Hi everyone, [Padmé Darcy] here. We are about a minute away from the scheduled start time. Are we happy to begin?
Yeah, we'll get going on time. So, yeah, will my prompt be just, "As the music stops, I start talking"? Is that right?
Yeah, that's correct, so.
Okay.
Yeah, you'll hear it down, but if you hear—if you hear nothing at all.
If I hear nothing at all, I'll get going.
Yeah.
Okay.
Keep going. Yeah, so I'm gonna move that line over now, in about 30 seconds. Yeah.
Darcy, is it possible to see how many people are on the call?
I can see it. I can see it.
Yeah, of course.
It's about 11:00 at the moment, so, yeah.
Yep. Is that all good, or do you wanna wait a little bit longer, or are you happy?
Oh, no, look, I think.
Good morning and welcome to Dyno Nobel Ltd's 2025 full-year results briefing. This is Tom Dixon speaking, and I'm joined this morning by our CEO and MD, Mauro Neves, and our Group CFO, Nitesh Naidoo . The materials we'll be covering today have been lodged with the Australian Securities Exchange and can be found on the ASX and Dyno Nobel websites. As usual, at the end of the presentation, we'll have time for questions, and an audio recording of this presentation will also be available on our website. I'll draw your attention to the disclaimers found on slide one and slide two of the presentation. Before we do move into the main presentation, I'd like to start with an acknowledgement of country. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land we are coming to you from today, the Wurundjeri peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation.
I pay my respects to elders past and present. Thank you, and I'd now like to hand over to Mauro.
Thanks, Tom. Good morning and welcome, everyone. It's my great pleasure to be here to present our 2025 full-year results. You see, as we work through the presentation, the Dyno Nobel team delivered excellent financial results and also made great progress towards separating from our fertilizers business and achieving our ambition of doubling our fiscal year 2023 explosives EBIT. I'll say more on that later. As Tom mentioned, you'll also be hearing today from our new Group CFO, Nitesh Naidoo. Nitesh joined us in July, and I'll quickly take this opportunity to welcome Nitesh to his first Dyno Nobel results presentation and thank him for his enormous contribution since joining the team. I would also like to thank Damian Buttler, who did an excellent job in the entering CFO seat, allowing a seamless transition to the CFO role as Nitesh joined us earlier this year.
We also have [Stuart Sneed] joining us as our new DNAP President. Stuart brings a wealth of leadership experience in the international manufacturing, technology, and resources sectors to our team. I would like to welcome Stuart and also thank Anthony Urzaa for so capably leading DNAP in recent months. I'll now move to our agenda. I'll spend the first part of the presentation taking you through the highlights of our financial year 2025 performance, how we're thinking about the year ahead, and providing an update on our business strategy. At that point, I'll hand over to Nitesh, who'll take you through our financial year 2025 financial performance, and then close the presentation with a discussion of Dyno Nobel's compelling investment proposition before opening up for Q&A. As these highlights show, we have an excellent year. We made great progress in our transformation agenda.
At our half-year results, we talked about the agreements we negotiated with various parties for the sale of fertilizers distribution business, the per diem offtake agreement, and the sale of Gibson Island. I'm pleased to say we have now reached financial closure on both the fertilizers distribution and Gibson Island, receiving upfront cash proceeds of AUD 579 million. I would like to thank Scott Bowman and the team for their considerable efforts as we completed the distribution sale this year and wish them every success moving forward with Ridley. The strategic review of our manufacturing operations has been completed with the sale of St. Helens, closure of Geelong, and a clear pathway identified for a sale or orderly closure of Phosphate Hill. I'm very pleased with the progress we made on our transformation program.
We set ourselves an ambition of doubling our financial year 2023 explosives EBIT, and we are continuing to deliver to our plan despite various challenges the market has placed in front of us. The Dyno Nobel EMEA and LATAM business, which we introduced early this year, grew earnings by 33%, and we continue to establish our capital-light footprint in these key regions targeting future growth. As well as delivering our transformation agenda, we've also been able to deliver strong improvements in safety and manufacturing. We achieved a 19% reduction in TRIFR and successfully completed turnarounds at three of our major manufacturing plants in line with our expectations. Stable manufacturing in Phosphate Hill has also allowed us to capitalize on strong DAP prices in the second half. Finally, we see significant growth with the domestic production of energetics for broad industry use across the resources and defense sectors.
I'll have more to say about that in a minute. I'll now move on to an area that's of critical importance to me and every person in Dyno Nobel: safety. Safety is always our number one priority. As I mentioned last year, we were seeing progress on some leading indicators, supported by extensive efforts taken by the teams to improve our safety performance. I am pleased to say our injury severity is down 40%, and our key performance indicators are now showing the efforts are having an impact. Significant improvement achieved in our recordable injury frequency rate and in the number of process safety incidents occurring. Safety is an area where we set high standards, and although we have more work to do, I'm pleased our metrics are moving in the right direction.
The turnaround at Moranbah this year was one of the biggest we ever undertaken, and we completed this work without any recordable injuries. A key driver of our improved safety performance has been the continued priority we put on safety leadership, which focuses on creating and supporting a healthy risk management culture. We're extending this culture into our wider operations, ensuring we have clear risk ownership and responsibility, and that our people feel empowered to manage risk by having the right tools and training. Now, moving to our financial results. The statutory results after tax, including IMIs, was a loss of AUD 53 million. This statutory result included IMIs of AUD 477 million, which primarily related to the IPF distribution sale, non-cash impairments at Phosphate Hill and St. Helens, and closure costs at Geelong.
The decision to fully impair the Phosphate Hill operations was a result of the sale process and ongoing uncertainty regarding the cost of gas. The gas supply interruption under our contract with Northern Territory Power and Water Corporation forced us to source gas in the East Coast of Australia. At group level, excluding the IMIs, we grew EBIT by 23% during the year, with our ongoing transformation program contributing an additional AUD 60 million in 2025, bringing the total earnings improvement delivered over the last two years to AUD 134 million. The group EBIT result also benefited from stable production, particularly at Phosphate Hill, which allowed us to capture favorable movements in commodity prices and foreign exchange. Dyno Nobel's explosives business also performed very strongly. Underlying EBIT in the explosives business, excluding IMIs, grew 16%, with all three BUs achieving solid underlying earnings growth.
You can see by the chart on the slide, we're expecting further strong growth in fiscal year 2026, which I'll cover later. The focus on quality earnings and capital discipline has contributed to improvements in our key performance indicator, return on invested capital. ROIC, including goodwill, grew to 8.2%, up from 6.3% a year ago. Excluding goodwill, ROIC is now sitting at 11.5%. We have also announced today a final dividend of AUD 0.095 per share, unfranked, which represents a 51% payout ratio, consistent with our capital allocation framework. This takes our total ordinary dividends for 2025 to AUD 0.119 per share. We continue to make solid progress on our AUD 1.4 billion capital return program. Having returned AUD 930 million so far, it leaves us with a further AUD 470 million to come.
We remain committed to completing this program and expect to recommence buying shares tomorrow once we've cleared our blackout period. Despite the large capital return program, our balance sheet remains in great shape, with net debt to EBITDA sitting at a comfortable 1.4x ratio. Moving now to the progress we made on becoming a leading peer player global explosives business. This slide reconciles our statutory earnings to our underlying Dyno Nobel explosives earnings to clearly show that our program has delivered AUD 134 million of benefits over the last two years. We have exited the fiscal year 2025 at a run rate equivalent to 47% of the total ambition of AUD 300 million of benefits. Importantly, transformation is not period-driven by cost cutting. In line with the fundamental change we're making to our business structure, we're making important and enduring changes to how we operate the business.
This slide outlines the size of the benefits coming from pricing discipline, premium technology sales, and customer wins. It also shows the benefits we've been able to embed into our cost base through renegotiating key supply contracts and optimizing our manufacturing processes. We fully expect this momentum to continue in the next year. For fiscal year 2026, we're forecasting additional benefits of between AUD 30 million and AUD 70 million. Included in this forecast is an allowance for some items, such as additional depreciation and implementation costs that may offset the gross benefits accruing from initiatives implemented under the program. Once again, we'll be working across all parts of our business to achieve these benefits. The operating model changes, procurement savings, pricing discipline, and increased sales of technology products are expected to deliver the most benefit.
The majority of the projects that will deliver these benefits have progressed well past the development phase and have either been approved for implementation or are already underway, leading to our confidence in the fiscal year 2026 outlook, which I'll now move on to. For the Dyno Nobel business, we are forecasting further strong earnings growth in fiscal year 2026. EBIT in the explosives business is expected to be in the range of AUD 460 million-AUD 500 million after corporate costs. We're finishing fiscal year 2025 with a strong 47% exit run rate, which gives us confidence and momentum going into financial year 2026. As is normal, we expect earnings to be positively skewed to the second half. We are expecting the debottlenecking activity at Moranbah in fiscal year 2025 will lift capacity at the facility, helping offset the capacity decrease created by the loss of excess ammonia from Gibson Island.
Although we are not conducting any major turnarounds at our core facilities, our ammonia supplies at DNA will be affected by the turnaround at WALA performed by CF Industries in March next year. Let me now touch on our strategy. Our strategy has been designed to help us achieve our ambition of becoming the world's leading global explosives player. Such ambition is supported by our people, our values, and will be achieved by building on our five strategic pillars. The five pillars outline how we differentiate ourselves in the market and what makes us a compelling partner for our customers, driving superior outcomes and improving overall performance across safety, reliability, efficiency, and bottom-line financial returns.
Our innovative technology allows us to offer a full suite of products that, when coupled with our experienced and talented Dyno Consult people, can be bundled in superior offerings, providing solutions tailored to each customer's specific needs. We are a trusted brand that has developed deep customer relationships over many decades across multiple geographies. This allows us to hold conversation as partners, not suppliers. Our long history in the industry has allowed us to build a network of privileged assets strategically located near high-quality customers and mining deposits. The last of our five pillars relates to smart capital deployment. We will be disciplined in how we deploy capital, prioritizing low capital growth that has superior risk-adjusted return. By focusing on these strategic pillars, we will leverage our differentiated product growth to achieve our ambition.
I would like to now talk to you about some of the growth we're seeing in the sales of these high-margin products.
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Our proprietary technology suite has seen continued growth in adoption as customers realize the efficiency and safety benefits these products deliver. Electronic detonator sales were up 15% year on year, and our Delta-E-enabled MPU fleet expanded by 24%. The Dyno Consult team took on almost 60% more engagements in fiscal year 2025 than they did in fiscal year 2024, as we continue to optimize solutions and deliver value to our customers. AI is also increasingly being used across our business, adding greater efficiency and effectiveness. A prime example is the use of AI at our Simsbury Initiation Systems facility, where it helped us increase capacity and reduce defects.
We've added a slide in the appendix for the presentation highlighting the AI-driven manufacturing improvements we're seeing at this site. Another of our strategic pillars is our privileged assets and networks. Our strong partnerships and privileged assets are an important drive at our growth strategy. In North America, our team secured a deal with a U.S.-based industrial manufacturer, REPKON USA , supporting onshoring of TNT production in the U.S. for the first time in decades. The new TNT facility will be built by REPKON USA at Dyno Nobel's Graham, Kentucky facility, funded by a $435 million investment from the U.S. federal government and will be operated by Dyno Nobel.
With limited capital outlay from Dyno Nobel, the offtake will secure a reliable domestic supply of TNT for commercial explosives production, materially reducing our overall exposure to U.S. tariffs, ensuring continuity and resilience for our customers across the mining, quarry, and construction sectors. In October, we formed a 50/50 joint venture with REPKON USA called Nitradyn, which will operate independently from Dyno Nobel business. Building on the successful tender for the TNT project in the U.S. , Nitradyn will focus on developing, supplying energetics for broader industry use across the resources and defense sectors. As you can see, energetics have a broad range of applications and include chemical products such as TNT, PETN, RDX, and IMX. We have the sites, requisite infrastructure, and a highly capable team experienced in manufacturing high explosives, which positions Nitradyn JV very well for future success.
This is just another clear example of how we can leverage our privileged assets, production technology, and operational expertise to expand our operations into a major new market segment and efficient capital deployment. I look forward to updating you on progress made by Nitradyn as we move forward. This year has seen us take several transformational steps, touting our ambition to become the leading global explosives player. As previously announced, we achieved a clean sale of our St. Helens fertilizers facility in the U.S., importantly, with no ongoing environmental liabilities or future remediation requirements to be incurred by Dyno Nobel. We reached financial settlement on the sale of our fertilizer distribution business and completed the sale of land at Gibson Island. We finalized production at our Geelong SSP plant and reached an agreement with Macquarie CGM to sell our per diem offtake contract.
We now have just one ongoing sale process, Phosphate Hill. As we announced in early October, we have a very clear pathway with respect to Phosphate Hill. Our priority remains to sell the asset as a going concern to a qualified buyer. However, if an agreement is not reached by 31st March , we will progress towards an orderly closure by 30 September 2026. Resolving issues relating to obtaining an economic gas supply is fundamental to the site's future viability, and we continue to engage with government stakeholders on this matter. Importantly, as we have reported today, the facility is self-funded at the current favorable debt prices. Subject to debt prices, it should remain cash positive while we continue to operate the plant in fiscal year 2026.
I would also note that if a sale does not eventuate, the cost of remediation and closure are expected to be offset by tax loss benefits and the release of working capital. During financial year 2025, we also made great progress in our net zero pathway, meeting short-term absolute reduction target of 5% by 2025 against our 2020 baseline. We also completed the installation of tertiary abatement of nitrous oxide at our Lomo facility. Having now completed tertiary abatement at both Moranbah and Lomo, we have been able to review and update our greenhouse gas reduction targets. Our previous medium-term target of 25% by 2030 has now been adopted as our new short-term target, and we have introduced a new medium-term target of 50% reduction by 2036. This new medium-term target is underpinned by a pipeline of identified projects. The net zero by 2050 ambition remains unchanged.
I'll now hand over to Nitesh, who will take you through our financial performance.
Thank you, Mauro, and good morning to everyone on the call today. We have some fantastic opportunities ahead of us as we pursue our strategy to deliver on our ambition. Firstly, let's look at what we've achieved from a financial perspective in FY2025, which demonstrates solid progress. As Mauro mentioned earlier, we've achieved 16% underlying earnings growth across our explosives business units. Our transformation program has delivered benefits that, on an annualized basis, are halfway to Dyno Nobel's earnings ambition, and I'm happy to say that things are well on track for FY2026. Scaling with smart capital deployment is a key part of the strategy, of which ROIC is a key measure. We finished the year with ROIC at 8.2%, which is up from 6.3% a year ago.
Finally, we delivered on the important milestone to exit the fertilizer assets, with sales proceeds of AUD 579 million received and a further AUD 270 million in deferred settlement. If we now move to the next slide, which shows our P&L. As you can see, revenues on a statutory basis were flat, impacted by the December 2023 completion of the WALA sale, and therefore, FY24 comparators included two months' earnings. Underlying revenue for the group grew 6%, and explosives by 2% year on year, impacted by the Queensland market weather event in half one. Pleasingly, we saw these impacts recover in half two, and our JV partner income grew strongly at 29% year on year. The transformation program continues to deliver operating leverage for the group, with operating margin percentage increasing 2 percentage points at a group headline and underlying explosives level.
Overheads growth was restricted to 3%, demonstrating cost discipline to our growth. The reduction in other income reflects one-off benefits in the prior year related to a land sale in explosives and a legal settlement in fertilizers. Our headline EBIT grew 23%, driven by favorable commodity prices in our fertilizers business. Headline explosives earnings declined 10%, reflecting the aforementioned WALA impact and a significant turnaround year at manufacturing sites of Moranbah, Lomo, and Cheyenne. This resulted in lower sales and higher third-party input costs while plants were being renewed, but sets us up for improved reliability and throughput going forward. The restructuring of Dyno Nobel to a pure-play explosives business has resulted in significant IMIs recorded in FY2025 from the sale and full write-down of fertilizer assets. A full breakdown is included in the OFR materials.
We also acknowledge that the restructuring of the group has made visibility of the true business performance challenging, so we've increased disclosure and reconciliation from our headline results to the underlying performance to assist. These additional disclosures are included in the compendium and will be provided going forward. I'll take you to the next page on slide 20. Underlying earnings in Dyno Nobel explosives grew 16% to AUD 434 million in FY2025, reflecting the AUD 134 million cumulative net transformation growth from the 2023 AUD 300 million baseline. We've broken out the adjustments on this slide, which relate to sale of fertilizer assets and one-off impacts from turnarounds. With the completion of the St. Helens sale in FY2025, Ag and IC is not material going forward and will not be disclosed separately. Pleasingly, underlying earnings grew across all geographies, with DNAL showing a 33% improvement, although it's off a smaller base.
JVs are a core part of the privileged assets in the Dyno Nobel strategy. They are cornerstone to the market leadership position of the U.S. business and an important consideration in our growth markets. We've also called out the growing JV income line that reflects the after-tax income included in our EBIT, which is unique to Dyno Nobel. We will continue to disclose this additional information as we feel it's material to the valuation of the business in the future. If we could now move to the CapEx slide 21. You can see we've maintained good discipline on our capital expenditure in FY2025, meeting all CapEx outlook ranges provided at the start of the year. Please note that we have adjusted the categories that we disclose to provide more color on the nature of capital investment.
Despite the significant FY2025 turnaround schedule, we have been able to complete these successfully and on budget. Our capital deployment moves away from turnarounds in FY2026 towards projects that are aligned with our growth ambition. We intend to increase spend in areas of digital and technology to ensure we maintain our technology advantage in market and enhance productivity for ourselves and customers. We also see increased capital spend in support of customer growth, particularly in EMEA and LATAM. This spend relates to investments in additional MPUs and emulsion plants and is expected to provide returns well in excess of our cost of capital and in line with the capital allocation framework. The range on the capital outlook is influenced by this category of CapEx, given the binary nature of tenders, which can impact on timing of spend. Moving on to the balance sheet on slide 22.
Our balance sheet strength is demonstrated by marked improvement across the key metrics shown on the left-hand side of the page. Noting the increase in the net debt was expected, driven by the tax commitments following the sale of WALA, and remains, as Mauro said, at the low end of our policy setting. This gives us an opportunity to pay dividends at the higher end of the capital allocation framework of 30%-60%, a full-year unfranked dividend of AUD 0.1199. The AUD 1.4 billion capital returns continue to progress well, with on-market buybacks at an average price of [AUD 293 million. The buyback will recommence on the 11th of November. With that, I will conclude by saying that I'm delighted to join the incredible team of Dyno Nobel, enjoying learning the business, and excited by the prospects I'm seeing.
I'll now pass back to Mauro for some closing remarks before we move to Q&A.
Thanks, Nitesh. To close out the presentation, I want to quickly outline what we believe is a very compelling investment proposition. We are in the very fortunate position of being one of the world's leading suppliers to an industry sector driven by demand for critical resources. Our strategic move to become a pure-play explosives company is well progressed and well timed to benefit from the increasing sophistication of the mining industry. This is allowing us to better focus management attention on optimizing our operating model and to more efficiently deploy capital towards high-return opportunities. We expect much lower volatility in our growing earnings as we move forward. We hold market-leading positions in two of the best mining markets in the world, underpinned by our superior product offering.
These positions have allowed us to develop high-quality long-term relationships with the largest global mining houses. We are well placed to lever these relationships into new growth regions as these customers expand in search of the future-facing minerals. Finally, our end market fundamentals are robust. Mining is becoming more technical, and customers are placing more and more value on products and services that improve their efficiency, safety, and sustainability outcomes. Thank you for listening, and with that, I'll hand over to questions. [Darcy], can you please remind our guests how to raise a question?
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you would like to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are in a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question.
Your first question today comes from William Park from Citi. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Mauro and Nitesh, for taking my question. Just firstly, with respect to FY2026 explosives EBIT, can you just step through how you're internally thinking about, I guess, the DNAL's contribution to FY2026 and the growth trajectory that you're expecting here, and what are some of the key drivers with respect to DNAL, please? Thank you.
Thanks, William. I'll start answering with more of the qualitative approach we have into DNAL, and then let Nitesh comment on the breakdown of transformation for 2026. Now, DNAL is a story about following our customers. We really like LATAM and EMEA as growth regions for two reasons.
One, those are the regions of the world where mining is growing more strongly, and those are the regions of the world that our own customers, the BHPs, the Anglo Americans, the Rios, are expanding that portfolio. It is very natural for us to just follow our customers on jurisdictions where they are already very successful. We have really invested time and capital this year to set up that business for success, appointed Richard Brown to lead that business with Ricardo in LATAM and Lucas in Africa, and we are seeing already some green shoots of that. I am not in a position to comment on any specific commercial outcomes, but I am very confident that we will see DNAL further grow in the next financial year. Nitesh, do you want to comment on the variables, how we are seeing transformation for fiscal year 2026?
Thanks, Mauro. Thanks, William, for the question.
William, we'll try to provide you some background. I know this is a question that many people have on DNAL and DNAL growth contribution. On slide 10 of the results presentation, where we show our perspectives on FY2026, we do have a category there, which is growth in international markets, and it gives you a range of AUD 8 million-AUD 15 million in terms of how we see DNAL's contribution towards our EBIT targets or outlook for FY2026.
Thank you. That's very clear. Just while we are talking about the transformation benefit, can I just ask about whether, if anything's changed in terms of the exit run rate that you're thinking about for the business? I know that for FY2026, the exit run rate that you're expecting has been revised down by a 5 percentage point.
Just wondering whether that's driven by what you've seen or whether you expect sort of acceleration into 2027 and beyond. Just curious to know what's effectively changed in the last six months or so.
Looks, William, fundamentally the program is unchanged. The way we're managing that remains unchanged. We made the decision, and something that Nitesh endorsed when he joined us, to keep reporting as cleanly and as directly to the bottom line as we possibly can to avoid too many reconciliations. Obviously, we're seeing this year quite a challenging set of geopolitical environment, namely tariffs, for instance, which provide some headwinds. As far as we can see sitting here, we still think that the range is still possible.
It's a range that has been slightly downgraded to reflect some of the headwinds we're dealing with, but we're still confident that we can deliver to that 65% refined range, and hence why, for the first time, we're providing EBIT guidance for the business.
Thank you. And then just one last one from me. In terms of one of your explosive plants, the minor turnaround that was originally scheduled for fiscal year 2026 has been pushed out to 2027. Just wondering whether you could provide some insight as to why you decided to defer that minor turnaround?
Look, it's really minor, to your point. If I refer you to slide 28 on the appendices, that will give you a bit of a snapshot of how we're thinking about major and minor turnarounds moving forward. We just have the opportunity to run this asset for a few more months safely.
It's about really the engineering plans, and it's about mobilization of suppliers. Nothing really major, just a phasing from 2026, from late 2026 to early 2027. We provided the full, as we normally do, the full turnaround schedule on slide 28 to give you some reference.
Thank you. Thanks for taking my question. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Ramoun Lazar from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Mauro. Good morning, Nitesh. Just a couple of questions for me. One on Dyno Asia Pac, just if you could comment on the situation in Indonesia, what you've observed in that marketplace over 2025, and are you starting to see some stabilization returning into that market?
Yeah, it's a great question, Ramoun. There are various moving parts. The first one is we have some local production of EN that has been brought to market.
The government has ceased to issue import licenses, so essentially the market is predominantly domestic now or fully domestic now, which puts us in a position to be not anymore trading international ammonium nitrate in that market. Essentially our price taker is at the domestic market. The other main impact is the exchange rate. The local currency has been severely depreciated last year, which impacted our business. Other than that, the trading levels, the work the team has done in the ground is quite exciting. I have to say they have become a bit of a springboard for growth in the region. We've noted that we have now a new contract in Malaysia in infrastructure. We're really using some of the technology that was developed in Indonesia with our emulsion mobile plant. Lots to like about that business, but 2025 has been a particularly difficult year.
Nothing that we see changing our strategic view moving forward, but I note that 2025 has been a difficult year for those two factors that I mentioned. We are still. Our customers. We have a strong customer base, strong partners. Still a business that we like, but acknowledge that 2025 has been a difficult year.
Okay, good. Thank you. The other one was just around Moranbah. You have the additional tonnes coming through in 2026. Can you maybe just comment on how much extra production you expect from Moranbah in 2026? I note your new gas contract begins from about April next year. Maybe if you could help us square up any additional sort of gas costs that we should factor into the second half from that new gas contract and then into 2027 as well, please.
Great questions, Ramoun.
You remember when we closed Gibson Island a few years ago, we lost about 30,000 tonnes of capacity of that surplus ammonia that we ceased to bring into the plant? With the bottlenecking we have done, we are now bringing back about 15. We are up to roughly 365,000 tonnes per year. What was the second question? Sorry.
Gas.
Oh, gas. Yes, yes. The gas reset is happening, to your point, in April. This is factored in our numbers for the financial year. As we mentioned before, our contracts typically, each contract is slightly different, and I will not comment on any specific, but it is fair to say that all of our contracts have gas formulas that will make it wash through our results. Maybe we could add it is not material, Ramoun, the difference.
Yeah. Okay, understood. I will leave with one final one, if I can, Mauro.
Just on capital allocation, if possible, can you comment on how you're thinking about that now that you're maybe a couple of years into the transformation and it is going to track and you've reaffirmed some of those longer-term targets, just in terms of capital allocation once the fertilizer business is done with? How are you thinking about that into next year and perhaps longer term?
Ramoun, I'll defer to our CFO. He's passionate about capital allocation and has been a big advocate for capital discipline in the business. So I'll let Nitesh answer the question.
Thank you. Look, I think the overall capital allocation framework still remains quite sound. In terms of the returns we are seeking from the new ventures or projects we invest capital in, our previous capital allocation framework was looking to exceed 1.3x our WACC.
We are looking, and as you can see in our disclosures around the nature of capital expenditure, to provide that additional clarity to the market, kind of exploring and understanding how our capital is linked to our long-term earnings and our five-year plan. We will look to continue to improve on the capital efficiency and effectiveness of our spend. That is consistent. In terms of our dividend payout ratios, that remains consistent. I think the question is a good one because as we become a pure play explosives business, clearly our volatility in the business in terms of liquidity and cash is different. It does allow us to consider where our setting is from a debt perspective. Our current target is 1.5x . Our policy allows up to 2x , but we are still making that assessment.
I've been working with the team and will update in subsequent results presentations of where we think that that would sit.
Okay, great. I'll leave it there. Thanks.
Thanks, Ramoun.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Brook Campbell-Crawford from Barrenjoey . Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. First, just on the nitrogen joint venture that you've announced today, more broadly outside of the TNT plant, which you previously disclosed, can you just provide some more color on how big you see that opportunity as being over time? Maybe things like how we should think about magnitude of capital investment, potential EBIT or earnings from the JV call it over the next three years or so. Any sort of color would be super helpful. Thanks.
Hi, Brook. Look, we're not in a position to go to that level of detail as yet.
As time goes by, we hope to clearly articulate what this new line of business could be. That is what it is. It is a potential new line of business that is a very, very interesting adjacency, as we learned, for a business that we already do. In Graham, Kentucky, we already handle high explosives. We manufacture PETN, which is one of the inputs into booster manufacturing, and cord. What we learned through the explorations we have done with REPKON is most of the capabilities, chemicals that we need to handle, people training, even the military-grade approvals we need to do in some of our processes, we already have.
It is a natural synergy to explore what has been happening with the geopolitical circumstances of the world to really use some of our capabilities to help build some more domestic manufacturing capability for some of those materials that go both in the defense sector, but also in our traditional construction and mining markets. It is early days for us. The Nitradyn JV has the mandate to pursue what we call energetics more broadly. That includes things like propellants and RDX, IMX, TNT, PETN, all products that we use in small quantities in some of our formulations. That opens up a new world of possibilities in all other applications that those materials have. We see that as capital light. Typically, those investments in recent times, especially in the United States, have been supported by government investment.
We will be doing some moderate investments in our facilities to upgrade things like utilities and access roads to be able to accommodate these new operations. It's early days, but now we're standing being early, we're pretty excited. Hence why we decided to not only pursue the TNT plant, but also associate with REPKON for broader and bigger opportunities in the future.
That's helpful. Thanks. Just on Phosphate Hill, the EBIT is skewed to the second half, I believe, given the comments in the presentation. Can you just sort of outline what's happening there? I presume it's a production phasing, but can you just provide some color on what's driving that? I have one final question if you have time. Thanks.
Yeah, you're right. Nothing unusual or different from history. We account for some weather disruption.
I don't think we can talk about weathering that part of the world as being unusual. We always give some allowance for that. We also have some yearly maintenance happening in the early part of the financial year. Nothing extraordinary, just the natural phasing of production in force. We provided both capital and earnings guidance for the full year so that you can get your heads around what the business could be. I remind you of the outcome of the strategic review where we clearly now said that by March we should have a new owner for the operations. If we don't, then we'll move into an orderly closure of the asset. This essentially puts in perspective what would be the full year earnings in a scenario of closure.
Obviously, if a new owner would take over the asset from March, different story, and that would be communicated to the market when the time is right.
Great. One last one. Just on the Dyno consult project engagement of 59% was highlighted in the materials, which is obviously a strong number. Just some commentary would be great on what's driving that increase. Is that a good gauge for sort of future new contracts or mix improvements? How should we sort of contextualize that really strong growth rate? Thanks.
Yeah, look, this is a remarkable outcome and really talks about the very capable men and women around the world doing trials. I think you can almost use that as a proxy for trials. That means that we have technical people engaging with customers that are trialing all range of our high technological products.
It could be a trial of use of shock-resistant electronic detonators. It could be a new mine trialing Delta-E. It could be an implementation of Nobel Fire, all of which moves us into that going from selling commodities to selling a bundled high-value-add product. You are right. This Dyno consult engagement typically is for us a leading indicator of what is coming in terms of the continuous improvement of our mix, if you want, going from selling AN to selling more value-add products.
Thanks so much.
Thanks, Brook.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Mark Wilson from RBC. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much, Mauro. And Nitesh, just a couple of quick questions on Phosphate Hill. Just wondering what your assumptions are in relation to gas and met gas supply through the course of fiscal 2026.
Thanks, Mark. It is Nitesh.
We've tried to make the assumptions around Phosphate Hill clearer for you to kind of assess the EBIT potential from that asset. As you see, we have previously reported a cost per tonne as part of our OFR. We've now guided forward on a cost per tonne basis, which includes met gas and gas. That guidance on cost per tonne is AUD 720-AUD 780. At the low end of that guidance, we see gas to be around AUD 16, and at the high end, around AUD 19. We've provided that in our assumption sets to allow you to apply market depth prices to calculate the earnings profile of Phosphate Hill. Hopefully, that helps.
Yeah, thanks. You have assumed that you're not getting any, you're basically sourcing gas from the East Coast, apparently?
Correct. The wholesale markets on the East Coast.
Okay, great. Great. Thanks.
Just on CapEx, I know you sort of spoke about the breakdown looking at customer growth, growth initiatives, and digital and technology. Is it fair to assume, given the focus of the company on those elements, that we are seeing a step change and we should actually look for these three components to be relatively consistent going forward?
I think, Mark, we've taken a bold step to provide you some outlooks for 2026. I think longer-term outlooks we won't provide at this stage. However, I think it is fair to say that we will provide these categorizations so that you understand the CapEx profile that we have. The growth initiatives as a category is obviously linked to the transformation program. Our transformation program has 2026 and 2027 still to go.
So it gives you an indication of, to some degree, how some of these categories are spent, may flex.
Okay. Okay. That's good. Thanks very much for that.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Scott Ryall from Rimor Equity Research . Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks very much. I just wanted to follow up on the earlier question on the U.S. TNT opportunity. And I get that you're not going to size it, and I understand all the production advantages and things like that, but just stepping back a little bit. The U.S. government is funding it. REPKON is building it. And what's actually Dyno's role at the facility? I guess if the U.S. government is funding it, is that an equity contribution or is it debt? I'm just trying to get a sense of, I guess, who owns it, what are the economics?
I'm not asking you to quantify anything, but how will Dyno Nobel make money out of this opportunity over going forward, please?
Yeah. No, good question. I think I can share some of that with you. Probably not as much detail as we'll be able to do in the future as this is a contract that has been awarded to REPKON and us as a member of that consortium. The details in what they call the contract details is yet to be negotiated. In high level, Scott, this is a GBP 15 million facility, of which GBP 5 million is essentially what we use for boosters. This gives you an order of magnitude of how relevant we are as a customer. We will have the sole offtake for the commercial market.
In other words, every tonne that goes out of that plant that is not directed to the military will be used for our own booster production or even if we decided to on-sale TNT. That is how you should think about it. We will run the plant for a fee, and the equity is the U.S. Army. Essentially, that will be a plant owned by the U.S. Army that we will be the operator. I hope that helps you get your heads around it.
Yeah, that does. No. Thank you. Thank you. I know you have all sorts of disclosure requirements, etc. The second question, just you have given some really good color around Phosphate Hill. Thank you. It would seem that every smelting business, refining business, everything that looks pretty similar to Phosphate Hill from a high level is talking to government about support for the business.
I wonder, you've given a pretty clear outline of if you can't sell by March, you start planning for closure by 30 September, a year away. Are you looking at the government as needing to support this facility in any way in order to get to that sale process closure, please?
Great question, Scott. I think the first step, which we welcomed, was the announced deal they made for Glencore. As you know, Glencore's smelting monetized in our operation are intrinsically linked. The fact that the government gave Glencore a two-year deal is definitely something that we welcome. It gives us a bit more certainty on the offtake of met gas from that smelter. The other area that we've been working very closely with every level of government is gas supply. We generally believe that the East Coast gas is putting and we are not alone in that.
Through the manufacturing in Australia, we have prosecuted with many of my peers the very difficult circumstance that manufacturing the East Coast of anyone that is heavily reliant on gas is facing right now. That's probably the piece of work that we need to do with government, and whether it's the Northern Territory government where the contract has not been performing, nothing that you haven't heard me talking before. Now, whether it's a gas reservation policy similar to what W.A. have or something done at federal level, we've been talking constructively to every sphere of government and prosecuting our case. I find that the operation can be viable, but not without commercial and fair gas price and energy price. This is what we're prosecuting with the stakeholders, and hopefully, we can come to an outcome.
Our main goal remains to be finding a qualified buyer to take that operation forward. Obviously, we cannot guarantee that outcome, which, at least for the energy price, is outside our control. I have to say, the people in Phosphate Hill have been amazing. They've been running that asset as safely and efficiently as ever. Dan Kelleher and his team could not be prouder of the work they've been doing. There are things that are outside our control, and gas is the big one.
Yeah. Understood. Okay. Really, fiscal 2026 as we look forward, what are we thinking on material items, please? They've obviously been quite large the last two years. I'm just looking for some idea whether they drop back down to certainly to double-digit level and hopefully closer to zero.
Yeah. I think, Scott, the IMIs are effectively very large, as we've made some really large impairments, particularly with Phosphate Hill and all our fertilizers business this year. Next year, it does markedly drop. We still have some ongoing costs as far as the transformation program that will continue to be incurred, but it's of a certainly different scale.
Okay. Thank you. That's all I have.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Lee Power from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, Mauro, Nitesh, and Tom. Mauro, just on the net transformation guidance you've given for FY2026, you got asked on this a little bit earlier, but I kind of came away a little bit confused. The range of AUD 30 million-AUD 70 million, is that a business target outcome, or is it just something around the delivery in terms of a timing element?
The reason I ask is it seems a lot of them are around cost savings, and also most of them are in kind of the very final stages in terms of actually being executed or realized now. I'm just trying to work out why there is such a big range in 2026.
Those projects, they have various natures. You're right. When you talk about the bottlenecking of plant, it's more of the engineering delivery risk and then pricing the product competitively in the market. Fair to say lower risk. When you talk about things like your supply of goods and even offsetting some of the pressures from tariffs, we will be self-sufficient TNT eventually, but we're still importing heavily TNT in the U.S. In this world of tariffs, there is, fair to say, some uncertainty.
As we present, and as has been the case before, and we'll be moving forward, we will be presenting the net impact of transformation will allow us some headroom for this variation. It's fair to say, again, as we're presenting a range for earnings for the first time, this AUD 30 million-AUD 70 million range of transformation links directly to the AUD 460 million-AUD 500 million earnings guidance. This is in-year cash that we expect to deliver. There's a timing impact, and there's also a likelihood of delivery of each of the projects. I would say we're very confident that we will deliver those projects. The AUD 30 million-AUD 70 million have to do with uncertainty around the offsets and also uncertainty around timing. We're very confident on that range that we provided given the things that we have control.
Obviously, if there's anything outside our control, we'll come back to the market and communicate. As far as we know, the things that we can anticipate, we believe that AUD 30 million-AUD 70 million range is appropriate.
Okay. That's great color . Thank you. Then just on your market commentary that's in your annual report, you've done a very, very good job delivering the EBIT growth you have. Because when I look at Asia Pacific, basic pressures, metal volumes were down 8% for the year. America's down 6%. I think the first half was down 7%. I noted there you've got some stuff around coal that seems to be improving. When we have that backdrop, how important is it for you that you get that volume piece positive again? How important is the market to your AUD 600 million ambition in 2028?
It's a great question, Lee, and I hope to give more color as we go in the road in the next week. Nitesh has been passionate about the same question. I have to say, historically, our business has been a chemical company, and we measured volume on the basis of traded ammonium nitrate. In summary, that volume commentary that you have in the documentation is all to do with AN equivalent traded volumes, which more and more, as we grow our share of high-end technology programs, does not necessarily talk to the profitable volumes that we trade. One of the things that in time we hope to be able to peel the onion a few layers down is the volumes that we trade of the technology products as well.
The profitability of selling a tonne of ammonium nitrate is not the same profitability of selling a tonne of emulsion, which is not the same profitability of selling services that include emulsions and detonators. We have been very clear to our commercial teams that this game is not about volume. It is a game about profitability and returns on capital. We have, as I said before, been very disciplined to only play on markets that we can win the games of return on capital. Volume has not been as much a priority probably as when we had that mindset of trading ammonium nitrate. Ammonium nitrate will be and is a very important part of our capability, but it is not the big game in town.
The big game in town here is really deliver the best possible product suite to customers, customers generating value, and we're being rewarded to do that. This is a clear example of how the world is changing in front of us. The volumes of ammonium nitrate traded in the future will likely not be a direct proxy for our profitability. Now, growing our business will probably mean that over time, we'll have more ammonium nitrate traded, especially in LATAM and EMEA. I fully expect that the traded volumes of ammonium nitrate in LATAM and EMEA will grow, but predominantly, those will be traded tonnes. Again, the profitability driver for those markets will be initiation systems, high explosives, boosters, services, digital. This is where our earnings profile will likely move into time.
Okay. Excellent. Thanks, Mauro. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Daniel Kang from CLSA.
Please go ahead.
Good morning, Mauro, Nitesh. Just a few questions, and I'm conscious of time, so I'll just ask all of them now. Firstly, can you talk about current domestic market conditions? We had some oversupply on the East Coast earlier this year. Are we still in market surplus, or have markets normalized? Secondly, can you provide some color on the competitive landscape? Have you seen a step up in competitive intensity, particularly in the domestic emulsion and initiating systems segments? Just a final one on fertilizer pricing. Where do you see current spot DAP prices? Wondering how that compares to the AUD 690 that was realized last year. Thank you.
I'll start with the two on explosives, and I'll leave Nitesh to answer the fertilizer pricing question, Daniel. The domestic market has rebalanced in the East Coast, Daniel.
After that weather event we have seen in February last year, we finished up the year pretty strong on the basis of essentially having the plant sold out and really working very, very hard to keep up with demand. As we expected, the dip we had was a perfect storm. We had our two-month interruption for the turnaround in the middle of that weather event, which was not too pleasant. Now the market is rebalancing, and we have seen quite a strong demand coming out of our coal customers. In the West Coast, as you know, we trade volumes, and we have had no problem at all to access competitive materials from our suppliers there. In terms of the competitive landscape, I would not say it is any different from previous periods. I do not see increased or decreased competition. The competition is still very hard. We do not mind competition.
I guess the two things that you heard me saying before that have been changed will be disciplined. We want to be remunerated for what we bring to bear, which is the quality and the security of supply that we can offer to our customers, especially in domestic markets. Also, we really compete on technology, competing value, competing value delivered to customer. We do not think that just competing in pricing is where we win. We win when customers realize value on using our products and remunerate us for doing so. The strategy is really about having market discipline and taking competition at face value and winning with technology and winning with quality of service. Nitesh, do you want to comment on DAP price?
Thank you, Daniel, for the question. The DAP price is obviously currently trading higher than the average that we had for last year.
The price increased over the second half of the year, which we were able to benefit from. However, going forward, based on the indexes that are published, it is expected to kind of alleviate to some degree. Those are public indexes that you'll be able to refer to.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from John Purtell from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Oh, good day. Mauro, Nitesh, hope you're both well. Just had two questions, please. Look, first one on Dyno Americas. Just a broader question around what benefits you're seeing in the U.S. from the Trump administration? Obviously, TNT is an example of that in terms of your expansion there, but interested in terms of broader perspectives for U.S. mine restarts and expansions and reshoring, etc.
And the other question?
The other question was just around acquisition opportunities relating to expansion into markets like EMEA and LATAM. Can we assume that there's potential for bolt-on acquisitions, but unlikely to be anything transformational?
Yeah, good question. Look, I think the hypothesis of an administration that was looking to onshore and privilege domestic manufacturing is starting to play out. To your point, TNT is a great example of that. We have nothing but lots of support from local stakeholders to double down on our existing footprint and support bringing back to the U.S. I think this is the first TNT plant in the U.S. since the 1980s. It is a quite remarkable outcome, and this is government to put their money where their mouth is. We have been up and down with tariffs, as you know, and so far managed to mitigate most of those outcomes.
In the positive range, Resolution, just to give you an example, seems to be closer to start as ever. As you know, Resolution is one of those world-class copper deposits that BHP and Rio Tinto have been chasing for at least a decade. I have seen movements in the direction of accelerating that process. Also, the focus of that administration on critical minerals is something that we like. Copper and nickel, lithium, those are all materials that use lots of explosives, and we welcome the impetus to improve the participation of the American industry in that. If anything, inflation has been hard on our current construction customers. We had some very successful outcomes, which sort of offset that from our numbers in that market. That market has not been great in the last 12 months or so.
A combination of high interest rates, somewhat subdued construction and infrastructure in Spain. It looks like, even if you look at more recent market communications from the likes of Martin Marietta and Heidelberg, they seem to be looking at the skies clearing out. We hope that that will pick up as volume for us. In terms of acquisitions, consistently to what we told the market before, we have now materially completed the first stage of our strategic intent, which was separating the fertilizers business. We have progressed halfway through our transformation, but as you know, the hard yards are to come. Fiscal year 2026 is such a critical year for us because it is a clean year, no turnarounds. It is a year to really double down on transformation, and the team is 100% focused on doing that.
We keep an eye on any opportunities to keep growing the explosives business. As you said, we're probably more in the space of bolt-on or small opportunities to help Richard and their team create beachheads and leverage opportunities into these entry markets. The time will be right at some point in future to go more strongly in consolidation, but the time is still not now. We're still committed to doing transformation and keep growing our earnings. We still believe that this industry is prone for consolidation. The logic, the strategy, the strategic rationale of consolidation for us still stands. We believe that this market will benefit from a different market structure, and we will have a role to play in that. Not now. The time will come. We really focus on delivering on this fiscal year 2026 guidance that we provided to the market.
Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back over to Mr. Neves for any closing remarks.
Thanks, [Darcy], and thank you all for joining us today and your interest in Dyno Nobel. I look forward to meeting many of you in person in the next few weeks as we go on to a roadshow. Have a safe week, and thank you for listening.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.