reason why this company won't surpass 20% margin in the medium term. Here's the summary and outlook. I don't intend to read it. It's there in black and white. The only thing I would say is that on the H1 performance gives us a lot of confidence that the H2 is gonna be a repeat of the first, and we should be in really good shape. With that, we'll go to Q&A. Yeah, Hi. Morning, guys. Hi. Um, just a few, one from my side. You talked about this great growth opportunity in automotive. So, can you quantify that a little bit more? Can you talk about how much investment you would need, how much sales you could think this will lead to? Then as well, circling back to something that we talked about last time, as well, the carbon reduction that was, well, on the forefront of your marketing, where you won some contracts as well with car makers, as far as I remember. How is that getting on, and are they basically complementary marketing pitches to your client base? Sure thing, Stefan. I'll address that. On the electric vehicles, um, indeed, the capital investment required, to capitalize on that, it's reasonably chunky. You would see, GBP 15 million of annual revenues, probably takes something like about, GBP 18 million of investment. It's that kind of order of magnitude, maybe even slightly more. The reason we didn't do that for this is we already had the capacity. We still got some capacity left, which we're using, but we are getting into the stage where we're looking at starting to pre-order some of this capital equipment. It's not so much the price of it, because you can get the returns quite easily. Excuse me. The problem is lead time. The lead time is quite long, and with everybody fighting, sort of, bread, claw, and tooth in the EV market, having the capacity is a winner. We should be looking at getting that in. Sales opportunity, well, you know, we've got two vehicles with one type of transmission that's giving us GBP 15 million just for Europe. You can see it could be really spectacular, actually. This kind of stuff could go very, very well. You know, four components, you get GBP 15 million a year out of it. Not bad. In terms of the carbon footprint issue, well, number one, they do go hand in hand because low pressure carburising is, by definition, a low carbon intensity process. It's one of our specialist technologies, low carbon footprint, that's an additional part to the cell. We did have some of the, some of the demand issues, 'cause this is not the only project we're working on. We've got a whole series of them, and people say, well, can we do it in Atmospheric carburising? Which is much, much, much higher carbon footprint. Part of the sales pitch is, no, don't do that. You get a better product, uh, particularly on the distortion. The distortion really matters on electric vehicles, because if you get distortion on the gears, that causes noise and vibration, and of course, on a silent electric car, it's pretty nasty having a gearbox that actually makes a noise. It's got to be absolutely distortion-free. You get that with LPC, Low pressure carburising, you don't get that with Atmospheric carburising to the same extent. Yes, the carbon, standpoint, big part of the sell and, and, very substantial opportunities, I think. Just one little follow-up. What is the solution of the car makes at the moment? Obviously, there's big electrical vehicle producers with models out there. Is it an internal solution so far? is it just like the ramp-up in the models that we see, that is now bringing that opportunity to you? A combination. I mean, one of the things is that Tesla actually doesn't tend to use much in the way of transmission. They've come across this situation. They are moving to it, I'm told, up to now, they've not really needed it. Um, there are people, the people that have been launching it so far, have predominantly been doing it in atmospheric carburizing. It's now that the low pressure carburizing is starting to take off, 'cause the through life cost on low pressure carburizing is much, much less than the atmospheric carburizing. I hope that answers your question. Good morning. Hi, it's Jonathan from Panmure Gordon. I just have three questions for you. Just coming back to that margin within automotive, can you just give us a feel for the EV margin versus IC? Is EV twice what IC is? It's not about the model, it's about the process. If you look at our AGI margins, automotive margins, you know, around that, which is mid-teens, basically, and sometimes lower. Having said that, we've got some outrageously high ones, the specialist technologies, those margins are 30%. That's, that's the kind of differential you're talking about... Essentially, okay. Just in terms of aerospace, you didn't really touch on defense. Can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing there? Are you starting to see. Yeah More demand for your services? It's up. Um, interestingly enough, it's up quite a bit in Europe. Remind me of the exact number. I think it's 30% up in Europe or whatever, but hardly anything in the US Overall, was it six, five point. Overall, defense was up 5.5%, constant currency, H1. Which I find surprising in the current environment, but that's actually the situation. I'm being told the problem is getting Congress to release funds, is the big issue in the States. I'm not a defense expert, I don't know. Those are our sales. Just the last one, just on the LEAP, I think GE was saying that they're looking to deliver 50% more LEAP in 2023 versus 2022. How does that come through to you? Does that essentially mean that your activity within that goes up 50%, or is it? If they achieve it, yes. Yeah. Okay. It's a direct feed. If they achieve it. Yeah. You won't believe the problems they've got right now, I can tell you. They've really got some issues. I hope they do, but we're not banking on it, so... Morning, it's Rory from UBS. I suppose if general electric are having problems on LEAP, they're nothing in comparison to Pratt & Whitney on GTF. Presumably, you have capacity to meet any additional incremental demand in the next sort of 18 months? Has that been communicated to you at all? Is there anything that you can add color on? Are you talking specifically about GTF? Yes. Unfortunately, we have very little presence on GTF. Certainly, these shenanigans about the problem they've had recently is nothing to do with us and won't affect us. In some ways, it might affect us because we're waiting for GTF to ramp up. We're sitting on the a contract to come to us. When they do ramp up, it's gonna be in specialist technologies, in HIPing. As yet, it's not really broken cover. GTF is a promise for the future, not now. We're not actually banking on anything on GTF yet. Great, thank you. Can I just clarify your comments on the march to 20% margins and how you think you can get there? Did you say on volumes alone, but presumably, a lot of those volumes are in aerospace, where the mix to specialist technologies is greater? Just trying to get a feel for what you think is volume and what is mix on a high margin. Mix aside. Margin. Mix aside, on pure volume increase, getting back to pre-COVID volumes in aerospace and auto, actually, we're already there in GI. That will get us over 20%. The mix issue, to go to specialist technologies and emerging markets, that will drive it again, 'cause in both issues, you're talking about margins that are around 30%. That's where you'll get it. You can get to the 20% level without any mix change. That's clear. Thank you. The man over in the corner over here, look, he keeps waving at you. Hi, Andrew Douglas from Jefferies. Can we just go back to the EV competition, I guess, backdrop? In terms of Stellantis and Mercedes outsourcing their contracts because they haven't got the insourcing capability, are you basically the only play in town, given your capacity at the moment? It would seem at the moment, yes. And am I right in assuming that once Mercedes and Stellantis and whatever platforms they're putting them on, it becomes successful, we can get this kind of snowball effect, when other people will want it, other platforms will need it, et cetera, so. I think that Right across the piece, there are people looking for this to go in. Yeah. It's not a case of people saying, they're doing it, we'll do it. They're all looking for it. Yeah. I think the way this is gonna settle out, we were talking about this earlier, they will want some in-house. Maybe 20%-25% of the capacity will be in-house because they want to be able to develop and to learn everything. Essentially, vast majority of this is gonna be LPC, and if they can get someone to do it, which we are quite prepared to do, then we'll get work out of it. Just broad and broader, broadly on Specialist Tech, in the slide, you talk about sales and marketing. I'm assuming that's literally more feet on the ground. Yeah and effectiveness. Smarter. Smarter. Smarter and better. Yeah Um more. Does that continue, or have you kind of made your big investment? No, no, it continues. A lot of it is actually not just people, it's the strategy associated with it. There's a fair amount of strategy when you're doing something where you've got a fairly unique. Almost unique proposition that customers haven't heard about, and how you go to market, and how you compete against different technologies in terms of alternate pricing and stuff like that. I mean, there's quite a bit of strategy behind it. Okay. Two small ones. Specifically on HIP, are you investing now for two to three years' time, or have you invested two years ago and you're now seeing the benefits? We are now deploying HIPs we've already got. Right. We will need more HIP capacity in 2025, and so we're gonna have to start investing for that fairly soon, too. Okay, super. Last for me, on M&A, I sensed a renewed enthusiasm for M&A, pipeline, quality of assets, whatever it may be, six months ago. Where do we sit now? What's that pipeline look in and how Well, unfortunately, M&A is one of those things which I have no idea how to forecast. Yeah. We'll achieve nothing for now. If we can get other parties to dance to our tune, then we'll do some M&A. If we can't, we're gonna be, you know, in a position at the end of the year where we're gonna be asking ourselves, what do we do in terms of supplemental distributions? Loud and clear. Thank you. Nobody's asking a finance question, Ben. Harry, can you ask a finance question? I have actually got one, funny enough, so Really? I've got several, please. The first is just looking at the North American margins in both divisions. Obviously, they lack the other regions. Just looking at North American ADE, margins are flat, half on half, and I'm guessing that comes back to getting labor and issues like that. Is there any? Lack of volume as well. It is simply more volume dropped through those. Yeah Margins go up? That's the primary driver there. Is that a sort of HIP utilization issue? Because obviously, if you've got a HIP coming on, then that's meant to be higher margin. No, it's not really anything to do with HIP. Okay. It's mostly to do with classical heat treatment, and it's just flat. I mean, the business is flat. If there's a bit more margin came through, sorry, a bit more volume come through, you'd see it, you know, fall to the bottom line very quickly. It's just the quirk of revenue timing and stuff like that. Yeah Rather. Okay. That wasn't a finance question. You tell him. No, here we go. Here we go. Just looking at the share payment line in the P&L, then just noting the big share purchase Thinking about share payment line going forward. I mean, is the share... I should know this, and I don't, but is the share, is the purchase of shares ultimately sort of then booked through as you allocate them in the P&L?... What I'm basically asking is what's the share payment line going to be? Well, those shares that the EBT purchases, when they vest, that is when you see the effect come through, both from a P&L perspective, and also when you see it come through. It'll come through in a drip feed basis over a long period of time. We're talking two, three years here over the recent purchase. It'll come through in terms of the share count numbers as well for your EPS calculations. Then just to think about it, the in effect, of a share payment, sort of almost self-financing your profit ratchets have reached. It sort of triggers share payments. I know it's not absolutely perfect. Is that the way to think about it? That we shouldn't think there's a sort of anchor coming through as the share base payments go up, it drags on profit. No. No. Okay. I mean, look, it will- It's self-financing. You continue to a crew- Yeah. -through your P&L for, as always, for expected bonus and the cost of share-based payments, which are reflective of one's expected performance, both in year, which is the bonus element, and the multi-year look, which is the share-based payments element, because they are multi-year incentive structures here, as they are in most corporates. Yeah. Just thinking finally about, obviously, you've got the surcharges sort of beginning to roll over. Can you give any sort of hints or guides around how we sort of model that, or we just shut our eyes to it and wait to be corrected in due course? Well, let me have a first stab at it, and then, Stephen, you may want to add something to this. The first point is, I can understand the challenge you have, because at one level, it is also the challenge we have when we're forecasting revenues going forwards. That's why we focus much more on revenues, excluding surcharges. From your perspective, I would say, focus on that, focus on your profitability, and then surcharges is the bolt-on afterwards, which is largely irrelevant for all of the financial parameters that matter to you and the investment community, which are typically, EBIT, EBITDA, EPS, cash flow, et cetera. It's a lot of noise that creates a challenge around forecasting the headline revenue number, but it's arguably an economic irrelevance for the underlying performance of the business. I didn't answer your question, but it almost says, well, that's because who knows? Tell me where energy prices are going to be through the H2 of the year. Surcharges added GBP 38 million well, GBP 38 million in the H1. If energy prices continue to fall, that number will be smaller in the H2. If energy charges prices go up, that number will be higher in the H2. I know that's not terribly helpful, but I can't forecast energy prices. No, it's not a bigger number to put 20% on that sort of thing. Then just finally, confirmation on the EV contract. I know you made it pretty clear, but I just want to be absolutely sure. The two, the Stellantis and Mercedes contracts in isolation in Europe, GBP 15 million a year for the next five years. Yeah, and then extensions thereafter. But it is that? Just those two- Just those two. OEs. Four components. Thank you. Morning, Dominic Convey from Numis. just again, helping us with the modeling, but in terms of breaking out that 8% extra charge between volume and price mix there, and I just wonder whether there's any material difference between the pricing component between maybe Spec Tech and classic heat treatment, for example? Not really. I mean, there's less of price increase in specialist technologies simply because they're on long-term agreements, but not materially different. Just another question, if I may. Just in terms of capital allocation, it felt, hearing you, Ben, that almost sort of downplaying the chances in the short term of any allocation, either through the old special divvy or buybacks. You talked about an extended period of net cash before that perhaps would trigger. Just give us a sense of what an extended period might look like. Well, look, I think the challenge is, and the issue is always that the balance sheet is something we constantly review, right? There isn't an absolute number, and there isn't an absolute period, because it depends on the business environment that we're operating in. It depends on the state of the cycle, it depends on the perceived risks for the business, for our end markets. It depends upon the pipeline of investment opportunities, both for organic investment and for M&A, of what we know or think is coming. The challenge in answering that in a way, with the clarity that you want, is it depends on all of those parameters and what is coming together at that point in time. It's something we are conscious of, and the message we want to get across is that is something we are mindful for. If there is an extended period, that is something we will consider addressing and looking into, dependent upon the investment opportunities that are coming along and the requirements of the business at that point. I think the important point here is this an outlook issue, it's not we've been sitting on it, okay? If we can't see in the future a use for it, that's when we do a supplemental dividend. If we fail on the M&A front, and we end up in a cash position, which is highly likely, not the failure bit, but if we didn't do it, we'd end up with cash. From that perspective, you know, we can look forward and say, w ell, what other M&A opportunities are there? We might then turn around and say, well, we can't see anything within the next 12 months. That's extended period on cash, so therefore, we do a supplemental. Okay. I guess linked to that, just CapEx expectations this year, next, mindful of that growing EV opportunity. Has there been any change there? Yeah, so look, CapEx, which as you know, we break out through two separate lines, maintenance CapEx and expansionary CapEx. H1, maintenance CapEx was just over GBP 28 million, wasn't it? I think GBP 28.4 million. I would expect a similar, possibly modestly higher number for the full year, but not much higher in the H2 than the H1. As far as expansionary CapEx, you'd have spotted that's gone up quite significantly in the H1, up by GBP 5 million or so to round about GBP 12.5 million. For the full year, probably GBP 25 million-GBP 30 million of spend in total on expansionary CapEx. Again, it comes down to opportunity, though. If we win some additional contract volumes, on new business, or there's new opportunities for expansion, we will rightly allocate more capital to that, using, as we always do, a requirement of a 20% hurdle, minimum hurdle, in terms of return for those types of new investments. Thanks. Looks like, we've exhausted the questions here. Thank you very much, everybody, thank you for coming, and, we'll see you later.