Good morning, everyone, and welcome to SigmaRoc's 2025 interim results. I'd like to introduce our Chairman, David Barrett, Chief Executive, Max Vermorken, and the CFO, Jan Van Beek, who will take us through the results. If you have any questions, there will be a Q&A at the end. Please raise your hand when you're in the room, and the presentation will be available on our website later today.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for joining our interim results presentation this morning. We've got a slide deck of about 30 slides for you. We'll take you through those fairly quickly, then I have as much time as possible for questions. Five sections in these slides. I'll start with section number one, an overview of the main highlights of the first half of this year.
It can be summarized in a sentence, which is a very strong delivery in what is a weak market. The results were excellent all around. Synergies got delivered, integration was completed, net zero roadmap is still continuing at pace. This was all done against a backdrop of very weak volumes where we have managed the situation of the weaker volumes very effectively. The delivery of synergies has gone more than to plan. Particular top line and also cost performance have all delivered through the first half and are continuing to do so in the second half. As a result, the financial results were strong on budget, margins up, EPS up, leverage down. As I said, net zero timeframe is still 2040, and we're continuing to advance on the reduction of our emissions.
All of these aspects combined mean we're very nicely positioned for the recovery in Europe as it comes with 2.7 billion tons of high-grade limestone and limestone reserves across the map. Lastly, we're also nicely positioned for growth. There are two tailwinds, which I will come to later on in the slide deck, which we start to benefit from as they materialize. As a result, full-year guidance remains as it stands. We go to section two, slide six of the presentation. A few slides here with a review of what the first half looked like. Revenue GBP 510 million, slightly down on the year. Some FX effects there, of course, as well. GBP 118 million EBITDA, 2% up year on year on a pro forma basis. The key geographies that contributed to this result are as follows.
First and foremost, the Northwest region, which is the U.K. and Ireland, performed very well in a weak backdrop, 4% year on year, EBITDA up, 4% year on year revenue up. This is a testament to the abilities of that team to drive performance in a market which has many challenges. West Europe, Belgium in particular, but also Spain and other smaller operations around the region contributed nicely. The effects of restructuring programs start to take effect here with a net 25% increase year on year in EBITDA. The Nordic region is the third region which really helped with the performance here. The backdrop when it comes to construction was weak, has remained weak. Paper pulp always has its challenges, and as a result, a flat year on year evolution is a real good progress. Lastly, the central region, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, some small challenges here.
These are to do with customer-specific issues, in particular, a big steel customer building a new oven, shutting down half their site, rail lines being blocked for maintenance, the agricultural season starting later, which means that demand comes in later, but also some budget changes, for instance, Poland, as a consequence of the elections. If we look at the results from a sector perspective on slide seven, we have the three main sectors we always report. Industry first. Steel, as I said, some specific customer-related issues, but auto demand remains low. As a result of that, steel demand remains more subdued. Paper pulp, tough trading, as always, in particular the paper side of things. Chemical stable, mining robust. These two sectors have actually done very well for us. Environmental section in the middle. Water treatment is a great sector that we are supplying, consistent demand.
Flue gas treatment is the second part of the environmental sector. Here, we have made good progress in supplying waste to energy plants. There are a few new projects coming on stream. Very happy to be helping those to get online and to develop a product that they need. There is also the coal and gas power generation sector that we currently still supply in various parts of Europe. Obviously, this is a backup power generation to the more sustainable wind and solar setups, and therefore the variability of demand means we need to be careful with the allocation capacity. Food is the last one. This agricultural supply has had a good demand, albeit with a delayed start to the season. Lastly, construction. Construction sector, the largest sector that we supply, 28% residential of the total, the total 45%.
Here we see the same trends that we saw in other market participants. Weak housing demand right across Europe. There are some indications of recovery in some parts, and there's an interesting slide in the appendix of this slide deck which gives you some details on mortgage applications. We'll go through that later on. The first half remained weak. Generally, infrastructure is stable in the U.K., and we supplied into that. Stable across Europe, but no new programs in particular coming online yet. The German packages that will look to contribute to the business next year, we will come on to those later in the slide deck. We then look at the whole business from a product perspective. Here, some interesting statistics which we will detail in the third part of the slide presentation as we go through the volume picture.
High-grade minerals, relatively flat, 100,000 tons of lime sales lost across the first half. The main loss in volume is in the aggregates and stone segments. Aggregates, obviously, construction materials, stone, the lower grade of industrial applications, where 1.1 million tons was reduced. That comes from three different aspects of that volume supply. I will go through those after the finance section. The value-added product is stable by decrease. This is particularly from the pre-cast sector in the U.K. and a slight uptick when it comes to dimension stone. This gives you a first perspective of what the results were generated, these results of the first half. I'll hand you over to Jan for the finance section.
Thanks, Max. If we move to slide 10 of the presentation, you'll see the outcome of the developments that were discussed earlier. This is a slide where you see a lot of numbers. The percentages versus the half of last year are very positive. We also have in the darker blue tiles a comparison with the pro forma number of last year, which is on an equal basis where our Polish and English business of lime is brought into the proper comparable. We passed the half a billion revenue mark, as you can see, 30% up year on year, down versus the pro forma numbers because of the reason Max described in the business. Difficult circumstances there, but we've done a lot of efforts over the last six months to mitigate that. You see it in the numbers that build up to the bottom line.
EBITDA is up nicely with 2% compared with the pro forma numbers, 21% year on year. Very nice progress there, which also boosted the EBITDA margins, 23% up versus last year and 60 basis points versus the pro forma numbers. We're in good shape there. Combine that with some additional benefits below EBITDA on our cost of debt perspective and see it as well a little bit of help on the depreciation side. It boosted EPS to a new record, GBP 4.7 for six months, is a new position that we haven't seen before. 52% up versus last year and a nice 9% versus the comparable year on year. We're in good shape there. That translates also in a better ROG number. As you can see, 100 basis points up year on year. A very nice position. On the cash side, we continue to generate very healthy cash flows.
We created GBP 53 million of free cash, translated into a conversion rate of 53% up versus last year with 640. We brought net debt down despite some headwind on the foreign exchange development over the last six months. It was still a position where we could bring leverage down to 2.0 x. If FX would have stayed flat versus earlier in the year, there was a 0.1x benefit even further. The debt is in euros and our business is generating cash in euros. There's not only a risk there, but I'll come back to that a little later. Overall, metrics are in good shape despite the difficult circumstances. If you move to slide 11, a bridge of revenue and EBITDA versus prior year, mainly the acquisitions play a big role here. As you can see, we deliberately mentioned those on the slide. Buxton came in in March.
[Poland] in September, both contributing on the growth in revenue and the EBITDA. West was already mentioned. The GBP 2 million on the EBITDA improvement there was due to the restructuring primarily and help of the smaller units in the development portfolio. Overall, good shape. Minor effects on the currency there, which is negative for the first month, but in the second half, we expect it to positively reverse. We go to slide 12, which is the core basically of our financial results that contains everything. The gray bars there, you'll see, is the market environment around us where we had to operate in. There was pressure on volume, as you can see there in the right and the left bar there on the volumes and pricing pressure in some areas of lime, especially in Poland and in Czech Republic. We did what we needed to do commercially.
Internally, we were very aggressive on our synergy project, both commercially as well as on the operations and the management of the network. We have positive results there. They were fully mitigating the pressure in the market. We have a small unit that has now started to trade in carbon credits. That brought positive effects as well to the numbers. Overall, very healthy EBITDA increase there of 2% versus the pro forma despite the market that we operate in. If we move to slide 13, you see more details of the income statement. This is on an actual basis year on year, not pro forma. A good trend there, as you can imagine, versus last year. Profit from operations moved up 19% following the improvement in EBITDA year on year that we saw earlier on.
It's a little higher relatively than EBITDA growth because of a somewhat lower depreciation level in the first six months. We expect that that will bounce back in the second half to some extent. This makes these numbers comparable for the second half. Overall, you see finance costs come down partially because we refinanced the bridge loan early in the year, partially because of rate cuts that the ECB pushed through during the first six months of the year. Overall, good help for the bottom line and the underlying profit that you see here lifted at GBP 53 million in total. The excess spends of GBP 14 million up with the increased profit. That reflects roughly 21% of profit before tax, slightly under the consensus of a little over 22%. Some help there as well. Overall, very good position to be in, which brought us the EPS of GBP 4.7 overall.
Proven in all areas with still a difficult market to operate in. Next slide, we show is around variable costs. This is how we are able to manage through difficult times and keeping our business resilient. The three components here, material and production, energy, fuel, and carbon, and distribution have a high variability of cost. We manage those very carefully and aggressively to make sure that our profitability stays where it is or improves. That's higher than 70% if you add it all up. Even in the two others, in the workforce and in the other, there are some elements that we can manage actively where the business volumes go up or down. Overall, this is a big help for us managing our business and the relating results of it. That's a really helpful character of our business that we continue to utilize.
If you move to slide 15, we show cash flows. Very robust in the first half, moving from GBP 118 million of EBITDA down to our free cash flow post-growth CapEx of GBP 53 million. Somewhat embedded in a working capital that moved up, some money invested. We made some accruals for the restructuring. They're winding them down. Guess it's paid this year versus accruals last year. That's natural progression on actions taken and the financial effect of those. We paid some taxes. As I said, 21% roughly of the profit before tax, which is the usual outflow. Maintenance CapEx was relatively low. Typically, it's somewhat higher, and we expect it to bounce back in the second half to more normalized levels. Finance cost of GBP 16 million brings us to GBP 62 million of free cash flow.
It was GBP 9 million of growth CapEx spent this year, mostly around the Belgium [quarter] that we invest in, anti-cyclical where we can. It typically pays off dividends when you do that. A project is running now and expected to go live mid-year somewhere during 2026. Overall, a healthy generation of cash flow, which we're happy to see. That leaves us to the debt position and the leverage on this slide on 16, which is also going in the right direction. The free cash generation helps. As you can see, we sold the second tranche of the France business in concrete, late in the half, and the first part was done late last year. That's a nice cash inflow. We see a couple of items that we paid money for on non-underlying cost. We participated in the secondary placing of the CRA stake in early February.
EPT bought GBP 10 million worth of shares at that time. Some live eggs there. You see a big bar there, the 23 in foreign exchange effect. Like I said earlier, it's a loan denominated in euros, business-generated euros. This is not a risk. It's a natural hedge that we've put in place. This is in pounds in effect, but not from a managing our debt risk perspective. Overall, GBP 498 million, and it brought leverage down to 2.0 x. It could have been slightly better, but overall, very good position to be in. If you look at the slides in the metric earlier on, it demonstrates that we were able to bring leverage down 0.5x, 0.6 x per annum, which is proven in the meantime. Very good position to be in cash-wise and debt-wise. On slide 17, you see a brief summary on the financials.
Very impressive operational results that we have achieved. EPS is at a record high at the moment. ROIC follows nicely in line while we position ourselves for the future, both from an operations and running the business perspective, as well as investing in areas where we think it will pay off. We continue to demonstrate the generation of cash and the ability to bring leverage down. Overall, we're in good shape. That leads to decisions around capital allocations. This is not new. M&A is back in focus, trying to get bolt-on acquisitions to our business. We have the room to do that in our bank facilities and the cash generation that we're able to also bring some internal funding of those projects into the mix. Overall, good shape. Capital investment we manage carefully. Leverage is in good shape, as I said.
The question comes when will we be returning cash to shareholders? We said that it'll be when we approach 1.5 x. We have a lot of ideas. We'll see how that goes over the coming months and hours. Overall, we're in good shape despite a difficult market around us. Thank you a lot.
Thank you, Jan. Section four, as we now progress with the slides, this is a section which is particularly focused on the strategic delivery and the implementation of synergies. We've gone in quite some detail in this particular slide deck this time to give you all the various details and levers that we used to mitigate the volume picture and to grow the bottom line of the group. There's a number of levers that we will go through. First and foremost, obviously, mitigation of volumes. That was done in various ways, in particular through the delivery of commercial and operational synergies, levers two and three. We've also looked at developing the group for the future. There is further progress on CO2, further progress on strategic investments, and then innovation where we accelerate further collaboration. That's the menu for the next few slides. We move on to slide 21.
Jan mentioned in his bridge a few slides earlier that there was a loss of GBP 9 million in EBITDA generated by the volume picture. That volume picture is 1.1 million tons of aggregate and stone reduced, 100,000 tons of lime reduction, and 100,000 tons of value-added products increased. The main part of that, circa 400,000 tons, is core volumes. Core volumes meaning soft to steel market in relation also to some of the breakdowns or maintenance work done at our customer base, and the construction market remaining subdued. Both of these were impacted by low PMIs and low confidence in the sector. That's the core volume reduction. A portion of that GBP 9 million EBITDA loss, obviously, is attributed to that section.
The remainder comes from either planned reductions in commercial and output, volume output, where we have shut plants down, optimized our commercial network, or where we have terminated a supply deal or supply agreement to help a competitor out who lost their mining license. That gives you the remaining 700. The core volume picture is the 400 you need to pay attention to. We mitigated this loss with two sets of synergies. The first set of synergies were focused on the commercial positioning of the group. The second set of synergies on the operational piece. That top line of commercial positioning breaks down into two buckets: GBP 5 million on what we would call mixed pricing, GBP 2 million on what you would call adjacent markets.
Mixed pricing has to do with what plants supply, what customer, what customer can we supply best from what country, these sorts of ideas, and then direct sales in terms of aggregates in Belgium where we have now become an aggregate supplier. The second bucket at the bottom of the page is to do with adjacent markets. We were never a lime supplier in the Baltics. We have engaged with energy from waste operators, very pleased to do so in the U.K., for developing new products. Those initiatives contributed seven. We're now [9 + 7 - 2] . To go back up above in the positive territory, we looked at operational synergies, and they break down into three buckets, totaling up to GBP 6 million.
We did quite a few restructuring efforts when it comes to the German business, which is called [Programme Future for FELS], shutting down some operations there, shutting down or reducing the output of operations in the Nordics, and as well in the West region in Belgium, contributing four to the bottom line. We continued to deliver on operational initiatives. In the middle bucket of optimization of kiln operations in particular, and here we look at fuel use, tighter controls of the operations of these kilns. Lastly, there's obviously a network of kilns that we are running, both internal to each country and in adjacencies across the border. That contributed a further one. As a result of this, we delivered in the first half, GBP 7 million + GBP 6 million , GBP 13 million in synergies in total already.
As you can see on the graph on the left-hand side of the slide, that contributed to the already GBP 8 million delivered in 2024. We're therefore walking nicely forward towards our targets. We've therefore upped the expected total for the year to a minimum of GBP 21 million on the right-hand side of the slide. As we get into territories where the markets grow again, the [EUR 40 becoming EUR 60] is a possibility. These are the BNL-based initiatives. We've also looked very carefully at how we could develop the group further for the future. That starts, first and foremost, with our net zero strategy on slide 25. We're switching to biofuels, and we will have a first kiln running on biofuels in full this month, September, and a second one coming on stream very soon. We've switched in Germany to HVO, so away from standard diesel.
We're optimizing fuel use in kilns, and this is through AI programs, a program that we're developing all the way to 2028, where we have AI steering controls for fuel use in kilns, and that will reduce fuel use there. Lastly, we've signed up to the Peak Cluster, the first CO2 capture pipeline in the U.K., which will connect several cement plants and us in the big district and capture all the CO2 emitted there. As a result, we are progressing nicely when it comes to our net zero strategy for 2040. We've also improved all our ratings with the various rating agencies. When we look at our strategic development, there are two projects we highlighted earlier in the year. The new aggregate plant in Belgium, civil work has started, wrong time, wrong budget, slightly below budget. We're expected to finish that plant in the first half of 2026.
That's exactly as per the timeline. It will give us a fantastic setup in Belgium to supply premium aggregate construction for the construction market as that market starts to recover. We have plenty of reserves there in that strategic location, not far from Brussels and further large towns, motorway connections. On the right-hand side, the ArcelorMittal JV [Gondamelie]. This is also on track for the creation of a kiln of 600,000 tons capacity, which we will, we are taking half that volume, which will be shipped to our Nordic business to replace old-fashioned capacity up there that will be shut down. We complement all this with further innovation. We've invested in two small businesses across April and June as part of the SkreenHouse Venture capital unit.
Here we're particularly pleased because we spend small amounts of money at this point in time, but are able to lead fundraise rounds for what are very exciting technologies, which both use our product at the top. We have Adaptavate, which will use lime bottom concrete, which is a sales platform, digital sales platform, which will use our materials in Belgium, Benelux region to sell across that part of the world. Very pleased with the progress there. As a result, we can now turn to the outlook and the summary of this slide deck, or we can turn to some questions. We look at the outlook from a sector perspective. Industrials, and this is for the second half of this year. Industrials, metals, mining, and chemistry. Chemistry is, we see, robust, continue to run robust mining as well.
Metals will continue to suffer from weaker auto demand, but we hope that will continue to improve, especially as Germany starts to focus on its infrastructure and defense budgets. Go back to those on the next page. We see some weakness in paper and pulp in the Nordics, in particular in Finland, where some plant shutdowns are being considered, and we need to work on mitigating strategies for those locations. When it comes to environmental and agriculture, the season for agriculture was slightly delayed, but that means the volume is coming through as we speak now. Generally speaking, it's a good sector for us to supply into, and we will continue to do so. Soil stabilization, waterways, and all the rest are performing very well. This is part of both the infrastructure but also the environmental segment.
Gas and coal-fired power generation, as I said, is very fluctuating with wind and solar. We need to monitor and map capacity. We allocate that sector very carefully, not overallocate. The last sector is construction. Residential, we hope to see stabilize. As I said, in the appendix of this slide deck, we have plotted for you the mortgage application statistics for all the countries we are operating in. You see that there are some green shoots here and there. The last 6, 9, 12 months, mortgage applications have started to come up. In Holland, this has already started to, in fact, actual construction work. It's not yet the case elsewhere. This is a good general trend, and we hope that this will then lead to a recovery in the construction sector in 2026. Infrastructure budgets that are being spoken about, particularly in Germany, are quite interesting. That's the next slide.
There are two tailwinds that we have identified, which will hopefully materialize into 2026 and on from there. The first one is the EUR 500 million worth of infrastructure stimulus in Germany. This will increase the German infrastructure budget from EUR 100 billion a year to EUR 120 billion, a 20% output increase, which is significant. That will continue year after year for the next five years, at least, and potentially on from there. As this comes in, this means roads, railroads, stations, you name it, they will contribute to the demand picture that we see in Germany and will also help adjacent countries around it. The second part of that spend is, and that tailwind is the German defense budget, which again, in particular, looks at steel, various applications of steel, but also logistics.
The integration of the Polish, German, and Czech economies, being that it doesn't just help the German economy, it will help the region we're most exposed to, 44% of our EBITDA. The second potential tailwind is when Ukraine hopefully finds lasting peace. We have looked at what statistics are available in the public domain on what a reconstruction effort might look like. On the right, you see a bar chart. At the statistics at the time of the publication, $170 billion worth of damage was done to Ukraine's infrastructure. A figure which on its own doesn't mean much, perhaps, but it equates to 21 years of Ukraine's total pre-war construction output. When Ukraine starts to rebuild, the effort will be significant. In our sites in Poland and in Czech Republic, not far from the border, we have obviously a small team in site already in Ukraine.
These are clearly two tailwinds which will accelerate the performance of our group when they come through next year. There's some headwinds, obviously, there's global uncertainty, trade tensions and others. These everybody's well aware of. We have flagged that steel continues to be weak on auto demand, again, in part due to tariffs on automotive to the U.S. There's some uncertainty around the paper, but we will manage those as we have managed volumes in the first half. If we then conclude on one slide for what does it look like for the rest of the year, full-year expectations unchanged. Optimism for 2026, 2027, 2028. The full benefits of the synergy program are coming through already. We've given you quite a bit of detail and will continue to come through. We're developing the group quite aggressively for the future. CO2, CO2 focus, innovation.
We have a fantastic footprint, 2.7 billion tons of reserves all across the map, which we will use to then help build, rebuild the German economy, Poland, Czech Republic, and around. As a result, this business has done well in tough times. There's some really good tailwinds out there. We're confident it will do well when things improve. That's the slides so far. We're happy to take questions.
Max, could you say a little bit about pricing expectations for the second half? I mean, a lot of buying in was a little bit of under recovery in the first half. The issue with this may be run through moving parts on that. The second question I had was on the admin costs. There was a bigger increase in admin costs in the first half versus revenue. What guidance is there for the project?
Yeah. Pricing, just to tell you, we have given you quite a few statistics right across the second half of the slide deck. Pricing generally has been good in a market where volumes are produced, and from that perspective, we're quite happy. There's also a price mix effect which comes through here. As we shift certain products to others, we need to take that into account. Second half, you should look at similar effects as the first.
Spotlight.
Maybe mix.
Yeah.
Admin?
Yeah, what we saw earlier in the income statement there is that year-on-year contribution of the units that are now reported in the P&L for all six months. They weren't there before. If you look at it on a pro forma basis, we're more or less in line. We keep a real close eye on admin costs, as you can imagine. Nothing to worry about there, as well as in a way we should. If you look at slide 17, it is visible, but basically the contribution of admin of the units that are now reported for six months totally.
Just trying to take that through. The only column of the volumes, does that largely complete? Now there are other volumes into next year, some of the kind of lower margin that you might also benefit from?
We constantly review the footprint we've got to see if there is the low end of the spectrum and we can just bottom slice the deliveries we do. Yes, we've got plenty of reserves. You can only sell them once. In particular, when there's super high-grade reserves in quarries that are difficult to develop because of mineralogy, the shape, the local government, we try to be careful not to sell quickly at the wrong price. There might be further bottom slicing in the next year. That said, the main piece there has been done.
On the capital allocation, it sounded as though your kind of M&A bolt-ons was more imminent than reinvesting the dividend. Is that where you kind of see your priorities?
Yeah, the priorities are to develop the map, develop and position ourselves next five years of growth in Europe. As the German spend comes through, and as we look at what that could do for the group, we want to just be exposed to that. It's a five-year trend, maybe a 10-year trend even. It's worth being in the right place there.
We're on one just on Germany. How long does it actually take to come through into end demand for your products?
They have given us more clarity on the infrastructure side of things. That goes from EUR 100 billion a year to EUR 120 billion a year, and that's just the infrastructure spend. There's also the spend which goes directly to the states in Germany. There's the digitization, the economy, the greenification. All these buckets come in next year. If you give the states money, they'll probably spend that on infrastructure and schools and hospitals too. All of this is being designed this year and being rolled out next year. As far as we can see, it will start to generate additional demand for us in the early parts of 2026. We get customer inquiries which are roughly paraphrased, "What happens if we run full capacity next year? Will you be able to support us?" Yes, this is the answer to that.
I think the point coming from the sort of Germany questions, in terms of your allocation of capital with regard to CapEx, do you anticipate that Germany is going to see a larger share of that, or given what you just said, you have enough capacity in Germany, so therefore it's sort of business as usual?
No, the capacity is fine. The plants are in really good shape. Whatever CapEx we add is just to maintain the existing setup. We've resized the group's footprint for synergy purposes and cost purposes, not to destroy capacity in such a way that we can't take part in the uplift. We're fine there.
Okay. That's helpful for me, I think. Just a question on Germany, reduce the workforce by 6%. I guess that sort of process takes a while. Did you get the full benefit of that in the first half, or is that still phasing there?
There's always phasing because, yeah, it's a year effect, right? The entire program was clutched to shut, closed at Christmas last year.
It is gradually improving now versus the first half because people were kind of on their way out. It's ramping up a little bit relative at the first segment.
Thanks . The second question, I think I've got three total. The second question on the central cost line was lower. You talked about carbon and the export setup. I guess those two are related. I just wonder how we should think about that central cost bit of the EBITDA segmentation going forward.
The unit is sitting in the Nordics, not in the Central, in the Nordics. They report the results under the Nordics. There's an export center there in place since early this year. They are actively looking at what happens in the market. We were able to benefit from some effects on the CO2 credits after Liberation Day. If you look in historicals, you saw a big dip there, and we went in and took positions there that helped us in the cost of credit. You've got to be on the ball there to do something, and we were. We were able to benefit from a dip in the markets, and we'll continue to monitor that very carefully.
That same unit also deals with energy hedging.
Yeah, that's right. That's also there.
The central cost number in the first half is representative of sort of full year and ongoing. There's no.
The central cost is primarily the restructuring in Germany.
Right.
That reduced cost base will continue going forward.
Thank you. The last one, just for CapEx guidance, you've given us some of the direction for maintenance growth. Just wondering, what does CapEx look like this year and next?
Generally, we operate between GBP 60 million - GBP 70 million on an annual basis for maintenance CapEx. This first half, we were light, but in general, it's still a good guidance to operate from. We try to pick up the pace, but the slogan there is we spend it wisely. We do spend it wisely and not just for the sake of spending it. It's a rigorous, you know, investment committee process that we run. The same applies for growth. Those are ongoing projects. It's not a decision-making on a day-to-day basis, but we'll invest where we think it's wise to do.
The growth one is obviously lumpy, right? Because you build a plant and at some point you need to pay, and it depends on where that sits in the CapEx.
Okay.
For me, that's okay. First of all, it looks like the phasing this year for profit is pretty normal, but there is more growth in EBITDA year on year in the second half. I assume that's to do with the comp. Just sort of explaining some of the moving parts there, the higher growth year on year in H2 versus H1, maybe starting with that.
The synergies that are relatively more is partially because of that ramp-up in the restructuring costs in Germany and in Belgium. In Belgium, theoretically, we also do something for additional cost-saving expenditures on the fly, which is also maybe do it in the first half, which we have to some extent. You'll have the full six months versus a portion of the year. That's that. The synergy projects are continuing to be executed, and some of them have started in the first six months, and they will carry through in the last six months of the year and onwards. There is, in general, the normal seasonality, if you will, because of the agricultural season being more in the second half, which is usually around 43%, yeah, 43%, 57%. We're in line with that. It's a normal pattern that we've seen.
Okay, second. The second one, just going back to the M&A. It looks like you're generating over GBP 100 million of free cash flow. In that context, do you see opportunities of that scale per annum to deploy that on M&A? How should we think about the size deals? Could you do one deal at GBP 100 million, or are you thinking [GBP 750 million], or what sort of options are out there for you basically in that context?
I need to refer you back to the CD slides there. Yes, you can spend, we can spend the money. Can we spend the money infinitely on lime? No, obviously not, because we're already number two in Europe when it comes to volume, behind obviously Lhoist, the leader in the lime sector. We will look at further aggregate expansion. We'll look at additional other minerals. All of those things are on the table. The M&A piece is not so much, can we spend the amount? It is, can you spend it wisely? And what do you want to buy? Don't forget also, we have some people say, why haven't you bought yet something? We focused on deliveries for synergies and make sure that this business runs optimally first. We want to make that work well. That was the plan for the first half.
Makes sense. There's one final one. I noticed some comment on lime imports coming through. I understand that's not generally an issue for Europe. I just want to make sure that's still.
This is interesting. This is lime being imported into Poland in particular from Ukraine and Belarus. Small volumes, about 5% of the market, but it does, it's a cheap product. It's usually also lower quality or low quality. That does disrupt the low end of the market there. It's interesting that it still comes through. 70% of Ukraine's lime demand before the war came out of Belarus and Russia. Obviously, there's not a huge amount of lime need currently there because they're not rebuilding. When they do rebuild, those flows will inverse. You can see that the countries next door will be the supplier of lime. It's obviously more of a beef coming from the east, unlikely.
On the finance costs, obviously they came down quite heavily in the first half. Both those are supposed to affect starting to phase in. How should we think about the finance costs? Maybe as we go into next year, I mean, is there further benefit? I'm not expecting you to sort of forecast your [CP cuts], but you know potentially, I don't know if it's at the new level and that we all read to see it.
Yeah, on the relative scale, costs will come down further. We refinanced in late February, so there were four months in, so there's six months coming. The rate cuts on the Euribor happened during that first half, and some even in June. That benefit hasn't materialized itself yet. That's about to come. We expect that for the last six months, Euribor will continue to stay around 2%. You can run your models to see what that means with the margins that we have and the leverage that we have. It should come down further overall relative to the first half because of the developments in the first six months, and then for the full period effect.
Anyone ?
Questions online?
As you look at your order book as relative to saying beyond what you said more generally about what you expect markets to just be doing in the second half?
You can't make a general comment on the order book everywhere yet. That's not easy. You can make it on a country basis. The order books, for instance, in the U.K. are pretty good. That's primarily lime, obviously, but also pre-cast. That's something that is not usual across the market. It's just this business managed to put itself into a fantastic position through skill, through quality, through consistent delivery, through a fantastic team that runs it. It's very much on that basis. There is no lifting the boats everywhere. It will come. It's not there yet.
One last one for me. The SkreenHouse, just wondering kind of what the long-term plan is there in terms of, I suppose, materiality for the group investment. Just how should we think of that? Yeah, it's too early.
No, no, it's obviously run by monsieur on the left. Yeah, you see a lot of large spend groups have venture capital units. We thought, okay, how can we be part of this as well? A lot of the technology and changes in an old industry like ours do not necessarily come from our labs. They come from people who have a great idea and then try to make that scale up. Where we have placed this unit is a particular sort of gap in the market. It is tech that uses lime, which is pre-industrial scale, and that needs an operator to demonstrate it can work. We then go in and put a small amount of money to work, GBP 250,000 - GBP 500,000 per business.
As you can see from one of the examples that we've given and the ones before, that seems to be sufficient to unlock for those tech businesses a fairly large fundraiser because they need the credibility of an industrial user behind them. Currently, it's only a small amount of money and a small amount of investment. If this continues to be this successful and the technologies that we have found really help the bottom line of Sigma, then we can scale that up. The two that were announced here, one is a trading setup for selling aggregates, and they've already done quite a bit of volume for us. The other one was a type of plasterboard that uses lime. Both use our product. It's quite a risk-free way of doing things.
Creating new demand.
Yeah.
They're not related to any of those initiatives in the broader sector. I think in Europe, they're happening at one that is recycling, I suppose, materials. I think they're quite big. I mean, is that something that maybe in the future you would look to get more into the recycling kind of aggregates and construction waste material?
David, do you want to pick that one up? That's your favorite.
The answer's no.
They need to qualify that. [Crosstalk].
We want to make use of all the materials that we quarry. We're not looking to take in demolition waste for reprocessing.
It's difficult. It's a difficult and specialist industry, and we prefer to stay close to what we know best.
It's very easy if you've cycled it one way to reprocess. It's a [2 of 9] quantity. To take general demolition waste in, who knows what's in there. It can come back and bite you later on.
To the acquisition question, you flagged industrial minerals very much on the agenda. Have you started to narrow the options down in terms of end markets?
The guidance we gave there was fundamentally a similar extraction process, not something ultra-complicated, really, all sorts of flotations, whatever else. Not too many processing steps when it is extractive, and then customers that we already know. I think that's the type of mineral we can get involved with. If the extractive process is in Africa or, say, whatever, and the process to get the ore out of the ground and into a usable product takes God knows how many steps, and you're starting to compete with the Glencores of the world, I am not sure if that's what we do best. That allows you to sort of see where it probably ends up.
Two more wind.
Thank you very much, everyone.