Sims Ltd.

Sims Ltd.

14.67
EUR
-0.01
(-0.10%)
Feb 15Next Earn

Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptFebruary 16, 2026

Operator

Today's presentation has been lodged with the ASX along with the results release. It may contain forward-looking statements, including statements about financial conditions, results of operations, earnings outlook, and prospects for Sims Limited.

These forward-looking statements are subject to assumptions and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those experienced or implied by these forward-looking statements.

Those risk factors can also be found on the company's website, www.simsltd.com. As a reminder, Sims Limited is domiciled in Australia, and all references to currency are in Australian dollars unless otherwise noted.

I would now like to hand the call over to Stephen Mikkelsen, Group CEO and Managing Director of Sims Limited. Please go ahead.

Stephen Mikkelsen

Thank you, and good morning from Sydney. Today we are here to present our half year results for FY 2026.

Presenting with me today is Warrick Ranson, our CFO. We are fortunate today to have all of our business units leads here with me in Sydney.

We have John Glyde, our ANZ Managing Director; Rob Thompson, our President of North American Metal; and Ingrid Sinclair, our President for SLS. The presentation has been lodged with the ASX along with the results release.

First up, I will provide an overview of the results and strategy. Warrick will then take us through the financial results.

At the end, I will return to talk about the outlook, after which we will have Q&A. I will turn straight to slide 5, which looks at our strategy and strategic priorities.

By now, the left-hand part of this slide should look familiar as it has guided us for the last few years. I'm going to focus on some of our recent key strategic achievements.

From a customer and supplier perspective, we have made great strides in increasing our unprocessed intake, particularly in NAM, and this is definitely driving increased margin when we process it into higher value material. We have signed a couple of significant key supply agreements in ANZ with New Zealand Steel and Alcoa, and SLS is expanding into Ireland.

Looking at operational efficiency, NAM has really improved its logistics infrastructure, particularly the ability to deliver domestically through rail, and this has allowed us to take advantage of the domestic shred premium. Work on Pinkenba continues at pace, including a fines plant, and rail infrastructure works at Otahuhu will allow us to effectively service the Glenbrook EAF.

From an innovation, agile perspective, we are transitioning to an outsourced global shared services model, which will improve our service offering, lower costs, and improve our ability to integrate new operations as we grow. We've just about completed relocating this SLS senior management team to Irvine in California and are already seeing the benefits around innovative thinking and ideas from the increased collaboration.

We've also added a new position to the senior team with a Chief Digital Officer. Given the strategic importance of deeper integration with hyperscalers, we've appointed a dedicated role to drive closer alignment with their operational workflows.

The first three bullet points under invest responsibly are linked. Warrick and I will talk more about Tri-Coastal, the Houston land base, and the property strategy lead role in the coming slides.

It is also worth noting that we've extended our debt facilities by 12 months as we position our balance sheet for further growth. Moving on to slide 6.

Firstly, safety on the left-hand side. Total recordable injury frequency rate for the first half has been maintained at best-in-class historical lows, and just as importantly, we are tracking well on our lead indicators.

As a management team, we all continue to focus on making sure our employees can go home each day just as they came to work. On the right-hand side, you can see that we are progressing nicely across governance, systems, strategy, and risk assessment in support of our climate commitments, including the integration of climate data into financial and operational systems to enhance transparency and decision-making.

Moving on to slide 7, and I'm conscious that Warrick is going to take us through the financial results in some detail, I'm only going to highlight a few points from the consolidated result. Metal sales revenue is flat despite sales volumes being down 2%.

This is all about the price and contribution of non-ferrous, whether it be copper, aluminum, or zorba. The market is very strong.

SLS revenue is up nearly 70%, and repurposed units are up close to 18%. SLS has had an incredibly strong first half driven by the demand for DDR4 memory, and we will talk about this in subsequent slides.

A more subtle point to highlight is the flat metal trading margin percentage despite the significantly higher revenue from non-ferrous, which has a higher absolute margin but lower margin percentage. This means that we have grown our ferrous trading margin percentage through disciplined buying of non-dealer material.

I'm very happy with our cost control, and it is also pleasing to see the growth in return on invested capital. Returns have improved materially over the last 2 years, and we remain focused on closing the gap to our cost of capital.

Slide 8 separates the main performance highlights between metal and SLS. The only additional points I would comment on here is the 3.5 percentage point increase in unprocessed scrap in metal driving higher shredder capacity utilization in metal and the 7.7 percentage point increase in EBIT margin for SLS.

Slides 9 and 10 look at the factors influencing our metal businesses. Let's look at slide 9 first.

The top two slides actually show how tariffs are providing protection for NAM and SA Recycling in North America. You can see on the top left-hand slide the falloff in US construction activity over the last year or so.

All things being equal, this would have resulted in quite a depressed steel market in the US. Look at the right-hand top slide and you can see the falloff in steel imports commencing with the introduction of Section 232 in 2018 and then continuing with the tariffs.

US steel manufacturers have benefited more from the fall in US imports than they have suffered from falling construction spend. What these charts indicate for the scrap market is that domestic pricing has been supported by strong demand, although softer construction activity continues to constrain intake volumes.

The bottom charts explain ANZ's dilemma and depressed ferrous results. Quite simply, global ferrous scrap prices have fallen as Chinese exports have risen.

Slide 10 shows why non-ferrous is in many ways the hero of the metal results, and it is quite simple. The chart shows the price in Australian dollars that Sims actually realized for its sales of ferrous and non-ferrous products.

Ferrous has fallen from a bit under $570 to around $545. Non-ferrous combined has risen from around $4,100 to nearly $5,000 on a blended basis.

Focusing on NAM on slide 11. These four charts capture the progress we have made at NAM and explain not only the turnaround of FY 2025, but now the continued improvement in FY 2026.

Firstly, the top left chart shows the benefit of focusing on profitable tons. We have grown trading margin percentage by 5 percentage points over the last 2 years.

This has been achieved by focusing on, amongst other things, unprocessed ferrous, which has increased by 12 percentage points over the same period, and this has increased shredder utilization by the same amount. Those shredder tons are producing more zorba, which, like all non-ferrous products, has risen nicely in price.

Finally, you can see that we are exporting less as we have grown our domestic channels to market. This is particularly so for shred, where domestic premiums to export have been growing and currently sit at $50 per ton.

As a point of interest, we sold around 85% of our shred domestically from the East Coast. This would have been around 10% just a few years ago.

It is important to note we still maintain our export optionality if market dynamics change in the future. Slide 12 summarizes the Tri-Coastal acquisition we announced last week.

As I said at the time of the announcement, over the last couple of years we had materially turned the Houston business around, but we needed access to better options both domestically and internationally to really drive performance. We had a suitable piece of land to achieve this at Maybell, but the capital cost to upgrade the port at Maybell and the size of our existing ferrous business did not justify the CapEx.

TCT gives us this deepwater access and therefore optionality, but it also materially increases our presence in the market in excess of another 350,000 tons, significantly reduces our operating costs through the infrastructure service agreement contract, and it frees up the sale of all our land in Houston. We estimate in excess of US$100 million, including Maybell.

From a numbers perspective, we have paid a bit less than 4 times EBITDA post-synergies. The combined businesses, and by that I mean our existing ferrous and non-ferrous operations plus the TCT acquisition, are expected to have an annual EBITDA of US$25 million and a return on invested capital of over 20%.

Turning to slide 13, SA Recycling. As the chart shows, SA Recycling has done a great job in ensuring resilience in its trading margin percentage.

They have been pretty consistent at around 30% for the last 5 or 6 years. In the last 2 years, this has been achieved by increased revenue from non-ferrous, including zorba, and this has combated the more depressed ferrous market.

SA Recycling has strategically developed a really strong hub-and-spoke model in regional markets. It now has a very consistent source of unprocessed material being fed from around 150 feeder yards into its 24 shredders.

This means more zorba from shredding and more opportunity to attract retail non-ferrous from peddlers. I expand on this theme a little more on slide 14.

Firstly, you will note the deliberate acceleration of the hub-and-spoke model. Since 2021, SA Recycling has acquired 76 yards compared with 52 for the 10 years preceding 2021.

You can see from the map that it is still a highly fragmented market, there remains considerable further opportunities and there is significant headroom in its existing shredders. Its strong cash flow and balance sheet strength support the growth.

SA Recycling has developed a real expertise in integrating these small bolt-on acquisitions and implementing its operational and commercial practices. What all this means is that the business is underpinned by strong unprocessed inflows and strong non-ferrous markets.

This provides a very solid earnings base in the current market conditions, and when the ferrous market cycle turns, SA Recycling is very nicely positioned to capture the upside. Moving to slide 15.

There is no doubt that ANZ continues to operate in a subdued global ferrous environment, and it does not have the protection of the tariffs that NAM and SA Recycling enjoy in the US. It does have a very strong non-ferrous business, a good hub-and-spoke network, and good domestic access for sales.

In many ways, it is a business that is structured very similarly to SA Recycling. It is worth noting that the non-ferrous contribution is even more important to ANZ as the ferrous market conditions are considerably worse than North America.

However, it will also benefit from an upturn in the ferrous market, although over the next couple of years this is largely dependent on a meaningful reduction in Chinese exports of steel, which seems unlikely. Beyond 2 years, however, the structure of the ANZ market is likely to change as domestic EAFs come online, and this is the focus of slide 16.

The chart shows that currently about 50% of the scrap generated in Australia is exported. However, by 2027, maybe 2028, this could reduce to under 20% as a result of increased EAF demand and additional charging of scrap in blast furnaces.

This local demand is likely to support prices and potentially delink Australia and New Zealand from the full impact of Chinese exports. In our view, our Pinkenba site in Queensland will play the major logistics role in facilitating scrap finding its way to the right location at the most efficient price.

This could well include importing scrap from our facilities on the West Coast of the USA. No other participant in Australia or New Zealand has the capability to manage scrap flow between all states, New Zealand, and the West Coast of the USA.

I now want to turn to SLS on slide 17. The chart on the right tells the headline story of the dramatic rise in DDR4 chip prices.

What has driven this? There are four interrelated points I want to make.

One, we still need DDR4 chips as they are the workhorse of many of our devices and the Internet of Things. Two, manufacturers are switching to making DDR5s where the demand from hyperscalers building AI data centers is almost insatiable.

Three, this has created a structural supply-demand imbalance for DDR4s. High-quality repurposed DDR4s are a practical solution, but they are also limited.

Four, a number of suppliers and market commentators are saying that the imbalance is likely to persist beyond 2027. I want to provide an update on our SLS expansion into Ireland, and this is on slide 18.

Firstly, the expansion is well underway, and we expect we will open the 120,000 square foot facility in early April. There will be some ramp-up and other costs, I expect meaningful contribution to EBIT will not happen until sometime in June, maybe July.

As the analysis shows, Ireland is an ideal place for expanding our data center infrastructure services. It is a major hyperscaler hub in Europe where we already have a presence.

We have a proven track record in these types of facilities, and I expect it to look very similar to our Nashville site, which a number of you have visited. We currently anticipate growing the business over the next 2 years to repurpose approximately 1 million units per annum with a skew towards DDR4s.

This is an exciting opportunity for us and is driven by an existing relationship we have with a major hyperscaler. I'll hand over to Warrick now for a more detailed look at the financials.

Warrick Ranson

Many thanks, Stephen, and good morning, everyone. Despite mixed construction activity in Australia, continued elevated Chinese steel exports, and softer US consumer sentiment impacting prices, ferrous scrap markets remained supported, assisted by the progressive expansion of EAF capacity globally.

With export markets exposed to global scrap dynamics, we continue to leverage the arbitrage in our key domestic and international markets and sell volume proactively between the two to maximize margins, reflecting the significant agility and flexibility embedded within both our inbound and outbound logistic chains. In parallel, non-ferrous markets delivered a structurally strong performance and provided meaningful earnings stability, with LME copper increasing by approximately 13.5% year-on-year, while LME aluminum prices rose by 9.8%.

The Asian spot price for aluminum reached its highest level since 2022, supporting considerable zorba price increases, as Stephen mentioned. Not surprisingly, non-ferrous trading accounted for over 40% of group revenue in the half, up from around 35% in the comparative period.

Concurrently, of course, prices for DDR4 memory continued to increase exponentially, rising by over 450% year-on-year as demand continued to increase against diminished supply, with manufacturing shortfalls and a focus on new generation cards continuing to uplift repurposing and resale activities. Across the business, we continued to deliver disciplined cost efficiency initiatives.

Current activities such as moving to a global shared services platform and the operational changes now targeted for our Houston operations will continue to provide performance improvements in the business. We saw our overall cost base remain relatively flat despite increases from higher inflows of unprocessed material in NAM and volume growth in SLS and, of course, general inflation across the board.

I'll come back and talk about our cost performance shortly. Our statutory result reflects targeted restructuring initiatives and non-cash hedge book mark-to-market adjustments associated with a significant rise in copper and aluminum prices at period end.

We continue to work on the recovery of our UK metal receivable following collapse of that third-party business in an extremely difficult market, but in line with prudent accounting practice, we updated the potential credit loss on the residual by a further £30 million to reflect current estimates. Although we have effectively reversed our prior accounting position on the sale, we remain pleased with our decision to exit the UK, the price we got for the business, and the way we were able to maximize cash flow, particularly given the number of subsequent business failures in the industry there of late.

Moving to slide 21 now, and I've touched on the principal drivers of most of these already, won't dwell on this slide. Positive contributions by both the NAM and SA Recycling businesses absorbed the impact of the current market pressures on ANZ, while the strong performance from our SLS business and a range of cost reduction initiatives, as I've mentioned, contributed further to the uplift in underlying results, reflective of the strength of the geographic and diversification aspects of our business.

I'll expand on some of the other factors driving these various movements in subsequent slides. Moving to the metal business more specifically, and in North America, total material inflows remained consistent with the prior comparative period, and converted metal volume moderated by 3% as we prioritized unprocessed intake in line with our value strategy, improving our overall margin position.

While this added to comparative costs, the team were able to generate a number of offsets through further site restructuring and productivity initiatives. Period on period, we actually experienced around a 5% reduction in average realized ferrous prices, generating a circa $13 million impact on the underlying EBIT for NAM, which we mitigated through that margin discipline and our cost-out initiatives.

In ANZ, ferrous margins were again impacted by the subdued international market, which also flowed on to domestic prices. Favorable non-ferrous prices provided overall revenue support and helped offset shredder downtime at our St Marys operation in the first quarter.

Notwithstanding elevated consumable input costs, particularly in the areas of waste disposal and electricity charges, net operating costs continued to be well controlled here as well, noting the current result does include an $8.8 million reclassification reduction. While US steel spreads improved over the course of the half, influenced by tariff-constrained imports, which are reflective of the US domestic market, in December, our Sims Adams joint venture actually reported its first upmarket for ferrous pricing since April.

Despite the comparative headwinds, the joint venture was able to close out the half year strongly, riding the uplift in non-ferrous prices as zorba continued its surge. Our global trading platform was able to keep its costs flat, though saw reduced broker revenue following the cessation of trading activities for Unimetals in the UK early in the period.

Moving to SLS now, and Stephen covered a number of the drivers here already. As we've noted, the business continues to see significant growth in the number of repurposed units, as well as benefiting from the dynamics of the market.

Pleasingly, we also expanded our hyperscale service offerings, adding diversification to the business's revenue streams. Increases in operating costs reflect both volume gains and expansion activities, and the team continues to look at additional opportunities around automation and robotics to support its cost management program.

The result further validates SLS's positioning within a structurally expanding hyperscale ecosystem and its connected drivers. Moving to slide 24 and touching briefly on central and functional costs now.

As previously mentioned, we continue to look for cost-out efforts in this area. We recently relocated our corporate office to further reduce costs, as well as successfully transitioned our purchase-to-pay function to our new global shared services hub as part of a more extensive shared services model being progressed over the next 2 years.

Following stabilization of the company's SAP platform implementation, project costs fell by $2.5 million, noting that we continue to incur costs in developing our new yard management software, which we hope to take live later this year. As previously advised, we elected to cease work on the development and commercialization of the plasma-assisted gasification technology that was being undertaken by Sims Resource Renewal during last year.

This further reduced the central cost pool by some $10 million to $12 million per year. Moving on then to our overall cost performance for the half, and we continue to look for opportunities to simplify and optimize our organizational structure, as well as further rationalize the existing operating portfolio.

At a group level, we were once again able to keep total costs relatively flat over the period, limiting the increase to just over 4% off the rebased comparative half. Included in this was $16 million in additional variable costs related from the increase in unprocessed material and the higher repurposed units at SLS.

Labor remains our largest cost element at around 40% of operating costs, and ongoing labor efficiency initiatives continue to provide significant benefits in this area and in line with our previous cost-out commitments. The group completed the year with net assets of just on $2.5 billion at balance date, broadly consistent with June, reflecting a stronger comparative Australian dollar at period end, dividend payments, and the further provisioning of the Unimetals receivable.

Of note, this includes a $200 million expansion on working capital levels from the uplift in non-ferrous prices, impacting both our inventory and receivable values, and a $72 million transfer to broker deposits related to our derivative trading activities following the run-up in copper and aluminum prices. I'll talk a little bit more about the impact of this on the next slide.

Pleasingly, as a result of our positive trading performance, the board has determined an interim dividend of 14 cents per share, payable in March. A little bit more on our working capital movements and the group's focus.

On slide 27, we've isolated the overall movement to show the impact of those higher non-ferrous prices on the business, which has been quite significant on a number of fronts. The impact of the run-up in the copper price from October in particular is certainly reflected in our numbers.

Working capital performance through better managing inventory levels, receivable conversion rates, and payment terms continues to be a key focus for us. Moving to slide 28, and we put up this slide last week as part of our announcement on the Tri-Coastal acquisition.

We've highlighted the potential to generate better returns from our property portfolio a couple of times now, and I just wanted to reinforce our focus on this area. We've broadly categorized our properties into four areas, with the third category the most complicated and the area where we're most likely to spend a fair bit of time working through.

As Stephen has previously mentioned, these are the sites where it is becoming obvious that over the next 5 to 10 years, the most valuable use of that land will not be in metal recycling. In most cases, this will require comprehensive planning, permitting, and other dependencies to fully capitalize on value.

As such, we're committing to a dedicated resource to ensure full management of the opportunity going forward and continuing our approach to disciplined capital recycling and unlocking embedded asset value. All that summarizes into our overall cash movement for the last 6 months.

I've talked about most of these already, but just to touch on capital. The majority of this spend occurred in our North American operations, primarily focused on improved metal recovery and incremental throughput initiatives, including the completion of channel dredging at our Claremont operations.

In ANZ, investment continued into the redevelopment of our Pinkenba site, including the construction of a new copper recovery plant. We expect to remain within our previous guidance in this area of between $120 million to $140 million of sustaining capital for the full year.

We've pulled out the restricted cash allocation on the derivatives to better reflect underlying EBITDA to operating cash conversion, noting these deposits will unwind in the second half. In October, we made our final dividend payment of $25 million in relation to the 2025 financial year, and as previously noted, the board has determined an interim dividend of 14 cents per share, fully franked, for 2026 in line with our capital management framework after taking into account the restricted cash impact.

Back to you, Stephen.

Stephen Mikkelsen

Thanks, Warrick. Let's turn to the outlook on slide 32.

In our view, the outlook for secondary market pricing of DDR4 chips remains very strong, and it is the DDR4s that are materially driving the excellent performance in SLS. This strength comes from the demand for DDR5 chips driven by AI.

Global production of chips is understandably heavily focused on DDR5s, and this is creating a structural imbalance in the supply and demand for DDR4s. We also anticipate continued strength in the non-ferrous market underpinned by the substantial copper and aluminum requirements for global renewable energy implementation and product electrification.

Tariffs are expected to continue to provide some protection for our North American ferrous businesses, and this is likely to result in the continued premium for domestic shred sales in the US. Furthermore, whether it be in the United States, Australia, or New Zealand, rising EAF capacity provides a strong outlook for our ferrous scrap products.

Finally, we cannot ignore the impact Chinese exports are having on ferrous prices, particularly for our business areas exposed to markets outside the domestic US market. While it appears the prices have been trading at or near a floor for a while now, there is little evidence to suggest China will reduce exports from current levels.

Importantly, much of our recent improvement in earnings has been self-help driven. As market conditions normalize over time, we believe the business is structurally better positioned to benefit from cyclical recovery.

Before we open for Q&A, as always, I want to thank our employees for their drive and commitment in delivering on our purpose, and most importantly, doing that safely. Back to you, operator.

Operator

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.

If you wish to cancel your request, please press *2, and if you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Will Wilson from UBS.

Please go ahead.

Will Wilson

Morning, everyone. Congrats on what looked like a strong result.

Just on ANZ, it looks like conditions picked up post the AGM trading update. Do you mind talking us through just the moving pieces there and what happened for the end market?

Thanks.

Stephen Mikkelsen

Sure. We've got John in the room, John, why don't you take us through that?

John Glyde

Sure. Couple of things.

Certainly saw improved volumes in the second quarter, particularly in non-ferrous and zorba on pricing. We also, as you would remember, we had the outage in the first quarter, and we largely caught that up in the second quarter.

As I said, volumes were up a little bit. We managed to take a bit of volume from our competitors, good cost control.

We delivered a little better than expected.

Will Wilson

Cool. Then just more broadly across the metals business with non-ferrous, just curious about how quickly those price rises result in more volume, more benefit to the business more broadly, conscious that the rise in price has been going for a while now, but you really had a step-up over the last quarter, say copper, for example.

Have you seen kind of a corresponding move in volume activity?

Stephen Mikkelsen

Let me sort of few general comments, and then maybe Rob can talk about NAM and John about ANZ. I think overall the answer to that would be yes.

Higher prices, by definition, drive more volume out of the market. That relationship has been here for a while now.

You're right to say that, non-ferrous has been very firm for the last 18 months, but particularly firm over the run-up we had in price leading into December was quite extraordinary, and you would expect to see that drive more volume out, and we're well positioned to take that. Maybe Rob, a little bit on how you see it from NAM's perspective, and John.

By zorba as well, by the way, too. We'll talk about that a little bit later, then John, maybe ANZ's perspective.

Rob Thompson

The only thing I can add is from a NAM perspective, about 2 years ago, we started to embark on our non-ferrous improvement story, if you will, and fully integrated now with Alumisource, fully integrated now with our Northeastern Metal Trading copper granulation company. Those consumer relationships dovetailing with the infrastructure of data centers going up in every neighborhood in North America.

It's been phenomenal. Stephen mentioned zorba, utilization of our shredders is up 10% over 2 years, and for that demand is definitely there.

Volumes up, margins are absolutely playing a part in our turnaround story.

John Glyde

What I would add, obviously zorba, as Stephen mentioned, we saw considerable improvement in zorba pricing late in the half. Over the half, and you must remember that zorba really is a byproduct of our shredding activity, and therefore any gain in that price sort of in some way or another filters through to revenue and, quite frankly, EBIT.

That certainly helped. From an ANZ perspective, ferrous markets are still very, very difficult.

Obviously, in very recent times, we've seen the Aussie dollar strengthen, which isn't helping our translation on an FOB basis on export sales. I think Warrick mentioned, even on our translation on domestic sales on an export parity basis.

Strengthening dollar certainly isn't helping, but still difficult. Non-ferrous is pretty strong.

Stephen Mikkelsen

I think as I said in my commentary, I really would describe non-ferrous as the hero of this 6 months result from a metal point of view. Will, just to summarize it, it will get more volume out of the market.

It must do. It's logical for that to happen.

Okay.

Will Wilson

It's hard to see what changes there in that regard. Just one last quick one for me on SLS.

I'm just curious about the lag between DDR4 pricing and when it flows through to SLS. I'm somewhat a little bit surprised, being honest, in terms of you gave a guidance 45-50 back in November, you saw another step-up in December in pricing that didn't come through.

Then you came into the top end of guidance, I know, but just, yeah, if you wouldn't mind touching on the lags there.

Stephen Mikkelsen

I'll get Ingrid to maybe comment more specifically, but my overall thought on that is our contract position is pretty set as we go into December. We know what volumes we're getting.

We know what sales we've made, there is definitely a lag on that. I wouldn't say it's a particularly long lag.

Ingrid, any further comment on that? No, I think

Ingrid Sinclair

that's spot on, Stephen. We're normally a month or 2 months out from what you see in the price increasing, obviously we'll start seeing it in this year, this half.

Stephen Mikkelsen

In the second half, yeah. Okay.

Will Wilson

Fair to say that the December price rise and even the back end of November, it was too late to kind of flow through to that first half.

Stephen Mikkelsen

A little bit of it got through. I'm, to be frank, getting my head around how we provide this guidance on SLS because we haven't done it before.

We're at the top end of what we provided, which says that some of it's coming through, but you're right to think that as Ingrid said, it's a month or 2 before it fully comes through. Okay.

Will Wilson

I held back from asking about SLS guidance, but that's really helpful. Thanks.

Stephen Mikkelsen

I'm sure we're going to get that question, so.

Will Wilson

Exactly. Cheers.

Thank you. Good result.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Peter Steyn from Macquarie.

Please go ahead.

Peter Steyn

Hello, Stephen. Thanks very much for your time.

Perhaps curious on two angles as it relates to SLS. Firstly, is just run rate.

It sounds like you would basically say that the run rate for the second half is probably incrementally higher than what you've finished the second quarter at. Then I'm also interested in how one thinks about the Irish facility.

You mentioned that you'd be sort of running at full tilt in June, July. How material would this facility be in the context of the network?

Does sort of give me the sense that it is quite material.

Stephen Mikkelsen

Sure. I'll get Ingrid to cover off Ireland because she's been heavily involved in that development.

Maybe I'll cover off the implied question about second half for SLS. The overall comment I'd make, you're right.

The strong pricing that we saw in December is now flowing through into our results, and it's fair to say that the start to the year for SLS has been very, very good. In terms of what does that mean for the full year, I'd make the comment that we're only 1 month in, and I think it's best that we will provide some additional guidance next month at the March investor presentation in Nashville.

By that point, we'll have a pretty good idea of where our first quarter is coming in and what pricing is looking like for the balance of the year. If I could just ask for some patience on that, we will do that additional guidance in March.

Suffice to say that, yep, absolutely, the volumes are still good coming out of SLS, and it's very, very obvious the prices are still high, and we've got lots of reasons why we believe that those high prices remain. I think there is absolutely a structural imbalance there, certainly a very good start to the half for SLS, but we'll provide additional guidance in March.

Ingrid, how are you thinking about Ireland?

Ingrid Sinclair

Ireland, yeah. Dublin will be ramping up in the second half of this year, and we expect to deliver full run rate sometime in fiscal year 2027.

That's when we'll start seeing the full impact in 2027.

Stephen Mikkelsen

It's probably fair to say it is material to SLS's result because it's a big facility. At ramp-up, we're expecting to repurpose another million units out of there, and as Ingrid, it's oriented towards or skewed towards DDR4s.

That's

Ingrid Sinclair

right. It'll be very similar to the site in Nashville.

Yeah. It is material.

Stephen Mikkelsen

It is material, Peter. Let's just see when it's up and running how things are, but we've highlighted it because it is important to the future of SLS.

I think it also signals potential further expansion outside the US. Our strong growth has been US, no doubt about it, absolutely no doubt about it.

Europe's a market where we have a presence, but I think with the likes of Ireland now, our presence is going to become much more meaningful. Yeah.

Peter Steyn

Could I ask Ingrid just a quick follow-up. The million units, is that backed by the existing contract?

I.e., you're on full run rate at some point in 2027, will that be your run rate of units repurposed?

Ingrid Sinclair

At the start of the ramping up, it will be off of an existing contract that we have now and an existing client relationship. Yes, that will be

Stephen Mikkelsen

I agree with that, but it's certainly not at capacity.

Ingrid Sinclair

There will be room. It's a starting point.

Stephen Mikkelsen

There'll be room in later years, let's focus very much on servicing a very important customer. I think in later years, there's further capacity in Ireland for other inflows there.

Peter Steyn

Gotcha. The million is an eventual target for repurposed units, and your initial start and your initial contract does not necessarily supply that level of volume.

Stephen Mikkelsen

No, I think it's the other way. The million is the initial, and it's how do we grow beyond a million with additional activity.

Peter Steyn

Perfect. Sorry, I'm going to sneak one last one in for Ingrid, just around the customer relationships, how you think about the push and pull from a commercial point of view.

You're obviously making a lot of money out of this activity, Ingrid. Just curious how your customers view that, and if with current prices, they think differently about economic sharing?

Ingrid Sinclair

We have several commercial relationships going on, and it took us years to get here into this market, right? The quality that we deliver, the loyalty we have built with this particular client it's really truly a partnership.

We offer servicing, which is a flat fee, but then on the resale is where we share revenue, and that is an agreement we have negotiated with them and remains so even as pricing changes.

Warrick Ranson

It's Warrick here, Peter. I think it's fair to say that we haven't set up Ireland with the hope of gaining customers.

We actually set up Ireland in response to a customer request, and, obviously have a transparent relationship with that customer. They understand our operating model and our earnings, etc.

We're actually responding to the customer need, and I think that really sort of signifies, as Ingrid said, the relationship that we've been able to develop. As Stephen said, the million's a starting point.

It's a strong growth area. We'd be looking to hopefully grow that part of the business further.

Ingrid Sinclair

Right. The 1 million is a bird in the hand.

Peter Steyn

Fantastic. I'll stop there.

Thanks so much.

Warrick Ranson

Thanks, Peter.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Lee Power from J.P.

Morgan. Please go ahead.

Lee Power

Hi, Stephen, Warrick, team. Stephen, I kind of get the reticence in not wanting to give 2H guidance now on SLS given the moving parts, but can you maybe chat a little bit about what you saw in a backward-looking basis?

What did SLS actually contribute EBIT-wise in the second quarter?

Stephen Mikkelsen

Again, okay, it contributed, obviously more in the second quarter than in the in the first quarter. I think what I probably the most relevant thing I I can say is that that that ramp-up has continued into the first half.

That's probably the best the best way to put it, and that's we pricing is still strong and volumes are good. That's so, the the activity that happened in the second quarter has continued and and, frankly, growing as we come into the first quarter, which is into the into the third quarter, sorry, the first quarter of the calendar, third quarter of this year, which is why like I'm very conscious that we will need to provide some more guidance around that.

I just need to think we we just need to get that first quarter under our belt. By the time we we speak next month, we will we'll have the actual results for January and February, and we do find it easier to predict that results March than we might for the metal business.

We'll have a very good understanding of what that March quarter is like. I'm expecting it to be good, and then I think based off that, we'll be able to provide some additional guidance of where we think the year-end is going to come in at.

Lee Power

Okay. Through the second quarter, is there much volatility within the quarter?

Was that trend continuing? Because the pricing only really lifted in the very back end of the calendar year, right?

Stephen Mikkelsen

It was a strong half. It wasn't just a strong quarter.

It was a strong half. Yes, there is some volatility, but in some ways, is it the right expression self-induced volatility?

Maybe that's not the right expression, but it's volatility that we're not particularly worried about because it's just whether or not does it suit our customers to ship the DDR4s at the end of a quarter or the beginning of the next quarter. There is definitely some volatility, but we get a good understanding of what that volatility is going to be well before it happens, which is why I think we were, by our standards, we're pretty accurate at the prediction of the SLS result for the half.

Lee Power

Yeah. Then maybe for Ingrid, it sounds like your comments to Peter, just around the commercial relationships and revenue sharing, that you think the leverage to pricing holds.

Obviously, the battle, I think, that everyone's having is that you look at what the pricing has done, I get the lags, but it kind of averaged $18 a unit for the DDR4 pricing unit you gave for the first half, and it's tracking at $67 for the half currently. It's obviously very material dollar move half-on-half as well.

Just any sort of color you can give us around the revenue sharing piece or that leverage might not come through for the business?

Ingrid Sinclair

No. As I mentioned, the revenue share that we've negotiated stays, and the partnership that we have in particular with this client is very strong.

We're investing back into the business, the expectation is that we will increase productivity through automation and use some of this just to improve the business for them. Moving into Ireland really is to meet their capacity needs, and this is what we do throughout.

I don't see that a clawback trying to occur. This is a very solid relationship, and the market fundamentals are strong.

Just don't see that.

Stephen Mikkelsen

No, I agree with that. Which I think I said last time, the thing I would add to that, having now visited a number of these clients, is that this is not core business for them.

This is our front office, their back office. While it is absolutely meaningful to us, and that's clear, it's hugely meaningful to us, their focus is very much on their front office, which is about getting as much of these hyperscale data centers built as they can, getting AI rolled out, putting their resources into that area.

This is nowhere near as material to them as it is to us. Therefore, what they're valuing is they value that we do it safely, they value we do it securely, they value that every single SLA that we've put to them, we achieve.

That's through to be frank, from Ingrid's perspective, that's through 5 or 6 years of hard work of building up these relationships. Just to repeat myself, yes, very material to us.

I'm not so sure that they would want to switch suppliers to save them maybe a few $10 millions of dollars a year and run the risk that they don't get the same level of service that they do from us. That's what's hugely important to them.

Ingrid Sinclair

If I can add, what's value to them is getting the repurposed DDR4s, right? It's not the money.

We have this client who's starting their decommissioning earlier because they need the parts in the new builds. It's very much value on getting the tested repurposed DDR4s going back into their data centers.

That's really where the value is.

Stephen Mikkelsen

Imagine if we turned up late, and we'd promised you would have the DDR4s on this date, and they're not. That's the risk that they run by going with someone else, and we've now got a really strong track record over the last 4 or 5 years to prove that we can do it.

Lee Power

Thanks for that. Then maybe just one more if I can sneak it in to John, I feel like you've undersold yourself a little bit given ANZ was break-even in the first quarter and you've delivered $22 million of EBIT for the half.

Can you just maybe chat a bit about when we think about using that second quarter number going forward around what the catch-up was or seasonality or something else going on, because it's obviously pretty solid quarter given what the backdrop's like?

John Glyde

Firstly, the second quarter was always going to be stronger than the first simply because of that catch-up process, which I got to say we, quite frankly, completed quicker than I thought we would. We largely got it all done in the second quarter.

I guess where you're leading to is how should we look at the second half? As I said, ferrous markets haven't improved.

Internationally, I would argue that we're sort of bouncing along or near the bottom in US dollar terms. Non-ferrous markets are strong, there's no doubt about it, both in retail non-ferrous and zorba.

I guess the other headwind aside from Stephen mentioned a lot about China and the amount of semi-finished steel making its way into our markets and our consumers is the Aussie dollar, and that's certainly, what have we seen in the last sort of 6-week period, 8-week period, we've seen the Aussie dollar go from around 67 cents to 71 cents. That is certainly hurting.

I would have said second half at this point, and I will say, Lee, we are 1 month into it. We are in January, but I would say, I think our second half's broadly going to be in line with our first half.

Lee Power

Yep, excellent. Thank you.

Really appreciate the color.

John Glyde

Thanks, Lee.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Brook Campbell-Crawford from Barrenjoey.

Please go ahead.

Brook Campbell-Crawford

Thanks for taking my question. Listen, I just had one on SLS and trying to kind of understand how it all works like some of the others here on the call.

Maybe just for the first half on slide 23, you talked about sort of 70% of revenue uplift relating to price. That implies about a $90 million increase in sales because of price, and then the total EBIT for the business was $35 million.

Just can you kind of talk through that? Why wouldn't you have a greater drop-through from revenue to EBIT given the majority of it's driven by price?

Thanks.

Warrick Ranson

It's Warrick here, Brook. Remember, the revenue is gross, and then we obviously take out the percentage of that we retain in terms of that sale, you don't get the full swing-through.

Got

Brook Campbell-Crawford

you. Okay.

That's the revenue share.

Stephen Mikkelsen

Yeah.

Brook Campbell-Crawford

Great. Then maybe just one I guess on the Dublin side.

Is the way to think about this, 1 million units, we can see what the DDR4 price is, we can assume, let's say a 30% revenue share and then an EBIT margin in line with what you've just delivered to kind of result in A$5 million EBIT from that facility once it ramps up? That's obviously very simplified, but would there be any large flaws with making those assumptions?

Stephen Mikkelsen

The one is that some of the units will go back to be repurposed, not resold, and repurpose is a service fee which is less than Fixed fee. Less than the resale.

Just I didn't quite hear what number did you come up I'm not going to say whether it's right or wrong, I just want to understand what number you came up with that back of the envelope.

Brook Campbell-Crawford

Listen, I was just using your 1 million unit comment and then we can see the DDR4 price is $70 US a unit, I'm pretty sure. Then we could assume a revenue share of 30%, call it, and then just use the EBIT margin for the division of 15% in the half, which I think gives you around A$5 million EBIT from that business.

I was just using that framework and hoping to get some sort of steer if that's sensible or not.

Stephen Mikkelsen

I just need to go through your math there because I'll be frank, I think that's a little light. It is, frankly, a little light.

Let me just think about your math on that because I'm not quite sure that last bit that you're coming into, maybe we can talk a bit about that, but again, maybe part of it will be in March, we'll be able to provide much more color with this additional guidance, but my initial reaction to that is that feels very light.

Brook Campbell-Crawford

Great. That's very helpful.

I'll pass it on.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Daniel Kang from CLSA.

Please go ahead.

Daniel Kang

Morning, everyone. Just to continue with the SLS discussion, maybe Ingrid, I just wanted if you can talk about the market share position of SLS at the moment.

I think the initial plans was to get to around about 10% share of the addressable market. Are you there already?

Maybe if you can shed some color on the competitive landscape on what the others are doing given that you're branching out into Dublin, what are their capacity plans as

Ingrid Sinclair

well? I don't think we're anywhere near 10%.

I think the market share is continuing to grow just as AI is exploding and this adjacent market is exploding accordingly, I don't think we've captured anywhere near 10%. There's still a lot of upside to go.

Our competitors, we talk a lot about Iron Mountain, SK tes, but it also is the hyperscalers themselves taking it in-house. We don't see hyperscalers doing it because they're competing with their data centers, and they make more margin in their data centers versus switching to what we do.

We don't see much movement there, certainly for SK tes and Iron Mountain. They are in Ireland already, Ireland is basically the nucleus for European data centers.

It's all located there. Still plenty of market.

Stephen Mikkelsen

Is it fair to say, Ingrid, that our biggest opportunity to grow market share is the work we're doing around showing to the existing hyperscalers who are not either doing it themselves or not doing it at all that there's significant value by using SLS services. I think that's one of our main growth levers.

Ingrid Sinclair

Definitely, because this is a way to get material at a cost-effective price point.

Stephen Mikkelsen

It's a big market, Daniel. To get 10% aspirational, that would be fantastic.

It's a big market. There's plenty to go.

Daniel Kang

Thank you, Stephen and Ingrid. Maybe a question for John.

I think you commented on ferrous scrap market still being pretty tough out there. What are the things that are you looking for for the markets to improve?

Can we see some improvement into the back end of this calendar year?

John Glyde

Look, couple of things as Stephen's talked a long and hard around the self-help piece, and that doesn't go away. Ongoing cost discipline, ongoing discipline around buying, trying to direct more unprocessed product to our shredders is all the sort of internal self-help.

I would say the other things that we've got coming on stream is Glenbrook, the New Zealand EAF, comes on late Q4 around May, I think, is sort of power on, and then there'll be a ramp-up period from there. That will be good for us.

We're very well positioned with the investment we've made there in rail infrastructure to service that needs. We've also got two fines plants that are currently under construction now, and they will go through a commissioning late Q3 into Q4, and we'll start seeing some very significant benefits, more so in FY 2027 from those two plants.

We've got the MRP upgrade in Auckland, which is again, as Stephen talked about, self-help, metal out of waste, very very good returns on that sort of investment. It's a mix of things.

As Stephen said, we don't, and you guys on the call are probably as well positioned or better positioned than us around the whole piece around China and when they're going to and if they're going to change direction. Ongoing strength in non-ferrous markets, really strong zorba pricing, driven by the underlying copper and aluminum pricing.

Ferrous is still tough. What we are seeing and this leads to the conversation about well positioned, we are seeing that a lot of our competitors are doing it tough.

I think that will present us with some opportunities down the track around industry rationalization and consolidation.

Daniel Kang

Makes sense. Thanks, John.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Chen Jiang from Bank of America.

Please go ahead.

Chen Jiang

Good morning, Stephen, Warrick, John, and Ingrid. Thank you for taking my question.

Maybe first question for Ingrid, SLS. Big increase of the revenue share from resale, I guess majority due to higher memory prices.

I'm just wondering, what is the strategy for SLS to grow your earnings if it's structural versus a one-off sugar hit when the DDR4 prices normalize? I guess the SLS business is not only solely rely on DDR4 prices.

What are the levers you can pull from here given the market is still, you mentioned, very fragmented and you are less than 10% of the market share? Thank you.

Ingrid Sinclair

That's very true. It's not all just DDR4, we're also seeing increase in pricing in hard drives and the other elements we sell, we don't just sell memory, we sell all components that are accessories to the data centers.

How we're going to grow is through volume. We're going to see more volume coming through our current contracts and expanding geographically.

Don't forget that once DDR4s have run their course, we'll start seeing DDR5s coming out, so that this will replicate and just go on to the next technology shift.

Stephen Mikkelsen

One more thing, Ingrid. Chen, you made an interesting comment about prices normalizing.

Look, it's a very valid and interesting point. The way we're looking at it, and this is a very unusual market structure, but the way we're looking at it is, what does normalizing mean?

Because you've got two really interesting things going on. Firstly, DDR4s, as I said before, DDR4s are the workhorse of the Internet of Things, they're the workhorse of our computers.

DDR4s are not going away anytime soon, you don't have this falling demand in the next couple of years. You just don't have it.

You've got this demand which is strong. What you have is this dramatically falling supply, which has been absolutely turbocharged by AI.

Anyone who can make chips is making DDR5s. That's what they're turning to.

No one's setting up new factories to make DDR4s of any quality because why would you? You might as well put all your resources into DDR5.

From an economics point of view, you've got this unusual situation where you've got strong demand and supply not there to meet that demand. Normally you would think it would, it's because it's been completely diverted somewhere else.

I'm not sure to say, time will tell on how it plays out, but I'm not sure what normalizing means when you've got that market dynamic.

Chen Jiang

Sure, thanks. Thanks for that, Stephen.

Normalizing almost trades like a commodity sort. I'm not talking about demand, but more like a price given how the price has been over the last 5 to 6 months.

Yeah.

Stephen Mikkelsen

Chen, where it doesn't behave like a commodity, and I get why and we're grappling ourselves with this because this is new for everybody what AI is doing. Where it doesn't behave like a commodity, when demand goes up and pricing is growing, you would normally, a commodity, there'd be more supply come on, people would invest in things, and more supply would come on, and that would dampen the price, and normally they overinvest, and so down price goes and then they all pull out, and there's the commodity cycle.

This doesn't really follow that cycle because you just can't bring on more supply.

Chen Jiang

Right. That's very good point, Stephen.

I appreciate that. Second question, if that's okay, again, focusing on SLS.

Are you being able to provide any color on the resale revenue sharing across corporates or hyperscaler? Is that how the contract work?

Understand, Ingrid, your team spent 4 to 5 years over the last 4 or 5 years built very strong relationship with hyperscalers, and hyperscaler revenue has been growing CAGR 40% or 50%. If you can give us any color on your existing contract position as well as if any new contract rather than just leverage to the DDR4 prices.

Thank you.

Ingrid Sinclair

Don't think we can get into too much detail because it's commercially sensitive on our contracts and what we've negotiated, but once we do, our contracts do run 3 to 5 years long. The percentages are negotiated up front and just sticks through the contract.

Stephen Mikkelsen

I think I agree. There's a lot of commercial sensitivity in that, Chen.

I'll go back and remake the point that why are we successful and why is Ingrid's team successful? It's around we've spent the last 5 or 6 years building up our proven capability to deliver, and delivery particularly when repurposing, which has the benefits of we get some resells.

It's really important for these hyperscalers. I'm with Ingrid, I just don't want to get into detail on commercial contracts.

Chen Jiang

Understand. Understand.

Absolutely. Fully understand.

Let's put it another way from contracts or relationship or even how your revenue model work. How that different to your competitor, Iron Mountain and other small competitors given it's such a very fragmented market?

I don't know if that's perfect competition or is that easy

Stephen Mikkelsen

Ingrid, I don't want to, but for me, the business model is fundamentally the same across the industry. That's not it's

Ingrid Sinclair

Pretty much. What we are doing, though, as far as repurposing DDR4s going back into the data center, we are the only ones that are doing that.

We are testing, reprogramming, and it's going back into a data center, it's competing against virgin material. That is something very special that we do, and that is in strong demand by the hyperscalers.

They need the parts because they can't get it on the market, so.

Stephen Mikkelsen

Good point, Ingrid. That's a big differentiator.

The industry structure generally, but it's actually a very good point around that service that we're particularly good at. Sure.

Chen Jiang

Thank you very much, Stephen and Ingrid. I will pass it on.

Thank you.

Stephen Mikkelsen

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Owen Birrell from RBC.

Please go ahead.

Owen Birrell

Good morning, guys. Just a few questions from me as with everyone, first question on SLS.

A couple of angles here from my perspective. The first one is just looking at slide 23, useful revenue by segment splits between resale, service, and other.

I'm wondering if you can give me a sense of the 5.3 million repurposed units during FY 20, well, first half '26, what split of those units by volume went to resale versus service? If we can

Stephen Mikkelsen

Just let me we we obviously we know that number. I'm just thinking just from a commercially send is that Warrick, what's your thoughts?

Warrick Ranson

Let us have a think about that, Owen, and come back to you. Yeah.

Owen Birrell

Okay. Then let me ask a subsequent question to that.

Is that split likely to change going into the second half? Do you have forward commitments for more service volumes as opposed to resale, or vice versa?

Ingrid Sinclair

We do have service commitments, but the way it works, Owen, when you get in a rack, there is only a certain percentage that is fit for purpose to go back into a data center. Technically, there's only a certain percentage that can go in.

Regardless of the increased need to go back into a hyperscaler, there still is percentage that is for resale and revenue share. The increased need would be met by a faster decommissioning cycle because they need the parts.

Owen Birrell

Yeah. Indicatively the splits between resale and service from a volume perspective are largely constrained and therefore don't fundamentally change from period to period, is that kind of what I'm getting from that comment?

Ingrid Sinclair

Right, because in a fully populated rack, there is only a certain percentage that can go back in.

Stephen Mikkelsen

I guess, Ingrid, the other way of looking at it, we would not be expecting second half splits to be materially different to the first half. No,

Ingrid Sinclair

but I would expect the volumes to go up because they need more parts.

Owen Birrell

Yep. Excellent.

Just on SLS, I guess in terms of from our perspective understanding how the operating leverage flows through, given the lease model that you operate, is it fair to say that it's a very high variable cost business? Are you able to give us a sense of I guess what the fixed-to-variable split is in the operating cost spaces?

Yeah.

Ingrid Sinclair

The way we're attacking that, Owen, is we're automating. We're going to automate wherever possible so we can bring productivity into the process and control that variable cost.

Yes, normally, as you would scale, you would expect costs to increase. We're going to attack it with automation.

Stephen Mikkelsen

My understanding was a lot of that automation was actually going to be leased anyway, essentially becomes more of a variable cost. Some of it is.

Yes, you're dead right. The stuff we showed in Nashville was on a volume basis.

Yes, that's correct. I think what Ingrid's talking about is we will end up turbocharging.

I think there's two things about SLS going forward. One is we will turbocharge automation because I think there's definitely productivity savings to be had there where we can effectively use a leased facility 24 hours a day through automation.

The other thing I would say is, moving forward, expect to see some additional expenditure going into R&D because what we know for sure is that in 3 or 4 years' time, the DDR5s that are going in now are going to come out, and they present a completely different challenge to DDR4s. Some of them are in liquid cooling, some of them are more sensitive.

We are going to spend some money on R&D to make sure that we've got a business here that has the potential to last for decades because there's a constant replenishment cycle with new equipment.

Owen Birrell

Okay. Just one more question for me for Warrick.

Free cash flow conversion was quite weak during this period. I understand there's often seasonal swings and trade swings.

Just were there any sales booked very late in the period that you haven't received cash for yet?

Warrick Ranson

We always have some sales. I wouldn't say it's a material amount.

I'd probably dispute the cause about free cash flow being weak. I think, for us, you have to back out the amount in our working capital, we have to include the margin deposits, and, as I pointed out, effectively, we had sort of $200 million sort of come through because of non-ferrous pricing.

We managed to maintain our total working capital balance at around about pretty much the same level. Actually converting our activity into cash has actually been quite strong.

If you take out that 70-odd million that went into those margin deposits, EBITDA to operating cash was pretty close to sort of 95%, just

Owen Birrell

It's just timing. I guess what I'm getting at is just timing and it should essentially rectify itself into the second half.

Warrick Ranson

Correct, because, yeah, those margin deposits, etc., will come back down. The

Stephen Mikkelsen

one thing I'll and at the risk of Rob's got a great expression, breaking into jail. The one thing I would add to that, though, is that if non-ferrous prices keep rising, we see them keep rising and rising and rising, two things will happen.

That will boost profitability, but it also, we've always been like this, puts more money into working capital. We've done a huge amount to hold our inventory levels, and I think Warwick's right, we've done a great job, the team has done a great job in managing that.

Rising non-ferrous prices boost profitability, but they absolutely increase our working capital requirements. If at the end of this year, if end of 2026, we have another surge in prices in non-ferrous, you will see a similar thing happen.

Owen Birrell

Sure. Just one one one final question on SLS.

You talked about sort of that pricing I guess sort of 1 month in advance. Is there a risk that you get the opposite project if prices come back down, is there any exposure that you have to a falling pricing environment from an input cost perspective?

Or is it purely just revenue share?

Stephen Mikkelsen

It's revenue share and service fees, I don't think so because it would flow through at the So we don't take, I think of what your question is, do we take inventory risk? We

Owen Birrell

Basically, yeah.

Stephen Mikkelsen

There is a small amount, but it's not massive. It can't be perfect.

Rob Thompson

It turns over pretty quick. Yeah.

Owen Birrell

Okay. That's great.

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Harry Saunders from E&P.

Please go ahead.

Harry Saunders

Morning. Thanks for taking my questions.

I'll start off with NAM for the sake of variety. Came in ahead of guidance.

Anything you would call out to not sort of use this as a run rate for NAM in the second half, given sort of current market conditions, perhaps?

Stephen Mikkelsen

You're right, we've got Rob in the room, and for the sake of variety, I think Rob's feeling a little unloved here.

Rob Thompson

Harry, no, I think you could safely say that, as John said, we're only 1 month into our third quarter. The domestic market has increased twice in this third quarter for us, $30 in January and another $30 or so depending on the grade.

Some markets are good, non-ferrous pricing is holding. If you recall, last year we had some severe weather where we operate.

That is reoccurring this year as well, with inbound flows, but I would say margins are going to hold this year, and we'll have a better third quarter than last.

Stephen Mikkelsen

It's probably fair to say, Rob, from an EBIT point of view, the impact of the cold weather has been nothing like it was last year at all here.

Harry Saunders

Right. This implies overall a reasonable increase year-on-year in 2H EBIT.

That's cool.

Stephen Mikkelsen

I think that's a fair conclusion to draw. I know Rob's comment, we're 1 month in.

We're 1 month in.

Harry Saunders

Right, thank you. I will go back to SLS now.

I'm just wondering if you can outline the percentage of SLS revenue that is resale that was 61% in the first half, what is memory within that?

Stephen Mikkelsen

DDR4 memory in particular. I think that comes back to Owen's question.

We'll take that offline, Harry, and have a think about coming back to you on that. Obviously the extent we do disclose something, we'll disclose it to everybody, but we're just grappling in our minds, what's commercially sensitive and what is sensible to talk to everyone about which doesn't impact our business with either our competitors or our customers.

Let's get back on that one, and we've definitely will.

Harry Saunders

Thanks. Then, I'm going to ask this anyway, and I know you probably won't answer, but if the memory price does hold at the current level, and based on you were saying earlier, the repurposed versus reused versus resold units don't vary materially in percentage terms, you must have some idea of what the pricing benefit should be in the second half.

Can you talk through the potential benefit there in terms of quantifying, please?

Stephen Mikkelsen

Yeah. If you're right, if you hold all of those things constant, you would expect the second half to be materially better than the first half because the prices rose into the end of the first half, and if they carry into the second half, we're clearly going to have increased absolute resale.

We the volume is looking good, we would expect some increase in service fees. Yes.

If you hold all of that equal, you would expect a material improvement on the second half versus the first half. What we'll do in March is try and provide some additional guidance from what we actually is happening, where we think that number is.

Harry Saunders

Thanks. Then maybe just asking Brooke's question a different way.

Any reason not to look at Ireland as the 1 million annual units as a ratio of your existing, what you did, 5.3 in the first half, call it 10 or 11 annualized, looking at that is just an even ratio to unit?

Stephen Mikkelsen

I think the mix is different. When you're looking at the whole business, Ingrid, I think this is the correct answer, when you're looking at the whole business which includes much more than just hyperscaler activity, and so it would skew higher than the business as a whole.

Harry Saunders

Okay. Thank you.

Last question, if I may, on SLS. Just wondering if you get a pricing benefit from customer reuse, or if that's kind of a fixed dollar amount, you're only benefiting on the actual resale percentage?

Also, just the revenue share, is there anything to stop customers lowering that percentage when the contract is eventually renewed? Are there any major renewals coming up?

Ingrid Sinclair

There aren't any major renewals coming up shortly. We're still another couple of 2, 3 years out on our existing contracts.

Stephen Mikkelsen

The service fee is a fixed

Ingrid Sinclair

Service fees are fixed. That's correct.

Where it's volume.

Stephen Mikkelsen

Yep. Ingrid made a really interesting and valid point before is that in terms of the service fee of putting it back in, when a rack comes out, it's not 100% redeployed back into the unit.

There is a substantial amount of those DDR4s that are not suitable to go back in, and they find their way to the resale market. Just because if we get more activity around the service revenue, we will pick up more resale revenue with that as well.

Harry Saunders

Thanks. I'll sneak one more in.

Just are you seeing any new competitors enter the market recently in SLS?

Ingrid Sinclair

As Stephen mentioned before, it took us years to get here, and to get to the level of qualification with the clients to make their technical specs, the security specs, data security. We are not, at this moment, seeing anybody, any new entrants.

It takes years just to achieve this.

Stephen Mikkelsen

We've said all along our biggest competitors remain the hyperscalers doing it themselves or not doing it at all. That's our next frontier.

Harry Saunders

Great. Thank you.

I'll leave it there.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Scott Ryall from Rimor Equity Research.

Please go ahead.

Scott Ryall

Hi, thanks very much. I'm going to start, if it's okay, on slide 22.

It's a question, I guess, for Rob and John. Specifically looking at the trading margin, just an observation first.

Rob, I hope you're giving John a bit of a needle about beating him for the first time in 5 years or so based on my numbers. I guess my question for both of you, for Rob, is your aspiration to get your trading margin up towards SA Recycling over the medium term?

John, is that decline, you've spoken about the top line and the ferrous markets and non-ferrous markets, how much of an impact on the trading margin did the outage have in the first half, please?

John Glyde

I'll go first. As I said, over the half, we actually managed to clear most of the inventory that was accumulated during the outage, we've got a small amount of overhang that will wash out in H2.

Over the half, it was pretty much clear. The other thing I should point out around trading margin is, proportionally having higher non-ferrous volumes and higher non-ferrous pricing actually impacts trading margin in percentage terms In percentage terms, yeah.

as opposed to dollar per ton terms. Actually doing more volume at higher pricing in non-ferrous has a negative impact on trading margin percentage-wise.

Scott Ryall

Is it fair to say that's the biggest driver then, John? Sorry?

Is it fair to say that that's the biggest driver then of the trading margin being down? No,

John Glyde

no, Ferrous is extraordinarily challenging. Yeah.

Yeah. I guess,

Stephen Mikkelsen

Scott, first of all, thank you for noticing that. A lot of work to the team.

In terms of SA Recycling, they're a heck of a model to aspire to be. I think the simple answer I can give you will be that, yes, through examples like TCT, the recent acquisition, and some road map activity that is yet to be released to the market, some of the feeder yard bolt-ons that we've talked about over the last several years, that's where we differentiate with SA largely.

They have more than twice as many shredders and more than two times the feeder yards, where they're able to collect material at a much lower level of volume, but also at a higher margin. NAM in the past has been built on big cities, big populations.

We can have something in the middle. Yes, more work to be done and we're going to continue clawing at it.

All right.

Scott Ryall

Great. Thank you.

Then my second question is predictably for Ingrid. It's a bit different, I think.

I guess what I'm wondering, just when you're planning your business, Ingrid, what is the visibility that you actually have on a rolling 6- or 12-month basis? You mentioned there's about a 2-month lag for pricing.

Does that mean whatever the traded price is now, you're getting in 2 months, and therefore, in 3 months, You can take an educated guess, but you're not quite sure what the price will be. Then, I guess, the same for the units.

Do you have pretty clear line of sight on a rolling 3- to 6-month basis, or is it longer based on your contracts that, like what you've just done in Ireland? Just be interested to hear how your business settings actually work.

Ingrid Sinclair

Scott, a tool that we use, which you can also subscribe to, is trendforce.com. That gives some visibility, certainly in this market, on the memory market, pricing and so forth.

Depending on the client, we do have some visibility because we're in their inventory systems, they're in our inventory systems, we can see the decommissioning cycle. We don't necessarily know what's coming out of there, but we can see when racks will be decommissioned and come to us.

That does give us some planning visibility.

Stephen Mikkelsen

Ingrid, it's probably fair to say that when it's varied from that, it tends to come earlier Correct. not later, Right.

is what we've found. That's been our planning challenges.

Something has arrived earlier than we thought.

Scott Ryall

Yep. When do you feel most comfortable with making a 95% confidence interval as opposed to say 80% or something or 75%?

Do you feel really confident on a 3-month basis as opposed to 6, 12, those sorts of things?

Stephen Mikkelsen

Ingrid, I'll let you have a think. By definition, the price is something that 2 months out gives you a lack of confidence in terms of what it's actually going to be.

We've got confidence around what we think drives it. When I look at our results, I feel pretty confident about what Ingrid's predicting 2, maybe 3 months out.

Beyond that, there is just some variability. What do you think the price is going to be is probably the main variability.

Ingrid can show me what the volumes are. I think 3 months out, with reasonably confident volumes, maybe it's going to come in earlier, which is, I guess, why we think we've chosen the March the March date should give us some degree of confidence around additional guidance for June.

Whether it's at the 95%, 95% feels a little bit like a utility. We're not that.

It's certainly a reasonable level of confidence. Yeah.

Okay.

Scott Ryall

Just with that in mind, and I know you've got very good reasons for having followed a customer to Ireland, how much when you go and spend the money and I note what you're saying, Stephen, about R&D and automation and things like that, there's no business plan in the world that's riskless, but how do you get the confidence of at least making your minimum return on capital for that investment decision, please?

Stephen Mikkelsen

Maybe Warrick, you think a lot about capital, maybe

Warrick Ranson

I think the beauty of the SLS model is it's capital-light. Our investment there is really around the lease commitment and how we structure that.

We obviously cater for that within the way in which we approach that. From a capital investment perspective, it's actually a great model.

There's not a huge amount of capital that goes into it.

Scott Ryall

That's fair enough. Thank you.

That's all I had.

Stephen Mikkelsen

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Ramoun Lazar from Jefferies.

Please go ahead.

Ramoun Lazar

Thanks, guys. Just a couple of questions on NAM and SA Recycling.

Just on NAM, comments at the AGM for a meaningful step-up into the second half. Could you maybe build on Harry's question around NAM and how to think about the second half given the seasonality that we saw last year?

I guess what you're seeing there with a step-up in non-ferrous pricing. What could we expect from NAM in that second half period?

Stephen Mikkelsen

I'm going to let Rob answer the question, but to me, it's around market pricing and our operations within that market. Rob, you think about this all day every day.

Second half, how do you feel about second half and what's driving it differently from last year?

Rob Thompson

I would say this to you. The way we've structured, and I think the presentation that you've been able to see, the pivot over towards domestic consumption, whether it's ferrous or non-ferrous, and having those customers, it's a self-hedging margin preservation.

I'm buying and selling in the same markets. The international side, we're optimizing when it suits, and we're dramatically changing the compositions of our cargoes based on best prices by commodity.

Non-ferrous resilience is there. I think the scarcity of copper and aluminum and really the demand pull has been good.

In terms of what Warrick mentioned earlier about construction spend, I think we're coming into the season in the next 45 days or so where we'll start to see some more construction demand. The steel mills are running in the high 70%s utilization rates.

Their margins are tremendously good. They're not going to miss a heat, they're looking for raw materials.

We're looking pretty solid in the second half. Okay.

Ramoun Lazar

I guess the step-up in non-ferrous would have given you more confidence around that meaningful step-up versus what you said at the AGM. Is that fair?

Stephen Mikkelsen

I I think and and unlike ANZ, I think in NAM, you need to be thinking about ferrous as well. Ferrous does give us ferrous we do have some confidence in NAM ferrous as well unlike I mean ANZ, we're we're fairly confident that China is going to keep depressed and there's nothing going to happen in ANZ.

Everything's about non-ferrous. NAM, this this shred the domestic shred premium, the the what we've done around our logistics to make sure that we can we can sell domestically.

That number I said before is quite amazing. 85% of our East Coast shred went domestically.

2 years ago, we would have been capable of doing 10%. The the the increased demand in the EAFs, there's there's more EAFs that come on come online.

Rob's right around the construction activity. We are feeling reasonably good about ferrous as well in North America versus first half.

Ramoun Lazar

Okay. No, that's helpful.

Then SA, I guess, pretty meaningful step-up there in the first half versus PCP. Not that far off the strong second half '25 result.

I guess how are you sort of framing that business into the second half, any thing to think about in terms of headwinds or costs or anything like that that could impact those?

Stephen Mikkelsen

No, I don't think there is, Ramoun. I think SA will enjoy the same market structure that NAM has.

What I would add to it, they continue to produce a lot of zorba, and we don't see zorba coming off in any meaningful way. In fact, zorba is strong.

We don't see copper coming off. We don't see aluminum coming off.

They have a good non-retail ferrous. No, I'm not seeing headwinds in the second half versus the first half.

You're right. Second half of last year was very, very strong for them, and that would be great if they could replicate that.

We're 1 month in.

Ramoun Lazar

Okay. All right.

I'll leave it there. Thanks.

Stephen Mikkelsen

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Charles Strong from Jarden.

Please go ahead.

Charles Strong

Morning, Stephen and team. Just wondering whether you could quantify the impact to trading margins in percentage terms there has been from greater non-ferrous mix, whether at the regional level or across metals?

I'm

Stephen Mikkelsen

not specifically, but what I would say is, by definition, greater non-ferrous lowers our trading margin percentage because we make greater margin per ton on a much, much higher. When you're selling copper at I don't know, $12,000, $13,000 a ton, your trading margin percentage is always going to be lower because you're making more in absolute dollars.

If I was to then say why NAM has done particularly well is despite that dynamic, NAM has actually grown its trading margin percentage, which I think goes back to Raman's question a little bit, which has come from ferrous. It's grown quite nicely.

Charles Strong

Thanks, Stephen. Just one more if I might.

You've had net corporate cost saves. Do you see any further opportunity there with outsourcing shared services, or anything of the like?

Warrick Ranson

There's always opportunity. I think what we've said before, we took a fair amount of cost out of the business sort of a year, 18 months back.

We did say that we would start to plateau in terms of those major structural changes to the business, but we're always looking for sort of cost-out. I'd say they're more on the fringe.

It's really about just sort of maintaining our cost levels at sort of current rates at the moment, Charles.

Stephen Mikkelsen

The only thing I would add on cost, Charles, if non-ferrous was the hero of the result in many ways, costs were a pretty good support act. If you back out the variable costs that came from increased unprocessed and increased activity in SLS, the actual underlying cost base has performed really well in some still pretty inflationary times.

I agree with Warrick. It's relentless, the cost program, and we will continue being relentless.

I think probably the major major cost reduction programs Well, I think we're more continuous improvement now, Warrick, aren't we? Yep.

Warrick Ranson

Yep.

Charles Strong

Thanks, Warrick. Thanks, Stephen.

I'll pass it on.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time.

I'll now hand back to Mr. Mikkelsen for closing remarks.

Stephen Mikkelsen

Thanks, everyone, for joining the call. Thank you for the interesting questions, very good questions.

I will see a number of you or we will all see a number of you over the coming days as we get out and about. Thanks very much.

Operator

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating.

You may now disconnect.