Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Weir's Interim Results Presentation. I'm joined today by our CFO, John Heasley, and we'll follow our usual format. After some opening remarks from me, I'll hand over to John to take you through the financial review in detail, and then I'll return with the business review, including an update on our strategic progress and the outlook for the group and our markets. We'll then open up for questions. Now, before I start, I'd like to mention the management changes we also announced today. After 43 years of service, Ricardo Garib will retire as President of the Minerals division at the end of 2022. He's made an enormous contribution to Minerals and Weir, and since his appointment as President of Minerals in 2016, he has led the division from strength to strength. Ricardo will be succeeded by Andrew Neilson, who is currently President of our ESCO division. Since assuming that role in early 2020, Andrew has delivered the acquisition synergies, built the growth strategy, and transformed safety and operational performance. We are well advanced with our process to identify Andrew's successor and expect to announce further details in due course. I'd like to pay tribute to Ricardo for his outstanding contribution over many years and take the opportunity to wish him the very best in his retirement. I'm delighted that Andrew will succeed Ricardo. He knows the Minerals division extremely well and has a wealth of experience from across our business. I know he'll continue Ricardo's great work, taking Minerals to new heights, and I look forward to working with him in his new role. 2022 marks our first full year as a focused mining technology company. Our mission is to make mining smarter, more efficient and sustainable, and the benefits of this focus and our potential for growth and margin expansion are becoming ever clearer. In the first half of the year, market conditions have been extremely favorable, particularly within mining, and we've successfully navigated through a complex operating environment. We saw excellent demand for our sustainable solutions and spare parts, which culminated in us delivering record aftermarket orders. Operationally, we executed strongly, as reflected in year-on-year growth in revenue and operating profit, with inflationary pressures mitigated, and we exit the first half with considerable momentum in manufacturing and supply chain. As a result, we may remain on track to deliver our expected full-year margin expansion and make meaningful progress towards our 2023 operating margin target of 17%. We have also set more ambitious emission reduction targets and submitted those to SBTi for validation, strengthening our sustainability commitments. Today, we're announcing a new program to transform business processes across the group, driving lean philosophy across our end-to-end value chains and maximizing the use of global business services. In driving a leaner and more efficient Weir, we'll deliver GBP 30 million of annual savings and operating margin expansion above 17% beyond 2023. Our first half performance reflects the strength of our business and the passion of our people, and I'd like to thank my colleagues across the globe for their hard work and commitment to strong execution and delivery for our customers. The newly focused Weir now has the potential to deliver compounding growth and margin expansion as we drive to deliver the value from our portfolio transformation of the past few years. We believe that there is a multi-decade growth opportunity ahead of us, underpinned by the global imperative for decarbonization, where, one, the world needs to mine more metals if it's going to reach net zero, two, the mining industry needs to extract these metals in a more sustainable way, and three, ore bodies are harder to develop and ore grades are declining. This combination of factors creates a compelling opportunity for Weir with our track record of innovative engineering. In addition to the fundamentals of the market, we have levers which will accelerate our growth ahead of the market. The first lever is our technology drivers, where we have the best brands and engineers in our space. Our technology-led strategy means we are supporting our customers with their biggest challenges and playing a critical role in leading the technology transition within mining. The second lever is our strategic growth initiatives such as the mining capital expansion strategy in ESCO and our HPGR and comminution business in Minerals. These and our other initiatives will see us expand our addressable markets and gain share across the bookends of our business today. With our new transformation program, we're adding a third lever to our growth and margin targets. With some of the recent challenges behind us, we now have a real opportunity to drive synergy across our business processes that was not available to us before. This program will see us take advantage of those opportunities, and I'll share more details on this later in the presentation. I'm very pleased about what we've delivered, and I'm feeling really good about the future. We've had a great first half, our markets are positive, we've got great momentum, and we're on an accelerated growth trajectory for many years to come. With that, I'll hand you over to John to take you through the numbers. John? Thank you, Jon, and good morning, everyone. I'm delighted with the first half results, which show 14% growth in orders, 18% growth in revenue, and a 15% increase in operating profit. Demand for aftermarket was particularly strong with orders up 23%, while OE orders, excluding the two large one-offs last year, were up 18%. Revenues accelerated in Q2 as we saw the impact of COVID and supply chain challenges start to ease. With book-to-bill at 1.17, we carry a strong order book into the second half of the year. Operating profit of GBP 168 million was 15% higher than last year, while operating margins reduced, as we expected, by 40 basis points to 15.3%. We again showed the benefit of being the market leader across our key products, maintaining gross margins by increasing sales prices as required. Profit before tax of GBP 143 million was GBP 24 million ahead of last year, including an FX translation tailwind of GBP 3 million, with EPS at GBP 0.405 per share and an interim dividend of GBP 0.135 per share. Free operating cash conversion was impacted by an increase in working capital with an inventory build supporting our strong order book. This plus the recent acquisitions of Motion Metrics and CIS resulted in net debt to EBITDA of 2x. As I will come on to explain, we continue to expect full year cash conversion of 80%-90%. I'll now turn to provide some detailed commentary on each of the divisions. Starting with minerals, conditions in mining markets continue to be favorable as commodity prices across our main exposures of copper, gold, and iron ore continued to motivate our customers to maximize production, and in some cases, also mining lower grade parts of the mine. While larger OE projects remain slow to convert, customers were very active in upgrade and debottlenecking solutions to drive more production from existing assets. Activity in the Canadian oil sands was also strong, supported by the oil price. These conditions resulted in aftermarket orders being up 21%, including the benefit of price increases, which we estimate at somewhere between 4%-6%. OE orders were up 17% excluding the prior year one-offs, driven by small upgrade and debottlenecking solutions where customers were looking to secure quick increases in production volumes to benefit from the strong commodity price environment. With our highly qualified sales and application engineers located close to mine sites, this is a real sweet spot for us. A great example of this is a notable increase in upgrade orders for our largest slurry pumps, which of course will also drive a long-term attractive aftermarket revenue stream. Revenues were 16% higher than the prior year, with aftermarket up 17% and OE up 13%. Revenue accelerated through the period as the impact of COVID and supply chain challenges started to ease, with Q2 revenue 22% higher on a sequential basis. Product mix was broadly in line with the prior year, with OE representing 25% of revenue, compared to 26% last year. Operating profit increased by 11% to GBP 135 million as the division benefited from increased volumes and strong execution, while margins reduced by 70 basis points to 17.3%. Gross margins remain rock solid as we continue to successfully pass inflationary cost increases on to customers. The benefits of operating leverage and continued operational efficiencies were offset by a return of T&E costs post-COVID, a non-repeat of prior year one-offs, increased R&D spend, and adverse transactional foreign exchange phasing. This was all as anticipated, and we continue to expect to see good progress towards our medium-term margin targets on a full year basis. Moving on to ESCO, where we experienced similar mining market conditions as the Minerals division, with infrastructure markets also continuing at strong levels, especially in North America. Total orders increased 27% to record levels, including a 7% benefit from the acquisitions of Motion Metrics and CIS, which are both trading ahead of our expectations. Like Minerals, growth included a mid-single digit percentage benefit from pricing. As well as gaining share in our core GET space with positive net digger conversions in the period, we've been particularly pleased with our capital strategy, where we sold more than 50 large buckets in the first half from a standing start just 18 months ago, as the efficiency benefits of our engineering and digital capability is increasingly recognized by customers. While we saw a sequential reduction in orders in Q2, this was reflective of some specific temporary mine closures and the mechanics of running down the inventory related to our acquisition of CIS, our distributor in Canada. Underlying market conditions remain buoyant. Revenues increased by 24% to GBP 314 million, and like Minerals, we were pleased with execution, which again accelerated into Q2. This was especially impressive for ESCO, given that one of our key foundries based in Suzhou in China was forced to close for a few weeks in April as COVID lockdowns hit. The team have done a great job to catch up production in the second quarter. Operating profit at GBP 51 million was 21% higher than last year as the division benefited from increased volumes, while margins were down 40 basis points at 16.1%. Like Minerals, the benefit of operating leverage was offset by the return of T&E costs post-COVID and increased R&D spend. As you will also remember, H1 margins last year benefited from favorable phasing of price increases relative to raw material purchase contract renewals. Now bringing things together to look at group operating margins. Overall, group margins have reduced 40 basis points in the period to 15.3%, driven by 30. We've seen greater than usual swings in valuation of derivatives used to hedge operational purchases and sales in non-functional currencies. This amounted to around GBP 2 million or 20 basis points and represents a timing difference with the corresponding upside coming when the underlying hedged transactions take place in future periods. Secondly, we've seen good operating leverage benefiting margins by 70 basis points, including the impact of exceptionally high freight costs in the period. This net efficiency benefit from higher volume was partly offset by 40 basis points incremental investment in R&D. Thirdly, the slightly favorable aftermarket mix in Minerals revenues provided a 30 basis points benefit. Finally, the return of travel spend in H1 to close to pre-COVID levels had a 50 basis points negative impact. As mentioned last year, 2021 included a number of one-off gains, such as the sale of a property which amounted to a 30 basis points headwind this year. This all left margins where we expected at 15.3%, and we remain on track to show good progress over the balance of the year towards our 17% medium-term target. As a reminder, the second half margins will benefit from further operating leverage as volumes increase, further cost efficiencies, the non-repeat of the prior year cyber impact, and of course, as always, maintaining our gross margins against the pressures of inflation. The margin progression that we saw from Q1 to Q2 as volumes increased and supply chain pressures eased underpins our confidence. Turning to cash flow, we saw a working capital outflow of GBP 112 million, which is reflective of a buildup of inventories in both Minerals and ESCO to support our increased supply chain disruption, especially for Minerals OE projects, where we are dependent on third-party suppliers for components such as motors or bearings. As those components which may have a relatively low value have in some cases been delayed, the whole project inventory, including the high-value product we have produced, remains with us until the whole project is complete. Additionally, freight delays have meant that there is a higher volume of inventory in transit than would ordinarily be the case. As we moved through the half, we saw these factors start to ease, which helped our revenue momentum with a 20% sequential increase in Q2. However, as a consequence, revenues were back-end loaded and therefore, as at the year-end, a higher level of debtors remained than would be the case with a more level-loaded revenue profile. This is simply a phasing issue with no concerns on aging or recoverability. As a result of the above, free operating cash conversion was 29%. Given revenue and supply chain momentum, we continue to expect much of this working capital increase to unwind and underpin cash conversion within our target range of 80%-90% on a full year basis. Turning to the next slide, free cash outflow of GBP 24 million compares to an inflow of GBP 45 million last year, mainly due to the operating cash flow just described. With regards net debt, we saw absolute levels increase by GBP 188 million after acquisitions and dividends. This includes an adverse foreign exchange retranslation of GBP 92 million which of course represents a partial balance sheet hedge of our U.S. dollar net assets, with the overall net asset translation benefit being positive in the period. This leads net debt to EBITDA at 2x on a lender covenant basis. Following the refinancing of our RCF during the period, we continue to have significant long-term committed liquidity. Briefly, this slide sets out some financial guidance for this year with a few points to highlight as follows. Firstly, with the strengthening of the U.S. dollar based on June rates, we would see a GBP 10 million full year operating profit translation tailwind, of which GBP 4 million was seen in H1. Secondly, as just explained, we continue to expect free operating cash conversion of 80%-90%. Thirdly, as previously discussed, our Russia net assets, which mainly comprise working capital, represent around 2% of the group total. Therefore, depending on our progress in winding down our order book over the coming months, we could face a worst case exceptional asset write down of up to GBP 30 million over the balance of the year. In addition, we will start to incur exceptional costs related to our process transformation program, which we expect to be around GBP 10 million this year as part of the overall cost of up to GBP 45 million over the next three years. In summary, our markets and our business are in great shape. We've seen record levels of aftermarket demand in the period and delivered strong revenue and profit growth with our margin trajectory as expected. While cash conversion was impacted by higher than normal level of working capital, revenue momentum means we continue to expect to see elevated inventory levels unwind over the second half and cash conversion to increase accordingly. We enter H2 with good momentum and remain confident in our medium-term growth, margin, and cash conversion targets with further margin upside beyond 2023 now underpinned by our new process transformation program which will deliver GBP 30 million of annualized savings by 2025. Thank you, and I will now hand back to Jon. Thank you, John. In this next section, I'll expand on the progress we're making towards our strategy and medium-term goals. First, let me remind you of the strong, high-quality mining technology business we have today. Weir has a unique position across the mining value chain with leading market positions and premium brands. We're operating every day at the very heart of mining processes. Our highly engineered technology, increasingly with added digital connectivity, is mission-critical to our customers who rely on our solutions to avoid downtime that can cost them up to $10 million a day on a large mine. We're very focused in where we operate, concentrating on high-abrasion applications which generate strong aftermarket demand, and we support that demand through our extensive service network. Having sold the original equipment, we have the opportunity to provide spares and service in the aftermarket. For every original equipment sale, we sell on average around 30% of the original value in spare parts every year. That figure is even higher for our large Warman slurry pumps, which gives us a reliable annuity-like revenue stream throughout the mining cycle. As I touched on in my introduction, our deliberate repositioning to focus on mining technology is enabling us to take advantage of the multi-decade growth opportunities that exist in partnership with the industry we serve. It's clear that the world needs to extract more metal to satisfy a growing population and, more importantly, to enable the clean energy transition. This is translating into significant increases in demand for metals like copper, nickel, and lithium. At the same time, our mining customers need to get more from less. The decline in ore grades means more material needs to be processed using less energy, using water wisely, and creating less waste. Without a reduced environmental footprint, our customers will not have the social license to operate. Therein lies the challenge. More essential resources are needed for electrification and renewable power generation to get to net zero, and the way those resources are produced must significantly change. Mining needs to become smarter, more efficient, and sustainable. This presents Weir with tremendous opportunities that play right to the core of our purpose. Our strategic ambitions are very clear and focused on the areas that will deliver against those opportunities which are aligned to our We Are Weir framework and its four pillars of people, customers, technology, and performance. First and foremost, our unwavering goal is to be a zero-harm workplace and one where people can be themselves, feel like they belong, and do the best work of their lives. We're aiming to grow ahead of our markets by getting closer to our customers, working in partnership to solve their biggest challenges, and playing our part in the mining industry's transformation to net zero. On technology, we continue to invest to expand our development pipeline, combining engineering excellence with digital capability to create sustainable and novel solutions. As we grow profitably, we will be leaner, cleaner, and more efficient, supporting expanded margins and strong cash conversion, demonstrating the quality inherent in our business. Our new business transformation program will underpin and enhance that performance. We're making good progress across each of these pillars, which I'll now expand on over the next few slides. Turning first to people, safety is always our number one priority, and I'm pleased that our total incident rate in the first half improved. At a rate of 0.33, we remain world-class in our sector. Our goal continues to be absolute zero harm, and we're now launching a new zero harm behaviors framework across Weir to drive a further breakthrough in our performance. In February, we ran our regular employee survey, and participation levels remained excellent at 87%, with the net promoter score unchanged, keeping us in the top quartile against industrial benchmarks. Having completed the deployment of the Workday HR system last year, we're now leveraging that and have introduced a Reverse Mentoring Programme and started to roll out our new Weir-wide performance development process. Inclusion, diversity, and equity, or ID&E, is the cornerstone of our purpose-driven culture. We've seen some great activity in our affinity groups over the past six months. The most visible expressions of this came in June when we celebrated Pride Month and recognized the importance and contribution of our women in engineering roles. We continue to support our people and their families in Ukraine, who I am pleased to tell you remain safe and well. In addition, our people around the world united in their generous support for our match funding appeal in aid of the wider humanitarian crisis. Turning next to customers and technology and the strategic progress made by our Minerals division. As I've said, growing our installed base today gives us long-term aftermarket revenues in the future. In the first half, we've seen really strong demand for our mill circuit solutions and particularly our large slurry pumps. For example, we secured a new order for a number of our largest Warman mill circuit pumps for a greenfield project in Argentina. Once operational, this will be the largest installed base of these pumps anywhere in the world. Each pump will generate around 100% of its original value in spare parts sales every year. Critical to supporting our installed base is continued investment in our service center network, and in the first half, we opened a new center in Kazakhstan, and we also committed to build a new facility at Port Hedland in Australia, which will deliver the GBP 15 million annual aftermarket contract for Iron Bridge due to start next year. Other commitments include a new center in the Tashkent region of Uzbekistan, which will support the GBP 14 million Mill circuit OE order booked in the first half. We also continue to see success with our integrated solutions, particularly as miners are running flat out and want to increase their throughput. That was the case at Capstone, Pinto Valley Copper Mine in Arizona, where we've created an integrated solution to improve slurry flow through the mill circuit. Operating within the constraints of the existing footprint, our team redesigned the sumps and fitted Warman MCR feeder pumps. By looking at the process as a whole rather than individual components, the team increased the throughput and efficiency of the process. On technology, we continue to enhance our digital offer. We've announced new partnerships with XMPro and AVEVA that enable us to extend the capability of our proprietary Synertrex platform. This will benefit customers, giving them data and insight to support real-time decision-making on the mine. We've also continued to invest in our portfolio for comminution, one of the most energy-intensive processes in the mine. We've upgraded and extended our range of small and medium-sized Enduron screens, making them more efficient and improving productivity relative to other solutions. Moving on to ESCO, where we've secured some great orders across our core product range. In ground engaging tools, we continue to gain share with our market-leading Nemisys systems and delivered positive net conversions. We're also winning share with our mining attachments as customers increasingly see the value of an engineered solution to improve dig efficiency while also reducing energy consumption. We're leveraging this to promote our Motion Metrics offer, which adds data-driven insights to our solutions. The first half saw us win an order for the first ever Motion Metrics ecosystem from one of the world's largest gold miners and a key ESCO customer. Our solution packaged a number of Motion Metrics proprietary products. The system provides GET tooth loss detection, fragmentation measurement, and boulder detection across the load, haul, and dump process. It gives the customer real-time data insights, allowing them to remove oversized material or foreign bodies from the ore before it reaches the crusher and disrupts the process. The solution will increase productivity and reduce cost with an estimated investment payback for the customer of just one year. This really demonstrates the potential we have to grow Motion Metrics as part of ESCO. We were also pleased to acquire Carriere Industrial Supply, building on our long-standing distribution relationship. As well as delivering on ESCO's strategy to have direct channels to markets in all major mining regions, the acquisition brings expertise in mining attachments and excellent underground capability, which we can leverage across the ESCO network. Turning next to performance, and in particular sustainability, where we have set more ambitious absolute emissions reduction targets to cut Scope I and Scope II emissions by 30% and Scope III emissions by 15% by 2030. We've submitted these to SBTi for validation, and we expect to hear back on that in the fourth quarter of this year. How are these new targets more ambitious? Well, firstly, we've switched from an intensity target to an absolute emissions reduction target, which will drive deeper cuts in Scope I and Scope II. Secondly, in making our Scope III commitment, we are adding absolute targets for emissions in our downstream value chain for the very first time. The Scope III target is especially exciting as 97% of our emissions profile is due to emissions from our products in use over their lifetime by our customers. This is where we can make a big impact through technology. Be it our technologies that optimize mining processes today, or our transforming technologies that deliver step change improvements in environmental impact, such as our HPGRs. Of course, these technologies need to go hand in hand with a shift to low carbon energy in mining, so it's imperative that we partner with customers and others across the industry to drive the broader energy transition. I'm proud that our new targets will make a significant contribution to decarbonizing the mining industry. Putting this into context, delivering our new targets would mean that in 2030, we'd achieve an annual reduction of around 4.2 million tons of CO₂ emissions, and that's the same as the annual CO₂ emissions of almost 1 million petrol cars today. Staying with performance, I'm delighted to be unveiling our new business process transformation program. The three divisions we had in 2016 when I became CEO were very distinct from each other. They had different end market cycles, different customers, and different manufacturing processes, and as a result, there were few opportunities for optimization. We've now reached an inflection point where we can drive more value from the business we have today, given our enhanced strategic focus and compelling opportunity for growth. As I described earlier, this provides an additional lever to accelerate our growth through optimizing the structure of our operations and driving synergy across our processes. Our new program will achieve that, focusing on three main areas. Firstly, driving lean philosophy across our end-to-end value chains. Secondly, maximizing the use of global business services. Third, leveraging the recent investments we've made in foundational systems such as Workday and SAP. The program will give us a scalable and efficient platform that will underpin our future growth. We expect the annual cost savings delivered by the program to be GBP 30 million, and these will be realized over the next three calendar years. The early benefits will underpin our 2023 operating margin target of 17% and will support operating margin expansion beyond 17% in subsequent years. Pulling everything together, I want to reaffirm our confidence in delivering the following medium-term goals. First, growing revenues ahead of our markets through the technology-led strategy and our business growth initiatives. Second, expanding group operating margins to 17% in 2023 through operational leverage, the elimination of recent one-off effects, and underpinned by the initial benefits of the transformation program. That program will also support margin expansion above 17% beyond 2023. Third, achieving 90%-100% operating cash conversion in 2024 and beyond. Finally, continuing to fulfill our sustainability commitments, including the more ambitious emissions targets announced last week. We'll deliver this while continuing to invest in our people and technology to support our strategic ambitions. Before I turn to the outlook in the context of the current macro environment, I did want to take a minute to reiterate the foundational strength and resilience of our business. Our Minerals aftermarket, which is what generates the vast majority of the division's profit and cash, and which has the highest aftermarket contribution of all its peers, has grown through multiple cycles in the last 12 years. In that period, we've seen the end of the mining super cycle, the shift from volume to value as miners cut CapEx, the return to growth as the global economy strengthened and new supply was commissioned, and of course, the recent impact from the COVID pandemic. Throughout these 12 years, the business has been highly resilient, growing through each cycle, delivering a CAGR of 7%. Part of that growth has come from an expanding install base, as even in a lower CapEx environment, customers want our integrated and sustainable solutions to help improve efficiency and increase production from existing assets. This is what underpins the margin resilience of the Minerals business, and since acquisition, ESCO has demonstrated exactly the same characteristics. Finally, let me comment on what we're seeing in the market and the outlook for the balance of the year. Current market conditions are positive, and we continue to see high activity levels in mining. Commodity prices are well above incentive levels, and for the vast majority of the world's copper, gold, and iron ore mines, they are also well above miners' cost to produce. This is illustrated in the graph on the right-hand side of the slide. These conditions support strong demand for our mining spare parts and expendables and our debottlenecking and brownfield solutions as customers seek to maximize production from existing assets. Our pipeline of large projects continues to grow, supported by long-term demand for future-facing commodities, albeit, as you know, timing of conversion can be lumpy. Onto the second half of the year. We've had a good July as the order momentum we saw build through the first half has continued, and we remain successful in navigating complexities in the operating environment. We go into the second half of the year with a fantastic order book and great momentum. In the round, we continue to expect to deliver strong constant currency, revenue and profit growth with operating profit towards the upper end of the range of analysts' expectations. We also expect to show good progress towards our medium-term margin and cash targets. Before we move to questions, let me quickly summarize the key messages from this presentation. We are a premium, highly resilient mining technology business. Through innovative engineering, we have a compelling opportunity to make mining smarter, more efficient, and sustainable. Long-term trends from technology-led transition to net zero mining are in our favor, and we have a clear strategy to deliver profitable growth ahead of our markets while delivering sustainable margin improvement. That's why I'm excited about the prospects of our business for the rest of this year and beyond. Thank you. John and I will now be pleased to take any questions that you have. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, please press star followed by one. As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. The first question today comes from the line of Will Turner from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Hi, good morning, both. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on your guidance. Obviously, you know, had a strong first half relative to where market expectations are, and then your guidance is also implying quite significant upgrades to the second half market consensus. I was just wondering, how are you thinking about the kind of weakening macro data which many commentators have been highlighting in recent months? And in particular, in your guidance, are you factoring in any potential slowdown for ESCO, which is obviously the more cyclical and the more non-mining exposed of your businesses? Yeah. Morning, Will. Thank you for the question. Yeah, we're obviously very conscious of the macro environment, the inflationary environment, and the fears around recession. You know, I'd repeat what was in the statement insofar as we see very high levels of activity across our mining markets. You know, through July, the momentum has continued. We're not seeing any signs of slowdown. Commodity prices are significantly above our production costs and indeed long-term incentive levels, particularly for the commodities that we're exposed to. The miners are, you know, generalizing, but very, very active at the moment in terms of continuing to increase production against some challenges that they have, particularly as commodity prices have softened a little bit. You know, production is the lever that they have. That's translating into, you know, with the equipment being running harder, it's translating into lower grades being mined now relative to maybe what was mined during the COVID period. The general grade decline continues. On top of that, you know, we're seeing the benefits of some of our installed base coming through. You know, lots of favorable things in the mining world, and we don't see any change to that given where commodity prices are today and the activity levels that our customers are talking about. You know, we feel good about the balance of the year from a mining perspective. As we flagged in the statement, the one area of softness, and we've seen this already, you know, is in infrastructure in Europe. That is, you know, clearly a relatively small part of our business. We've already seen the effects of that in ESCO through the first half of the year. In effect, that is already net in our numbers, and we don't see that improving. Across the rest of the portfolio, we feel very good about the activity levels at the moment. Okay. You're not seeing any slowdown in the U.S.. No. You know, there could be a potential slowdown toward the end of the year. No. Another question I had on inventory. It's obviously a bit of a headwind. You're clear in the sense that you expect this to reverse at least partially in the second half. What gives you confidence that the inventories will reverse, and you'll be able to deliver some of the work in progress and build it there? Thanks, Will, I'll take that part of your question. As you saw, with an inventory build, you know, circa GBP 100 million in the first half of the year, obviously part of that was order book related with the strength in orders. You know, that's inventory that we just need to carry to allow us to deliver on our obligations over the second half of the year. However, there were another couple of key drivers in there. One, supply chain disruption, so especially in respect of our Minerals OE projects, where, you know, we have to buy some components like bearings or motors, and to support those projects. They may be relatively low value items, but if they are delayed coming in, then all of the inventory related to that project sticks with us. That includes the high value, well, that's HPGRs or pumps or screens that we've produced ourselves. That's one driver of the higher inventory, the other one being freight. Freight logistics, especially coming out of China, remained complex, especially through Q1. As we think about that GBP 100 million build, I would say roughly, half of that relates to those two specific items in respect of supply chain and freight. As you can imagine, we've been through in great detail the projects that those relate to. We can see visibility on how freight lines are easing up, and therefore we've got really high confidence in that half of the inventory build unwinding over the second half of the year. On the bit related to the order book, obviously we will continue to drive efficiencies in our inventory, as best we can, but to some extent, you know, that will be what it will be. However, in the round, you know, we're confident in the majority of that first half build unwinding over the second half of the year, and that will support the free operating cash conversion in our target range of 80%-90% and of course, support leverage moving down towards the top of our 0.5-1.5 range. Great. That's very clear. Thanks for that further color on the leverage. My final question is, how is Motion Metrics performing? Obviously, it was a relatively expensive acquisition. But are you already seeing any meaningful synergies? And did it have a role in the kind of better-than-expected performance of ESCO in the most recent quarter? Yeah. Absolutely delighted with how Motion Metrics has been integrated into the Weir family and making sure we managed through the cultural aspects of that integration, but I'm delighted with how that's gone. You know, the team is happy as part of the Weir family, which is great to see. I think in terms of how it's performed in the first half, you know, slightly ahead of expectations, which is great. We've had tremendous interest and pull from our customer base for the core offering. As I mentioned in the speech, you know, we're already starting to sort of pilot the broader opportunity with Motion Metrics across all of the mine, working in conjunction with both ESCO and the Minerals division. Very, very happy with how it's going. The pipeline is building very strongly. I'm very excited about, you know, the potential for us to bring data and insights through the Motion Metrics artificial intelligence across our broader value proposition for our customers. That'd be great. Thank you both. Thank you. The next question today comes from the line of Mark Davies Jones from Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Thank you. Good morning, both Johns. If I can go back to the first question that Will asked really about the outlook. Clearly the bullish picture you're giving is somewhat a contrast with fears of recession and some relatively downbeat commentary from some of the big miners recently, and commodity prices coming back a bit. Absolutely understand the resilience of the aftermarket side of your business and that that's the majority of it. But on the OE piece, do you think that might slow down for you after a stronger period? To go back to your picture of the longer term outlook, I see the demand for these core Minerals for the energy transition, but is the willingness to make those greenfield investments there? You talk about social license, but there's also sort of shareholder license behind that, but there seems to be still reluctance to make those commitments to deliver that increased growth. Is that a concern? You know, on the one hand it is, yeah. From a personal perspective, it's quite perplexing and I think, you know, as I've been saying for a while, you know, the elephant in the net zero room is that if we want all of these electric vehicles and heat pumps and everything else, then we need a hell of a lot more copper and nickel and lithium and all of these metals, you know, the future facing enabling metals to do that. So the fact that, you know, the new supply, you know, is not coming on rapidly and decisions seem to be taking longer to work through the system, you know, from a personal perspective, I find that quite perplexing. From a Weir point of view, of course, you know, we're somewhat agnostic because if we do see a surge in CapEx and new brownfield and greenfield expansions come through, then that's fantastic. We'll take advantage of that. That will allow us to have a significant step up in our installed base. But if it remains, you know, sort of in the current sort of stuck in the mud sort of situation that we're in just now, then of course what that means is that our customers will intensify their efforts to increase production from existing mines and do more of the debottlenecking, more of the brownfield smaller expansions, which has characterized our OE over the last year or two. Of course, as you know, it's really our sweet spot. I mean, given our footprint, our boots on the ground, in the mines, and our ability to work closely with customers to understand and unlock some of the production and productivity issues that they have on existing mines. I think from a Weir perspective, we sort of win either way. I mean, I'd prefer more expansion to be coming through because that's, you know, what we need for the health of the planet. It is a bit locked up at the moment, I will admit. Okay. Thank you. On the business process transformation program, just to clarify, GBP 30 million of savings. Did you say the cost of that is GBP 45 million? Pretty substantial investments. Is that around investing in technology or is there some restructuring and headcount to come out of that process? Yeah. I mean, stepping back, I think as we've worked through the challenges of the last 12 months with, you know, COVID, our cyberattack, you know, the logistics challenges of recent times, it feels like those things are, you know, now in the rearview mirror or heading in that direction for us and we have much, you know, a very, very clear line of sight in relation to our 17% margin target for 2023. We felt it was the right time now, thinking about the value creation opportunity beyond that, to actually be quite forthright in terms of how we're gonna get there. We've talked about in the round some of the things in the past around leveraging systems and shared services. We think there is a broader opportunity to not only do those things on a more accelerated timetable in terms of driving towards global business services, for example, across our functions, leveraging the investments that we've made in IT. There's also a broader operational opportunity as well. A couple of, you know, highlights of that, for example, you know, our regions grow at different rates. We need to continue to optimize the service center footprint, for example. In ESCO, three of our five foundries are now, you know, really humming and at the kind of pace and cost per ton that we were looking for. We've still got work to do in a couple of the other foundries. Then in Minerals, you know, I think we've done, and the team has done a great job on the integrated solution strategy to drive growth. I think as I look at the fulfillment behind that strategy, we've created some complexity and there is now an opportunity to really think about how we lean out the global value streams, value chains, you know, that will enable that and allow us to become leaner and more efficient. You know, of course, against the backdrop of the recessionary environment that you talk about or the macro concerns, you know, it's no weakness to say we're gonna have a look at ourselves and make sure that, you know, we're lean and trim across the cost base, and ready to face whatever lies ahead. Excellent. Can you give us any indication of the phasing of the cost of the program? We expect to see some of the GBP 45 million to come through towards the back end of this year and then sort of balanced over the remaining three years as we seek to deliver the upside opportunity in the margins. I should say that, you know, the fact that we will incur those costs does not mean that we are backing away from our cash conversion targets over the next three years. We expect to take the cash cost of the work that we will do and still deliver on the cash conversion targets that we've set out. Thank you very much. Thanks, Mark. Thank you. The next question today comes from the line of Klas Bergelind from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Yes. Hi, thank you. Hi, Jon and John, Klas Bergelind at Citi. Just want to come back to the cash conversion target, which now looks even more back-end loaded than I thought. I mean, half of this, you say, seems to be linked to bottlenecks with shipments held back because of components missing and so forth. Did you say that you have seen bottlenecks easing? Because that's a quite big assumption that quickly can change. I mean, some people would say that the China lockdown impact might still filter through to global supply chains. Also on operating profit, the up to GBP 20 million impact from Russia, this could also weigh on the conversion here. Can you just confirm that you haven't seen much of the GBP 20 million yet? Thank you. I'll stop there. Yeah. Thanks, Klas. In terms of the cash conversion and supply chains, yeah, I mean, we are seeing things or we did see things easing through the back end of the second quarter and continuing into the start of the third. Of course, things aren't perfect, but, you know, we've adjusted our lead times in terms of when we're ordering. We adjusted how we're procuring freight, et cetera. While the environment is by no means perfect, what we have had is, you know, a period of time to slightly adjust how we operate and how we adjust our lead times for ordering, et cetera. That's starting to now flow through in terms of how predictable and reliable components are coming into us. Yeah, I would just reaffirm my response to Will's question, which is, you know, we've done a lot of work in analyzing out the status of those components, where they are in the supply chain, whether they're on the water, whether they're still with suppliers, and we've got high confidence that around half of the inventory build has a clear path to unwinding over the second part of the year. In terms of the GBP 20 million Russia impact, you know, that's something that we guided to earlier in the year in respect of sort of forward-looking. You remember last year we had some pretty big orders coming in from Russia, and therefore the step up that we came into the year anticipating in terms of revenue and profits from Russia was quite significant, and that's what the GBP 20 million represented. Clearly that's now been reflected in prior guidance. I think, you know, everyone is, in terms of, the market's understanding of that. Therefore, you know, I don't think that there is any ongoing impact of that GBP 20 million to factor in in terms of H1, H2 bias. I think that's all factored into things as we've presented today. Okay. I'm sorry, Klas. The only just point I would add on Russia while we're talking about it is in respect of the wind down of our business there, which is ongoing. Of course, there's a degree of complexity to that as we think about, you know, being responsible to all stakeholders, including our employees in Russia. As I clarified earlier in the year, our net assets in Russia, which principally represents working capital, is about 2% of the group total. As we wind down the business, there still remains the likelihood that there will be an exceptional write down of some of that working capital in the second half of the year. As I said in my speech, you know, we see that as a worst case, the 2% of net assets, which is up to GBP 30 million. Of course, given it's working capital, the majority of that would be non-cash. Yeah. No, I mean, obviously Russia is a bit of a look through element given that demand is strong elsewhere, but I just wanted to clarify that second half likely impact. Thank you. My final, my second and final one is on the order pipeline and in the context of the volatile commodities we see out there. We obviously feel well about the cost curves. It perhaps looks more ugly than hitting profitability at the miners at the moment. Just one question on both topics we have heard of a weaker outlook. Have you guys seen any difference between the different commodities anywhere, or is it just, you know, even solid across copper, gold and so forth? Yeah, yeah. No, it is. I mean, the reality is that, you know, in the current environment, we're seeing strength across all of our regions, we're seeing strength across our commodities. You know, and if you look at the OE order input that we've had this year, we haven't had many big projects. I mean, we've had a few, new sort of large mill circuit pump installations as I've talked about in my speech. But our OE is characterized by a lot of brownfield optimization, debottlenecking work, and the pipeline is full of a lot of that. It's, you know, very, very active. You know, go back to my earlier comment as commodity prices come down, then our customers, the lever they've got is more production to protect profitability, and that they're driving that really, really hard at the moment. That's reflected in the OE order strength that we saw in the second quarter, and it's reflected in the OE pipeline that we have over the balance of the year. Yeah, it is, you know, there is still a paucity of big OE projects in our pipeline, but it is chock-full of, you know, smaller debottlenecking type projects, which again, our sweet spot. Thank you. Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask another question, please do press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Okay, our next question today comes from Vladimir Sergievskiy from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Gentlemen, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. A few of them actually. First of all, very strong orders in the aftermarket and still very high book-to-bill as well. Presumed that aftermarket orders are growing well above growth of the underlying installed base that you have. Could you talk about sustainability of those growth rates, and if you are seeing any support to orders from potential pre-ordering from your client base, which is still obviously very cash rich? That's the first one. Yeah. I mean, I can break down if you think about our orders for the first half of the year, the constant currency increase was 23%. Within that, we saw, as we flagged in Q1, a small element of pre-buy. The effect for the first half is probably low single digit, couple of percentage points. We obviously have pricing, as we outlined. You know, we saw strong pricing power and therefore offset our inflationary cost inputs. That's probably mid-single digit of those underlying orders. There's GBP 1 billion for acquisitions with Motion Metrics and Carriere. The underlying volume growth in our aftermarket when you strip all of that out is mid-teens percentage points, which obviously is very robust. As I said earlier, that is driven by activity levels. It's driven by, you know, all commodities remaining above incentive levels. It's driven by our customers, you know, working very, very hard to increase production, and even in a relatively flat production environment, having to process more rock to deliver the same amount of commodity. There was high grading through COVID. You know, generalizing, not everywhere, but high grading through COVID, which is now unwinding. We're seeing the benefits of installed base growth, and we're seeing the continuing ongoing benefits of lower grades. As we sit here today, we don't see those things changing. You know, as long as commodity prices stay, you know, where they are, then it's going to be a very buoyant, you know, and high level of activity kind of market for us. That's great. If I also can ask about the revenue cadence or revenue sequential growth between Q1 and Q2. I think you saw more than 20% growth, and that's a lot higher than any other mining equipment companies actually delivered. Any specific reasons for the strong sequential growth between Q1 and Q2? Yeah, I think, you know, the underlying growth was robust. You know, in Minerals, as we've highlighted in the past, we do receive, you know, an annualized order in the second quarter, which means that the second quarter is always the strongest quarter for Minerals. I mean, you know, if you look back over history, you can see always a sequential step up from Q1 to Q2 in Minerals as a result of that, annual order being booked in the aftermarket. In ESCO, you'll see that there was a sequential step down in orders from Q1 to Q2. Underlying was robust. That's really driven by the pre-buy that ESCO saw in the first quarter. It's driven by the fact that a couple of ESCO's customers were in shutdown through the second quarter, so we didn't get the orders coming through there. As we acquired Carriere, we wound down the inventory in that business. You know, formerly they were a dealer and we didn't, so we didn't get orders from them. Those were the factors which drove the step down in ESCO, which net-net is in the overall sequential growth. I would reiterate what I said about what is driving the underlying activity in mining across both businesses, in the answer to your first question, and that's what we expect to continue to see over the balance of the year. Perfect. My last one is related to net debt developments. Was this increase in line with your original expectation? Then maybe a very housekeeping clarification. You mentioned 2x net debt to EBITDA leverage on lender covenants. When I do mechanically versus your twelve-month reported trailing EBITDA, it looks more towards 2.5. Where the difference comes from and your target leverage between 0.5 and 1.5. Is it the target for lender covenant or is it the target of mechanical calculation of leverage on reported numbers? Yeah, I'll take that, Vlad. In terms of where we stood at the half year, then obviously, you know, orders were a bit stronger and as I've described then that fed to the increase in inventory to support the order book. Of course, inventory was a bit higher than we might have expected at the start of the year. For the reasons that, you know, I'm sure you know as well as us, that's commonplace and the macro backdrop is driving that. Yeah, a little bit higher than we'd anticipated, but as I've said, absolutely no change to our outlook for the full year in terms of cash conversion. That 80%-90% is something that we retain as our outlook for the year and as again, I've described in a couple of questions so far, we've got a very clear visibility to how we see that unfolding. In terms of the leverage and the 0.5-1.5, that is on a lender covenant basis. That's how we've consistently talked about leverage over a long number of years. You know, that's on a trailing twelve months basis, net debt, excluding leases, IFRS 16 leases to EBITDA. Again, that's been consistent over a long number of years, and that is on a average exchange rate basis, such that you don't get the ratio being confused comparing average rates, which is what our income statement is translated, and therefore results in our EBITDA to our balance sheet net debt number, which is at a closing rate. You need to look at them on a consistent currency basis, which again, is how it's always been done. The range of 0.5-1.5, you know, that's where we said we always said up to 2 x for M&A. That's why we're sat at around 2 x just now, because we've just done the acquisitions of Motion Metrics and Carriere. As I said, the cash conversion for this year will support us getting down towards the top end of the 0.5-1.5 range by year end. Sounds good. Thank you very much. Thank you. There are no additional questions waiting at this time, so I'd like to pass it back to the management team for closing remarks. Well, thank you everybody for your participation in the call this morning and for those questions. We very much appreciate that. Obviously we're available over the course of today through Ed in IR if you have any follow-up questions. Take care.