"total_tokens": 128448, "prompt_tokens": 124119, "candidates_tokens": 4329 } Joe: Good morning and welcome to Ibstock's 2026 half-year results presentation. I'm joined today by Simon Bedford, our interim CFO, and I'd like to thank Simon for his support and leadership during his time as interim CFO.

As previously announced, Will Wilkins has also joined Ibstock as CFO earlier this week and is with us here today in the front row. You'll have the opportunity to meet Will after the presentation today.

Before I begin, it's also worth recognizing that we've been proudly marking 200 years of the original site at Ibstock, and few industrial businesses can trace their roots back over two centuries, and we're really proud of that. With that, let's turn to the agenda.

I'll share an overview of the first half of the year and how we're navigating what remains a very challenging market. Simon will then take us through the financials in more detail, including the divisional results, cash flow, and balance sheet.

I'll then come back to update you on market dynamics and on the progress across our five strategic levers, and I'll then summarize our outlook for the remainder of the year before we move on to Q&A. Turning first to the overview.

We entered into the year with the expectation that there would be some growth in the market. However, poor weather and macroeconomic events led to more volatile conditions and subdued market demand across our key end markets.

Against this backdrop, the business has delivered a solid performance in line with our expectations. Some key messages to point out: The clay business delivered a resilient performance in the period.

UK domestic brick deliveries for the first five months were down around 8% year-on-year, and our comparable sales volumes were down around 7%, meaning we gained domestic clay market share in the period. While our concrete business has also been impacted by the challenging backdrop, most of our categories have outperformed the market.

We've acted decisively to manage capacity, production volumes, and inventory, and we continue to align output to demand, manage inventory carefully, and maintain discipline on overhead and costs. In parallel, our teams have continued to make strong progress across the five strategic levers that underpin our medium-term value creation plan, and I'll go into more detail on that later.

Despite not anticipating any meaningful market improvement, we expect to achieve a stronger adjusted EBITDA in H2 than in H1, supported by customer order intake, an anticipated stronger performance from our concrete and futures businesses, and normal seasonal weighting towards the second half. With near-term conditions expected to remain challenging, the full-year outturn is anticipated to be around the lower end of current market expectations.

Finally, while the timing of recovery remains uncertain, Ibstock is well placed to deliver growth and value creation as market conditions improve. We have a market-leading position, a more efficient asset base, major capital projects largely complete, further optionality to generate cash from our land and clay reserves.

With that overview, let me hand you over to Simon to take you through the financials.

Thanks Joe, and good morning everybody. I will now take you through the financial performance for the first half.

As Joe said, the market backdrop remained challenging, but the business has performed in line with our expectations with focused execution across pricing, cost, capacity, inventory, and cash management. Turning first to the financial summary.

Group revenue for the first half was £164.2 million compared with £193.4 million in the prior year. On a reported basis, this represents a reduction of 15%, reflecting both the market backdrop and the sale of our non-core Forticrete roofing sites at the end of 2025.

On a like-for-like basis, revenue is down around 10%. Adjusted EBITDA was £25.7 million compared with £35.5 million last year, with a reduction driven principally by lower volumes, the fixed cost absorption impact of deliberate production and inventory management actions, and continuing cost inflation.

This was partially offset by the benefit of around half the £5 million annualized cost savings from the right-sizing action taken in 2025, as well as ongoing efficiency actions. Adjusted EPS was 0.7 pence compared with 3 pence in the prior period.

Net debt to EBITDA leverage was 2.5 times on a banking covenant basis at the half year, compared with 1.9 times in June 2025. This reflects lower earnings and a small increase in net debt.

Net debt and leverage are expected to reduce in the second half as cash generation strengthens. While ROCE was disappointing in the period, we expect to return to our target ROCE of 20% as the market recovers.

The board has proposed an interim dividend of 0.5 pence per share. Moving now to cover the revenue bridge.

Group revenue reduced by £29.2 million year-on-year from £193.4 million to £164.2 million. The first quarter was particularly challenging given subdued demand and weather impacts, but we saw improving volume trends during the second quarter.

Clay revenues were 10% lower on a reported basis, with core clay revenue down 8%. That reflected lower volumes in the first half, partially offset by positive pricing.

We implemented annual price increases in February and introduced a temporary surcharge in June to help mitigate additional energy and fuel-related inflation. Concrete revenues were down 26% on a reported basis and around 11% on a like-for-like basis.

The reported decline reflects the Forticrete roofing sale, while the like-for-like movement reflects continued weakness in residential and RMI markets, partially offset by improving demand for rail and infrastructure projects, albeit from a relatively low base. Overall, the bridge reflects the reality of a difficult market, but also the actions we are taking to protect value through pricing discipline.

Turning now to clay. Clay delivered a resilient performance against a challenging backdrop, with market share gains in the period.

Total revenue was £119.9 million, down £13.6 million year-on-year. Core clay revenue excluding Futures was £118.1 million, down 8%.

Volumes were lower in the first half. However, as Joe mentioned earlier, that was better than the wider domestic market in the period up to the end of May.

Headline pricing remained marginally positive. The February price increase and the temporary fuel and energy surcharge introduced in June helped to offset part of the cost inflation in the period.

In terms of mix, we continued to see stronger performance in new build housing and wirecut bricks, while demand for soft mud bricks remained more subdued, particularly in RMI in the South East and London markets. Adjusted EBITDA for clay was £23.4 million compared with £32.8 million last year, with our margin reducing to 19.5%.

The reduction reflected lower volumes and the temporary fixed cost absorption headwind from our deliberate management of capacity, production, and inventory levels. Those actions reduced EBITDA by approximately £5 million to £6 million in the period, but they are the right actions to align output with demand and manage cash.

Within clay, the Ibstock Futures cost base increased as Nostell ramps up, with net costs of £2.5 million compared with £1.5 million in the prior year. As Joe will cover later, customer engagement around Nostell is encouraging, and we remained confident in the long-term opportunity.

Turning to concrete. Concrete revenue is £44.3 million, down 26% on a reported basis and 11% on a like-for-like basis.

The reported movement reflects the impact of the Forticrete roofing sale in Q4 2025. The market backdrop remained challenging across private residential and RMI, with flooring products particularly affected by the subdued activity.

However, infrastructure demand provided some support, with rail-related sales improving during the period and most other concrete categories declining less than the market. Adjusted EBITDA was £3.7 million compared with £6 million last year, reflecting lower volumes and continued weakness across key end markets.

EBITDA margin was 8.3%, down on the prior year. During the period, we saw continued strategic investment in selected manufacturing sites.

That temporarily reduced production capacity as lines were taken offline for upgrades, but it positions the division to deliver operational and efficiency benefits in the second half and beyond. While the near-term market remains difficult, we continue to see medium-term opportunities in concrete, particularly as rail and infrastructure activity improves and as our investment in selected sites begins to deliver benefits.

Moving now to cash flow. Adjusted free cash flow was an outflow of £22.3 million compared with an outflow of £9.6 million last year.

The principal driver was the reduction in adjusted EBITDA, together with seasonal working capital movements. Working capital was an outflow £17.2 million compared with £12.4 million in the prior period.

The outflow reflects the normal seasonal pattern. Inventory levels did increase modestly against the comparative period, as trading volumes were softer than expected.

CapEx reduced to £15.2 million compared with £20.9 million last year. Of this, around £4 million relates to organic growth investment and £11 million relates to sustaining CapEx and improvement projects.

The important point is that our major organic growth programs are largely complete. As a result, we'd expect an acceleration in free cash flow generation as CapEx normalizes and as trading conditions improve.

Turning to the balance sheet. Net debt at the 30th of June was 153 £151.3 million.

This was in line with expectations and reflects the normal seasonal increase in working capital, lower earnings in the first half, and the broader trading backdrop. Leverage was 2.5 times at the half year, compared with 1.9 times at June 2025.

We expect net debt and leverage to reduce in the second half, supported by stronger cash generation, with leverage moving towards 2 times by the end of 2026. We continue to manage cash carefully, with a clear focus on liquidity, cash generation, and maintaining financial flexibility through the cycle.

For those looking for the technical guidance for 2026, this is included in the appendix section. With that, I will hand back to Joe to cover our market drivers and strategic progress.

Thanks, Simon. At the full-year presentation in March, we set out five strategic levers that will help us to drive shareholder value over the medium term.

These are market leadership, growth in new market sectors, product innovation, efficiencies, and strategic options. We've made some good progress across each of the five strategic levers in the first half of 2026, and this is strengthening the business today, as well as building additional sources of value and diversification for the medium term.

Before sharing progress across the levers, let's start with an update on the market. If we turn to the core markets, you can see from the chart that there's been a big swing in industry forecasts related to housing starts and completions.

For us, housing starts are a key indicator, and the CPA have moved from forecasting an 8% growth in 2026 in their winter forecast to a 9% decline now in their summer forecast. There's a similar picture for heavy side RMI, but a more encouraging picture for infrastructure output, which is showing low single-figure digit growth.

The macro environment is not helping, with the evolving situation in the Middle East and the UK changing political landscape affecting consumer confidence. Housebuilders are experiencing build cost inflation and margin challenges, and it's difficult to see this changing meaningfully in the short term without some sort of targeted intervention from the government, such as a support for first-time buyers.

The longer-term fundamentals are still positive. The UK continues to face a significant housing shortage.

We have also an aging housing stock that requires ongoing investment and renewal. Planning reforms and recent announcements about building council housing are very interesting, but this will all take time, and we need to a short-term action to improve the pace of recovery.

While we remain cautious about the near term, we continue to believe the medium-term opportunity is significant. Turning to the brick market.

Clearly, there's a strong correlation with the housing and RMI markets and brick dispatches. Domestic brick deliveries for the first five months of the year were down around 8% year-on-year.

As I've mentioned, Ibstock's clay volumes were down around 7% for the same period. Imported products were stable at around 19% of the overall market.

At the same time, there's been discipline on production in and inventory. UK manufacturing inventory levels were broadly in line with December 2025, reflecting the actions we and others have taken to align output with demand rather than allowing stock to build.

Looking at our own clay capacity. As stated, we've reduced our production in H1, and our plan for the year will continue to align production with market demand.

Managing production and stock to recent volatile market conditions is a challenge, and we need to balance the short term with the need to supply a market that must see some recovery in the mid term. At this stage, we expect to see some improvement in volumes from H1 to H2.

Should that not happen, we will flex our production down further. As Simon explained, this would create a margin headwind in the short term, but would be the right approach for cash discipline and longer-term value.

Let's turn to our first strategic lever: market leadership. With more than 200 years of trusted knowledge and expertise, the breadth of our offering, the strength of our customer relationships, our national footprint, and technical capabilities gives us a very, very strong brand position.

As customer requirements continue to shift, our expertise in product performance, durability, technical specification, and sustainability are important differentiators. While many of our customers are looking increasingly are local, increasingly larger players are looking to have national offers across a range of clay, concrete, and facade products and solutions under one unified Ibstock proposition, and we're definitely benefiting from that.

During the first half, our focused commercial strategy has gained market share, along with further deepening customer relationships, improved service, and using insights more effectively to inform future growth priorities. Turning to growth in other sectors.

I mentioned in our last market update that we see significant medium-term opportunities in the areas of social and affordable housing, mid- to high-rise buildings, along with a huge pipeline of public sector buildings and infrastructure projects. We know the government's £39 billion Affordable Homes Programme provides a strong foundation, with additional discussions on council housebuilding expected to drive further activity in the years ahead.

While we've yet to see funding fully translate into a meaningful increase in delivery, our focus on end-user relationships and housing association engagement is helping to build share and strengthen our pipeline. Several strategic relationships are tracking double-digit year-on-year growth, demonstrating the value of this more targeted approach.

Although building safety issues have constrained recent activity levels, mid- to high-rise is an important long-term opportunity, especially for facade systems. Alongside this, the remediation market remains a sizable opportunity, with thousands of buildings still needing recladding.

The third area is public sector investment. The government has committed to £718 billion to infrastructure and public sector buildings over the next decade across areas including education, healthcare, and justice.

This chart shows the anticipated spending splits, and we are increasingly targeting these markets. You can see on this next slide an example of our proposition within the education sector.

The range of Ibstock products that align to the Department for Education's construction framework is very broad and is enabling earlier engagement with customers. As a result, we've seen strong engagement from notable tier one contractors with millions of pounds of pipeline opportunities.

As with the education example, we also see similar opportunities in health, social care, and the recently announced defense infrastructure spend. The third strategic lever is product innovation.

Innovation remains central to our growth strategy. It helps differentiate Ibstock, supports the evolving needs of our customers, and opens new routes to market.

Revenue from new and more sustainable products now represents around 25% of our group revenue. Looking at the first half of 2026: Within clay, Atlas is now making 12 products, including the first from our carbon-neutral range.

That's an important milestone, combining efficient production with enhanced product capability. Atlas will continue to benefit from investment in hydrogen, subject to the forthcoming HAR2 government funding round.

In concrete, we brought to market the Anderton Gen 3 cable trough in June with Network Rail approval. This product is designed to significantly improve installation efficiency and support the demands of critical rail infrastructure projects.

Across our facades range, the new Nostell facility is creating a strong platform for growth, with good customer engagement and specification activities. Taking a closer look at Nostell.

This site will deliver some truly differentiated ceramic products and manufacturing capabilities, unlike anything else in the UK. Factory acceptance testing is now completing, and we've seen a strong customer response in both the new Ibstock and Fastwall ranges.

Orders for the core ranges are already in the low millions, with inquiries in the specification pipeline in the tens of millions. Fastwall has also already received industry recognition as housebuilding's best new product of the year.

We look forward to hosting investors at Nostell, showcasing its capability first hand, and this is currently planned for early October. Get your tickets.

Our fourth lever is in driving efficiencies, and this is focused on three main areas. Firstly, our manufacturing estate.

Over the last 8 years, we've invested over £300 million to modernize our network. That investment has created a safer, more automated, efficient, and more sustainable asset base, which will return significantly as our utilization levels improve.

As Simon mentioned, we've completed improvement projects on our concrete flooring, walling, masonry, and lift shaft factories. We expect to see improving performance as some of these investments ramp up from H2 and into the future.

We've also used the current market conditions to extend shutdowns in targeted clay factories and invest in high-return upgrade projects. An example of this is one of our largest wirecut factories in Nottingham, where we're now seeing higher output and energy savings of between 15% and 20%.

We've also launched an operational excellence program, which will deliver long-term efficiencies and cost reductions across all locations. This has now started with key pilot sites and will extend more widely into 2027.

The third focus extends beyond manufacturing. We continue to drive efficiency through process simplification, systems improvement, and digital enablement.

During the first half, this included the implementation of a new customer relationship management platform, alongside a number of initiatives using AI tools designed to improve the effectiveness across the group. The last area I'll touch on is further strategic optionality centered on our land and clay reserves.

Just to provide a sense of scale, today we manage over 2,700 acres of land across the UK, spanning our factory estate, clay quarries, where we have unrivaled clay reserves, as well as a much wider natural estate. We see increasing value being realized through several complementary routes.

Firstly, the commercialization of calcined clay. Secondly, a program of land development and sales.

Thirdly, land-based income streams. Looking at these three routes, starting with calcined clay.

Calcined clay is growing to become a key area for cementitious materials, and Ibstock has invested to develop a major project of scale in the UK. This is an important foundation in decarbonizing the construction industry, using a lower carbon, lower cost cementitious replacement material.

During the first half of the year, we've concluded further geotechnical work and investment to maximize the potential of the asset. We also continued to progress commercialization during the period.

With an exclusivity period with one counterparty now ending, discussions may broaden to include alternative partnership opportunities as we seek to maximize long-term value from this strategic asset. We will continue to update the market on this initiative given the current live conversations taking place.

Moving to look at land sales. Again, further work has strengthened our view of the opportunity, and we now expect our well-established land development and sales program to deliver from a previously expected £25 million to £30 million to around £50 million over the next five years.

The final area is in our land-based income streams. Today we already generate around £2 million of annual income through inert landfill and energy.

However, we see growing opportunities to create additional value with increased restoration and biodiversity net gain, and believe this could more than double. A good example demonstrating this opportunity is our former Dalton quarry in Lancashire, which is being transformed into a biodiversity habitat bank, generating around £1 million per year.

We see the potential for possibly two or three more of these, as well as the need for increased inert landfill projects. Taken together, these opportunities demonstrate the breadth and quality of the asset base and the optionality it provides for long-term value creation.

Bringing that all together. We continue to take all the necessary actions to manage the near term whilst keeping the long-term potential of the business intact.

Despite not anticipating any meaningful market improvement, we expect to achieve a stronger adjusted EBITDA in H2 than H1, and that's supported by our customer order intake, an anticipated stronger performance from our concrete and futures businesses, and the normal seasonal weighting towards the second half. With near-term conditions expected to remain challenging, the full-year outturn is anticipated to be around the lower end of current market expectations.

Net debt and leverage are expected to reduce towards 2 times by the end of 2026, supported by stronger cash flow generation. We expect pricing actions to broadly offset cost inflation, and we'll continue to actively manage production and inventory levels.

Our major organic growth projects are now largely complete, and that gives us a more efficient manufacturing network, a strengthened platform for growth, and greater optionality as free cash flow improves. Over the medium term, we remain confident in the fundamentals in the business.

The long-term drivers of demand remain sound. Our market position is strong, and our five strategic levers provide clear routes to value creation in addition to market recovery.

With that, Simon and I'd be very happy to take your questions. As normal, for the record, if you I'd be grateful if you could state your name and institution before asking your question.

If you're in the room, you can press the button on the microphone on your seat so people can hear. Aynsley.

Thanks. If it's working or not.

Aynsley Lammin from Investec. Just two for me, please.

When we think about your guidance for the full year, are you assuming any more kind of lack of fixed cost absorption in the second half? I think £5 million, £6 million in H1.

Is there any in H2 expected? You mentioned you might review capacity and stock.

Then the second question, just on pricing, I guess, just the way to think about that, you obviously had the price increase in February, and you're still sticking with just surcharges, and you're confident they cover the cost increases, or are you thinking about another proper price rise in kind of coming into the summer and into H2? Thanks.

I'll take pricing, and if you want to take the cost one? We've obviously implemented a price increase in February, and then given what was happening with the inflation-based, geopolitical stuff, we put one in June.

We'd expect that to flow through fully for the rest of the year. At this stage, we're not planning on any other price increases.

I think we've been really tried to work very closely with our customers. We ate the cost for some time to see what was going to happen, and then we communicated very effectively with them, and we're not looking to have any more.

Now, we'll have to wait and see what happens with the macros, but at this stage we're not planning on any further price increases.

On fixed costs, our aim is to balance sales demand with production demand. With our outlook moderating on our view of demand in the second half of the year, if I just talk bricks, we'd expect probably to produce about between 45 and 55 million less bricks in the second half of the year versus the second half of last year.

We will get, Joe was alluding to, really that fixed cost absorption headwind in the second half as well.

You will get the full view of full year of our cost improvement actions pulling through the second half as well.

Max.

Hi there. Max Hayes from Cavendish.

Thanks for the presentation. Just on imports, with the shareholding steady, what's happened so again on pricing versus domestic?

Also has there been any shift in the regional mix, or has it been fairly consistent across the UK? Thank you.

Imports have remained fairly flat, and held their share, I think. Some of the importers have been quite aggressive on price.

You would look at some of the pricing points and say is that variable cost and freight and they're just trying to get cash? That some of the markets overseas are not great as well.

We are going to need imports when the market comes back, because the UK capacity is, below the normalized market volumes, and so I think a lot of customers want to keep a bit of a foothold. Then some of the incumbents have taken more capacity off in the UK and are flexing their wider European capacity to bring things in.

I think that's the main reason for it. They're flat.

They haven't really changed in the last few years. Yeah.

I think regional splits wise, the South East and London have been really challenged in the last few years. We're starting to see some improvement, and there's a little bit more support for making the London market move, but it hasn't really meaningfully changed at this stage.

It's still a fairly similar pattern. Ed.

Hi. Ed Prest from Berenberg.

On the balance sheet, you talk about working towards two times EBITDA at the year end. How dependent is that on market recovery, and how dependent is that essentially on achieving H2 EBITDA greater than H1?

Do you have levers at your disposal that you can use to reduce debt without the market recovery coming through?

That we naturally delever in the second half of the year just by how our weighting works on trading. It is linked to our view of the market.

It doesn't include any sort of strategic action to improve the balance sheet or net debt position. It is based on trading.

We are confident in what Joe said around the indicators we've got around. It's not a massive improvement in brick volumes.

It's a small improvement on the first half. We see improvement in the concrete business, and also we see further sales in Futures, and that gives us confidence around our net debt just naturally coming down.

Particularly, the first half was particularly difficult. That gives us a view that we'll approach two times leverage.

Priyal.

Priyal Woolf here from Jefferies, thanks. I think I've just got three questions.

The first one is on clay. You talked about market share gains.

I think there was a similar message from your other main listed peer, I just wanted to check where do you think those market share gains are coming from? Second question, just on Nostell, you talked about tens of millions of revenue potentially from inquiries.

How should we phase that in our forecasts over the next couple of years? Then the last question is just in terms of the exclusivity period ending with regards to that calcined clay all those conversations, what were the main points of attrition that led to that exclusivity ending without a contract being signed?

Thanks.

Good. We've given some numbers here to show the first five months market share on clay, and I can't really comment on other businesses and what they're saying.

If they have taken share, there's not that many players in the market, someone's lost some share. It's pretty simple maths.

I think the main thing for us is really the range of products we have and the close customer connections and the strategic nature of the relationships we have deepening over time. We supply a broad diversity of the market, and that's housebuilding, RMI, and other.

I think the team's done a really good job at engaging our customers and working with them. I'm pretty confident that our brand will continue to maintain and drive share.

Nostell is really interesting. this is truly a differentiated factory, it's still building up, and the thing about specification products that link to the facade market is they've got a lead time.

Typically, a specification project, a mid- to high-rise building will be planned in, it'll be between 12 and 18 months, we are getting, and but they're already in the pipeline with architects and developers at stage one, for example. We see that and we've had inquiries come in.

The real thing for us now is to see how fast we can translate those inquiries into physical orders, which I mentioned that we've got in the low millions now, and then how quickly they get called off. There is no doubt that mid-high-rise buildings with space constraints, speed, labor shortages, really need these types of products.

We're very excited about it, and we think that the versatility of our Nostell site and the innovation We've had lots of customers visit already and they're getting very, very excited about it. This is definitely going to change the market.

It's not going to cannibalize the brick market. We still are going to have lots of traditional building going on in the UK, but we think in the mid-high-rise space and in certain sort of government infrastructure projects, this is going to be a flyer.

I think it'll ramp up over the next two years. It's not going to ramp up fully this year or next year, but we definitely see it ramping up, within three years it'll be to the business case that we've talked about before.

Look, when you have discussions and complex complicated negotiations, there's always a, it's always quite complicated. I can't go into any detail because these conversations are confidential.

We are still talking to a key counterparty, but I think given the fact that the exclusivity period is ending, and in order to maintain the maximum value creation for the longer term, I'm open to broadening those conversations to other partnership potentials. Christen?

Christen Hjorth from Deutsche Bank, managed to find the mic at the end. First question, just to sort of maybe help make it really simple for us, I think that the full-year guidance in essence is a mid-single-digit EBITDA increase versus the first half.

How should we think about the, you've sort of given the areas, but in terms of the quantitative piece, how should we think about bridging that gap? The second one, I think Joe, you mentioned for the full year, you expect price and cost to broadly offset.

I assume that's an absolute EBITDA terms the way we should think about it, rather than margin terms. Also assume that was the same for H1 as well, where price and cost broadly offset at the EBITDA line, or is there a bit of catch-up to come in H2?

Thank you.

I'll take the second one and Simon can take that the guidance one. We had some benefit in the first half from pricing, but you didn't we only put the we I said we ate some cost with the other, the inflationary-based environment.

We waited to see is this a temporary thing, is it going to change? We didn't want to rush to just put prices in straight away price increases straight away, and I think that was fair for our customers, we ate some cost.

Now that we've put it in June, you will see that cost largely offset inflation at its current levels for the second half.

In terms of guidance, if we just talk H2 '26 versus H1 '26, we see, and Joe just alluded to it really, we see some catch-up in pricing as that sort of the difference between pricing and cost is a lot more normalized in the second half there, we see that. We see some growth in clay volumes, but only low single-digit increase in clay volumes H1 to H2, we get a little bit of benefit there.

We do see improvement in the two other areas of the business, one being concrete and the other being Futures. Concrete is yeah, we have done several investment projects in the first half of the year which will be finalized and therefore will deliver product into the market which the market needs, and also we expect some gain from rail infrastructure a bit more in the second half of the year.

Also as the sort of inquiries around Nostell and Futures increase, that will translate into sales and cover the fixed costs. What we're suffering from a bit in the first half is the fixed costs are in, but the sales are just gaining momentum and therefore we have a net cost in the first half year.

We see that moderating in the second half, you get a few of those improvements through, and therefore that's why we believe, EBITDA in the second half slightly better than the first half, and therefore get getting to that sort of range a number we've guided on.

Stephen.

Hi, it's Stephen Rawlinson from Applied Value. Two for me if I may.

Firstly, just thinking about calls on cash over the next 12 to 18 months, would it be right to think that you're moving into a phase of maintenance only CapEx during 2027? If so, could you give us a guide as to what the annualized level of maintenance CapEx might be?

Secondly, some of the routes to market that you use, direct and indirect, seem to be under some financial strain. Could you just give us a view of thoughts about your own management of credit risk in the next 12 to 18 months or so, as we move forward?

Because quite clearly, the strain starts to show through more typically on sometimes on recovery than necessarily on the downturn. Just give us a clue on that, please.

On CapEx, we would expect sustaining or maintenance CapEx to be around £20 million going forward. I think we'd always expect a small level of improvement projects, which would be only around £2 million to £3 million really as we look to improve the fleet, you can probably classify that as growth, but that would really be it.

We're not anticipating to do any major growth investments in the in the near future. Yeah, 20 £20 million to £25 million would be our CapEx number going forward.

Yeah. At this time, we don't have any major concerns with credit.

I know there was some chatter yesterday, but we obviously have good very good credit insurance, which covers everything. We monitor that and we're in discussions all the time.

We're not seeing any big strain with our larger customers. With the smaller customers, well obviously they go through different routes to market, as you alluded to.

I think some subcontractors have probably had a tough time, and that's where there's a bit more exposure, smaller subcontractor work, and they tend to be supplied by some of the distribution networks. At this stage, we're not seeing any major credit issues in the market.

Harry.

Thank you. Harry Gowers from Peel Hunt.

I think just two questions on inventories. Firstly, your own inventory I think was actually up slightly, I think was the what you mentioned in the presentation.

Are you sort of happy with where inventories are at the moment? I know you talk about aligning production with inventories, but could there be a period where we actually see production lower than sales to potentially bring that down?

Then secondly, just on the channel inventories, do you think there was an impact in the first half from, I don't know, maybe starting in Q4 last year from some of the housebuilders, the merchants maybe starting to destock a bit on sort of signs of weakness, in which case that's maybe a one-off impact that we've seen potentially that might not occur in the second half? Thanks.

Quite insightful, Harry. I think on our own inventories, we want to be really focused.

We're probably higher than we would like to be. We're not in a desperate situation, but we want to really manage that carefully.

Obviously we've been we built more stock last year than we would have wanted, and so our yards are fuller than they would normally be, and that's why this year we've taken the action to destock. We'll continue to manage that, and if there are changes, we'll continue to flex.

It's better to do that than to build more stock levels. As you look at wider inventory levels for manufactured products in the manufacturers' yards, you can see it hasn't changed that much.

We obviously took some action to reduce this year, but there was quite a pronounced drop in February in the early part of the year with the weather, and you just can't, so, while our plan was to actually have a working capital sort of inflow, it didn't work out like that. We'll continue to be focused on that.

I think the channel, you're right, there was probably quite a bit of destocking as well, because there was quite a bit of stuff in the channels, and I think that started to wind through in the first quarter. The second quarter of the year actually was quite I was quite optimistic because we start to see better dispatches, I definitely think there was a bit of destocking going on in the first quarter.

Ben.

Thanks. Ben Barrow, RBC.

Just on that pricing point again, was there a difference between putting through prices for soft mud versus extruded? Has it been more difficult perhaps in the soft mud area?

Next on land sales, that's obviously increased in your forecast. Could you give us a bit of an idea in terms of timing for that unwind?

Thanks.

I think look, we differentiate prices are differentiated in the marketplace, but general price increase was fairly similar across soft mud and wirecut products in the UK. I think some competitors may have differentiated a bit more.

There's definitely a higher cost of production for soft mud products, you need to make sure you're capturing that back. I don't think there was any big changes in the general price increase around soft mud versus wirecut.

Around land and timing, we've obviously found there's a few more projects that we feel are coming closer, but again these things, to maximize the value, you don't want to move too quickly because you need to make sure you've got planning and the right conditions to maximize the value of the land. We've said in the next five years, I think some will come before that.

I don't think we've got any big chunks this year, but unless we unless something changes, which it could, but I think, in the next, two to three years, you'll see some interesting inflows. Clyde.

Just two left for me, Clyde Lewis at Peel Hunt. There was a little note about carbon credit emissions spend.

It'd be interesting to give us an idea of the scale of that and how you think that's likely to change going forward. I suppose partly linked to that is obviously the sustainability element of the business, and I suppose how much pull are you seeing from the customer base at the moment?

Has that increased? Has that decreased?

Obviously the Atlas plant is going to be a lot more energy efficient, etc., and things like the slips again have a very different energy profile compared to traditional brick, it'd be interesting to see what the customers are talking to you about on that front.

On carbon emissions, we will look at the market around carbon and look at our exposure in terms of free allowances versus the carbon emissions that go on, and we will buy carbon credits at a certain point to manage that dynamic, and that's what we did in H1. We don't see any material difference in what our carbon exposure is at the moment, but obviously it's driven also by the market and by how we are producing as well.

Then

on sustainability, as I've said before, for us sustainability is a lot we're a long-term business, and we want to be a sustainable business. We believe that our products actually stand the test of time and are very sustainable anyway.

If you think about a brick and the carbon footprint of a brick over the life, not just 60 years, which is what's stipulated in some of the standards, but actually over, it they're very, very efficient products, but we use energy, we want to use materials, and we want to make sure we're the most sustainable in those areas. I think the Future Homes Standard, it's still a bit of discussion around that and, it's there's a little bit of debate around the costs associated with it, and housebuilders are having a real challenge, but there's definitely been a lot of work done on Future Homes Standards and what materials and what sustainability requirements are needed for that.

I think when you talk to architects, they're very conscious about sustainability, specifying the most sustainable product for the long term, but they're also talking about resilience with weather pattern changes and so on, it's more holistic than just carbon. It's a much more holistic thing sustainability.

We think that, things like Atlas and the continuing drive to drive our carbon footprint down and other sustainability metrics is a real differentiator for us, and we'll con- we'll keep doing it. How much price you're going to get for it in the short term, given the challenges, might be a bit debatable, but we think in the long term having the credentials of a strong sustainable company is key.

Charlie.

Thanks. Thanks, Joe.

Charlie Campbell at Stifel. Two, but kind of related, I think.

Just on the surcharges, presumably those could come off quite quickly. I guess customers would be keen to see that.

What are they watching in terms of the signal for those surcharges to come off? Then secondly is related really, just wondering about your hedging policy for 2026- seven, and, at what point, which gas prices should we be looking at, and when's the critical point this year in terms of decision on hedging for '27?

Thank you.

What the criteria we talked about with our customers when we we introduced the surcharge, they they asked us to to look at a few things. One being give us criteria what what your cost inputs are, and largely that was linked to the the gas price.

Then they said when when things change, give us give us a chance to make sure that this comes off. We were very clear about that.

Obviously, we ate the costs for a few months, and we're we need to see where those costs go. They they started to come off when we thought there was going to be peace, and then they went back up again, they're still in.

The other thing to note about how quickly you can take them off, which we will do when when things normalize, is you can't keep changing pricing every every month. The customers don't like that either, because they've got to change all of their, back office, and it's really complicated, and they're often supplying other other end users, you've got to be mindful of those things.

We're working really closely with our customers, and we're we're, talking to them regularly. In terms of the 2027 hedge, I think we're well hedged, 60%, Simon?

We we will we normally like to be about 80% hedged by the time we get to budget. At this time, who knows what's going on, we're not we're not piling in or we're we're just staying cautious.

We've actually got gas that we buy in energy for '28 and '29, like our like our some of our competitors, we've we we hedge forward and we take layers of cover as we go, but the near-term market there's too much risk forecasting it, we're not we're probably wouldn't go in at the moment. Good, thank you very much for your attention today.

Look, it is a difficult backdrop. There's lots of potential exciting things that may come with some of the announcements from the government, maybe a bit of peace in the Middle East, hopefully, and we can get this market moving again.

We are really well positioned for when this market comes back. I think Ibstock is a really strong recovery play for the UK market, and we have to start building more, but we will continue to navigate the short-term challenges as well.

Thanks very much, and we can have a bit of a chat now if you'd like to stay around.