Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the ALS Limited H1 2024 Results Briefing conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation, followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Malcolm Deane, CEO and Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining today's call to review our half-year 2024 results. I would like to start by thanking our dedicated and talented employees and management team for their continued support and collaboration underpinning our strong results today. At ALS, we remain guided by our vision to be the global leader in the discipline of scientific analysis in pursuit of a better world for all. Our focus on sustainability drives the strengths of our Coal business and ensures that our financial performance is aligned with our strategic objectives for fiscal year 2027. Our strong industry positioning in minerals and environmental enables us to continue supporting the needs of our clients and to achieve the performance goals in our five-year strategic plan.
As highlighted in our plan, the growth agenda is strongly supported by megatrends such as the clean energy technology transition, increased outsourcing from our clients, increased regulations and enforcement from authorities, and increased demand for sustainability-linked services. We continue to confirm the tailwinds that these megatrends provide to our business. I would like to highlight the main achievements of our company's performance in the first half of the fiscal year 2024, that are helping us stay on track with our discipline and strategic growth agenda. First, by capturing industry megatrends in our environmental business, we have continued to deliver high single-digit organic growth and record margins. The environmental business presents a strong strategic organic growth pipeline, complemented by high-quality acquisitions opportunity in key geographies and end market exposures. Second, we have strengthened our leading position in minerals and delivered stable margins despite the slowdown in exploration spending.
Our market leadership and long-term growth and profitability is driven by our world-class hub-and-spoke model, excellent client service offering, increased uptake and penetration of our high-performance testing methods, and the acceleration of our mine site operations service offering. The global electrification continue to drive revenue growth in our minerals group. We have maintained market leadership in our minerals division, with exposure to the green metal subsidy opportunity. ALS has become an enabler of the global energy transition, with battery metals representing more than 40% of the total mix tested in our labs, and these proportions continue to grow. The minerals performance has also been supported by a high demand for metallurgy activities related to battery technology and critical metals, with new project wins, market share growth, and continued expansion of testing services.
The third and most important takeaway from our presentation today is that we continue to deliver value for our shareholders. We have demonstrated impressive operational resilience, and with our strong margins durability in minerals and margin expansion in the environmental business, we have maintained overall industry-leading margins. We also continue to deliver value for our shareholders by maintaining a balanced capital allocation strategy and a healthy balance sheet. We have continued executing our inorganic strategy in a highly volatile global economic environment, tightening our governance process and ensuring that acquisitions are made with a clear strategic purpose. Our focus is to continue maximizing the company's return on capital employed. Before turning to our financial performance, I would like to reiterate another key objective in our strategic plan.
We continue to deliver value for our shareholders by maintaining our focus on people, enabling a solid culture of innovation and collaboration, with a high level of employee engagement and client interaction. At ALS, we are incredibly proud of our safety culture, and this is shown by the industry-leading performance that the company presents in this regard. This half year, we saw good financial performance from the group. Our business delivered overall revenue growth of 7.4%, with low single-digit organic growth, despite the global economic backdrop and the high interest rates environment. Despite these challenges, the company continued to deliver industry-leading margins above our EBIT floor margin of 19%. This was supported by the strong performance of our leading environmental business and the resilient performance of the minerals division.
The company maintains its focus on managing inflation through strong price governance and discipline, leveraging a global procurement approach. We have accelerated execution of internal efficiencies, driven by collaboration and a new approach to share innovation across all businesses. Our cash generation and the balance sheet remain strong, supporting our continued growth journey. Moving to slide 13, our mineral business has successfully demonstrated its resilience to cyclicality. Our mineral business is positioned to provide the mining market with a unique holistic service, leveraging our three key pillars and operating model, which is described in slide 12. This approach has not only been highly successful for the company in helping build its current market leadership position, but it also supports our longer-term growth path.... Our minerals division have a track record of market share gain, delivering strong, consistent, and sustainable growth.
As we see on the bottom right side of the slide, we are experiencing double-digit solid CAGR growth rates in key areas such as mine site services, high performance methods, and metallurgy, since our business has diversified. This has consolidated the business resilience, as evident in these results, with a very modest organic revenue decline, considered against the double-digit drop in sample volume and overall margins remaining above 33%. Contrast this to the declining markets almost 10 years ago, when market margins troughed at around 20%, and it is clear that our downstream growth and innovation journey is ensuring reduced cyclicality and earnings resilience. As we mentioned in our last presentations, the mineral business is being reshaped as the mining market is entering a long run, demand-driven cycle.
The market for metals and minerals that enables electric vehicles, energy storage, and other energy transition technologies has doubled in size over the past five years, and this trend is expected to continue in the long run. While the pace of the transition is still being shaped, the pull on demand is expected to support stable demand growth. To be able to serve these markets, we are repositioning our minerals division, leveraging, as mentioned before, our unique operating model into metallurgy, mine site production, and consulting and data analytics. ALS has a track record of building leading testing businesses, as we can see in slide 17. ALS strategically looks for scale in testing markets and identifies niche opportunities where we can build a clear and distinct value-added proposition for our clients. The organic growth and margin improvement above industry standards for our environmental business demonstrates this ability.
In other words, we know how to build sustainable leading businesses. Our environmental business is now equal in size to our mineral business, and is now the second-largest provider of environmental testing services globally, delivering this service at market-leading margins. The environmental business has industry-leading margins reflecting of a strong client added value proposition, innovation, and operational excellence. The food and pharma division, as also shown in this chart, is in the early stages of development. We are starting to build the necessary scale needed in the end markets, where we understand how to add strategic value and differentiate from our peers. The food and pharma division has strong underlying tailwinds to underpin organic growth, having showed a five-year CAGR of 24%. Before I conclude my section, I will give a current update on the Nuvisan investment.
Since acquiring our 49% interest in Nuvisan in 2021, we have made some operational improvements in conjunction with our partner, but the business has encountered significant challenges. At the time of acquisition, Nuvisan represented great potential value for our pharmaceutical clients, providing a fully integrated offer from drug discovery through to clinical trials, and then to quality control batch testing. The macroeconomic environment for Nuvisan has been difficult over the last 2 years, with a significant pullback of investments and funding into global pharmaceutical research and development markets. While the long-term outlook for these markets remains strong, these near-term trends have a significant detrimental impact on Nuvisan, particularly the drug discovery business. The underperformance of the Nuvisan business has the attention of the management, and we are critically evaluating the current investment opportunity and considering all potential ownership options.
We remain proactively engaged with the Nuvisan business, exploring a pathway to success that would diversify the client base through business development opportunities and achieve cost saving through strategies to rightsize the business. As a management team, we are aware of the importance of a disciplined and balanced approach to growth, while maintaining a strict capital allocation framework. Nevertheless, we are evaluating the business to ensure we make the best decision for our investors. We expect to reach a decision in early calendar 2024. I'd like now to hand over the presentation to Luis, who will take you through the financial performance of the business during the half year period.
Thanks, Malcolm, and good morning, everyone. I will now present the highlights of our H1 FY 2024 financial performance. Let's start on slide 24. The group delivered resilient results amid a challenging economic environment. The total revenue from continued operations reached AUD 1.3 billion, a 7.4% increase over PCP, of which 0.7% was organic, 3.1% from acquisitions, and 3.5% from positive FX impact. Excluding the minority investment in Nuvisan, the organic growth was 2.4%. The organic growth results from a strong and increasing demand for environmental services, high demand for critical minerals, and a high-performance testing, partially offset by the temporary slowdown in mining exploration and the limited funding for new product development in the pharmaceutical business.
The group delivered market-leading operating margin with underlying EBIT of AUD 245 million, and underlying NPAT of AUD 158 million, exceeding the guidance provided in the last AGM. The group's underlying EBIT margin H1 contracted by 126 basis points at constant currency to 19.1%, reflecting the underperformance in the food and pharmaceutical business, partially offset by the strong margin improvement in environmental and resilient geochemistry performance. Excluding Nuvisan, the group underlying EBIT margin was 20.3%. I will address later in this presentation, the performance of each division. I'm moving now to slide 27, where we present the key highlights of our capital management. We continue to preserve a solid balance sheet, well positioned to continue to support our organic and inorganic growth ambitions. This strong position springs from the disciplined and proactive approach in capital management.
We have closed H1 with a strong liquidity level of AUD 486 million. Solid leverage ratio of 2x and interest cover ratio of 15.1x. In October 2023, the group secured $224 million US private placements with 5-year bullet maturity, issued in three currencies, and with weighted average cost of 5.65%. This new facility provides additional liquidity to the group to execute on its growth strategy and eliminates any potential refinance risks in the short term. With this new placement, the total group liquidity will increase to AUD 580 million. The total cost of debt will rise to 4.05%, and the debt maturity increase to 5.3 years.
We continue to preserve a solid debt profile as well, mitigating risks associated with interest rate exposure in the current economic environment, and preserving a natural hedge, aligning debt currency mix with profile of cash generated in each currency. Post EUR USPP issuance, 80% of the debt are fixed, with an average cost of 3.74% and a weighted average maturity of 8 years. In H1, the group generated AUD 236 million of cash flow before CapEx, up AUD 10 million from H1 FY 2023, and with improved EBITDA cash conversion rate of 82%, which puts us on track to deliver cash conversion above 9% for the full year. The strong level of cash generation has allowed the group to continue to finance the investments in organic and inorganic growth opportunities.
In the half, we invested AUD 85 million operational CapEx, represented 6.6% of the group's revenue, having approximately two-thirds of the total CapEx allocated to growth initiatives. The strong balance sheet enabled the group to continue to execute its acquisition strategy. In H1, we completed 6 acquisitions for a total consideration of AUD 77 million, adding AUD 36 million revenue in a full year run rate base, and continue to expand our geographic presence in service of the life science business. We entered the second half with a pipeline of opportunities to support with our growth ambitions. Based on the resilient performance in H1 and the group's solid financial position, the board has declared an interim dividend of AUD 0.196 per share, partly franked to 20%, representing a payout ratio of 59.9% of the H1 underlying NPAT.
The existing AUD 100 million share buyback program remains in place as a capital management tool, so the board has determined not to offer a dividend reinvestment plan. I'm moving now to slide 33 to cover our Commodities division, which delivered solid results amid the soft environment of mining exploration. The division delivered total revenue of AUD 545 million, an increase of 0.4% in constant currency, with an organic decline of 0.4%. This moderate reduction in organic growth was underpinned by strong price management, support with base metals demand, and value-added services. All business with the Commodities division, with exception of geochemistry, delivered strong organic growth and improved the margin.
The division underlying EBIT reached AUD 161 million, with the EBIT margin of 29.6%, a slight reduction of 18 basis points versus PCP, and in fact, an increase of 13 basis points if you're considering a constant currency. This is a good performance, considering the current environment, which was characterized by subdued sample volumes in our geochemistry business. The geochemistry business continued to expand its leadership position, being able to partially offset the 13% decline in sample flow in the period, delivering organic revenue decline of 5.8% and maintaining margin above 33%. These results were obtained by good price discipline, increasing uptake of premium value-added services, strong cost management, continued investment in innovation, such as high performance methods, and accelerated growth in the downstream activities.
Metallurgy achieved strong revenue growth of 24.5%, driven by strong mining sector activity in energy and battery-related metals, new project wins, and market share gains.... The pipeline of products remains solid, particularly in the battery-related metal space. The Inspection business delivered impressive organic revenue growth of 14% due to the strengthening of global commodities trading activities. Our oil and lubricant business, formerly known as Tribology, delivered strong organic revenue growth of 10% and significant margin improvement as we continue to implement its margin improvement plan. Finally, our core business, that represents approximately only 1.5% of the group's EBIT, had a strong organic revenue growth and margin improvement due to the volume recovery in the period. I'm moving now to slide 34 to cover the life science business.
Life Sciences continued to grow its growth momentum, reaching a total revenue of AUD 739 million in H1, with the total growth of 12.7%, of which 1.7% was organic and 4.5% from acquisitions. Ex Nuvisan, the Life Sciences division grew 5% organic, driven by the good performance of the environmental business. The division delivered an EBIT of AUD 110 million, with EBIT margin of 14.9%, a reduction of 201 basis points from prior periods, due to tough economic conditions, geopolitical conflicts, and restrictive monetary policy, reducing new product development in the pharma business.
Underlying margin on constant currency base, excluding Nuvisan, was 16.4%, down 117 basis points versus PCP, reflect a strong margin improvement in environmental, offset by weakness in the food and pharmaceutical business. The environmental business delivered by robust growth of 11.7% in constant currency, with organic growth of 8.5%. With solid platform already established, it was able to leverage its global footprint and scale, successfully executing price management and improving margin. Our environmental business is one of the global leaders in a large, growing, and fragmented market, greatly benefiting from sustainability megatrend. ALS has a unique opportunity to continue to grow organically and execute its acquisition strategy in this space.
The food and pharma business is still in the process of creating a global network with a density of operations in key regions, and continues to face challenges imposed by the current economic and geopolitical environment. Our food business grew 13.4% on a constant currency base, with organic growth of 3.1%, and is expected to improve volume and margin in the second half. The pharmaceutical business, with organic decline of 16%, was impacted by the reduced level of funding for new drug development and by the existing economic environment. Excluding Nuvisan, the organic revenue decline was 7.7%. As Malcolm mentioned, our minority investment in Nuvisan is in a strategic review, following a period of underperformance since last year.
Now, I will hand it back to Malcolm, who will go over additional aspects of the group's strategic priorities and its outlook for FY 2024.
Thanks, Luis. The medium to long-term outlook for both life sciences and commodities remains very supportive. Our group remains well positioned to execute on our fiscal year 2027 objectives to capture sustainable structural growth opportunities. We will continue focusing our efforts on the strategic priorities described during our presentation. This includes growing our minerals position to capture the upside of clean energy technologies and continuing to develop our environmental business to better position our company for the sustainability agenda, while building our operating model for the food and pharma divisions to replicate our success in environmental and minerals. Despite a challenging near-term market backdrop, we still foresee a positive outlook for the company. In fiscal year 2024, we expect to deliver an underlying NPAT of between AUD 310 million and AUD 325 million.
At a group level, this is supported by delivering modest organic revenue growth, achieving margin improvement within the life sciences portfolio in the second half, delivering cash conversion above 90% and a ROCE greater than 20%, and a disciplined acquisition agenda. More specifically, our commodities division will benefit from further market share gains across the full vertical value chain. In particular, the geochemistry business continued to see increased demand for our market-leading, unique, high-performance methods testing and value-added services. We expect our service offering and market share growth to support margins above 30%. Within life sciences, our core environmental business continued to perform well across all geographies, supported by market share growth in key geographies and increasing demand for emerging contaminant testing. The business has also been able to successfully leverage its global scale to achieve good pricing outcomes.
We expect the business to conclude the year with mid to high single-digit organic growth and margin expansion. Both our food and pharmaceutical business, excluding Nuvisan, remain focused on further expanding their platform and delivering margin improvement into the second half of this year. We expect the food business to close the fiscal year with mid to high single-digit organic growth and margin improvements. While the pharmaceutical business, excluding Nuvisan, will show volume and margin improvements in H2, with total year low single-digit negative organic growth. Our strategy remains clear, with a defined investment focus to capitalize on sustainability links, megatrends, and life sciences growth. We will also continue to maintain our market leadership in the minerals division, remaining leveraged to the green metals demand associated with the global energy transition.
And lastly, our commitment to our people is unwavering, as we continue to support a culture of inclusion, innovation, and collaboration. As evidenced in these half year results, our business has continued to demonstrate its resilient and balanced operating model, which has enabled our three key achievements of the year to date. Industry-leading growth on margin in our environmental business, leading position in minerals, delivering market share growth and resilient margins, and continued delivery of value for our shareholders. To finalize, as also reported today, the company is undergoing a management transition. In this regard, Luis has decided to step down from the company to pursue new professional challenges and to attend to personal matters. I want to thank you, Luis, for your support and your great service to the company.
In line with our succession planning, we have begun a process to identify the best candidate for this role, considering people both externally and internally. During this transition process, Michael Williams, who is with us in this call, Group Finance Director, who has worked with us for more than 20 years, will assume the role of Acting CFO from January 19, 2024, and together with the rest of the finance team, will be working closely with Luis to ensure a seamless transition.
Malcolm, thank, thank you, Malcolm. I just want to say two words. It has been a privilege to serve as the ALS CFO for the last five years. With our collective efforts and hard work, I believe we have successfully established ALS as a leading player in the testing, inspection, and certification industry. Our financial position is strong, marked by disciplined capital allocation, critical enablers for sustainable growth, and I'm confident that ALS is well positioned for continuous success under your leadership, Malcolm. My successor will inherit a solid platform to build an even brighter future for the company. As you mentioned, I'm already working with Michael Williams, the Group Finance Director and Treasurer. We have been working together for the last five years. He will assume the role of Acting CFO upon my departure.
I'm also fully committed to facilitate a seamless transition during this period, and will be available after my departure to provide additional support to my successor's onboarding process. I just want to close by thanking my LS colleagues, and especially my team. I'm deeply grateful for the collaboration, support, and shared achievements. I think that with that, we can move to the Q&A part of the call.
Thank you. So we're now ready to take your questions on the call.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from John Purtell with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Oh, good day, Malcolm and Luis. Thank you. And Luis, congrats on what you've achieved over the last five years, and all the best going forward.
Thank you, John.
Just had a couple of questions if I could. Just starting with Geochem there. You've referenced a sort of sequential improvement towards the end of the period, and that's really reflective of sort of market share increase, rather than the market itself. So I suppose just the question is kind of how do you assess sort of the state of the market at the moment? And obviously, you've referenced the high performance categories, but are there any particular call-outs in terms of commodities or end markets where you're taking that share increase?
Thanks, John. So I can start with the, with the answer. We've seen the peak of the trough of sample volume decline in May or June, and since then, as you can see on the presentation, the volume has improved. The growth that we see in the business and the opportunities are still in line with what we discussed early this year. We have a uptake of high performer methods by major companies, and we see good momentum of ALS growing market share in the mine site production. So those two will be the two big drivers for the growth of the company and the sustainable earnings that we have discussed during the call.
Thank you. And just the second question is on pharma. You've obviously highlighted an expectation of improvement in second half margins. What's driving that? And presumably that relates to base pharma, because I think on Nuvisan you sort of, well, you sort of said improvement in margins ex Nuvisan there. So what's driving that improvement in pharma margins? And you've also referenced some operational improvements there for Nuvisan. Should we expect those to flow through in the second half, such that we have a better second half than the first for Nuvisan?
Thanks, John. So I will start with the first part of the question, and Luis will help us with the second. We are seeing a recovery on the pharma business across all regions. We are speaking about the underlying pharmaceutical business, John, as you rightly said. Specifically in the Americas and in the USA, having volume improvements since Q2, flowing to Q3 and Q4. And that trend is also consistent in European testing business that we have. So those will be the two drivers for the underlying pharmaceutical improvement on the second half, and Luis can answer on the Nuvisan question.
Nuvisan, we don't see a significant change in performance in the short term, John.
... I think that the, the challenge there is really related to kind of, structural drivers, particularly in the lack of funding for, for drug development in, in this space of, research and development. We have been, work with them over the last months, and as Malcolm mentioned, we're about to embark in a full review of the strategy, operational model, and so on. And I think that, by the end of this year, beginning of next year, we'll be in a position to have a firm review, not only which are the, the potential and, potential opportunities that we have with Nuvisan in the future, considering the market position that they have and the structural drivers, but the ability to really to turn around and, and make that company at a profit level that we, we can operate.
So we're gonna have a better visibility of that in the next few months.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Rohan Sundram with MST Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi, Malcolm and Luis. Thank you. And Luis, wishing you all the best. Very sad to see you go, and congratulations as well.
Thank you.
A question on the, on the Geochem side of things, just following on from John's question. Are you able to confirm for us exactly when the sample flow trends turned negative? It looks like we're not far off, based on your previous disclosures and the charts you used to provide. Just based on that, should we soon expect to see further improvement in the year-on-year trend and upon tracking these soft comps?
Thanks for the question. We have also provided the chart that you're referencing. I think it's in the appendix of the presentation.
Slide forty-five.
Slide 45. Thanks, Luis.
Okay.
And there you will see the sample volume behavior. And we have also included the chart that shows the sample volume compared with the exploration budgets. As I said, during the call, we've seen the peak of the trough May, June of this year, and since then, we've seen volume improvements across all geographies. But especially we've seen volumes improving in North America and Australia, and during the last part of the Q2, we've seen also improvement in some other areas like Latin America, that is consistent with the exploration funding that we've seen, that Latin America has been the leading region for the year. I don't know if that responded to your question or if you have a follow-up.
No, that's helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Malcolm.
Thank you. Your next question comes from James Wilson with Jarden Australia. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Just one quick question from me around the Nuvisan option. Could you just give us a bit more color on what the main factors that will be influencing your decision are? I appreciate you talked it a little bit earlier. Just looking to see what sort of metrics you might be tracking when assessing that option.
Thanks, James. So in line with what we discussed in May, the intention is to understand the strategic fit of a CRO company into the ALS portfolio, understand the value that we can bring to the clients in that space, and if there's gonna be enough synergies that we can cross leverage between our pharmaceutical platform. Those are the, really, the three drivers of the decision that ALS needs to take. We understand that there's a short-term market backdrop, but we understand as well that there's long-term opportunities in that market. But I would say that the drivers are those three strategic questions that I just explained.
Okay, great. And just, just to follow up on that, when you're talking sort of short term versus longer term, can you give us some sort of a time horizon on where you're expecting, I guess, Nuvisan to realize its values going forward in the longer term?
So that, that's part of the strategic review. We—When I say long term, it means that the market is looking positive in the next 3, 5, and 10 years, but that's general market data that I can provide to you. It's not specific to Nuvisan. So if you speak about... If you, sorry, if the question is about Nuvisan itself, I think it's aligned with the strategic review that we need to assess and what's the impact and the benefit for the ALS portfolio, and most importantly, to the return to our shareholders.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Peter Drew with Carter Barr Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, Malcolm. Hi, Luis. Congrats on the result, and thanks very much, Luis, for all your help and guidance over the past five years, and all the best.
Thank you.
Just got a couple of questions. Just firstly, could you just provide a little bit more context on the Geochem business, sort of where it is, I guess, from a, a revenue perspective, a revenue growth perspective? I mean, volumes have improved, and you've also got this revenue per sample sort of, you know, feature, you know, improvement. I'm just wondering, you know, is, is the Geochem business back in revenue growth, or is it still contracting?
So what we are discussing right now as an outlook is a year that is in line with the happier results. We are putting a lot of the attention on the margin resilience, and that is driven by the market opportunities that the four services that I think they are disclosing in Slide 13, that we see the CAGR growth in metallurgy. We see the very positive CAGR growth in high-performance methods and also in exploration for the last 5 years. So we are focusing on the business resilience and how we can be sure that this business is gonna be less cyclical, as we discussed in the previous meeting, Peter, throughout the years.
In terms of volumes, the chart that we presented in the appendix shows where we are with volumes right now, but that's not something that we control. We control the operational opportunities that we have in the business and the margins that we can deliver, and hence, the return that we can generate for our shareholders. Luis?
Yeah. Thanks, Malcolm. I mean, I guess, putting the question maybe a bit more clearly, is as those, that volume decline, you know, reduced through the half, was and you've also got revenue per sample growing from an uptake in, you know, the high-performing methods. I'm just wondering, you know, was there a crossover point during the half where it actually was producing growth versus PCP?
For the half year results, as we disclosed in the presentation, it has a small negative organic growth. But Luis, you want to comment?
No, no, Peter, we normally don't provide this information, like on a quarter or monthly basis. But I think that one important element that we highlighted here during the presentation. Until a few years ago, the main driver for geochemistry was just the volume, sample volume. And this is another half; now, we have seen that over the last two years, where there is a significant gap between sample flow variance and organic growth. And this, in our view, is proving the dynamic that we have in terms of price impact, in terms of mix, in terms of value that the clients put on the data that we produce in life science, and as well, now, the good performance in the strategy to penetrate in the mine site business.
So when you look to the geochemistry business, even to foresee the future, we try to not only look to the volume now, but how those factors are playing together and impact the total revenue for the company. I think that that's—it's an important change compared to what we used to have in the company a few years back. That was primarily driven by volume. Yeah, thanks. And then, just moving on to the comments on, you know, improvement in second half life sciences margin. Just to clarify, you're referencing improvement versus the second half of fiscal 2023, correct?
What we have disclosed about life sciences is margin improvement for the year as a life sciences division.
Correct. It has an improvement over Prior Comparable Period as well.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Megan Kirby -Lewis with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Morning. My first question is just on the geochemistry business and just on the pricing. It looks like that implied pricing uplift is around 7%. It would just be great if you could talk through the drivers in terms of what is actual price increase versus what you're seeing from those value-added services or mix.
Thanks, Megan. So we are seeing price increase, high single-digit, for the period. A portion of the price increase is connected to the high-performance methods and the uptake that we're seeing from majors, especially, and that has been extending. Not all majors are using those methods, so that's a market opportunity for us as well. But as we also mentioned, the price is connected with the data solutions. So if you go to slide 12 on the presentation, you will see the operating model of the minerals division, and we have three. As we have been discussing, we have the hub and spoke model that reflects our cost base, the client service approach, and the value-added services.
In the value-added services, we include both the high-performance methods and the data solutions that we can provide.
That's great. Then just as a follow-on to that, I guess just around sort of the longevity of that uplift from value-added services, and you sort of touched on it there, that a number of your major mining customers are not using those higher value testing at the moment. You know, how do we think about the evolution of that? You know, can you keep developing these higher value tests? Yeah, and just how we should think about that uplift going forward.
Thanks. So as we disclose in slide 13, the high performer methods have a 38% CAGR during the last three years. They have almost doubled in size from year-on-year. And as I said before, we are seeing more interest for more majors to take those methods. So there is a lot of runway for us to continue expanding the acceptance of the high-performance methods with our clients.
Thanks. So just final one, just on life sciences, and it looks like the food margin declined as well as the underlying pharma. So just more detail on the driver there and what gives you confidence in the uplift for second half.
I can take that, Malcolm. I think that when you look to the Life Sciences, we have to acknowledge the unique position that we have for environmental, very large footprint, already with a hub-and-spoke model implemented in a regional level, high level of expertise capabilities. When you look to the food and pharma, they are businesses that are still being formed, you know, with acquisitions that we did in the past and continue to do. In this kind of picture, they are more vulnerable to specific geopolitical challenges and the economic challenges that we face. So they have somehow lagged behind environmental in terms of margin. And during H1, we also did some kind of operational improvements and sometimes even restructuring certain parts of the pharma business and food business.
and that we expect to see those results in H2.
That's great. Thank you very much.
My pleasure.
Thank you. A reminder to please limit your questions to two per person. Your next question comes from Nicholas Rollinson with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi, Malcolm and Luis. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe one for Luis. I'm just thinking back to the guidance you gave at the same time last year for AUD 300-320 million NPAT, and that was after delivering a higher first half of 164. I'm just trying to understand what gives you much more confidence this time around in a strong second half.
I think that the it's pretty much the momentum that we're seeing across the business. As you saw, the commodity business, with exception of Nuvisan, we have strong growth and margin improvements. With exception of geochemistry, I'm sorry. In geochemistry, even though with subdued sample volume, is still benefiting from price and mix, and we don't see that dynamic being reduced in the second part of the year. Our clients, they're still demanding high performance testing, continue to face challenge to extract mineral from the ground and facing environmental regulation, even more stricter, in the future. So the drivers are there for incremental demand in geochemistry.
In life science, environmental has performed very well and continue a very good momentum, not only in terms of revenue growth, but also margin improvements, reaching probably record high margins now in H1. And the food and pharma business, as we have outlined, we had in H1 several operational improvements. So, you know, performance improvement plan deployed and continue to deploy in H2. And I think that will provide us the gain of a margin improvement in the second half. So when you combine all those elements, I think that we are comfortable to provide the guidance that we provide now.
Okay, that's helpful. And just noting the AUD 13 million spend on ERP in the half, could you give us some clarity on what the expected cost and duration of that program are?
Yeah, we have initiated the ERP program. Probably the phase that we're right now is we are gonna see the concentration for highest costs, because we are building a blueprint for roll out in the organization. We are not gonna do a big bang, not to increase the risk for the company implementing ERP, so we are deploying pilots in Australia and the US that expect to go live in the next few months. And once we have that blueprint, we can roll out to other parts of the organization.
I think that we're gonna see probably similar costs in the next year, and then reduce the cost in the years to follow, since we have a ready blueprint already established and interface with our laboratory management system, and we can deploy this kind of model in the other countries.
Great. That's it from me. Thanks, guys.
Oh, thank you. My pleasure.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Reinhardt van der Walt with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, folks. Just two quick ones from me. You mentioned that you're looking at the ownership structure of Nuvisan. I suppose the most obvious options are you exercise the option, sort of, I suppose, either the put or the call, because the current structure certainly doesn't seem to be working. Are there any other options we should be thinking about that you can maybe put together for Nuvisan?
No, I think that... Thanks, Reinhardt, for the question. I think that you described, those are the options that we have on the table, and we wanna have a strategic review of that before we take the best decision for the company and to ensure the return to our shareholders.
Got it. Perfect. Thank you. Gearing in the business seems to be normalizing a bit now. How should we be thinking about optimal capital structure at this point? There's obviously still quite a bit of inorganic investment required until we get to 2027. So where do you want to see the balance sheet? What are the, sort of the bookends we should be thinking about that leverage figure?
Yeah. Our view is, did not change since we announced our strategic plan. And just as a reminder for everybody in the call, we believe that we can deploy around AUD 200-150 million in capital every year in M&A. And I think that we have a solid pipeline of opportunities to execute on that. And with leverage ratio ranging from 1.6 to 2.2-2.3, almost a full turn below our bank covenants of 3.25. And that would be supported by cash flow or cash generation, cash conversion above 90%, and the leverage ratio, you know, managed in that way. So I think that this is somehow an outline for the capital structure.
We are always now, we have been trying to keep liquidity very high, to make sure that we capture opportunities to invest in, not only in acquisitions, but also in organic CapEx, if you will, for growth of the business. And I don't see any significant change in that picture, at least at the moment.
Perfect. Thanks so much, and all the best of luck with your next opportunities, Luis.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, and that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.