Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Hill & Smith 2026 interim results presentation. In terms of the structure today, I will first take you through the highlights, and Chris will then focus on the operating and financial review, and I will finish with a strategic update and the outlook.

Let me start with the highlights. I'm pleased to report that the group delivered a strong first half trading performance, underpinned by robust infrastructure demand in the US.

Organic constant currency revenue growth for the period was 5%, in line with our financial framework, and was led by our US businesses, which delivered 14% organic growth, supported by both Engineered Solutions and Galvanizing. We continue to progress our end-market mix, with revenue from our faster-growing priority end markets increasing to 39%, while operating margins were in line with the prior period, with further expansion in the US offset by a weaker UK margin.

The group also continues to deliver strong returns while retaining significant balance sheet capacity. Return on invested capital increased, reflecting the growth in our US Engineered Solutions businesses, and remains well above our framework target of 22% plus.

We aim to provide a growing dividend, and with the interim dividend of 25 cents per share, being 7% up on the prior period. We continue to execute the £100 million share buyback program that we announced this time last year.

Our balance sheet remains strong, providing significant flexibility as we look forwards. We made good strategic progress during the first half and continue to allocate capital in a disciplined way.

In March, we committed to organic investments of £35 million or around $50 million over the next two years to expand existing capacity in our US growth platforms, and these projects are progressing well. We also announced the acquisition of Freiberg and Hentec, both of which have been successfully integrated into the group and are trading well.

Particularly Freiberg, where there is a strong momentum going into the second half. We have an active and growing pipeline of further attractive M&A opportunities aligned to our strategic framework, and we would be disappointed if we didn't secure further acquisitions before the year-end.

In the UK, where markets remain challenging, we've taken actions to improve the strength and resilience of our businesses, which we expect to deliver improved financial performance over time. Giving the strong first half performance and the momentum in our US businesses, we now expect full year operating profit to be modestly ahead of our previous expectations, with a small year-on-year improvement in margins.

Further ahead, we're confident in the medium-term outlook, reflecting our strong positions in structurally growing infrastructure markets. In summary, a strong first half, good strategic progress, and an increase in full year expectations.

With that, let me hand over to Chris.

Thanks, Rutger, and good morning. Starting with the results for the period.

All amounts in this presentation are in US dollars following our change in reporting currency at the start of the FY '26 year. Revenues of $607 million were 5% ahead of the prior period on an organic constant currency basis, driven by double-digit US growth.

Underlying operating profit was up 3% on an OCC basis, with total constant currency growth of 7%. Underlying operating margin for the period was unchanged at 17.0% with continued growth in US margins offsetting weaker performance in our UK Engineered Solutions businesses.

Return on invested capital increased by 90 basis points to 26.7%, reflecting our continued focus on capital efficiency. Underlying earnings per share grew by 9% to 90.6 cents, reflecting the growth in underlying pretax earnings as well as the reduced average share count.

The board has declared an interim dividend of 25 cents, representing an increase of 7%. Moving to the geographical and divisional views of revenue and operating profit.

In the two pie charts at the top of this page, you can see the continuing growth of our US businesses, denoted in light blue, which increased their share of group revenues and profits to 66% and 84%, respectively. Looking at divisional revenues in the bottom left chart, US Engineered Solutions, denoted in green, increased its share of group revenues by 4 percentage points to 51%, and Galvanizing Services, in orange, grew by 1% to 25%.

Conversely, UK and India Engineered Solutions reduced to 24% of revenues. Turning to cover divisional performance, starting with US Engineered Solutions, which delivered a very strong performance reflecting positive structural growth drivers.

Revenue grew by 14% on an OCC basis, with constant currency growth of 18%. Our Composites business continued to see solid demand across a wide range of end markets.

The business delivered modest revenue growth against a strong comparator, although margins were slightly lower, reflecting end-market mix. Our electrical transmission and distribution business, V&S Utilities, delivered an excellent performance, with very strong double-digit revenue growth at margins above the divisional average.

Our Engineered Supports business started to benefit for the new capacity available following the expansion at our Waggaman site in Louisiana, capitalizing upon strong demand from industrial and infrastructure projects, including data centers, energy, and water end markets. The business delivered over 20% revenue growth in the first half at record margins.

Performance in our off-grid solar and message board business showed initial signs of improvement, as expected, during the first half, benefiting from a positive demand backdrop. Freiberg, our newly acquired business engaged in the design and manufacture of custom enclosures and other engineered solutions, performed well in the period.

Revenue is expected to accelerate during the second half with the commissioning of the new Arizona facility, although initially at lower margins whilst activity builds. Overall, the divisional margin increased by 20 basis points to 18.1%, including the benefit from Freiberg.

The prospects for the division look strong, supported by ongoing investment to modernize the aging electrical grid and multiyear state and federal funding to upgrade infrastructure, alongside investment to onshore vital components and serve additional technology demand. Galvanizing Services delivered a strong performance, with 11% OCC revenue growth and 18% OCC profit growth.

Margins grew by 110 basis points to 25.6%. The US business continues to benefit from very positive demand tailwinds, with revenues up by 16%.

Margins were above the prior period, demonstrating the excellent quality and service provided by our local teams. The UK grew revenues by 6%, ahead of the wider market.

The margin was ahead of the prior period, reflecting continuing strong commercial execution. Overall, the division has good prospects, underpinned by momentum across a broad range of end markets.

Lastly, UK and India Engineered Solutions. Revenue and operating profit were down, as expected, reflecting challenging conditions in UK markets as well as the impact of a one-off project benefit in transport infrastructure markets in the prior period.

We experienced good demand growth from data center markets, with revenue growing to 17% of the divisional total, up from 11% in the prior period. However, activity levels in road and industrial infrastructure and residential construction were below the comparative period, with the impact of operational leverage causing margins to reduce.

We have responded decisively, initiating actions in three main areas. Firstly, we have placed increased focus on growing our positions in more attractive end-market segments.

Barkers, our perimeter security business, has been very effective in moving away from lower-margin, cyclical construction markets towards the group's faster-growing priority end markets. During the period, we transferred the galvanizing activities previously performed at Barkers to our principal UK galvanizing operation, Joseph Ash.

This change releases incremental capacity at Barkers to further increase activity in data center and other higher-margin sectors. Secondly, we have taken steps to combine existing businesses to create larger, more efficient operations.

During the period, we combined two companies, Prolectric and Malatite, to create a single business under a common leadership team, which is expected to realize both revenue and operational synergies and will be accretive to margins over the medium term. Thirdly, we have taken portfolio actions to reshape the UK group, aligned to our operating company framework.

Hentec delivered double-digit margins in the period of our ownership and provides the wider UK business with strong routes into European data center markets. The disposal of our permanent steel road barrier business reduces our exposure to the lower-growth UK roads market.

Overall, these actions taken are expected to improve the resilience of the UK group and support margin recovery over time. Moving on to cash generation and the balance sheet.

Cash conversion of 50% was below the comparative period, reflecting an increase in working capital to support growth in several of our faster-growing US businesses. Cash conversion performance is expected to increase significantly during the second half of the year as this working capital build begins to reverse, and we continue to target cash conversion of at least 80% in line with our financial framework.

The group's return on invested capital increased to 26.7%, reflecting faster growth in our larger US Engineered Solutions businesses. Covenant leverage was 0.4 times at the end of the period, with over $340 million of funding headroom to support further investment and shareholder returns in line with our capital allocation policy.

The share buyback initiated in August 2025 continues to be executed, with around £59 million completed at close of business on Monday. Rutger will discuss capital allocation later, but it is clear that we have significant investment flexibility and capacity to support our growth objectives.

Before I hand back to Rutger, let me briefly summarize. We achieved a strong performance in the first half, delivering well against the financial framework we have in place, and with sustained momentum in our US businesses, feel confident in the short- and medium-term growth outlook for the business.

With that, let me hand back to Rutger.

Thank you, Chris. As we categorize our end markets into four groups, as shown on this slide.

You will also know by now that our revenue footprint is different in our two regions, which you can see in the two donuts on the right of the slide. What is good to see, though, is that in both regions, we increased our exposure to the higher and resilient growth markets in the first half of 2026.

In the US, a more significant proportion of revenue is generated from these high-growth and resilient markets, represented by the green and amber parts in the donut. The revenue share from those markets increased from 46% to 50% in the first half, which reflects our strength in T&D across our platform businesses, and also a growing presence in data centers.

In the UK, our perimeter security and access flooring businesses are pivoting to global data center markets, with a strong opportunity pipeline. Supported by the Hentec acquisition, 14% of revenue is now generated from data centers, which is the vast majority of our high-growth emerging markets exposure.

We also saw a reduction in stable growth markets, mainly in transport infrastructure due to the lower project activity and the disposal of our permanent steel barrier business in May. Our end-market prioritization is firmly embedded in our operating company strategic planning and decision-making.

As a group, revenue from high and resilient growth markets increased from 32% in the first half of 2025 to 39% in the first half of this year. Let me now explain one way how we're increasing our exposure to priority end markets by focusing on the exciting opportunity we have in the US power transmission and distribution, or T&D, sector.

Firstly, I will cover the US electrical grid market and the factors that gives us confidence in its longer-term growth potential. The structural factors driving growth in US electrical grid markets are the need to increase the resilience of aging infrastructure, additional electrification requirements from EVs, data centers, and other industrialization, and grid balancing and storage needs due to a wider network of power sources.

As a result of these factors, over the last 12 months or so, US utilities have announced a significant increase to their medium-term capital investment plans. Utility capital spending is projected to be around $1.4 trillion over the five years to 2030, of which about half is expected to be within the T&D system, implying a T&D compound annual growth rate approaching 10% across that period.

This represents an exciting opportunity for Hill & Smith. Let me now move on to explain where we play and what we do in this market.

T&D is a significant growth driver for our group, with around $150 million or 24% of our group revenues coming from T&D in the first half, almost entirely in the US. Our US platform businesses have strong positions in niche segments of the T&D value chain.

V&S Utilities, which currently accounts for almost 60% of our T&D revenue, focuses principally on the substations that provide the transition between transmission and distribution. The business produces engineered tapered tubular steel structures and component packaging for substations, as well as value-added services including warehousing, assembly, and modular substation solutions.

It operates through framework agreements with both utilities and EPC contractors and has strong long-term relationships with major customers. Creative Composites Group, or CCG, which delivers around 1/3 of our T&D revenue, manufactures custom designed composite material poles for distribution networks, together with a broad suite of ancillary products.

It has a growing order book with several utilities, especially in California, where extreme weather creates demand for the more resilient poles CCG provides. The balance of our T&D revenue is largely accounted for by our galvanizing operations.

Our investments in capacity expansion within our existing network of galvanizing facilities will support further growth in this sector. Having given that overview, I will now focus specifically on V&S Utilities, which has the largest exposure to T&D of any of our businesses.

It accounts for around 15% of group revenue and is expected to grow by low double digit over the medium term. V&S is the market leader in its operating regions, with five locations in the Midwest and Northeast of the US, taking advantage of the proximity of supply to demand.

As I already mentioned, the business has strong customer relationships with leading utilities and EPCs, and the top 10 customers account for well over half of its revenue. V&S focuses on providing shorter lead times than its competitors, as well as better service, which is a significant source of competitive advantage at a time of such high demand.

We are investing in expanding capacity at our Burton and Muskogee sites to help maintain our lead times and address the market growth opportunities. In terms of financial performance, V&S has a strong track record, with an organic growth of 9% over the last decade.

The business delivered very strong double-digit revenue growth in the first half of 2026, with a record order book at the end of June following a higher order intake during the period. V&S has operating margins that are above both divisional and group average and has a high return on invested capital.

They have also benefit from successful M&A, with both acquisitions made in 2024, Widloe and Capital Steel, performing well. Overall, we are excited by the growth prospects in the US T&D market, and our platform businesses are strongly positioned to benefit from that growth.

With the strong structural growth dynamics in T&D and other priority end markets in the US, we have committed around $50 million over the next two years to grow our existing network in our utilities and galvanizing businesses. I would like to provide a little bit more detail on these and on other growth investments that we are making.

Prior to this $50 million commitment, in 2025, we completed the expansion of TPG's Waggaman facility at a cost of $10 million. TPG produces engineered pipe support for infrastructure projects, including water, data centers, and energy plants.

The new facility was completed on time and to budget and helped to drive TPG's strong first half trading performance, with over 20% organic revenue growth at record margins. In V&S Utilities, we have two projects in progress.

We're expanding the Burton, Ohio site at a cost of around $10 million, which will come online at the end of this year. While in Oklahoma, we're spending around $20 million to relocate to a new purpose-built facility nearby, which will come online late in 2027.

Both of these will increase our capacity to meet the demand across the T&D markets that I outlined before. When we look at our galvanizing business, demand drivers are more broad-based and positively impacted by federal, state, and private investments to support industrial expansion and technology change, but also with positive end-market mix increasing the share of galvanized steel.

We're investing around $20 million in expanding our facility in Columbus, Ohio, which will come online from the end of 2026 and further broadening our addressable markets. Additionally, at Freiberg, which we acquired in April, we are investing $12 million in a new facility in Eloy, Arizona, where we will manufacture gensets for data centers and other faster-growing priority end markets.

Commissioning for this facility is on track, and production will build during the second half of this year. Freiberg has delivered an impressive performance to date, and we are excited about the potential for future growth.

Together, these investments will underpin our growth ambition in our larger US businesses for 2020 2027 and the medium term. The way in which we've allocated capital in recent years has been key to the progress that we've made and will continue to be a critical focus for us going forwards.

As we are both disciplined and agile in our approach to capital allocation. Together with our strong balance sheet, this will provide both the capacity and flexibility to invest further for growth and to increase shareholder returns.

In doing so, we apply a clear prioritization. Our first priority is to drive organic growth through investments in capital projects, talent, and innovation, focusing on higher-growth, higher-return end markets.

Our investment in capacity expansion on the previous slide are good examples of this in action. Our second priority is to target inorganic growth with a structured approach to M&A based on our operating company and financial frameworks.

We target to invest, on average, $65 to $95 million each year. I'm pleased that we have successfully integrated both Freiberg and Hentec, strengthening our positions in priority end markets in both the US and the UK.

Our M&A pipeline remains active and growing. Thirdly, we aim to deliver a growing dividend, understanding the importance of providing consistent and growing returns to our shareholders.

Lastly, we will return surplus capital to shareholders where leverage is expected to remain low for a sustained period. Having now completed over half of our 100 million buyback, our leverage remains low at just 0.4 times, which provides significant further funding capacity.

Let me now finish with the outlook. We delivered a strong first half led by our US businesses, where we expect the positive momentum to continue, underpinned by structural investments to upgrade and onshore vital infrastructure and support technology change.

Our organic investments in capacity expansion and our active M&A pipeline will also help to drive further growth. We expect the UK environment to remain challenging.

Against that backdrop, we've taken a range of measures to strengthen our UK operations, making our businesses more resilient and supporting margin recovery over time. Overall, we now expect full year 2026 operating profit to be modestly ahead of our previous expectations, with a small margin progression year on year.

We continue to have confidence in the medium-term growth outlook, reflecting our strong positions in structurally high-growth infrastructure markets. With that, Chris and I will be delighted to answer any of your questions.

Hi, it's Rob Chantry at Berenberg. Thanks for the presentation, guys.

Three questions. Firstly on US T&D, thanks for a lot more color that you provided.

Can you just give us a bit of insight into the competitive environment? Does it remain really fragmented or is there a bit of a rush to consolidate given the scope of opportunity?

Secondly, also on the US T&D, can you just give us a kind of insight into is there any change in customer type given the changing dynamics of US infrastructure, or does it remain regional utility focused? Are you seeing new types of customers coming on?

Then thirdly, on galvanizing, again, kind of really good performance. Can you just give us some indication of capacity utilization in the US and the UK, because clearly you've got very decent step-up in margin as well, but just how full are you at the moment?

Thanks.

All right. Maybe I'll do the first two and you can talk about capacity.

If we look at US T&D and sort of the competitive environment, I think in the areas where we operate in terms of the substations, we don't see a change in that competitive environment. Demand is fantastic with record order books.

I think in that dynamic, we continue to be focused on our service levels and our lead times. The lead times have gone up a little bit, but everybody, their lead times have gone up.

For us, the key thing is that we remain sort of competitive there and have better lead time than our competition. We haven't really seen different participants sort of coming into that market.

Similarly, I would say in our markets we operate, we still work with the different customers, the main utilities and big EPCs. Not seen change from that.

We've said in the past that we do look at adjacencies in T&D because this is clearly an attractive market and we only operate in small niches at the moment. There we do see slightly in some of those adjacencies quite a lot of activity also in terms of M&A.

That's an area where we continue to look at, but we're very keen to keep our financial discipline there as well. Overall, there is a little bit more activity in those areas, but not in the niches that we operate, I would say.

Just in terms of Galv, the capacity utilization across both UK and US is in that sort of 70% to 75% sort of territory of theoretical capacity. We always talk about that being the kind of sweet spot because if you move past that, then you tend to find that starts to impair your sort of operational flexibility, which can prevent you accessing some of those margins that you've seen the business being capable of performing over time.

That's where we want to keep things. There are some marginal gains that both of the businesses have been able to get out when you just think about the efficiency with which you move steel through the factories.

There are sort of marginal gains that you can continue to access that keep that sort of capacity utilization at that sort of level despite continuing market growth. That's the sort of way we think about things in general.

Now, in the US, clearly in the first half, we saw much stronger growth, 16% growth in revenue, which speaks to the fact that you're serving a set of markets there that are really firing on all cylinders. The action that we've taken by essentially doubling the footprint in Columbus, Ohio will give us something like an additional 15% or so of capacity relative to the theoretical nameplate we've got today.

The way that I would think about that is to say, look, that is capacity that will underpin what we expect to be market growth over the next sort of 3 to 5 years or so. It will come on at the end of this year, it will be available and that will build over time, but actually it will be a very effective way of making sure that despite that sort of level of market growth continuing, we continue to operate our networks in that sort of 70% to 75%, which is exactly where we want to be.

Hi guys, thank you for the questions. Lacie Midgley at Bloomberg Intelligence.

Three questions, please, all kind of around US growth and really helpful color. I think firstly on V&S Utilities, you pointed to low double-digit medium-term growth, but the first half growth and the order book seem stronger.

I know you also talk to V&S, one of the distinct advantages over your competitors as being shorter lead time. Just trying to gauge how much that contributed to strong first half growth, if there was a pull-forward there, or if the record order book is implying a higher run rate than that going forwards.

Then just on the order book, you talked to US T&D growth split across modernization, electrification, and balancing. I think the three you pulled out.

Just wondered if you could give some color on the order book split across those three sort of categories, please. That would be helpful.

Then just lastly on the working capital build in the first half, how much of that was related to V&S Utilities and that order book? I guess, and how much capacity do you think you need to support the growth there, and if it is a higher run rate, how do you kind of think about that going forward as well?

Thank you.

All right, lots of questions. We'll try to give it a go and then Chris, maybe if you want to add on.

I'll try to start with it, but clearly, yes, we do believe that Utilities has this sort of low double-digit sort of opportunity of growth in the medium term, very much driven by what we already said, sort of the 10% overall growth we see in T&D investments over the 5 years. I think they clearly had a fantastic first half because we have a very strong order book.

I don't expect that sort of level to be always at the same. It's sort of almost trying to catch up with that order book that helps to drive that.

In terms of how it splits between the different categories that drive that growth, we don't know, because that is basically the general trends that drive that overall capital investments, but in the end of the day, we provide a substation steel structure for that. Whether that's driven by additional capacity or upgrading the existing is something that is more difficult for us to have sort of visibility on.

Clearly with all of that growth, we are investing, as we say, in both Burton and Muskogee, in total about $30 million. That overall provides also capacity, additional capacity in utilities sort of are driven by a couple of things.

You can do more shifts, yeah? That's what we're doing at the moment.

Originally, we worked on one shift and now we're putting a second shift in. You can invest in some additional sort of capacity in some equipment, and then actually, you need space.

You need space for welders, basically. Both what we're doing in Burton and in Muskogee, that we have a significant opportunity to put more welding stations in, but you don't have to do that in one go.

You can do that over time, sort of matching that with the growing demand. Across those three things and those investments, we feel pretty comfortable that we can deal with the demand over the next couple of years, yeah?

Let me perhaps deal with the working capital question then. In terms of how we think about working capital, we measure working capital as a percentage of annualized sales in every business and clearly our focus is making sure that we're very efficient in the way that we manage that working capital.

There is seasonal growth in the business and that's been particularly pronounced with a very strong Q2 performance of the business, in a way that growth was still in the balance sheet at the half year date. If you look at it expressed as a sort of function of last 3 months sales, it went up by about 80 basis points or so across the group.

About half of that increase was within Utilities, as you say. The other half was essentially making working capital investments elsewhere in the US group.

Across pipe supports, the TPG business, the Roads business, and a little bit in CCG as well, there was also a little bit of build there. As we've said in the statement, we expect that to start to reverse in the second half, and therefore we're targeting getting back towards 80% for the full year.

It was 50% in the first half, which was really a reflection primarily of that action that we took to build a little bit of working capital. That's the way to think about it, and certainly we'd be looking to bring that number back.

It was sort of 15.6% at the half year '25. We'd be looking to bring it back towards that sort of number for the full year.

Hi, David Farrell from Jefferies. I'll go one at a time, save you having to write them all down.

Firstly, again, thanks very much for the detail on V&S Utilities. One of your peers kind of talked to their numbers recently and a lot of that was kind of pricing over volume.

There was some volume, maybe you can give the split of how much of that low double-digit growth that you saw in the first half was pricing versus volume. Is that kind of essentially pass-through pricing on steel or competitive?

I know Valmont is doing a lot in transmission, that's mainly of their business. I don't know where they talk about pricing necessarily.

If you think about a substation, is a unique design, that's partly why we're doing that. What we're doing is we're recovering the inflation on that and we're making sure that we maintain the margin.

I struggle always a little bit with the price/volume bit on the substations because they're not a standard product, right? Now, in transmission, that's not what we do, by the way.

I can see that that is more standard and maybe that's easier to talk about, but for us, the key thing is to make sure that we maintain or grow the margins if we can.

Thanks. Just want to touch on UK Roads.

Obviously, Barkers has been kind of a real success story for you in terms of turning around where they're focused. It sounds if you want to do kind of similar across the other businesses in that portfolio.

Have they been given a set amount of time to reposition themselves, and say if 18 months they haven't delivered it, is that when we kind of look afresh as to kind of what their position is in the portfolio?

Absolutely. I think it's right that we always look at our portfolio.

What I've said in the past, we look, do we think it's a structural issue, yeah? Structurally, and we can't move it into a more attractive area, then clearly that will have a portfolio sort of consequence, which sort of was the case with VRS where we said, "Look, structurally, we think this is not going to be attractive and therefore we're disposing of it."

As you said, Barkers, I think, is well on track to sort of move into that data center. Our floor access business is a bit behind, yeah?

We need to see that changing in the next 12 months. Hentec is really the key in that sort of transition because they've got this fantastic sort of network and linking into the EPCs for the data center.

We're not going to sit here for years and wait. I'm very pleased about the progress by Barkers.

I think floor access has a good opportunity. I think the Roads business, what we still have is the temporary barrier business, which in itself we've got a very strong position in the market.

We of course want to see an uptick in some activity through Road Investment Strategy 3, yeah, but that we don't expect this year yet. We're going to have to see that picking up in order to be happy about that.

Okay. A final question for Chris.

Pension deficit repayments. Could you kind of remind us where we are in terms of those numbers?

Sure. At the time of the last triennial valuation, which was year and a half or so ago now, there was a small deficit, which was funded through until the end of Q1 of this year.

We were making payments, and then we agreed with the trustees that we would cease payments into the pension scheme at that point. Based on our sort of roll-forward on a sort of best estimate funding basis, we believe that that scheme is now in a modest surplus.

The work of the trustees and the company over the course of the next 3 to 4 years is to make sure that the quality of scheme data is sufficient to then look to take that off the balance sheet of the group. No, it's in very good shape.

It's in now a surplus position and we've stopped making cash contributions.

Thanks.

Morning, it's Richard Paige from Deutsche Numis. Just a couple from me, please.

Freiberg, first-half performance, it looks like margins are significantly ahead of where we thought they might be. Could you just talk through that and obviously the second-half capacity increases there?

Then secondly, there's obviously a lot of physical capacity you've added. Could you talk about any challenges you might have recruitment-wise, supply-chain-wise to support that and what else you might need, please?

Thank you.

Should I do Freiberg?

Go ahead, yeah.

In terms of Freiberg, just to sort of remind you of the performance in the '25 year, the business had a top line of about $31 million and it made just over $5 million of operating profit. That was essentially the last full year before our ownership.

When we announced the acquisition of Freiberg, we really said, "Look, we expect that top line to grow, perhaps 10%, to something in the kind of $35 million region, and for the margin to remain at about 17% to 18%." That was the sort of assumption coming into the year.

Now, what we've seen in the second quarter was some very strong performance in the conversion of revenue into profit. The margin was very strong and it was up into that sort of mid-20s territory, and on a top line that was just over $10 million.

You can see that the runway has increased a little bit ahead of where we expected it to when we came into the year, and at very good margin levels. As we look into the second half, the way to think about the top line is that we expect that to accelerate with bringing on that Eloy, Arizona factory.

That is likely to mean that in the second half, revenue is likely to move up to a runway that will give us around $25 million of revenue in H2. When you add that to the 10 that was in the first half during our period of ownership, takes it up to a top line of about 35 for the nine months.

The margin will be lower because essentially you are bringing fixed cost into a business and then building the throughput of that factory over time. You get under-recovered fixed cost in the near term, and so therefore that sort of mid-20s margin is more likely to be in the mid-teens in the second half of this year.

On a blended basis, that means we're likely to be kind of 18% to 20% or so margin for the nine months as a whole. I think, as we look into next year, we expect the stabilization and the full commissioning of Eloy to benefit the business, and therefore we'd expect to move the top line forward such that the way to think about it for next year is perhaps Freiberg delivering up to sort of $60 million of revenue for a full 12-month period, and we'd expect margins to sort of stay at least at that sort of group target level of 18% or so.

We feel really good about the integration has gone well, the Eloy commissioning is on track, and I think the demand outlook for that business, it's data centers, but it's a number of other diversified attractive end markets looks very, very positive as well. We feel really good about the medium-term prospects for Freiberg.

Talking about capacity, indeed, quite a lot of physical capacity, and we want to make that work, we need people for that. That's clear.

I think if you think about Columbus, the sort of extension we do there, we clearly are successful there and operating in our current business, I think we feel pretty confident we can get the right people in. I think, yes, recruitment is always a little bit of a challenge.

Now, the interesting thing, this is why I talked about how can you get more capacity in the utilities. You can do more shifts as well, but if you have more space, you can probably, first of all, go back to a full day shift, but have more weld stations, and it's easier to recruit people for that.

We have different tools to be able to get those people in. This is why you grow into the capacity.

We'll probably look at slightly different shift patterns to make it more attractive. We can do that when we have the physical space.

Thank you.

Hey guys, I'm Jamie Murray from Bank of America. A couple of questions kind of similar to the Freiberg question, I suppose.

On slide 12, you outline that data share data center share of revenue has inc- has nearly doubled to about 9%. Clearly a meaningful part of the portfolio.

I was just going to ask, firstly, if you could just provide some further color on what type of products and services you provide for the data center, maybe excluding Freiberg. Second is, how do you see that growing over the next 6 to 12 months, including the new facility in from Freiberg?

Then third is, just how much visibility you have with the data center clients and how much is contracted? Thank you.

Lots of questions. I'll give it a go.

In terms of products, and it differs whether you're in the US or in the UK and Ireland. The UK and Ireland, it's very much at the moment sort of perimeter fencing for data centers, the highly engineered, which is why they're more attractive, and our floor access solutions, where we see an opportunity, but there's more to do, although Hentec is already in there.

Those are sort of the main products I would say in the UK and India. In the US, at the moment, pipe support is going in there, we've seen some good growth in our pipe support business.

Galvanizing is where we go into it, and maybe some of the smaller parts on composites we can do as well. There's a mixture of what we can do.

Clearly with Freiberg coming on stream, at the moment, it's modest. That percentage is going to increase because a lot of Freiberg's growth is going to come from data centers at the start.

We think that over time, Freiberg's revenue split might be about 50% data centers. That will increase that percentage for the US.

I think it's important to say that, yes, we are benefiting from the data center markets, but in the US, a lot of the growth is still coming from that T&D that we talked about. In terms of visibility, I think we've got, both in sort of TPG and in Freiberg in particular, pretty good visibility sort of in the next 2 to 3 years of what's available.

Yeah?

Excuse me, it's Harry Philips of Peel Hunt. Just actually on that last point from Jamie, just clarify, that's 2, 3 years visibility on that sort of data center element

in In

Freiberg. Yeah.

Perfect, yeah. Just three questions also, please.

Just on galvanizing, just wondering where your sort of market share might be sitting. I appreciate there's a sort of regional aspect to it, but just wondering, someone put it to me today, and this is an argument that's been put forward on Hill's many times before, if you're making this amount of margin money in galvanizing, therefore, you must draw people in.

As a reminder, what are the sort of barriers to entry, moats, whatever element you want to think about in Galv? Then secondly, just in the Composites chart, you talked about a slightly adverse mix.

Just wondering the dynamics behind that and is that just a sort of how it happened in the half or is there a sort of structural change occurring there? Then finally, just coming back to the sort of restructuring costs and what have you, and the level of exceptionals, is it beyond normal amortization and stuff, should there be any exceptionals in the second half in sort of a meaningful sense, please?

Okay. The exceptionals, I think, I'll leave to you.

It's too complicated for me. If if you think sort of in in galvanizing, yes, we always talked about, the regional market share is important, right?

Because you we we always say it's about sort of 200 miles radius that you need to be within to to be able to to deal with the market. Where we have galvanizing plants, and you take that sort of radius, then, our estimate is that we have like 50% or 60% market share in in the US.

I think, and that is either stable or increasing as we speak, yeah? Your your point about the sort of barriers to entry, I think, we because yes, on the face of it, it's fantastic business, but it's not easy to get to those margins, right?

It's not like every So when we look at, like mom-and-pop shops, let's say, in galvanizing, they make a lot less margin, right? Because they, they are not good not as good as we are in sort of operational excellence in running these plants, yeah?

We're also, and this comes back to this sort of 70% to 75% capacity utilization, we are very customer focused and very quick and agile for for our customers, and of course, we price that in. I think, it's not a given that you can make those margins that we that that we have.

The other thing is, it is, once you put in a a new site, it's not cheap, necessarily, and you need to have, baseline customers, basically. As a new entrant, you will really struggle with that.

I think there are lots of reasons to say, and we haven't seen new entrants coming into the in in the market because it's not it's not so easy. I'm I, and I don't think we, should be complacent or anything like that, but I think there are very good reasons to say why we think this is pretty, they're they're pretty high barriers to entry.

On on the composites, yeah, I I think it's more of a point in time. We had, fantastic We last year ended up, and and utility poles that is a bit more up and down, and we've talked about how attractive and also growing market that is, but the timing of those orders, they they they are, they can change a little bit over the year.

We had a fantastic year end last year, if you remember, and then, okay, maybe, but that is not something fundamental that we're worried about.

Harry, just in terms of the sort of cash costs of change in the UK group, the total kind of cash cost of restructuring is around $3 million, of which around half was cash settled in the first half and about half of which will be cash settled in the second half, but all of that cost has been accrued for. When you look at it from a sort of P&L perspective, all of the costs associated with effecting that change is reflected in the first half numbers, although some of the cash will actually flow out in the second half.

When you look at the sort of economics of those changes, these are all about creating more resilient and more efficient platforms in the UK group, and so therefore the payback on that cost, if you like, is rapid. We think that that has the potential to be accretive for margins to some extent in the second half of this year, but once we annualize that benefit in '27, then we'll start to see that benefit accelerate through.

Just a couple of questions from the online portal, one of which we've I think probably done enough on, but I'll read it anyway if you want to add anything further. The first one is, "Good morning and congratulations for the results.

Could you update us on the capacity expansion in the US across your different businesses? When do you expect capacity to come online?

How constrained are you in the US regarding volume growth in H2 and early 2027?" Anything, gents, you want to particularly add on that?

I think what we said is galvanizing and Burton are sort of coming online at the end of this year, and Muskogee is at the end of next year. We feel with this capacity, we can deal with the demand that we're facing.

The second question is a question for Chris. "Can you please give an update on the US private placement that was due to expire this year?

Has it been extended? If so, what tenure and interest rate was it secured at?"

Yeah. Just to remind everyone, we had two tranches of USPP, each of which was $35 million.

The first tranche did mature in the middle of this year, in June, that was repaid. Essentially now what we've got is $35 million of PP that matures in 2029 and we've got a £300 million RCF.

We talked about having over $340 million of available funding. Essentially that is the firepower that we've got.

We haven't gone back and rolled that PP over, but as you can imagine, as we think forward and given the conviction that we've got in the sort of investment opportunities in the business, we'll come back to the question of financing in the balance sheet in due course, but we're certainly comfortable that we don't have a sort of constraint from an availability perspective on the balance sheet going forwards.

Thanks, Chris. Any final questions from the room?

Rutger, summary? Okay.

Thank you very much.