Good morning, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Spirax Sarco Engineering plc 2022 half year results webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Nicholas Anderson, Group Chief Executive. Please go ahead, sir. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2022 half year results announcement call. I'm Nicholas Anderson, Group Chief Executive, and I'm joined here by our CFO, Nimesh Patel. Regarding today's presentation, I will start by sharing the highlights of the first half, and then Nimesh will take you through our financial performance. Later, I will return to cover the operations and outlook for the full year 2022. To finalize, we'll be happy to take questions from the analysts on the call. Moving to slide three. I would like to start by acknowledging and thanking all my colleagues around the group for their outstanding efforts to meet exceptional customer demands in what has been a challenging first half year. Across the group, we have seen continued strong demand growth despite challenging environment and softening IP. All three businesses entered 2022 with record order books, and all three have expanded their order books during the first half. We saw particularly strong demand for larger project orders as customers accelerate capital investments. In addition to delivering increased volumes, as we ramped up our shipments from our manufacturing facilities, we have continued to actively implement price increases to offset inflation and protect margins in line with our well-established practices. In Steam Specialties and ETS, we saw sales growth well ahead of IP and demand growth well above sales, with both businesses continuing to expand their order books beyond their record opening positions. In Watson-Marlow, sales were significantly up. Demand from customers in the biopharm sector has normalized in line with our expectations and reflecting lower COVID-19 related demand, while growth from the process industries was significantly above IP. Watson-Marlow's order book at the half year remains above their opening position at the beginning of this year. As expected, CapEx has risen to record levels during the first half, driven by increased investments in our manufacturing capacity to support growth, particularly in Watson-Marlow. Nimesh will provide further performance details in the financial section. Now moving on to slide four. The global supply chain challenges that kicked off in the latter part of 2021 were still present in the first half of 2022, impacting the availability of key manufacturing components such as nylon, printed circuit boards, and semiconductors. We continue to engage with our supply chain partners to deploy our mitigation strategies, successfully maintaining deliveries that met customers' requirements. In March, we announced our decision to suspend all group trading with or within Russia. On the 6th of July, we concluded the disposal of our Spirax Sarco Watson-Marlow operations to the local management for a nominal consideration. During the first half of 2022, we continued our revenue investments to support growth across all three of our businesses, including accelerating our digital initiatives. We also continued investments to further expand manufacturing capacity through factory modernization and debottlenecking initiatives. These include new equipment, revised processes, additional people, and new manufacturing plants in Watson-Marlow. We have continued to make further progress on our ESG agenda, and I will provide more detail of this in a moment. Our business development teams in ETS and Steam Specialties continued collaborating to address the substantial sales opportunities arising from decarbonization, and which I will expand upon when we get to the ETS section. In ETS, we made good progress to address the financial underperformance of the Chromalox facility at Soissons in France, and this process should be completed by year-end. Lastly, on the 25th of July, we signed a binding agreement to acquire Vulcanic for a consideration of EUR 262 million. Now on to slide five. The acquisition of Vulcanic represents a significant milestone to strengthen our ETS business. Vulcanic is a European industrial electric heating group and is the largest supplier in Europe of bespoke industrial electric heating solutions. It operates a direct sales model, has 10 manufacturing facilities worldwide, and employs over 700 people, of whom almost 90% are based in the EMEA region. Vulcanic has a clear strategic fit with our ETS business, and it expands our platform to deploy the group's business model, driving further improvements in sales growth and margin over time. Vulcanic has a strong complementarity with Chromalox through its existing customers, products, and operational footprints, including its strong focus on decarbonization. It also balances our geographic footprint by strengthening ETS's presence in the EMEA region, where we expect to see the strongest demand for decarbonization solutions in the near term. Together with the actions we are taking at Chromalox in Soissons, Vulcanic establishes a larger profitable footprint in EMEA. Now, Vulcanic's pro forma performance in 2021, following its acquisition of VMF in the USA in December 2021, includes revenues of EUR 89.4 million, adjusted EBITDA of EUR 17.6 million, and adjusted operating profit of EUR 16 million. This transaction is expected to close late this third quarter. Turning now to slide six and the ESG. As I mentioned, we have continued progressing our group's ESG agenda. Our ten inclusion commitments, which form part of our inclusion plan called Everyone is Included, are being cascaded globally through a series of inclusion master classes, webinars, and workshops to embed these commitments into local policy and practice across the group. We also formally signed the UN Women's Empowerment Principles and UN LGBTI Standards, and joined the Women's Engineering Society to help advance our gender equity journey. I was particularly proud that our colleagues raised GBP 92,000 towards our total donation of GBP 284,000 to the Ukraine Red Cross Appeal. We were very pleased to make the first awards of our newly established group education fund, which totaled more than GBP 230,000 across numerous projects globally. We have also made further investments in health and safety, including a new global health and safety management system and behavioral-based safety training programs on a global scale. From an environmental perspective, we have now secured green contracts for close to 40% of our group's electricity supply and launched over 50 biodiversity projects globally. We achieved a significant reduction in absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 market-based emissions as measured against the first half of 2021, and initiated implementation of Project Clear Sky to fully decarbonize our Steam Specialties U.K. manufacturing facility in Cheltenham. Every manufacturing facility has also developed their initial net zero roadmaps, which are being refined and incorporated into their operating plans. These are just some of the many internal ESG initiatives of the first half. In addition to our continued work to support our customers to improve their sustainability performance, which includes bringing to market our suite of TargetZero solutions for decarbonizing steam generation, and I'll come back to that in a moment. With that, I'll now pass you on to Nimesh. Thanks, Nick, and good morning, everyone. Nick and I are pleased to be presenting another strong set of results delivered against the backdrop of macroeconomic uncertainty and challenges in the industrial operating environment, some of which we expect to persist in the second half and beyond. I'll explain the drivers of our financial performance, which underpin our improved outlook for the full year. Moving to slide eight. As always, the numbers we will be discussing are the adjusted results. Adjusting items include over GBP 15 million of costs relating to the restructuring of Soissons, our ETS manufacturing facility in France, and almost another GBP 7 million of costs related to our acquisitions of Cotopaxi and Vulcanic, in addition to our exit from Russia. Further details are included in the appendix. Sales were 17% higher, reflecting an organic increase of 15%, and operating profit was 10% higher or 9% on an organic basis. The difference between our reported and organic growth rates reflects the positive effect of currency movements on sales and profit and the adverse impact of our exit from Russia, partially offset by our acquisition of Cotopaxi. These impacts are reflected in our reported numbers and excluded from our organic growth rates. Our operating profit margin decreased by 150 basis points on both a reported and organic basis to 23.8%. In line with previous guidance, this margin reduction was driven by the full year impact of revenue investments made during 2021 and continued investments in 2022. Net finance expense remained the same as the first half of 2021. We estimate an increase of GBP 2 million in the second half related to the acquisition of Vulcanic. Our effective tax rate in the first half, which is based on the expected full year tax rate, was 26%, again in line with guidance. EPS at 175.1 pence was 11% higher, broadly in line with the increase in operating profit. In respect of the first half, we are proposing an interim dividend of GBP 0.425, reflecting our strong first half performance and our confidence in the full year outlook. This is an increase of 10%, following an increase of 15% in the total dividend for 2021. Our dividend cover will remain at the top end of our stated range of 2x- 2.5x. Moving to the sales bridge on slide nine. Currency movements had a positive impact of over GBP 11 million on sales or 2%, driven by a weakening of sterling, particularly against the US dollar. If July month-end rates were maintained for the rest of the year, we would expect to see a slightly higher positive effect of around 3% for the full year. Acquisitions and disposals includes the net contribution from Cotopaxi, acquired in January, and the impacts of our decision to suspend trading with and within Russia from March onwards. The effect on sales was less than 1% in the first half and is expected to be similar for the full year. The group's organic growth in sales was 15%. All three businesses delivered strong organic sales growth, driven by higher volumes as well as price increases. We increased output from our manufacturing facilities, supported by prior and current investments. Although our order books still expanded from their already record levels as demand continued to exceed sales. Organic growth in Steam Specialties sales was 10%, with demand growing significantly above IP. This was despite growth in Asia-Pacific being impacted by a COVID-19 related lockdown in China during the second quarter. ETS organic sales growth was 13%, driven primarily by Chromalox, and despite lower sales in EMEA due to a significant reduction in output from our plant in Soissons, France. In Thermocoax, organic growth was lower than the average for ETS, reflecting the longer lead times on shipments of new orders to the nuclear and semiconductor markets. Watson-Marlow once again performed very strongly with organic growth of 26%. Process Industries demand growth was significantly above IP. While Biopharm demand has normalized on lower COVID-19 vaccine related demand, overall demand still exceeded sales. We expect group revenues in 2022 to reflect the typical split of around 48% and 52% between the first half and second half of the year, prior to reflecting the impact of Vulcanic. The next bridge on slide 10 highlights the movements in adjusted operating profit for the half year. Currency movements increased profit by GBP 3.5 million or 2% as a result of both translational and transactional impacts. If July's month-end rates were maintained for the rest of the year, we would expect to see a slightly higher positive effect of around 3.5% for the full year. The net effect of acquisitions and disposals reduced profit by GBP 1.8 million, or just over 1%, and is expected to be similar for the full year. The total organic increase in group operating profit was 9%. Steam Specialties profit grew 2% organically. As anticipated, this was below our organic growth in sales due to the full year impact of our 2021 revenue investments and our continuing investments in 2022, which offset the benefit of operational gearing from higher sales. ETS profit increased 9% organically, with profit growth higher in Chromalox than in Thermocoax, reflecting the strong growth in Chromalox sales. Watson-Marlow's organic profit growth of 21% reflected the very strong sales growth in the first half, and like Steam Specialties, was below organic growth in sales due to the full year impact of our 2021 revenue investments and the ramp up of our new BioPure manufacturing facility in the U.K. The increase in central expenses reflects increased investment to deliver on our strategic initiatives, such as sustainability and strengthening our governance, in addition to higher charitable donations. Turning to slide 11. Our adjusted operating profit margin decreased to 23.8% in line with our guidance, and which is above pre-pandemic levels, and the second highest first half margin in our group's history after 2021's record 25.3%. This 150 basis point reduction in margin reflects the full year impact of our 2021 revenue investments, which support the future growth of our business. When presenting our 2021 results, we estimated the full year impact of these investments would have reduced the group's 2021 margin by less than 200 basis points. During the first half of 2022, we have continued with our revenue investments and the ramp up of our new manufacturing sites, including Watson-Marlow's new BioPure facility at Dunsbury Park in the U.K and Thermocoax's new facility in Normandy, France. In the second half, Watson-Marlow will also ramp up its new U.S. facility at Devens. Across the group, we have also continued to successfully deploy our active approach to price management during the first half of 2022 to offset inflationary pressures and protect our adjusted operating profit margin. We anticipate the full year adjusted operating profit margin in 2022 will be similar to the first half as we continue to invest for growth, which will offset the benefits of operational gearing from higher sales in the second half. Nick will talk about the margin performance in each business shortly. Turning now to cash flow on slide 12. Operating profit to operating cash conversion was 44% due to investment in working capital and increased capital expenditure. Our ratio of working capital to sales increased to 24%, up over 200 basis points from the end of 2021. This reflects a planned rebuilding of stock to meet increasing demand and mitigate supply chain related shortages of raw materials, as well as an increase in receivables. Going forward, we anticipate a reduction in this ratio of working capital to sales to a similar level as reported in 2021 as shipments increase in the second half of the year. The most significant driver of the increase in capital investment relates to our previously announced expansions of Watson-Marlow's manufacturing capacity, particularly in the US. The construction of this US facility is the largest project in our group's history, with an expected cost of $106 million, the bulk of which will be incurred in 2022. We anticipate capital expenditure for the full year will be approximately 7% of sales. As a result, we anticipate that cash conversion for the full year will be higher than in the first half, but lower than our historical levels of around 90%. We ended the first half with net debt of GBP 203 million, up from GBP 131 million at the end of last year, and net debt equated to 0.5x EBITDA. Net debt will increase in the second half following the completion of our acquisition of Vulcanic. Thank you, and I will now hand you back to Nick to run through our view of industrial production and our business performance. Thank you, Nimesh. On slide 14, we have once again shared the sequential evolution by quarter of global industrial production output. As you all know, global industrial production growth, or IP for short, is the best predictor of our markets. The blue line represents Oxford Economics IP forecast for 2022, one year ago in July 2021. The green line represents their forecast on the 23rd of February, the day before Russia invaded Ukraine, which we shared with you at our full year results announcements in March. The red line is Oxford Economics latest forecast published on the 15th of July. Now, the first point to note is the stronger than expected global IP output in the first quarter of this year, followed by the 1.5% global output contraction that followed in the second quarter of 2022. This contraction was mostly a result of the heightened uncertainties caused by the war in Ukraine, COVID-19 lockdowns in China, rising global inflation, and corresponding monetary policy actions, all of which compounded the continued global supply chain disruptions. Consequently, over the past six months, global IP growth forecast for 2022 was systematically downgraded from 4.4% to 3.5%. Given the still uncertain macroeconomic environment, it is plausible that these forecasts could still suffer further downward revisions. In fact, last night, after this presentation was finalized, we received a new update from Oxford Economics lowering the 2022 global IP forecast to 3.3% for this year. Nevertheless, our robust business model and disciplined execution of our strategies have underpinned the resilience of our performance throughout economic cycles. We remain confident in our ability to successfully navigate the continued uncertainties ahead. Now, on slide 15, we start the half year review of our operations with the Steam Specialties business. Steam Specialties sales were up 11% to GBP 400.6 million, or 10% up organically. Adjusted operating profit was up 3% to GBP 92.1 million, or 2% up on an organic basis. The adjusted operating profit margin of 23.0% was down 180 basis points on both a reported and organic basis as we continued our revenue investments in support of growth, including in our digital strategy. Demand for Steam Specialties products and solutions grew significantly above global IP in the first half of 2022 and well above sales as the business expanded its order book further from its record opening position. Demand remains strong across all regions and most market sectors. Contributions from Cotopaxi, acquired in January 2022 to accelerate our digital enablement journey, were more than offset by the disposal of our Russian operations. We anticipate sales growth for the full year 2022 will continue to significantly outperform current full-year forecast of IP. As anticipated, the first half adjusted operating profit margin was 180 basis points lower due to the full-year impact of our 2021 and 2022 revenue investments, which offset the benefits of our operational gearing from higher sales, as Nimesh explained just recently. We expect a similar impact on the full year 2022 adjusted operating profit margin compared to the full year 2021. Moving to Slide 16. ETS sales of GBP 104.7 million were up 13% organically or 18% on a reported basis, benefiting from a 5% currency tailwind as sterling depreciated against the US dollar. The adjusted operating profit of GBP 12.8 million was up 9% organically and resulted in an adjusted operating profit margin of 12.2%, 60 basis points down organically, due mostly to the revenue investment for growth. Within ETS, Chromalox increased its adjusted operating profit margin organically, driven by continued strong price-performance in the Americas, where margins are above 20%. The profitability of the Soissons facility in France has been addressed through a consultation process. Adjusting for losses incurred in Soissons during the first half of 2022, the ETS adjusted operating profit margin would have been higher than in the first half of last year. As I mentioned there already, following the completion of successful field trials, the first decarbonization solutions developed through the Thermal Solutions Synergy project, a collaboration between Steam Specialties and ETS, are now available. Collectively known as TargetZero, these new and innovative solutions are designed to help our customers decarbonize their critical industrial processes, including the raising of steam. For the full year 2022, we anticipate ETS sales growth will be significantly ahead of global IP and similar to the first half, growing above Steam Specialties. As a result of the operational gearing from increased sales, we anticipate adjusted operating profit growth ahead of sales growth in 2022, with an increase in the adjusted operating profit margin for the full year. The Vulcanic transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2022, following the receipt of regulatory approvals. Vulcanic's organic sales growth in 2021 and during the first half of 2022 was similar to ETS. We expect the full year 2022 sales growth for Vulcanic to be similar to ETS's. Now, on Slide 17, Watson-Marlow's sales of GBP 244.8 million were up 26% organically, while the adjusted operating profit for the first half was up 21% organically to GBP 87 million, driven by strong sales growth. The adjusted operating profit margin of 35.5% was down 170 basis points organically, reflecting our continued revenue investments and the recruitment of additional colleagues for our new manufacturing facilities. Supported by increasing demand for gene and cell therapy treatments, underlying demand for Watson-Marlow's products remains strong. Demand from customers in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector normalized in line with our expectations and reflecting lower COVID-19 related demand. While in the process industries, demand growth was significantly above IP. Watson-Marlow's overall order book at the half year remains above the 2021 year-end position. Sales to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors grew by close to 30%, reflecting increased deliveries from the significantly large order book, while sales to the process industries grew significantly above IP. Watson-Marlow continued making significant progress in expanding its manufacturing capacity during the first half of 2022. Our newly installed capacity at BioPure in Portsmouth, Watson-Marlow Pumps and Tubing in Falmouth, and Aflex Hose in Huddersfield enabled almost 40% increased production output across those four key plants compared to the same period of 2021. In 2022, we continued to anticipate around 20% organic sales growth to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector. While for the process industry sectors, we anticipate similar organic sales growth to that of the first half, remaining significantly ahead of global IP. Well, we expect strong sales growth in the second half of 2022. The organic sales growth rate will be lower than that achieved in the first half, reflecting the strong second half comparator of 2021. We anticipate that for the full year 2022, the adjusted organic operating profit margin will be below 2021, reflecting the full year impact of our 2021 and 2022 revenue investments, as well as the ramp up of our new manufacturing capacity. However, the margin will remain comfortably above 2020. Moving on to slide 18. We have again added three new customer case studies that help illustrate how our three businesses improve the performance of our customers and help them achieve their sustainability targets by reducing energy expenditure and waste while contributing to a more efficient, safer, and sustainable world. These case studies are in appendix one to three of this presentation, and I would encourage you to read more about them at a later moment. Now, that concludes today's presentations, so we will now be pleased to take questions from the analysts on the call. With that, I'll hand back to Nadia. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to slowly press star one one on your telephone and wait for a name to be announced. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Now we're going to take our questions. Please stand by. The first question comes to the line of George Featherstone from Bank of America. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Hi. Morning, everyone, and thanks for taking the questions. My first one would be on the order book. I wonder if you could help us understand a bit more about the increase year-over-year here. What contribution do you think there's been from price and how much from volume in that increase? And then also, how much visibility do you have now compared to typical levels? Hi, George. Thanks for your question. Look, yes, the order book is up, and it's up by those two reasons, the price and the volume. The visibility is the same as we've always had, right? You know that we have typically you know long short lead times, and therefore we have limited visibility although high predictability, and we always remind people of that. That visibility remains the same. We've historically operated on seven or eight weeks, seven to eight weeks of order book, and those are usually the longer cycle orders that sit for a bit longer in the order book. We do have across the board the group, as you know, close to 40% of our business that actually is booked and shipped within the same month. Therefore, that limits the visibility. Now, if we've said clearly that the order intake of this year and the sales of this year have been impacted favorably by both volume growth and sales growth, you would expect that same mix to be reflected in the order book at the moment because of the short lead times that we've mentioned. Okay. Very clear. Yeah. Thank you very much. Maybe then turning to the payback period that you typically offer for customers, which is already or historically has been very short anyway. I wondered how much of that has changed maybe in the prevailing energy cost environment for steam and ETS, and also how much of the demand growth across those two businesses would you attribute to growing need to reduce energy costs for your customers as we look forward? Look, are you particularly interested in if the payback of decarbonization solutions is longer than the payback of the other projects that we've usually been doing? Is that what you're trying to understand? Well, I'm just trying to understand if the payback period has changed because when customers are looking at, maybe upgrading their systems, it might be against now higher energy costs that they can offset through some of the improvements that you can give. I just wondered if there's been a change versus history in terms of the payback period that you'd normally be able to offer. Yeah. Okay. First, as a reminder, energy savings is just one of the many ways in which we help our customers improve their performance, right? Yeah, it's a more visible one, easier to visualize, but it's not the only way in which we help our customers improve their performance and reduce their costs. Inevitably, the part that is related to energy savings will benefit from a slightly shorter payback if the energy costs go up, or will lengthen a little bit when the energy costs go down. It doesn't materially change the overall situation that we have been seeing with the customers because energy costs are not the only reason why customers are reflecting that. When it comes to decarbonization solutions, and that's why I was inquiring if that's where you were going. It does extend a little bit. When the customer is looking to, for example, decarbonize one of their operations, the driver there is reduction of carbon footprint, not the energy costs. Actually, you know, the cost of electricity are higher than gas, and therefore that does change a bit of the equation. Really the driver there tends to be reduction of carbon footprint as opposed to energy costs. Okay. Thank you. Final one for me would be on the large project demand that you've seen an increase in. Just wondered if you could maybe run us through particular customer segments that you've seen this in, and is it more in the Asia Pacific region where you've seen this? 'Cause that's historically been, I think, the area where large projects would be mostly found. Okay. Yes, thanks, George. Good question. Yes. Look, yes, APAC is where we see a lot of or higher proportion, if you want, of CapEx driven sales, customer CapEx driven sales. New build design of new facilities or expansion or, you know, brownfield expansion of new facilities. Yes, that is reflected this year as it has been historically. The nature of that is mostly across all sectors. I wouldn't call out any individual sector as having seen more CapEx investments by customers than in other sectors. Really what this is is the expected return to normality after the slowdown during 2020 because of COVID. As you remember, 2019 global IP was already coming down. In fact, it was close to 1% in that year. Many companies were already reviewing their capacity expansions. When we talk about CapEx, customer CapEx projects, it's essentially customers expanding their capacity, either it's a greenfield or brownfield expansion. When the demand for the customer's products starts softening, as it was in 2019, you know, the need to expand their capacity eases a bit, and we're already seeing that slowdown in 2019. Come 2020 with the pandemic, everything stopped because it wasn't clear. Once the situation started becoming clearer in 2021, customers started pulling those projects out and reviewing those projects, and you start seeing those orders coming in at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. It is really a return in that sense and somewhat of a catch up, from the slowdown that goes back to 2019, really. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now we are going to take our next question. Please stand by. The question comes to line of Aurelio Calderon Tejedor from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Hi. Good morning, Nicholas, Nimesh. It's Aurelio Calderon from Morgan Stanley. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is around the process part of Watson-Marlow, and I think the implied guidance or the implied performance in the first half is quite encouraging, close to 20% growth. So what's driving that growth? Is it again, market share gains that your pumps are displacing other types of pumps? Or what is the driver behind that strong growth and kind of the forward-looking demand comment, which also looks quite encouraging? Okay. Thanks, Aurelio. Thanks for your question. Look, the process industries, as you will recall, is a collection of multiple sectors. The main ones are food and beverage, water and wastewater, and then water treatment processes, a little bit of precious metals mining, et cetera. There is a variety of sectors. In all of those sectors, as is typical across all of the businesses of our group, we do tend to gain market share through the sale of, you know, solutions for customers, which is, you know, the uncovering the need, the unrealized needs of the customer. It is the same reality that we've shared in the past, where our sales engineers walk the plants of the customers, identify ways in which they can improve the customer's performance through the use of our products, and then we'll look for those opportunities to either share products or services that improve the customer's performance. When we do that, inevitably there is some market share gain, because sometimes you might be displacing, in the case of Watson-Marlow, other types of pumps, for example, where the adoption of our pump solutions, you know, improves their performance to the detriment of a different type of pump that they might have been using previously. Therefore, that is a form of market share gain inevitably. It's, you know, it's no different to the operating model that we've shared with you in the past. For that reason, we continue to see that trend positively progressing. It is that, you know, that those characteristics that I've just described that explain why the process industries and Watson-Marlow growth in even faster outpace than IP compared to other parts, because it's that stronger displacement of other types of pumping technologies by the Watson-Marlow products. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. The second question is around pricing, and I know you haven't really called out the price increases in the first half, but if we think about these prices kind of sticking, do you see any differences by division, by business, by geography? Or do you think you can kind of hold on to those price increases as kind of inflation moderates a little bit into 2023? Okay. Thank you, Raul. Another good question. Look, let me start by reminding yourself and all the other listeners on the call that we have very well-established processes across all three of our businesses, deeply embedded now, what we call the price management processes, right? Therefore, for years now, the organization has been trained and has successfully managed to pass on inflationary increases to protect our margins. Therefore, what happens when inflation ramps up is that we have to ramp up our corresponding price increases to customers. Inevitably, in a year where there's an acceleration, as we've seen at the beginning of this year, that would lead, and it did lead, in fact, for example, to further price increases in the first half than we had originally planned for. When we did our plans for 2022 at the back end of last year, we were anticipating a level of inflation, which clearly, at the end of the first quarter, was noticeably higher than what we had planned for. We went back, and we did a little reinforcement of the price increases that we put through as inflation was coming through larger. To be honest, customers, nobody ever likes taking a price increase, but they understand it. They understand it because we're very transparent, and we demonstrate to the customers. Of course, the customers are experiencing the same thing in their own businesses. While it's never easy, and it shouldn't be taken for granted, I think we have well-embedded processes, and we've seen that come through. Actually, in the second quarter, we were worried if that reinforcement of price increases would be, you know, strongly pushed back or not, and the pushbacks were in line with what we expected and have therefore come through. That gives us the confidence that our margins are protected. In the second half, we think now that the worst of that is behind us. At this point, we're not anticipating the need for further price increases through the balance of this year. That does not change by division or by geography or by market sector. Some channels are easier than others, but the principles are the same across all parts of the group. That's helpful. Thank you very much. Maybe if I can squeeze one last question. On the ETS benefit from electrification and decarbonization, are we seeing that in the numbers already? Because obviously your growth in ETS was ahead of steam in the first half, after kind of years of underperformance to steam, and your forward-looking comment is also a bit more positive on ETS. I also remember from the ETS Investor Day, you were talking more positively about this business going forward than for steam probably. Is that benefit tangible in the numbers right now? Or are we still kind of in that wait and see mode to see when this decarbonization and electrification benefits kick in? Yes. We are already beginning to see some benefits in the order book, in fact, since the end of last year already. So you know, as we said, for those of you that were able to follow the ETS Capital Markets Day at the end of June, this is a new and additional incremental trend to all the other trends that we see in our business. The global move to decarbonize industrial processes is a process that has started, is a trend that is on its way. It's really just getting started, okay? Also, it's very difficult to predict the rate at which this trend will further improve our ability to outperform IP growth going forward. We know it's happening, and it's already beginning to contribute, obviously on a smaller scale, because it's the beginning of a process. Yes, we've already received multiple orders, since the end of last year or even before. We see this trend is already a reality, but it's the beginning of the curve. It's you know, it's not the most significant driver yet, but it will build over the years to come as a more substantial contributor to our growth. That's very helpful. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. Please stand by. The next question comes from the line of Jonathan Moberly from Barclays. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Hey, guys. Good morning. I just have three questions please, if I may. Just in terms of the first one, can you just talk a little bit more about Vulcanic, please? Potentially about what synergies you can get from that deal by putting it together with Chromalox. Also, essentially what investment is needed or what investment you think may be needed in Vulcanic going forward. Also, how do we think about the margins for Vulcanic? Is it your aspiration to get that margin of that business pretty much up to the group average? That was the first question. Okay. Hi, Jonathan. Thank you. And thanks for asking about Vulcanic, because we are very excited. We think this is a really strong complementary opportunity for us. We had been pursuing it, and we had been tracking it for some years because it was private equity-owned, and therefore, we knew that sooner or later, it was gonna come to the market. In fact, it was expected to come to market earlier, but got delayed by COVID and so many other things. We see, and why we're very excited is 'cause we see this as a very strong complementarity with Chromalox. Basically, when you look at Vulcanic, it's pretty much the Chromalox of Europe. I'm reminding everybody that Chromalox is, you know, strongly present in the Americas, in the USA in particular, but very light still in Europe, in EMEA. Vulcanic is the other way around. There's that first geographic complementarity, but the products, the technologies, the services, are very aligned. However, this is another great point, not necessarily overlapping in market sectors. When we do our traditional sectorized view and approach, you'll see that, for example, Vulcanic has good significant part of their sales going into food and beverage applications, and supplying, for example, to food and beverage OEMs. You know, OEMs that are making, for example, ovens for bakeries or for food processing. That's a sector where Chromalox hasn't been focused on, and Vulcanic has got a good presence. We see not only geographical, but also segment sector market sector complementarities in that sense. There's also another interesting synergy for us, is that they've got a well-established, efficient and profitable manufacturing footprint across Europe. Which as you know, Chromalox didn't have. We only had basically one plant in Thermocoax in Soissons, which, as you all know, is historically loss-making and underperforming, and really, well, we're now in the process of closing. That left us really without a good industrial footprint to manufacture the Chromalox products in Europe, which we will continue to do, because this will be a market sector-driven dual brand strategy in ETS in exactly the same way and following the same footprint of the successful dual brand strategy that we've established over the last five years between Spirax and Gestra in the Steam Specialties business. That's exactly the footprint that we're using. When you think of the complementarity and the synergies, the revenue synergies between Vulcanic and Chromalox, you just need to look at what we've done between Spirax and Gestra and model that into Vulcanic and Chromalox and ETS. Additionally, we do have these manufacturing savings or cost revenues because now we can manufacture the Chromalox products going forward in what is today Vulcanic manufacturing plants locally without having to rely on making those in the U.S. and shipping them across to EMEA. That, therefore, gives us additional synergies in that sense. We are very excited and looking forward to having the Vulcanic team join the family, you know, hopefully by the end of next month. In terms of investments required, look, there's always investments required, but I have to say that the team at Vulcanic have done a good job. I personally visited a few of their top factories and could see firsthand that they’re not as underinvested as one sometimes fears when the business has been under private equity ownership for a longer period of time as they were. In that sense, you know, we saw some areas which will require investment inevitably, and we factor that into our plans in order to bring them up to the standards of performance that we expect across our group. It’s not more than we were expecting. That’s in line with our expectations. In terms of margin progression, the first thing to remember is that Vulcanic is already a mid-teens profitability business. We haven't got, I'm glad to say, a loss-making, underperforming plant or part of Vulcanic as we had when we acquired Chromalox. We knew that when we acquired Chromalox. We knew that Soissons was loss-making, it was gonna be a problem. You followed over the last five years all our efforts to try to fix it without having to close it. We haven't got that situation in Vulcanic. While, you know, the investments that we'll be making to Spiraxize Vulcanic once they join the family will inevitably dampen their margins a little bit in the first couple of years, and that's part of our model, as you all know. The gap to get to or above 20% margins is smaller, and therefore there isn't the dispersion that we had in Chromalox in terms of good performing and bad performing parts of the group. We can see the margin progressing up to or beyond 20% over the coming years, in line with our group strategies for all across the group. That's super helpful. Very clear. Thank you very much for that. Secondly, can I just again sort of maybe focus on sort of revenue investment and obviously what you're seeing in the business currently? Obviously, there's a lot of that happening. It's gonna come through in the second half as well to depress margins. As we look to FY 2023, do we still see that scenario as a lot of that sort of revenue one-off revenue investment pretty much finished, so possibly there's a bounce back in operator efficiency in 2023? Okay. Good comment. Just before we answer that question, which I'll defer to Nimesh because he's eager here to do a bit of work himself also. Just on the Vulcanic, I forgot to mention, but it's very important. You know, Vulcanic has also been working on decarbonization for some years. Another great synergy between us also because the kind of applications that Vulcanic has been working and been getting orders already, like we have for decarbonization, are in different applications to the one that Chromalox has been focusing on with, you know, in the synergy project with steam. Actually that's another great synergy opportunity with and complementarity with Vulcanic, which is around driving the decarbonization, but not in overlapping applications, therefore very truly complementary. Of course, their strong presence in Europe. Europe is leading the world in decarbonization, and we expect it will continue to lead the world in that over the coming years here, at least the next five years, six years, for sure. Therefore, in that sense, you know, their strong industrial base in the EMEA region is also a strengthening for the decarbonization initiative. On that, I'll turn over to Nimesh to answer your question about revenue investments into 2020. Thanks, Jonathan. Yeah. Let me just remind everyone, what do we mean by revenue investments? These are costs that go through our P&L that ultimately help support future years' growth. We include things like ramping up our manufacturing capacity, the addition of colleagues in our business who support our supply operations. We include in that strategic initiatives. Our strategic initiatives around Target Zero that Nick's talked about or indeed rolling out of our digital programs, et cetera. Our commitment to inclusion internally and improving our talent acquisition and retention processes, those sorts of things. Of course, we include the expansion of our direct sales force. Our front line that help drive our growth through our solution-based approach to partnering with our customers and solving their problems. Those things absolutely have been invested in very strongly right the way back from 2021 and continuing into 2022. Of course, we were doing that even prior to 2021. It's been part of our business for a long time. I think the thing that we just need to remind ourselves of is that in 2021, we were coming out of a challenging period post-COVID. We didn't know how quickly the market was going to recover and what sort of rates of growth we were gonna see. Like everyone else, I think we were surprised positively that growth took off as strongly as it did. You will have seen that in the fact that we upgraded our guidance from what we provided at the beginning of the year in 2021 to where we got to by the end of the year. That meant that some of our revenue investments lagged a little bit, the growth that we saw in the top line. The consequence of which was that they were more weighted to the second half, and therefore in 2022, we feel the full year impact of those investments. Going forward, we see that starting to line up again. You know, the rate of revenue investments will be much more in line with the growth that we're seeing at the top line because we're coming out of that recovery period. The other thing is, you know, some of those manufacturing ramp-ups that we've seen, where we've added a material number of people in our supply organization, particularly in Watson-Marlow, some of those are starting to be behind us. We've still got Devens in the second half of this year, but, you know, we've delivered a number of these now. We started with Aflex, we've got BioPure, we've got Normandy, and now we've got Devens. Those will be behind us. My sense is there'll still be a bit of an impact next year from the full-year impact of investments that we're making in 2022, but not anywhere in the region of what we've seen this year as a result of the annualization of last year's investments. Does that answer your question? No, that's very clear. That, you've made that very clear. Thank you very much. And maybe I can just sort of squeeze this maybe one quick final one in. Just in terms of America's steam, obviously growth of 18% now. I mean, that's a great number. What's essentially driving that? I know obviously historically you've had good growth coming out of places like Argentina and Brazil. I think probably there's a contribution from that. If you can just sort of talk around that a little bit, and also just within your America steam and particularly sort of the US-focused part of that operation. Obviously, a lot of that goes through distributors. What are you seeing in terms of sort of distributor demand? Is there potential for a bit of a destock or in terms of H2 or if things kind of normalize in terms of inventory levels? Just any sort of comments there would be helpful. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Jonathan. Look, we're very, very pleased with the growth of the steam business in the Americas. The good thing about it, and we want to call it out, is that it's actually nicely spread across all of the Americas operations. Not only the Latin American operations, which have been very robust growth even in real terms, so even, you know, you say, oh, well, some places like Argentina have, you know, higher inflation, therefore you've got to get a bit of a higher price. We've been through those in years past, Jonathan, you remember that. We always take those effects out to assess the real terms growth, underlining that. It continues to be robust across all of the Americas operations in Latin America and in North America, so U.S. and Canada. That is the nice thing about it, is that you can see this consistency come across the U.S. in particular, you know, growing in a nice pace as we've been investing for years, you know, to try to accelerate the direct sales element of our sales. Retaining our partnerships with distributors, not cannibalizing the relationship with our distributors, but adding, you know, more of a direct sales initiatives. We are seeing, you know, slowly, but every year, gradual improvements in that sense. We've seen that again here. Yes, the U.S. has also seen double-digit growth. We expect that to continue. You know, around distribution, adding some destocking or the effects of restock. There's always a little bit of that, as you know, but actually it's not. I wouldn't call it out as the main driver of additional growth in the USA, because we're looking at how much the distribution channel is growing, and we're looking at how much the direct sales channel is growing. They're both growing, and actually direct sales is growing at a faster rate than distribution. It's pleasing for us to see a normalization at high levels of growth as we've been investing in for many years. Great. Thank you, guys. That's very clear. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. Please stand by. The next question comes from the line of Mark Davies Jones from Stifel. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Thank you very much. Morning, Nimesh. Can I go back to the moving parts of Watson-Marlow? Obviously, even by the very high standards of that business, the last couple of years have been pretty extraordinary. We have seen in some other cases, as COVID stuff drops out of the mix, some other companies have seen perhaps bigger normalizations than anticipated. Can we get a bit more sense of the moving parts? You still sound very confident on the outlook, but of that 60%, which is pharma and biotech, can you give us any indication of how much of that is currently COVID-related business, do you think? Hi, Mark. Thank you again. I'd like to remind you've heard me say this before, we like to be boringly consistent in what we say. It's always good to remind people of what we've said before. Yes, we have the biopharm sector and we have the process industry sector, both of which have essentially different drivers. The process industry is driven by IP and above IP also as we displace other types of pumping technologies, my question that I mentioned earlier, or my response to Aurelio's question earlier. That on the process industry side, not only the correlation to IP, but also the displacement of the types of pumping technologies by our other products accelerates also the growth around the process industry side. Therefore you can see that coming through strongly in the numbers now in the first half. On the biopharm side, 60% of the business, we've talked since 2020 of, before 2020, we were talking about, you know, the gene therapy, gene and cell therapy treatments that are moving more and more to biotechnology. That was fueling before COVID something to the tune of, for us, anything between 17%-20% year-on-year growth of sales into the biopharm sector. Along came COVID, right? With COVID, we got that additional drive because all the companies that were developing vaccines for COVID were already well-established customers and using our products for development and later for the manufacturing. COVID brought us that additional demand related to the vaccines. The underlying demand, the gene and cell therapy drug demand that was already growing at 17%, for us, you know, that meant 17%-20% growth rates, those underlying demand growth rates continued. What we're seeing now is the extra demand of the COVID-related part normalizing. As we were expecting. You know, we've been signaling this all along since 20- Sure, sure. Late 2020, early 20- Yeah 2021, mid-2021, early 2022. This is in line with what we were anticipating, I have to say, where you saw that big wave, and therefore the additional requirements for COVID are less significant. That underlying demand from the biopharm sector, not related, has continued. At the rate it was coming, it's now a little bit higher, because I think one of the benefits of COVID is also having demonstrated to the world the virtues of biotechnology and how, you know, these technologies can help cure or treat some of the big illnesses like cancer and things that the world still struggles with. What we are seeing really is that underlying demand, not related to COVID, actually picking up a little bit, at the same time as the other one levels off. From an order intake point of view, we saw strong wave last year and into the very early parts of this year in terms of stronger order because of the additional COVID related demand. That part is kind of tailing off, but the underlying stuff continues to come through. Because those orders were placed and held in the order book, because to be honest, we, in some of the places where they needed, we didn't even have enough capacity. Some of those orders were being placed for delivery into this year. That's why you're seeing that demand wave cycling through the sales, and that's why you saw almost close to 30% sales growth in the Biopharm sector this year as we're delivering that higher order book in line with the customer's requests. We see all of this situation normalizing going forward. We see it resuming normal demand patterns. The best test for that is when we look at the actual level of order intakes that we're getting, not the year-on-year growth or variances, but the absolute number of pounds coming through, it's still very strong. Again, we've noted that quote book is still going up despite the sales rising. That tells you the demand is there, it's still robust. That's what gives us the confidence to be able to say that, you know, we hope to be able to continue growing this business at the rates that we're indicating. Thank you. That's very helpful. If I can just ask one clarification. You talked about more large projects and CapEx stuff coming back into steam, which I guess we'd expect at this time of the cycle. In the past, you've suggested that that comes through at rather lower margin. Is it significant enough to have any effect on mix as we look ahead, or is it very much at the edge of the business? I think it's the latter part of your question, Mark. This is part of our business. It's no different with the CapEx side of the business, which again, reminding people, has historically accounted for about 15% of our total demand, right? Just to put things into perspective, 85% of our business continues to be driven by the customers' OpEx budgets, right? And that other 15%, which is more capacity expansion, CapEx driven, capacity expansion of our customers for customers' CapEx budget, it's a bit more cyclical as you'd expect, but ultimately through the cycles, it's always around 15%. Yes, it's a bit lower margin relative to the other 85% OpEx part of our business, but it's not negative margins. It's not, you know, poor margins. Oh, yeah. It's not out of range of margins. Exactly. Other than when occasionally somebody makes a mistake, which as humans, you know, sometimes happens, and we call those out when somebody sells a project that doesn't go well, we have. But it's marginal, thank goodness. Yes, it's in the mix. When we give you the guidance that we give you for margins going forward, all of this is taken into consideration. You don't really need to be trying to extrapolate or read in between the lines. We're transparent and straightforward. These effects of the higher CapEx growth is taken into our considerations when we project or we give you guidance on the margins. Sure. Thanks very much. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. We've got another question coming through. Okay. Yes, we're having the last question. Just a moment. Thank you. Please stand by. The last question comes from the line of Dominic Convey from Numis. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Good morning, both. Thanks for taking the question. Just a couple, if I may, and slightly sort of follow-up questions. Just, you mentioned, I think back in the ETS Capital Markets Day, that in reality, the Soissons closure there would likely not see a benefit until 2023. I wonder whether you could just remind us what the anticipated net benefit of the action taken there. If not a specific number, then maybe tie it back into Jonathan's question, I think it was, with regard to the investment for growth in 2023, that you said that the drag would be significantly less than what we're seeing this year. Obviously, therefore, can you give us a sense as to whether the expected cost savings at Soissons would be greater or equal to the anticipated drag from investment for growth next year? Okay. Look, Dominic, thanks for the question. It's Nimesh. Let me just put this in context in terms of our overall journey with respect to ETS. We talked previously about three things that we are doing, which are incredibly tangible in order to support ETS on its path to improved profitability, on top of making sure we've got the right team, making sure that we're embedding our strategy, making sure that we're embedding our business model in both Chromalox and Thermocoax. Those three things are, one, addressing the losses at Soissons. Two, driving higher volumes. You can see both of those things in our first half results. You can see that we've made the announcement around Soissons. You can see that there's been material volume growth in ETS. The third was improving pricing, recognizing that we needed to take action there, particularly in EMEA. That piece will take longer to come through. Again, we've taken the actions, but it takes longer to come through because we've got a backlog of orders, some of which will be slightly lower margin that we need to work through over time. The net impact of all three of those things will be that we will achieve our target, which was to get margins to above 20%, 10 years from the point of acquisition. Ideally, Nick and I would like to get there, and the ETS team, more importantly, would like to get there earlier. That's what we're trying to do. To give you confidence that it's not an unrealistic target, we remind you that the Chromalox Americas margin is above 20%. Your specific question was around the impact of Soisson. We're not giving guidance per se on the individual impact of those three things and how they'll impact margin other than to say that we expect the ETS margin to improve this year and next year. However, what I will say is whereas we won't see the Soisson benefits this year because we'll carry the cost, but we won't have all the revenues from Soisson. Actually it's a bit of a headwind in terms of this year's performance. Had we stripped out the impact of Soisson this year, it would be reasonable to expect that the ETS margin overall would've been in the order of 100 basis points better. Okay? That gives you a little bit of a sense of quantum of the impact from Soisson. Does that help? It does. That's very clear. Just in the context of the ongoing drag from the group wide investment in growth next year, it feels that that'll still be a net headwind if we were to effectively net off the Soisson benefits. Look, the way I think about this is there's two different things happening. One, we are growing the business. We're making the business more profitable. We're investing some of that back in the form of revenue investments to drive yet more growth and profit improvement. Okay? On top of that, we are taking some discrete actions which underpin greater profitability into the future, which is the three things I just talked about. I wouldn't get too focused on the impact of revenue investments in ETS. Yeah. Hi, Dominic. It's Nick here. Just as a reminder for you and everybody else, the revenue investments are tailored to the level of organic growth that we can achieve. You've seen us do this through the years because ultimately what funds the revenue investment is the operational gearing that we get from the higher sales growth. As you will recall, when sales growth was higher and therefore you're getting more operational gearing, we're able to reinvest more into the business. If you go back to 2019, for example, when it was slowing, we also slowed those revenue investments. Ultimately, what offsets the revenue investments is the operational gearing from the higher sales. The exception to the rule was this catch-up effect that Nimesh already explained because at the back end of 2021, we had faster sales growth. It accelerated faster than we could bring those investments in, and that created a lag effect that was normalizing this year. What was untypical was last year's margin because of that lag effect of the costs. We are confident that lag effect is being recovered through this year. Therefore, as you start planning and thinking for forward years, you've gotta go back to the traditional models, right? Which is basically the. We will continue to do revenue investments, but those are tailored to the expected level of organic growth and therefore funded by the operational gearing and not, you know, gonna be a drag on margin progression and, as you mentioned, going forward, but part of the business that, as it always has been. Does that help put it into a bit more perspective, Dominic? That's very clear. Thanks both. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Dear participants, thank you very much for all your questions. I would now like to hand the conference over to Nicholas for the summary and outlook. Okay. Thank you, Nadia. Apologies to everybody. I skipped my last slide. When I flipped the pages here, my last slide went over with the previous one, and I missed commenting on the last slide, which is slide 19 in the pack, where we were summarizing and giving the outlook for the year. Although it's a bit late for it, I just wanted to come back and read through slide 19, which should be up on the screen for you all now. On slide 19 with the summary and outlook. The first half revenues are up 17% to GBP 750 million, or 15% growth on an organic basis, driven by both volume growth and price increases. The adjusted operating profit in the first half this year is up 10% to GBP 179 million, or 9% up organically. While the adjusted operating profit margin of 23.8% is down 150 basis points due to the full year effect of the 2021 revenue investments and the 2022 revenue investments. The Vulcanic acquisition strengthens our ETS business and expands our platform for decarbonization solutions. In terms of outlook, you know, our strong first half performance, together with the record order books and demonstrated resilience through economic cycles, is what underpins our improved outlook for 2022. If the current exchange rates at the end of July were to prevail for the remainder of this year, there would be a tailwind impact on close to 3% of sales and 3.5% on operating profits. Overall, we expect group revenues in 2022, excluding contributions from the Vulcanic acquisition, will reflect the typical split of approximately 48% and 52% between the first half and second half of this year. We expect the full year adjusted operating profit margin in 2022 will be similar to the first half as we continue those revenue investments for growth while remaining comfortably above those pre-pandemic levels that we discussed about. Apologies for having skipped that slide earlier on, guys. We're all humans. It's been really great to be receiving your questions. Thanks for signing in and for your support, and look forward to catching up with all of you in the near future. Thank you. Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect. Have a nice day.