Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and to everyone dialed in. Thank you for making the time to come and listen to our presentation of our half-year results.

As as normal, we'll run through a presentation where I'll give a a quick overview, Pieter will will give the financial information, Collin will will talk about the the social side of the business, the softer side of the business. Then I'll summarize again at the end, and with thereafter, we'll handle questions.

If there are any questions, please type it in for those of you online, type it in under the Q&A block or the chat block, and we will read it here and and answer the question. If we look at the period that has has just gone by that we reported on up until 31 August, I think that first block is a good summary of what happened where where we really saw a number of challenges that converged on the business from various fronts, specifically in the bulk commodities space.

For me personally, one of the highlights of this period was also in how the whole Afrimat team got together and and how we managed to strategically realign the business to adjust to what could be a new normal in in many of the cases, and how the team has executed with intent. I really hope to to share with you the progress that has has been made in the in the year so far.

If we look at the successes, you'll know that about three years ago, we announced that we were buying the Lafarge South Africa businesses. Many people still confuses Lafarge with cement.

It's actually a very small part of the cement of of the Lafarge business. The real value in the Lafarge business has always been the aggregates business and the positioning of their aggregates assets, as well as their fly ash business.

That you'll see has really come through in a big, big way this year. We have also been able to get access to our new iron ore deposit called Doornfontein, which is really critical for us to be able to to adjust to what what we call a new normal in that industry with a with a very high quality material that has a a low cost of production.

During this period, we also saw significant increase in our export of anthracite. You'll remember that Nkomati anthracite mine was a dedicated mine to to Glencore when we bought it out of business rescue.

Glencore decided to shut down last year in August. They decided to shut their ferrochrome smelters, basically taking the the market away from us overnight.

The team really got together, and you'll see how the exports have increased. Fortunately, in anticipation of what could happen, we did start developing the export market before before this happened, but we really had had the opportunity to accelerate it very hard.

Then we've we've been awarded a 240,000-tonne-a-year allocation on what is called MECA 3. That's a a manganese export allocation.

Transnet renews these allocations once every 10 years. There's seven years left on this allocation that we that we were awarded.

Then also as part of our cash generation, we we managed to sell iron ore on what we call the GFB line, the the general freight business line of Transnet. It's a more expensive way, but it did give us the opportunity to sell redundant stock that we had in the in the iron ore business and turn that into cash, and and that that did that did help us with cash generation to to to to an extent.

As I said in this beginning, it has been a very, very challenging first half. It has been the most challenging that we've ever had since the listing of Afrimat.

By the way, Afrimat will be 20 years old on the on the 7th of November. Some of the challenges that we had: the the the reduced rand price at the mine gate.

We saw probably from where it was about a year ago, probably a good 25%, 30% reduction in rand price at the mine gate. We also saw lower domestic iron ore sales, our our local customer being ArcelorMittal, who who decided to buy a a extra stockpile of material from Beeshoek, which is a closed mine, but there were still some stock on there.

That impacted our sales in the first half of this year, and on top of that, they also had their challenges. The cement market remained an overtraded space.

The in the domestic or the the inland cement market, our analysis is that the whole market has shrunk. If we look at what our competitors are saying, that that that is true for for most of the cement players in that northern region, supplying into Gauteng and the northern provinces.

Then the thing that's very topical at the moment is the sharp increase in fuel prices. As we speak, diesel is about 75% more expensive than what it was in the beginning of the financial year.

That is a in an open-pit mining operation, quarrying operation, that does have that does bring specific challenges with it. If we look at all these things, and we are not we're not good at standing here and making excuses.

That's not that's not the Afrimat way. We normally try to be proactive and try to foresee things.

Some of the things that changed in this first half was was a little unforeseen and happened a little bit quicker than we thought. If we look what proactive actions were taken in in this in this period, a lot of our loss-making operations were closed.

We didn't have many of them, but they but but those that we did have, we did close them. The non-core operations were sold.

For instance, we we've now completely exited the manufactured concrete manufactured product market. We've sold all our brick and block businesses, all our our factories.

We focused very strongly on cash cash generation and debt reduction. We managed to reduce our centralized centralized cost with there was quite a lot of cost that came with the Lafarge transaction, which we managed to to to engineer out of the business and is now completely out.

We we completed the divestures that the Competition Commission expected of us to to do. That that deal was was completed, and the money was the money was banked.

Then we made very, very good progress on our our strategic positioning of our cement business. With the Lafarge business, we did get the cement business.

It is a turnaround, and JD and his team has done an exceptional job to turn it around. That has now given us very good opportunities to look at strategic alternatives, which we are working on.

If we look at the different segments, there's a comparison on the screen for you on in terms of revenue. We saw a marginal reduction in in revenue from 5.3 to 5.1 billion.

The and and there you can see aggregates still being the dominant contributor in terms of revenue, but you'll also see later now also in terms of profitability quite a quite a a good contribution. Iron ore constant, round about 24%, 25% of revenue.

If we then look at our Construction Materials business, which as I said in the beginning, that was really the star performer of this half-year, there you can see what the revenue has done. Year on year, the revenue has been relatively flat both for aggregates as well as the cement business actually had had a slight reduction in revenue.

The aggregates business revenue must also be seen against the backdrop that certain assets were disposed of in this period. The growth we saw in certain asset assets in terms of revenue was offset by the revenue that we that we lost by the disposal of certain assets.

The important slide or the important information on that slide is the operating profit and the margin. There you can see that the aggregates business is really now starting to come through, and we'll give you a little bit more detail in the next slide on exactly how that is how that is done.

If we look at the aggregates and fly ash business, we we are very, very satisfied. When when I stood here six months ago, I was asked the question what margins do we hope to to see in the in the aggregates business, and I made the comment to say I I would really hope to see it go above 20%, and we did break through the 20% margin.

The margin that you'll see in our financials are actually higher than that, but remember that does include the profit that were made on disposals, which we've now stripped out. What you see there in front of you is the real operational business and what what was made in that business.

The the Lafarge businesses are now fully integrated into our business and working as a as a unit. There's there's no more Lafarge in Afrimat; it's fully integrated.

We did spend a bit of capital to to make sure that all those businesses, and it's an ongoing process, we'll always make sure that we we we we remain relevant in terms of capital. We we also had we did dispose of certain businesses that were relatively high-revenue businesses, but low-margin businesses, typically some of our ready-mix businesses, as well as all the brick and block businesses has been disposed of.

The star performer is really the fly ash business that although it although it's not a big business, the margins in that business is very healthy, and it's a business with a very solid moat around it. There you can see on the graph the the operating profit for half-year periods over the last six years, and that green circle or block around it, that's after the Lafarge transaction.

There you can see how that has changed our our aggregates business, and there you can see the reason why we bought Lafarge. If we look at the the footprint, you'll see that our footprint, with the exception maybe of the Southern Cape, that's a very lively part of the country, but the rest is where wherever there's good economic activity, we have a very strong presence.

For instance, we we own more than 50% of the accredited quarries that can supply Transnet, which I which I think is a is is a very valuable competitive advantage. Transnet and provincial roads is a big a big driver of of the performance of this business, in addition to private building.

There's there's quite a lot of private building going on around the country, and and we see that residential building in certain parts of the country is accelerating, and the renewable energy market is definitely accelerating and using more of our products. The cement business, this has been a very difficult turnaround in a market that is extremely depressed.

Anybody that analyzes cement industry should agree that especially in that northern part with a with with all the cement factories being in a relatively small radius near Lichtenburg in in North West, the market is extremely tough for those guys, and and and JD and his team has had a tough job to turn this business around. Operationally, they've done a fantastic job.

The the the factory is is in a very good state. What's interesting is the prospects for that industry is actually very good.

Government is really coming to the party in terms of protection protection measures that's coming in against imports, and there's some other actions coming in against low-value blenders. The longer-term prospects for this this industry and for this business is not bad.

That gives us the opportunity to to do to to look at very interesting strategic alternatives for the business, and we are we are looking at a few very, very exciting opportunities in this space. As soon as we've got everything firmed up, we will we will talk to the market a lot more.

Bulk commodities: you'll remember that just about two years ago, our bulk commodities business was about 80% of our profits. I get the question very often nowadays that you said you're a you're a diversified business, but your diversification didn't help you.

Our answer to that is if we didn't have the diversification, we didn't have the aggregates business, we would have been in trouble. You will see that we have generated cash, which I think is the important measure that we've actually built we have reduced debt a little bit.

Unfortunately, our our bulk commodities business was under a lot of pressure, and specifically on the iron ore side, we had a combination of factors. We we we reached we are reaching the end of life in in Demaneng, which is making the cost higher, the quality lower.

We have to buy in to blend the product to keep our our export market alive. Doornfontein, which is the the the mine that we that we acquired, and and the guys did a fantastic job to to get a a very good business there at a reasonably good price.

Then we had to, fight the South African system, and we even had to go to court to get the license. We got that all done, we got the approval, and we actually have a team on site as we speak, busy developing the mine.

It's a it's a low-cost mine, and we should start seeing sales from here towards the end of this financial year, because it's a it's a mine with with a very low strip ratio, and it's a direct-shipping ore for a for a certain part of it. If we look at the domestic market, I touched on that just now.

ArcelorMittal closed Newcastle. They and they they acquired a a dump, a or a stockpile, not a dump, a stockpile of material.

Because it's our competitor, I would call it a dump, but it's probably unfair. They acquired that material, and that had an impact on on the volumes that they acquired from us.

They are moving through that stockpile, and we are starting to see an improvement in in sales, and we expect a stabilization of round about 90 to 100,000 tonnes. We've already seen in in the second quarter an improvement, and as we speak, it seems to be reasonably stable round about those volumes.

The average realized price is lower than in the past, but we also have now a a a a different structure in place that will hopefully improve the pricing a little bit in the in the not too distant future. On the on the export side, we have seen a very good and you'll see in the next graph how the improvement in Transnet is starting to become a reality.

We've seen more reliable work or or logistics from from Transnet, but on the downside, they have now gone from one shutdown to two shutdowns. We're still seeing that our our actual material transported is still below our allocated our allocate our rail allocation, because of specifically because of these shutdowns.

There was a a derailment, but Gerhard, I'm only aware of one derailment this year. Yeah.

Okay. Gerhard and I have a little inside joke, because Gerhard always predicts the the the derailment to be just after the shut.

Anyway, we also exported 110,000 tonnes of mostly fines that were slow-moving or redundant stock, and we decided to to to export that, albeit at a higher cost. The GFB export line is more expensive than the than the normal Sishen-Saldanha line.

Given the the cash that we could generate and it was was redundant stock, we did decide to do that, and it generated cash, but it did not really it was not really profitable, but it did generate cash and free up cash for stock that was actually dead stock. The average price at mine gate did reduce.

On average over the period was 16.4% down, in spite of the fact that for the period, the average dollar price in the first half of this year was 3.3% up, and but the strengthening of the rand and and the big thing was the increase in the shipping cost of almost 50%. That reduced the the rand price at the mine gate for us.

Looking at our bulk commodities, Demaneng is at the end of life, and we will probably start seeing the last of that towards the end of this year. There's still a little bit of material left, but one day when Ernie, who is in the audience here who does our sales and marketing, when he pays us a better price for our iron ore, we can go back and fetch the stuff from from Demaneng, but for now, he's not paying us enough.

Doornfontein, that's an exciting new opportunity. We are on the site, we still we're doing two things simultaneously: the one is the obvious material that that that we can see there, we are we've we started producing from there, but we we are still we have a a a team on site that does the exploration so that we can do a proper competent persons report when we we stand here six months from now, we'll be able to do a proper report on the material.

I can tell you, this is a bargain of a lifetime. We bought Jenkins a couple of years ago for 300 million.

We paid 150 million for this mine, and I I don't want to quote any figures from here, but I think we we bought significantly more iron ore in the ground than what we did in with in the case of Jenkins. The exploration is is ongoing and will be done towards the end of this financial year.

I'm very excited about that. Jenkins will be focused on the domestic market.

It is a low-cost operation, and we will we will focus that on the on the on the domestic market. Here's the slide that I wanted to show you.

If you look at the graph, and this is because this goes back all the way to September 2023, and the different colors shows the different modes of transport on the export line, the GFB line, domestic rail, and domestic trucks. Can you see that from July, in July, we did a little bit by road still, but as from August, nothing has gone by road.

That speaks to the changes that we are seeing at Transnet. There's a definite change in the in the quality of I want to call it quality of management of Transnet.

There you can see some of the trends in the iron ore market: what the 61, 62% Platts price has done in the last three years, what the lump premium has done, and also the freight rates, which fortunately, as we speak, are starting to come back. We were in excess of $30 a tonne, and I think it's at the moment round about $20, $25, $25, it's starting to look better.

Manganese: we at this stage, we're still we're still using Driehoekspan. It's a it's not a great quality manganese deposit, but it is an extra with with no extra overheads.

It's a it's an operation that we do at at at marginal cost. We're exporting through there.

Doornfontein, on the other hand, there is a certain part of the farm that has reasonably good quality manganese, and this allocation is definitely going to help us to get full value from Doornfontein. If you ever wanted to see what the culture of Afrimat really means, let's go and look at what happened at at Nkomati.

The 15th of August 2025, I was in in Botswana on a on a on a short vacation, and my colleague Gerhard, our COO, sent me a WhatsApp to tell me that the ferrochrome smelters are not starting up again. My wife says my legs literally gave way under me because of the impact that would have on Nkomati, because we were a dedicated mine for Glencore.

We did start exporting a little bit of what we call high phos, the the material with with higher levels of phosphorus in the in the material, which was out of spec for and used to be a waste product. We did start exporting that at a low level, but our focus was was Glencore.

The team got together, they managed to to reduce cost dramatically, and the marketing team, with Rickus sitting in the room here and and some of our other people, they really got going. As we speak, Rickus is now at a point where he says he's sold out as from November, December in in volumes.

This is what Afrimat's people does. We can never control the external environment, but we can control how we react to it.

We had the best excuse: your market falls away. The guys just got in there, and the ladies, and they they turned this into an opportunity where we actually think that there's enormous value in this asset now, the way they they've positioned it.

We're quite excited: a good balance between our domestic market now, where we are not only supplying Glencore anymore, we're also supplying a few other users of of anthracite, and we are exporting, and the good news is we're starting to see export prices ticking up with international energy prices going up, we see the same starting to happen in the in in this market. This is a team that I'm extremely proud of.

Industrial Minerals: I've said it a couple of times that South Africa is deindustrializing. When we went into Industrial Minerals 15 years ago, it was a big focus to have a consistent offtake, counter the cyclicality in in in in construction.

As we speak, we actually turning a big part of our Industrial Minerals business, specifically Marble Hall, we're turning that more towards an aggregate supplier in the construction space again, because we are deindustrializing. We've lost Newcastle.

Ferrochrome smelters are coming back, granted, but we are also seeing that our glass and chemical customers are battling against cheap Chinese imports, and I think government should wake up. We're losing our industry at a hell of a rate because of these cheap imports that's being dumped in our in our market.

We see a little bit of action in certain markets, but I think they're moving too slow. This business, we are going to turn it into an aggregate supplier again, because the the industrial market is just falling away.

What we call our Future Materials and Metals business, that's Glenover: so there are two two sides to it. On the one hand, we are doing a little bit of of of fertilizer out of it.

Cash generation is okay, from a accounting perspective, it's actually losing a little bit a little bit of money, but it's really the non-cash component, the the depreciation part that's that's causing that. We are generating a little bit of cash, but that's not the focus.

The focus is on the right side of this this graph. The iron phosphate is a very good precursor to the battery minerals space, and there's some very interesting things going on in that space, which hopefully, we'll be able to make an announcement within the next six to eight months on on where that is going.

Then a byproduct of that process is rare earths, and Dr. Campbell Perry can tell you a lot more about the markets for rare earths.

He's an absolute expert on on where that can go. It's a it's a very very exciting project for the future, where where we see the the market developing to, and this can be a big game-changer for us in a in 18 months or two years from now.

I'm going to hand over to Pieter. Pieter, good luck explaining these financials.

Thank you, Andries, and good afternoon, everyone. Just before we look at the financials, I want to reiterate what Andries was saying is we as management want to build a sustainable business for the long term.

This is not a one-day game; this is a five-day game for us. The results is unfortunately a finite game, is some headwinds.

The team has done a lot of work to reposition the business. You can either become a victim of the headwinds, or you can reposition yourself.

We see ourselves as that team that will reposition the business, and that's what we've done. If we look at the financial results, the summary of the financial results, the group revenue is slightly down 4.3% to 5.1 billion.

The headline earnings per share went from a profit of 101 cents to a loss of 58 cents. Slightly different to the operating profit.

The operating profit was 252 million. There's a few things that make the difference: the first one is the profits, Andries alluded to the profits that we made with the divestures, which is 95 million.

We made a profit with the divestures that the Competition Commission wants us to divest. Then there's also other non-core businesses like the ready-mix and the brick and block businesses that we sold, that was also a profit of 31 million.

That's the first one. Then there's the tax entry: the cement business made a loss of 140 million, and because of that loss, we can't recognize the deferred tax asset, there's no tax entry on the 140 million loss.

That increases your tax expense in your income statement. The profits are also then added back, like I said, the profits with the sale of the assets are also added back for headline earnings, and that's why we've got a loss in that.

With the loss, there's also then no interim dividend that we're going to declare. The other two figures there, return on net operating assets 7.2% and operating profit margins, that's below par.

We are working hard to improve that to where we expect that to be. The one good thing that we do manage to get right is the reduction of debt.

Andries alluded to that, the cash that we generated through the working capital, we sold extra stock that's in the iron ore business through the GFB line, and that has generated cash and that allowed us to reduce the debt to equity from in August last year, it was 52.5%, February, it was 50%, it's now 46%. If we look at the revenue, like I said, the revenue is down 4.3%.

The operating profit is down 32%. If you strip out those once-off things, the operating profit is down 66%.

If you look at what's the difference between this year and last year, this graph explains that: it starts with last year's operating profit, and it ends with this year's operating profit. The first one, and Andries said this, it's a good performance from the aggregates business.

If you look at that extra profit, this is on top of what we did last year with the aggregates, we added another 240 million, the comma is not right on this thing, another 242 million of profit. If you exclude the once-offs, it's another 119 million that we added on top of what we've done last year, it's a 37% improvement if you exclude the once-offs.

It's exceptional performance from the aggregates. The shared services, you will see Andries also touched on that, I'll give a bit of color on that, but there's a 36% saving on our centralized service costs.

Then the other big one is on the iron ore side, and we saw a reduction of 390 million in our profits. The two biggest things that impacted that: the first one is on the pricing, the export pricing, we saw a significant drop, specifically on the shipping that went up almost 50%.

The second one is on our domestic volumes. It was very erratic during this six months.

Last year in August, we sold 200,000 tonnes to our domestic customer; the average that we did this six months is 64,000. For a mine to ramp up and ramp down, it's difficult.

You want a mine is like a manufacturing plant, you want to run at full capacity all the time to get the cost per tonne down. The erratic volumes had two impacts: the one is revenue, because the volumes are lower, you get less revenue, and secondly, your cost per tonne goes up, because you're not that efficient, because you firstly, you ramp up and you produce 100 or 200,000 tonnes, and then your customer don't take it and you sit with that, then you have to cut production down and you have to sell the excess stock.

That is what we did during this period. We did generate the cash with the excess stock, we're not on excess stock levels anymore.

Like Andries said, it has stabilized now going forward. The focus of the business for this six months was to generate cash, and you will see the cash generation for this six months is 20% higher than what it was last year.

We generated over 200 million out of our operations. We used that to reduce our debt, like I said, the debt-to-equity levels came down to 46%, that's the second graph there.

Then the shared services, a 30% reduction in our shared service costs. The biggest one of that is the SAP cost of the old Lafarge business that's now out of the system.

The head office cost is now also out of the system. On the balance sheet, I'm not going to stand still on the balance sheet.

It looks similar to what is in February. The only material change or biggest change is the reduction in the debt, came down from 2.4 to 2.2, like I said, 46% debt to equity.

There's no other material changes since February in our balance sheet. If you look at the capital that we spent, it's planned F2027, it's broken up what we already spent on replacement capital is 173 million.

You can see there Construction Materials 64, Cement 48, Mining 53, that's up to 173. About 37% of the budget of 465, there's still 291 million remaining.

We are as management very prudent and stringent on our capital spend. There's a high likelihood that we're not going to spend the full budget, because we do want to preserve the cash, but we also don't want to hamper the business.

We do challenge the teams on return on investments when we look at the capital. If you look at the improvement capital, the only big improvement capital is the Doornfontein, what we paid for Doornfontein, 150 million, 160 million in there.

There's a few other costs that's in there. The planned spend there is the additional costs that we're going to spend on the mine.

It's predominantly the drilling work that we're going to do. That adds up to 196, that gives you the 662 that's planned for the year.

If you take the improvement out, it's below 500 million where we see the replacement capital, it's around 4% of your revenue. We're still doing our replacement capital, we are just very stringent on when we do spend the capital.

Once again, or to conclude, our focus areas is to generate cash, improve our operational efficiencies, get the loss-making things to perform, use technology to help us improve our operational efficiencies, and then the cash that we generate, we're going to use to reduce our debt levels to where we are more comfortable with our debt. Those are my comments on the finances.

I'm going to hand over to Collin for the socials part.

Thank you, Pieter. Good afternoon, everyone.

It's a pleasure again to stand in front of you just to share with you a bit of what we continue doing in Afrimat regarding our people, and also how we look after our environment. I think the story is despite of what's happening in the short term, we continue to investing in our people.

We want to make sure that we always set up for the long term and not just on a short term. If we look at the metrics first on the employee side is we now have 3,143 employees, which has dropped from last year, and mainly because of the divestitures that we had and also the disposal of some of those non-core assets.

We did have a little bit of some retrenchments, which is something again we're not really proud of as a company, because we just want to see creating more and more jobs going forward. Because of the environment where things were, we had to really re-look at some of our businesses, and then we shed off some employees there.

Then, but we continue to still create jobs in some other areas, especially in aggregate business as you have seen there, and we continuing training people. We had still 5,700 days, which in total was about 33% to 34% of our employees were exposed to some training.

Although the number of days are reducing, we still see that a number of people increasing, because we are moving more towards the technological side of things in terms of training people. Then we continue giving more bursaries, obviously, for people who are wanting to go outside.

We do have our own internal programs, and at the same time, we also send people out there to universities, to colleges, and FET colleges. Some of the highlights which we are proud of is we have seen a number of employees who now have medical aid or what do you call it medical insurance jumping up from 19% to 50%.

We understand this country it's getting tougher and tougher, but we are continuing trying to engage insurance companies and stuff to try and still make it possible for employees to have access to good medical covers and stuff. Then we continue to look at our attendance, which is still looking good, and then also the labor turnover, it still remains low for the industry, which is sitting at 11%.

I must also say that on that 11%, about 5% of that it is due to retrenchment. People they don't really leave Afrimat when they join Afrimat, which is great.

Then continuing on the training and development, we do spend still a lot of time and money on our artisanal skills, and also technical graduates. Technical skills again, as you will know, it's a mining company, it is important.

Especially on the artisanal side, we realize that the quality out there, it's dropping and dropping in most FET colleges. We're creating our own internal sort of expertise, or strength to build those skills internally.

We are looking at different skills, obviously. You can see there at the bottom the areas that we spend on in terms of learnership.

We do spend a lot of time training our boilermakers, electricians, the millwrights, the fitter and turners, diesel mechanics, it's really one of the areas that requires attention. Then in terms of the graduates, which is typically the engineering qualification coming out of the university, that's another area that we spend a lot of time on.

Mechanical engineers, that's one area we've been spending a lot of time. We have realized that some areas that we need to focus on is areas like metallurgy, mechanical engineering, and we are trying to change that focus to make it more a I call it heavy mining skills, which we never had previously, to make sure that we have our own internal skills, especially for our bulk commodity business.

One of the gems that we did acquire when we bought Lafarge was they had a technical center or technical academy which really they were underutilizing it. As we bought it, we then started improving the utilization, where it's now 90% utilized.

The quality of the education there, it's really well standards, which we really proud ourselves of. That training is not only just for Afrimat as well.

We bring people from other part of the industry to come and learn from that academy. These are the trades that we offer: fitter, turner, millwright, electricians, welder, and boilermakers.

Then going forward again, we continue looking what are the scarce skills that are becoming more problematic for ourselves, which is diesel mechanic is one of those. We are preparing ourselves at the moment to bring those trades into our academy.

That will be happening next year. Every time I stand here every six months, I always promise you that I will introduce you to one of our success stories, especially introducing individuals, because I believe numbers don't give you a proper story.

Today, I just want to introduce you to Mbuso Biyela. Mbuso, he is currently in Richards Bay quarry, and I want to encourage all of us, if you are going that side of the world, you're welcome to pop in there and go and greet and say hi.

They will appreciate visitors. Our quarries are in remote places, and it can be lonely in those places.

If you're passing by and you're visiting that side, please pop in and go and greet him, and ask him about some of his journey in Afrimat, and he will give you the story himself. He joined us in 20 2014 as an intern, and he always talks about when he came here, he thought he was going to be in the office in a nice air-con, fancy office, and then he was sent straight into the plant to be with a broom to clean up the plant and stuff.

Those are the kind of experiences that he proud himself with and cherished, because now no one can tell him, I almost used the word, but you know what I'm saying. He's now got the skills, and he has developed.

He has become a all-round quarry manager, which is one of the quarry managers I'm actually proud of. When we took over Lafarge, this Richards Bay quarry, it was shut down, because they couldn't run it because of the community.

Now, Afrimat being Afrimat, because we try to make sure that we are diverse in our skills and we know how to operate everywhere in the country, we send him with some of our guys who know how to engage the communities, and he went and met the chief in the area, and he was able to negotiate with them to be able to open up that quarry. He then get into that quarry, and he develop it from almost no money.

Davin didn't give him any money to CapEx to build that, but he managed to make money, profit, in the first, Davin, I don't know how many, first three, four months? Five months, it was already profitable.

That quarry today, I think last year full year, it was over 10 million rand profit that he made developed from nothing. This is an all-rounder quarry manager who knows how to engage the community, who know how to engage the DMRE, who know how to look after his employees.

That's a kind of skill we need going forward, and we're proud when we see those guys becoming strong like that. Please visit him when you go that side.

Then if we look at from the mineral resources side, we always share the number of mining rights. It's really an administrative balance, but at the same time, it created a skill that we never thought we'll have.

When you have many mining rights, you end up having to engage the DMRE more often, which creates that relationship with them, and now we obviously try and go and create what we call a collaborative relationships with them instead of having this hostile relationships. It worked for us.

Whenever we need to get things done, sometimes it takes long, sometimes it is frustrating, sometimes we take each other to court, but at the same time, we always agree that it's not personal, and it's a business, and then we continue work with them. We got 58 mining rights.

They've came down a little bit due to divestitures, obviously. Then we continue looking at areas that we're not there with the mining permits and prospecting rights, which is how we look at new market.

We always talk about shooting a small gun before you shoot a cannon. That's how we test some of the markets quickly and see if there's market before we can go big.

There are a few mining rights which are not active at the moment, and I think that still create opportunity for us. We're still investigating some of them if there's opportunity to reopen them, and we're sure that sometimes there will be opportunities to do that.

Communities, as I've said before, it's one of the areas that again, we try hard to really keep our feelers on the pulse. It's not an easy one, especially coming now with the elections.

We really really trying to understand what's happening. We checking, we have always our people on the guard to make sure if there's any unrests, our people are safe, and how we can continue operating.

We do have this matrix where we check which are the heat rates, and wherever there's heat rates, we try and get close to those sites to try and engage and see how we can maintain good relationships so that we can continue operating. I'm proud to say that last year again or last six months, we haven't really had any stoppages due to any community unrest.

In terms of safety, again, safety, it's one of our core values. We want to see everyone getting home unharmed.

It did took a bit of a dip in the last couple of months, but two COOs with the rest of the teams really turn things around again, and make sure that we prioritize safety. We can see that it's coming down, same with medical treatment cases that are coming down, and we are improving again.

We have really tried lower our targets, which we used to be sitting at 0.3, now we've put it at 0.25, which we're looking forward to see that coming down, and continue to drop it further as time goes. Part of some of the things that helps us to continue with the safety standards, obviously, it's our audits.

We are part of the ASPASA, in association which there's annual audits that gets done to those quarries. Each year, those audits get tougher and tougher, and we can see this year it's a little bit tougher, because the stats have dropped a little bit in some of those sites that we've audited already.

There's still more sites that needs to be audited, and hopefully, we can see that improving. It does help us to make sure that we look after our employees.

Then medicals, that's something just to show you how we do it, we don't do everything in the beginning of the year. There's periodic medicals that gets done to individuals to make sure each and every year that we don't harm them.

This is more from the health side specifically, not from the injuries, because with health, you can have someone having a disease and dropping over the time. If you don't do annual checks, you can really end up hurting people, and we don't want to see, once again, people retiring in Afrimat and being suffering from silicosis and all the other diseases.

Then lastly, if we look at from the environmental side, especially with the carbon emissions, we can see that in all of our businesses, there's a slight improvement. Cement, it's the only one that has emitted a bit more than the previous year, but it's mainly purely because of the volumes that clinker has produced more.

It shows the efficiency that's happening in the cement, and it's not necessarily because we're just polluting more, but if you look at in terms of intensity, it's reducing. Also last year, why we had a bit less emissions, it's because we bought more clinker in, but this time, we are producing it ourselves, which obviously has an impact on emissions.

Electricity, as well, we continue to be more efficient. We have an electrical engineer who's been looking at our power factors.

Power factor, it's something that you fit on your plant so that you don't have wasted energy, if I may say that in a simple term. That's to try and improve in utilization of your kilowatts, and we see that improving all the time in the last few months.

The other areas, it's also water consumptions. We've been intentional on that, trying to reduce the clean water that we use, and so that we use more recycled water.

That's really going well in every part of our business, and we proud on that. General waste also, it's one area that we're trying to minimize that.

Then used oil, as you can see with cement there, you see that that number has gone up a bit, it's because in our kilns, as they're becoming stable, we've also started introducing alternative fuel on that. That's one of the way of reducing carbon emissions, and also using cheap fuel, which we got it's a waste oil that gets used on the kilns, which really it's been doing so well, because then you can reduce coal in utilization on that.

In a nutshell, that's what's happening on the people side and the environmental side. I'll hand over to Andries to finish.

Thank you, Collin. Right, ladies and gentlemen, what that leaves us with is where we are now and where we are heading.

If we look at our aggregates business, we are still gaining a little bit of momentum with our initiatives, refining our strategy a little bit more. We'll maintain our margins.

We should maintain our margins north of 20%. We see strong demand, specifically from the rail sector, the road sector, excluding SANRAL, unfortunately.

The only thing that worries us a little bit is the fuel cost rising and that, in some cases, it's becoming more and more difficult to pass that cost on to customers. Cement: the turnaround is mostly done.

There's still a little bit of work to be done, but the strategic options remain open, and we quite excited about that. The Industrial Minerals business, that's the one business that we don't think in the industrial minerals space, we're going to see huge improvements other than the improvements from the ferrochrome smelters, but a bigger focus on agricultural lime and the aggregate sector in that space will hopefully keep this business alive, and we'll probably just integrate it into the Construction Materials business.

Glenover: lot of work going on behind the scenes to really make sure that we bank and that we lock in the best possible value in what is absolutely a unique resource. Iron ore: Doornfontein, you'll hear a lot about Doornfontein in future.

That is really the big game-changer in that market. I just lost my screen here, but there it's back.

It's just our IT guys playing some tricks on me, but the rail allocation, Transnet is busy with reevaluating the rail allocation. We do have an expectation, there is a little bit of communication between us and them, and I think at this stage, it's still confidential, but there is an indication that we'll see an increased rail allocation as probably from about February 2028 is when the new rail allocation will be active.

International sales should increase. At the moment, the international sales are still under pressure from higher shipping rates, will be lower now than what it was a couple of weeks ago.

We expect our domestic demand to stabilize between 90 and 100,000 tonnes a month. On the anthracite side, as we said just now, it's an exciting time for us.

The market is opening up quite nicely, the guys have got their cost down very nicely, so that's a positive. Then on the manganese side, it's a little bit of marginal income.

It's not a big allocation, but it is a marginal income for us in that space. We tried to show you that we saw a combination of factors that impacted the business, and all of them external and out of our control.

The management team really did try to react. We did strategically realign the business, and the one thing that the team did is they really executed with intent and tried to move as quickly as they possibly can.

With that, thank you very much. I will now take some questions.

I know there's some questions online, we'll take two or three questions online, and then we'll also take questions in the audience.

Andries, the first question online is from Keith. He asks: 'If diesel prices came down to the same average levels of 24/25, with everything else kept the same, what would the impact have been to the first half of 27 profits?'

Keith, that's not an easy question to answer. To give you an indication, we burn about 2 million ton 2 million liters of diesel per month in the group.

Obviously, you can then go and look at over the six months as I don't have that data in front of me, but you can see what the impact would have been in total, that the additional cost as a base from where it was in March. That's one way.

Then there's still the distribution costs, which in the aggregates business specifically, it's a delivery cost. That's very difficult to quantify, because most of that, we have been able to recover, Davin, if I'm right.

In the aggregates business, there's not a big impact in the first half, but we do see a bit of pushback from certain customers, which could change in the second half. Anton, do you agree?

Good.

The next question is from Marty: 'Will beneficiation capacity be moved from Demaneng to Doornfontein, or will run-of-mine be transported to Demaneng?'

Marty, for a start, we'll transport while we still establishing, but as Andrew always says, in the fullness of time, the entire beneficiation operation will happen on-site, but that will probably only happen in the next financial year.

The next one is from Clarence: 'Bulk commodities: considering current fuel prices and moving of transport to rail, what is the anticipated benefit from a cost perspective for Afrimat?'

There's no effect, because we sell to our domestic customer at mine gate.

The next one is from Catherine: 'At the pre-close, you had said you hope to update the market by these results on the next steps for cement. What are the main things holding this up?

Is there anything more we can say on the most promising strategic options?'

Catherine, it's always dangerous to put a timeline on negotiations, because you must never push in a negotiation, then you don't get full value. We are very close to what I consider a good prospect, but there's still a little bit of work to be done.

As soon as we're ready, we will communicate. You must please trust us that we will put the full value and the full benefit of what we can do ahead of trying to reach specific reporting dates for investors.

We think it's more value for investors to make sure that we get the best possible deal, even if it takes a few weeks or a few months longer.

Next one is from Tim: 'Please talk through the domestic iron ore and how long Beeshoek will be impacting offtake. Will this make domestic sales tick up at some point?'

It's very difficult to predict, and I see Gerhard is laughing, because he knows it's difficult for us to say exactly where is with a Beeshoek stockpile. We think they're very close to it, but we don't have accurate information, and unfortunately, we don't have access to the property to see what's going on there.

It could improve our volumes when that is done. For now, our guidance is 90 to 100,000 tonnes that we quite certain about.

Anything more than that would be pure speculation.

Andries, if there's questions from the audience, we can field that in between.

Campbell?

Thanks, guys. Is there likely to be any further shared services benefit going forward?

Then secondly, you spoke about AMSA. I don't know if you noticed this morning, IDC is basically AMSA has been nationalized now, IDC buying out ArcelorMittal's stake.

Do you see any effect long-term with that?

I think in terms of the shared services and centralized costs, we can see some more marginal improvements, but not the quantum that we've seen so far, because remember, we do everything there. That is all our centralized engineering, metallurgical, IT, social, all the compliance, everything centralized.

None of it is on mine sites, so that makes it look quite high. There's not a lot of scope left, but there is a bit more scope to tweak the costs.

There should be a little bit more in the full year, but not that much. On ArcelorMittal, we think it will bring stability.

There is a bit of a cash injection coming into that business, and I think it does create certain new opportunities, which I do not want to speculate about too much now, but I think in all, I think it's actually a very positive development which will stabilize the business and create new opportunity.

From Tim: 'Please talk through the Nkomati offtake to Glencore now that they are ramping up. What has happened to price?

You mention having other customers. Has the break in offtake changed the contract offtake terms with Glencore?'

Right.

I am going to try and answer, and Gerhard, I'm going to put you on the spot if I get stuck. In terms of the contract with Glencore, that contract has now changed.

It's no longer a dedicated mine, and we are now free to trade with other customers. Don't worry, Rickus, I will not give the price away.

It's a highly competitive environment now, and our commercial manager is very worried in there that I might give the prices away, which will give an opportunity to some of our competitors. We've seen reasonably good pricing in the market, and we do see very good improvement in volumes.

Sorry, Tim, it's a very competitive space right now, and we think we're in a very strong position, I don't want to give away too much.

Another question from Marty: 'Please state increase of profit on old Afrimat aggregates business if Lafarge is excluded, to understand Lafarge contribution better.'

I'm just looking at the financial director of the Construction Materials division. Lafarge is about 50% of our operating profit.

She nods, yes. It's about 50% of the stated operating profit comes from ex-Lafarge assets.

Another question from—

Sorry, Pieter, are there any questions? If you have a question, just put up your hand, otherwise, we'll carry on.

There's a question there.

Yes, good afternoon. I was just thinking, with everybody speaking AI, to what extent is technology helping to increase your efficiencies?

That's a very interesting topic, and unfortunately, Francois, are you in the audience? Francois Landsberg is not here.

We have a team who's responsible for our operational efficiency under the leadership of Francois Landsberg, is a part of our Exco. We've seen some really exciting work coming out of that, specifically in gathering data, and I don't want to get into too much detail, but one of the interesting developments that we are starting to see is where in the past, we would almost inundate operational people with data, and now, with AI running in the background, now we can actually literally run black screens with information going to them.

Just on the information side, we've already seen enormous progress on that side, and I get quite excited, because I see a very exciting future with that in our business. Let's suffice and say we are starting to see some of the improvements you see in margin is because of much better control and much better insight in what's happening.

On that, we've got one new employee in the business, his name is Claude.

He's overworked and underpaid.

Another question from Tim: 'Please talk through the potential to get more rail allocation on the Sishen line for export iron ore. When could you receive this?'

I think you've answered that already.

We have had communication from Transnet to give us an early indication of what it's probably going to be. Now there's certain information that they require from us, which we will give in time.

Then hopefully, the formal announcement is probably going to be in February next year, I think I heard. I just want to confirm,

yeah.

We'll be able to announce hopefully, and Catherine, maybe I mustn't make a date, but we've been told by Transnet that hopefully early in the new year, we'll be able to make the announcement for implementation early in 2028.

Another question from Tim: 'What do you see as your break-even export iron ore price in US dollars FOB?'

It's a very difficult question to answer, and I see my colleagues laughing at me at the back there. It's a very difficult question, because, to be able to answer that, you must please tell me what the shipping rate is and what the lump premium is.

In rand terms, for Demaneng, we are at break-even at the moment if I can give you that. That's for Demaneng.

At Doornfontein, we expect costs to be more closer to what Jenkins is, slightly above Jenkins' cost, which will then open up margin. If you need more information, we can try and get that together, but that'll give you an indication.

We're at break-even at the moment with Demaneng.

Another one from Catherine: 'Can you give any guidance on expected profit contribution from manganese?'

I think I'll be on thin ice to give any profit contributions, but it's a relatively small contribution, thinking it's 20,000 tonnes a month. It's not a high-margin business, but it's a little contributor.

It does pay the overheads of that operation.

A question from Charles: 'The results reflect proceeds from equity raise of 50 million. Please, can you provide some clarity on this?

Are any further equity capital raises contemplated?' No,

it was just something that we did as a prudent measure at the time when when we early in the year, when we were a little nervous about a few things, but no more. Any more questions in the audience?

Nothing? Oh, there's a question, please.

Just please wait so that they can hear it online.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Are you budgeting for resumption of dividends in the second half, or is that going to be extended further?

Depends on the results of the second half, obviously. If the results are what we think it will be, there should be a resumption, but I don't want to commit to that until we have more certainty on the second half.

There's still a few under the chat function from Alan: 'Are you seeing any pickup in anthracite sales for ferrochrome production?'

Yes. Definitely ramping up.

We can see that.

Then one from Bruce: 'Hi, Andries, can you please give us an indication of the average dollar export anthracite price realized versus the rand domestic price realized?'

It's slightly below the rand price.

One from Solani: 'How much have you put into the cement business, and how much do you reasonably believe you can get from it?'

I think it's published what the capital is that we put in this year and previous years, and we don't know yet what we'll be able to get out.

Another one from Bruce: 'Andries, what percentage of SA ferrochrome production do you estimate is back in production?'

Rickus, you say 80%? You agree?

That's our colleagues that work with it, they say about 80% is back.

Yeah. I heard from someone that Samancor will be fully up and running by December.

Yes.

Okay. Then one from Ryan, which we already answered, is the source of the 50 million equity raise.

Okay.

That's all under the chat. Let me see the Q&A.

There's nothing more.

Right, ladies and gentlemen, that wraps up what we have for this half. It's been a tough half.

It has been exceptionally stressful for the entire team, but they've come through, and they've positioned the business a lot better for the second half, and especially going into the future. There's still a few challenges in the market out there, the geopolitical situation worldwide remains a challenge, fuel prices remains a challenge, but the team is arriving wide awake and ready for work every morning and doing their best.

I think the business is being positioned extremely well for the longer term. With that, thank you very much.

Those of you in the audience, please join us for a light lunch afterwards, and obviously, you are free to interact with management that is present. Those of you online, thank you very much for spending the time, and best of luck with everything you do.

Thank you.