Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Welcome to Orica's 2024 Half Year Results presentation. In the room with me at Nicholson Street is Sanjeev Gandhi, our Managing Director and CEO, Kim Kerr, our CFO, and also in the room is Angus Melbourne, our Chief Technology Officer. Both Sanjeev and Kim will be presenting shortly. As per normal, we'll have plenty of time for questions after the presentation, so feel free to queue up and we'll get to those questions promptly. Before we start, can I just ask you to read the quick disclaimer on slide two? Thank you, and with that, over to you, Sanjeev.
Thank you, Delphine, and welcome all. I'll start with slide number 4. Regretfully, this half we reported a fatality as a result of a traffic accident on a public road in India, where our vehicle was struck from behind by a non-Orica heavy haulage truck. A full and thorough investigation was undertaken, and the implementation of key learnings is in progress across our global operations. Our serious injury case rate is slightly above our target. Safety is and remains our number one priority, and we will continue to focus on our safety culture and risk management practices to improve our safety performance.
We have recorded zero serious environmental incidents, and loss of containment remains a key focus globally. We continue to make progress towards our climate targets as we work towards our long-term ambition to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2050.
The installation of tertiary abatement at our Yarwun Nitric Acid plant is well progressed, with the first phase successfully completed on time and within budget. Turning now to slide five and our key highlights for the half year ending in March. As we continue to execute on our strategy, I'm very pleased with the continued uplift in our performance and, more importantly, the quality of earnings the team has delivered. We have achieved improvements across all of our key financial indicators, with a 10% year-on-year improvement in EBIT and NPAT. I'll talk more about these on the next slide. This is despite the ongoing disruption in the external environment, extreme weather conditions in some regions, and the very heavy turnaround schedule in the first half, especially here in Australia.
Thanks to the great work of our manufacturing and turnaround team, the Kooragang Island ammonia plant's six-year turnaround has been completed safely and on budget. This critical maintenance activity will ensure safe and reliable manufacturing operations into the future and supply security for our customers in the region. Importantly, we continue to deliver sustained value to shareholders by continuing to grow both underlying earnings per share and dividends. In this half, we announced two very important acquisitions: Terra Insights and Cyanco.
The Terra Insights acquisition was completed on 29 February 2024. This acquisition has established Orica as the global leader in geotechnical and structural monitoring in mining and civil infrastructure, with a unique portfolio of six industry-leading brands. The integration of Terra Insights into Orica Digital Solutions is well on track, with a key focus on cross-selling opportunities both in the mining and the civil infrastructure value chains.
On 30 April 2024, we finalized the completion of our Cyanco acquisition. With the addition of Cyanco, Orica has now become the leading integrated global sodium cyanide producer and supplier, with access to the attractive and high-margin North American gold market. I'm excited about the growth that these acquisitions will bring to Orica. We are committed to successfully integrating these and delivering value to our shareholders. I will provide further details on these strategic acquisitions later. Turning now to slide 6. We have delivered strong performance across all segments, driven by strong customer demand, increased earnings from high-margin premium products, and continued commercial discipline.
As mentioned earlier, we have continued to achieve improvements across all our key financial indicators. EBIT was up 10% on the prior corresponding period to AUD 354 million due to strong performance in our core blasting business and the digital solutions segment.
Underlying net profit after tax is also up 10% to AUD 179 million. Stronger earnings led to continued improvement in operating cash flow. Our return on net assets has continued to improve from 12.4% in the first half of the 2023 financial year to 13% in the first half of the 2024 financial year. In addition, our balance sheet remains prudent post the recent acquisitions of Terra Insights and Cyanco. We continue to deliver sustained value to shareholders, with underlying earnings per share of AUD 0.028 per share, or 8% from the prior corresponding period, and an interim dividend of AUD 0.19 per share, up 6%. Turning now to slide seven. Focusing on our core blasting business, I'm pleased to report that earnings increased in all regions compared to the previous corresponding year.
The common theme in all regions is the quality of earnings delivered through increased adoption of our high-margin products and technology, together with sustained commercial discipline. Starting first with Australia, Pacific, and Asia. Customer activity was robust in most sectors across the region, including in gold, coal, quarry and construction, and iron ore. However, mining activity was softer in nickel and lithium due to closures or reduced output. Demand and supply for ammonium nitrate were balanced across the region. The segment earnings increased by 2% despite the very heavy planned plant turnaround schedule in Australia.
In Australia and Pacific, Orica continued to grow in the metals and quarry and construction sectors, with technology offering being a key differentiator. Asia made a very strong contribution, with strong earnings to growth, particularly in Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and India. Turning now to North America.
Market fundamentals for most commodities in the region remain strong, especially in the gold and the copper markets in the Western U.S. and Canada. Mining activity in the U.S.A. and Canada were impacted by difficult winter weather conditions, especially in the Eastern States. Activity in Mexico was constrained by the slower ramp-up in quarter one following the prolonged industrial action at a customer site late in the previous financial year. Quarry and construction activity is expected to remain robust in the second half, supported by continued urbanization and significant government infrastructure investments.
Against this challenging backdrop, North America delivered strong earnings performance, supported by ongoing EBS conversion, a strong contribution from the Western U.S. metals market, and higher blasting technology adoption. The region continued to diversify its commodity base, with increasing revenue contributions from the copper, quarry and construction, and iron ore segments. Next up, Latin America.
Mining and exploration activity was strong across the region, with significant investments in Peru, Brazil, and the Caribbean. In Chile, the commercial environment was more competitive due to the softer copper production. Political instability subsided, with fewer strikes and fewer disruptions in Orica's major markets. AN's supply chain continued to be very challenging due to the global geopolitical issues. The supportive market conditions have translated to strong EBIT growth in Latin America in the first half. Growth in Brazil and Peru was supported by further adoption of Orica's premium products and technology, and further growth in the Caribbean was driven by significant GDP growth and mining activity in the region. Finally, Europe and the Middle East and Africa.
Mining activity remained robust due to strong demand for future-facing commodities. Growth opportunities also continued in the Middle East and Central Asia, where demand for Orica's full-service portfolio drove margin uplift.
In the first half, EMEA delivered 37% earnings growth with a solid performance in the core blasting services while increasing uptake of premium products and blasting technology. Orica has strengthened its position in the region as one of the most reliable and value-added mining solutions providers through our AN supply network and our technology offerings. Quarry and construction activity was impacted by project delays due to the macroeconomic conditions in the Nordic region. One of the key common drivers for the earnings uplift in all regions is increasing customer adoption of our high-margin premium products and blasting technologies, which are at the forefront of innovation and differentiate us in the marketplace. We have been talking about our blasting technologies like WebGen and 4D for some time now.
We are now seeing, as represented on the graphics below, a significant increase in the uptake of our key blasting technologies and our sustainable solutions across all the regions. We expect this momentum to continue as we reinforce our competitive advantage in blasting through our unmatched global AN manufacturing and supply network and differentiated technology offerings to solve our customers' biggest challenges today and in the future. Orica Digital Solutions has been identified as one of Orica's key growth verticals as we continue to build and invest in the next generation of digital technologies and solutions, both in and beyond our blasting core and enabled by AI. In this half, EBIT from our Orica Digital Solutions segment was up 16% year-on-year.
This growth was driven by strong performance across all three categories: Ore Body Intelligence, blast design and execution, and Geo Solutions, which is now incorporating both GroundProbe and Terra Insights offerings. The segment has an attractive financial profile with low customer churn rate and the annual recurring revenue within the targeted range of 60%-70% of segment revenue. We continue to build the Orica Digital Solutions portfolio of interconnected workflow solutions, both organically and inorganically, across the value chains. Whether deployed together or individually, our advanced solutions ensure greater precision and predictability for mining, quarries, construction, and civil infrastructure operations. Let me step through some key highlights for the half in each of those product categories. In Ore Body Intelligence, upstream in the value chain, I'm pleased to confirm that we have now completed Axis integration.
Knowledge transfer and new key management positions are firmly in place, ready for the next phase of growth. We now offer a full range of ore body intelligence solutions to help customers better understand the ore bodies and ground conditions before blasting. During the first half, earnings were impacted by the softness of the exploration market in Australia and Canada. However, with a significantly expanded international footprint under Orica's ownership, we expect growth in the second half. Blast design and execution, which complements our core blasting offering, continued to its strong performance, driven by increasing customer adoption of key technologies such as BlastIQ and OrePro 3D, to name a few. One of Orica's unique value propositions is our ability to combine our core blasting capabilities with our leading digital solutions offerings.
This half, we have a use case where we have successfully enhanced our 4D blasting solution with our FragTrack Shovel digital solution for a tier one customer in the Americas. This integration enables us to use the rock fragmentation data from FragTrack that we get after the blast to improve the next blast loaded with 4D, which then enhances blast results and brings substantial benefits downstream in the processing phase. Moving now to Geo Solutions.
As mentioned earlier, Geo Solutions includes both GroundProbe and Terra Insights. In this half, GroundProbe increased its recurring service revenue and kept a strong level of radar sales to support more growth in this category. The recently completed Terra Insights acquisition has established Orica as the global leader in geotechnical and structural monitoring in both mining and civil infrastructure, with a unique portfolio of six industry-leading brands.
The integration of Terra Insights into Orica is on track, with a key focus on delivering cross-selling opportunities. I will talk more about this soon. Let me hand over to Kim to talk through the financials. Thanks, Sanjeev. I will move to the key financial metrics shown on slide 10. As Sanjeev stated earlier, we have delivered improvements across our key financial measures. While our revenue is lower due to pass-through of lower input costs, our EBIT of AUD 354 million is up 10% compared to the prior corresponding period.
Our statutory net profit after tax was AUD 338 million and includes the following significant items: the profit of AUD 173 million on the previously announced sale of some of our surplus land at Deer Park. The release of the accrued earnout being AUD 26.6 million relating to the acquisition of the AXIS Group. And costs of AUD 41.3 million incurred as part of the acquisitions of Terra Insights and Scienco. The AXIS earnout was in part contingent on certain key management remaining employed by Orica and has been reversed primarily due to key management exiting the business. Integration activities and knowledge transfer have occurred across all key functions, with succession implemented for key management positions. Sanjeev will talk more on the performance of AXIS shortly.
Net operating cash flow of AUD 190 million was significantly higher compared to the prior corresponding period due to higher earnings, improvements in trade working capital, and lower interest and tax payments. Turning to the EBIT bridge on slide 11. Earnings growth in the period reflects improved mix and margin expansion through increasing customer uptake of Orica's premium products, commercial discipline in our contracts, and increased earnings from digital technology offerings.
The manufacturing performance reflects the costs for alternate sourcing of ammonia during the six-yearly major ammonia plant turnaround at Kooragang Island that we flagged at the start of the year. Earnings from specialty mining chemicals were impacted due to lower volumes from a partial gas curtailment to the Yarwun manufacturing facility following an incident to a supplier's gas pipeline in the Gladstone region. Also of note was the completion of the acquisition of Terra Insights at the end of February.
We have since finalized the purchase price allocation accounting for that acquisition, and the impact on depreciation and amortization is reflected in our updated outlook that Sanjeev will talk to shortly. Turning now to slide 12 on trade working capital. Excluding the balance taken on from the acquisition of Terra Insights, trade working capital reduced by AUD 15 million since year-end. Favourable movements in trade receivables and payables were partly offset by increased inventory holdings to support turnaround activity and higher customer demand in the second half of the year.
We continue to optimize our investment in trade working capital with ongoing assessment of our supply chain network, ensuring appropriate inventory volume is maintained in the right location to support our customers, and through programs that are delivering improvement in our receivables and payables management. Turning to capital expenditure on slide 13.
Total capital expenditure for the first half was AUD 217 million. We invested AUD 130 million in sustaining capital expenditure. This reflects the successful delivery of turnarounds, including the six-yearly ammonia plant turnaround at Kooragang Island, as well as further investment in customer-facing assets. In the first half, we invested a further AUD 14 million on sustainability projects, predominantly relating to progress on the Prill Tower abatement system at Kooragang Island and readiness for the deployment of tertiary catalyst abatement technology at Yarwun.
We invested AUD 74 million in growth capital expenditure to support targeted customer growth opportunities, to further develop our digital solutions business, and to continue optimizing our discrete manufacturing network. I will now talk to slide 14 on the balance sheet. During this half, we refinanced AUD 275 million of existing committed bank debt facilities, and a new AUD 150 million committed bank debt facility was established to support our growing business.
The average tenor of drawn debt at 31 March 2024 was 5.4 years. Net debt of AUD 987 million at the end of the period includes AUD 455 million of cash proceeds from the institutional placement and share purchase plan undertaken during the first half. As a result, gearing at the end of March was 17.3%. After adjusting for the payment for Cyanco that was made after the end of the period, pro forma gearing at 31 March 2024 would have been 29.3%, which we consider prudent in the current external environment. In December 2023, S&P Global Ratings reaffirmed our investment-grade credit rating of BBB, stable.
Turning now to the dividend slide. Orica's dividend policy is designed to ensure that shareholder returns reflect the company's position and market conditions throughout the cycle. Under this policy, we've consistently paid dividends within our target payout range of 40%-70% of underlying earnings.
The board has declared an interim ordinary dividend of AUD 0.19 per share unfranked for the first half of the year, an increase on the prior interim dividend. The interim dividend payout ratio of 51.6% of underlying profit is also an increase. And with that, I'll now hand back to Sanjeev.
Thank you, Kim. Most of you have seen our strategy on a page before. We are deeply committed to the continued execution of our strategy and to deliver enduring returns for our shareholders and broader stakeholders. Turning now to slide 18, which summarizes how we have executed on our strategy to date. At the core, we continue to pursue profitable growth from blasting and by expanding Orica's presence across future-facing commodities, increasing adoption of premium products and new blasting technologies, while ensuring we always maintain supply to customers and commercial discipline.
We've also been optimizing our manufacturing and supply networks, which positions us very well to meet the demands of our customers, especially given the ongoing volatility in the external environment. These initiatives have significantly improved our earnings over the last three years. Beyond blasting, we are expanding our portfolio with the Terra Insights and Axis acquisitions, accelerating customer adoption of our new digital solutions, and demonstrating our strengths and capabilities in providing integrated digital workflows from mine to mill and augmenting our blasting core.
We have also significantly expanded our specialty mining chemicals vertical with the Cyanco acquisition, building on more than 30 years of specialty mining chemicals experience. This presents new growth opportunities for our business. Let me expand a little more on these recent acquisitions and the opportunities that lie ahead of us. Turning now to slide 19, starting with Axis.
Acquired in October 2022, Axis has positioned Orica as a full-service player in ore body intelligence, in mining, as well as in the expanded offerings in adjacent sectors. Furthermore, given Orica's unmatched global footprint, Axis can scale its business quicker through Orica channels. Axis has strategically and significantly expanded its global footprint under Orica's ownership in nearly 20 months, as shown in the graphic with you. Axis has been able to deliver top-line growth and increasing market share while maintaining its margin profile by increasing rental revenue and low customer churn. Axis is well-positioned to grow further. This will be delivered through a robust pipeline of opportunities with key global drillers and tier one customers. The team has also been expanding Axis's distribution network with new agreements and partnerships in the Americas, Asia, and Africa.
We continue to expand the Axis technology portfolio with the release of the new CHAMP Navigator 2 product in March, and have further technologies in development in the pipeline which will drive greater differentiation in our offering to customers. We are also starting to see higher revenue run rates due to our expanded international footprint. All of this put together means we remain well-positioned for recovery in the exploration market.
Turning now to slide 20, the Terra Insights acquisition. The acquisition of Terra Insights in this half has established Orica as the global leader in geotechnical and structural monitoring in mining and civil infrastructure, with a unique portfolio of six industry-leading brands shown here. Terra Insights is highly complementary to Orica Digital Solutions and our GroundProbe business, adding additional products and capability across the mining and civil infrastructure value chains, increasing geographical exposure, and further diversification of Orica's revenue.
You can see by the two value chains on the chart that Terra Insights offers a highly complementary offering of world-leading sensors and monitoring applications. The portfolio of products from Terra, combined with GroundProbe, significantly expands Orica's geotechnical and structural capabilities to monitor critical assets such as dams, bridges, tunnels, nuclear power plants, etc., in civil infrastructure, but also expands our offering to mining customers. Following the completion of the acquisition in February, we now have an integration team and governance process in place with a key focus on leveraging Orica's global footprint to maximize immediate cross-selling opportunities. We've had the first successes in introducing Terra Insights into our Latin American customer base. Turning now to our most recent acquisition of Cyanco, which was completed on April 30th.
Earlier in the year, we announced our acquisition of Cyanco more than doubling our existing sodium cyanide production capacity and creating the leading specialty mining chemicals business in the world. Cyanco is a leading supplier of sodium cyanide in the US with a well-established distribution footprint, enabling services to gold mines in the US, Canada, and overseas through access to various supply chain models. Similar to Terra, we have an integration team and governance process in place to manage the successful and efficient integration of the Cyanco team into Orica. With the earlier-than-expected completion, Cyanco will contribute between AUD 40 million-AUD 45 million EBITDA in the financial year 2024. We are working through the purchase price allocation and its impact on EBITDA and will be in a position to disclose this once we have finished with that work.
We will report on our new specialty mining chemicals vertical in the full-year results for FY 2024. Moving now to slide 22. This shows the pro forma view of how the Cyanco and Terra acquisitions further increase Orica's exposure to attractive market segments and further diversifies our business for growth. Firstly, our specialty mining chemicals vertical contribution to group revenue is expected to more than double from 5%-11%, and the digital solutions will grow from 3%-4%. Secondly, the acquisition will help us to further diversify our commodity mix into gold. Our gold exposure is expected to grow from 21% today to 25% with the acquisition of Cyanco. We continue to make good progress with our financial and non-financial strategic targets.
As mentioned at the start of the presentation today, safety remains our number one priority, and we will remain focused on implementing key learnings from safety incidents and improving our safety culture. We are on track to achieve our FY 2024 financial targets. We have continued to grow our core organically, as well as expand digital solutions and our specialty mining chemicals verticals. This will support our financial targets such as return on net assets and the dividend payout ratio. We are also well on track with our decarbonization targets in line with our net-zero ambition.
As indicated in the FY 2023 results, we have now successfully completed several major turnarounds in the first half of FY 2024. These events are critical in maintaining safe and reliable manufacturing operations, high manufacturing utilization, and ensuring security of supply for Orica's customers and the industry.
As mentioned earlier, the major ammonia plant turnaround at Kooragang Island has been completed and is fully operational. At Yarwun, our tertiary abatement is on track with the first phase completed last month and the next to follow at the end of this financial year. This is yet another key milestone in our decarbonization journey. Also at Yarwun, the major turnaround on NAP-3 AN2 has been completed. Looking into the second half of the year, we will complete the installation of the Prill Tower emission abatement at Kooragang Island and also complete the tertiary abatement on NAP-1 at Yarwun.
Planning for the turnaround at Carseland is also progressing well and is expected in late FY 2024. Now, turning to the outlook for the financial year 2024 on slide number 26. I'm pleased with our first-half performance and expect the positive earnings momentum to continue into the second half.
EBIT for FY 2024 from underlying business before any contributions from Terra Insights and Cyanco is expected to be higher than the prior year, and it's also expected to be slightly better than our original plans at FY 2023 results. This is due to a stronger first-half performance despite the heavy planned plant maintenance schedule and strong demand for our products and services across the mining and civil value chain in the second half of 2024, as well as continued strong adoption of our blasting and digital technology offerings.
T erra's EBITA contribution after integration costs is expected to be minimal in this financial year, as already indicated. Cyanco EBITDA contribution is expected to be in the range of AUD 40 million-AUD 45 million in this financial year. Depreciation and amortization is expected to be AUD 420 million-AUD 430 million, including Terra Insights, but excluding Cyanco.
Net finance costs are expected to be in the range of AUD 170 million-AUD 175 million, including the financing for the acquisitions. Effective tax rate before individually significant items is expected to be around 30%. Capital expenditure for the underlying business is expected to be slightly above the previously disclosed range of AUD 410 million-AUD 430 million. Additionally, AUD 25 million of capital expenditure is expected for the acquisitions. The inflationary pressures, higher energy costs, supply chain disruptions, and geopolitical risks will remain an ongoing challenge.
Turning now to slide number 27. So how do I see Orica today? With 150 years of experience in blasting, Orica is the global leader in blasting services. Following the Terra Insights acquisition, Orica is today the global leader in geotechnical and structural monitoring with a unique portfolio of six industry-leading brands across the mining and civil infrastructure markets.
With the addition of Cyanco, Orica is today the globally leading integrated sodium cyanide producer and supplier with access to the attractive and high-margin North American gold market. Today, we have a portfolio of businesses which are globally number one. Our customers' appetite for new technology and our strategy sets us on a very clear pathway to drive organic growth from blasting technologies and accelerate the adoption of our new technologies and digital solutions from mine to mill. I am excited about the future with further opportunities to grow our core blasting business and also grow beyond blasting with our recent acquisitions in digital solutions and specialty mining chemicals. I believe that by focusing on what is within our control, we can deal with the uncertain external environment and continue our progress and successful execution of our growth strategy.
All of this will lead to delivering greater value to our shareholders. Thank you, and with that, let's open for questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question on the phone, please press star one one and wait for our name to be announced. To cancel your request, please press star one one again. First question comes from the line of Anthony Longo from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Sanjeev, Kim, Angus, and Delphine. A couple of questions for me. Firstly, with respect to the Asia Pac result, I mean, ultimately that EBIT number looked pretty strong, and congratulations on that. To what extent was that benefited from, I guess, the timing of the turnarounds and, I guess, maybe the deferral of some of that work that is now in the second half versus the first?
Thanks, Anthony. Thanks for the question. Yeah, but look, I mean, whenever you do such a major turnaround, you always build in contingencies. And when we started out with the planning, and then when I reported this in the FY 2023 results in November, I said we are basing this off an ammonia purchase price of close to $1,000. Well, current prices are nearly half of that. So that obviously meant that our opportunity cost to bring in significant tons of nitrogen equivalents was lower. That helped with the results. Secondly, fortunately, because the team, our manufacturing and turnaround team, did such a great job with fantastic planning, we did not have to use a lot of those contingencies that you normally build in for these kinds of events. So that helped us to manage the cost.
Having said that, we have imported more than 100,000 tons of nitrogen equivalents, which is a lot of volume. And you can imagine with every ton that you bring in from the network or from external markets, it's additional costs, logistics, handling, and the risks involved with it. So all of that has really helped us. We have not pushed anything into the second half of the year. So whatever was planned for the first half has been successfully concluded. And obviously, the benefits of being on budget and with lower purchase costs have helped us with the results in Australia.
That's great. Thanks so much. And I guess the next question for me is just looking at the EBIT growth year-on-year. A lot of it has been those premium products, as you've mentioned. Are you able to give us some signposts as to what adoption rates are potentially on new contracts? I mean, I appreciate the slide in the pack that does have the strong growth that you have seen across the past four years. But what is the, I guess, on an incremental contract, are more of those services now being picked up? And of your existing customer base, what sort of penetration levels are you running at at the moment?
Anthony, we're just starting. You know that we had these products and technologies ready already in 2021, and because of COVID, we were not able to roll them out because you need to trial. Our customer base is quite conservative with anything new and disruptive. Just as an example, WebGen or 4D. Today, we don't have those restrictions. We have now successfully trialed and commercialized the blasting technologies, and I'm not even talking of digital. I'm just talking of blasting. We have successfully commercialized them globally.
In fact, just a few months back, we got the first sign-offs from the regulators in the American markets to launch WebGen. All of this needs a lot of time because this is a totally new disruptive technology, and a regulator in every of the major markets has to sign off. So there's a lot of testing, trials, to give confidence.
We are done with all of that, and now it's all about scaling it up. That's why you see that growth that we have demonstrated in that particular slide. It's the same with 4D. We have to first invest in the delivery system so that you have variable density product going out to the customers, which means all our MMUs had to be readapted or newly built, and then they had to be equipped with the latest technology, the connectivity via satellite. So all of that takes time to roll out across the globe. Today, we are in the process of rolling out 4D all over the globe with the commercial contracts. Just those two examples tell you it takes a long time to bring in new disruptive technologies.
But once you see the value proposition, once you see the success, then the customer started pulling, and then we have to run very hard to catch up with demand. And that's the stage we are in today. So we'll put all efforts this year, next year, and the year onwards to start to scale that up. But we have just started on this journey. So you'll see more and more of that benefit coming through this year than the year after and the year after, so on. So watch this space. It's really exciting at the moment.
Fantastic. And sorry, last one from me, just in terms of the mining nitrate supply and demand balance. Can you perhaps give some comments around that and how you're looking at that from east and west coast, if you like?
So you meant Australia, Anthony?
Australia, sorry.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, nothing has really changed in supply and demand. We were tight because we did not have—I mentioned 100,000 tons plus of nitrogen equivalents had to be brought in either through our own network or from our partners. So we were tight. Now that the plants are back and running, we'll start to rebuild inventory before we go into the next Prill Tower turnaround, which means we will not have prilling infrastructure. So we'll have to build up inventory to prepare for that particular event. And then NAP-1, the nitric acid plant one in Yarwun, will go down for installation of tertiary abatement.
So we'll stay capacity constrained in the second half of this year due to the turnaround schedules we have and the very low inventories. Apart from that, supply and demand has been quite, I would say, balanced in Australia.
We've had some weather interruptions which have impacted demand, especially in Queensland. So when mine sites got flooded, there was less uptake of products and services. Hopefully, we are moving past that, and then we should see a better demand position coming out second half of the year. In terms of supply globally, but here also in Australia, nothing really has changed except for the fact that we were tight, and we are now in the process of starting to rebuild inventories within our system in Australia.
That's great. Thanks so much.
Thank you for the questions. Our next questions come from Reinhard van der Walt from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Sanjeev and team. Thanks for taking my questions, and well done to the continuous manufacturing team on the turnarounds. At first, just like to get a little bit more detail on your end markets in Australia. Maybe just first on gold, we're seeing some miners actually low grading with the higher gold price. Is that having any kind of earnings mix impact? Second, maybe just in coal, we've had some more wet weather, obviously. How much more kind of emulsions mix impact is there that needs to unwind? And then maybe the same thing for iron ore in WA as well, just the extent of weather impact in the year. Thanks.
Thanks, Reinhard, and thanks for acknowledging our maintenance and manufacturing teams because these folks, you cannot imagine the kind of pressure they are in tight environments working with contractors and trying to get a very, very difficult job done on time, safely. I cannot appreciate that more. Thank you for calling that out. I really appreciate it. Commodity demand across the globe and in Australia has been quite consistent. Surprisingly, thermal coal - not a surprise to me, frankly - but thermal coal has been strong. You just look at the export stats out of Newcastle. We've seen strong demand and exports for thermal coal. We've seen copper going great guns. I mean, clearly, $10,000 doesn't happen if there's excess supply and not enough demand. Copper has been doing very well. Gold, historical highs.
The challenge with gold is, and I mean, you've kind of referred to it, is that it's not easy to access new resources in gold. The new potential resources are quite dilute, and this means you need to blast more and you need to extract more, which is just positive for our blasting business with gold and then clearly for the sodium cyanide business. The strong demand for gold is going to continue, in my view. We are running hard to keep up with the demand, both for sodium cyanide as well as for our blasting services in gold. This is applicable globally, not just here in Australia. Iron ore has been steady. Obviously, iron ore has a big impact depending on the sentiment in China. I have to say India, for example.
And whenever we go down to India, we are always amazed at the kind of infrastructure that's being built, the steel consumption, met coal consumption in India. So we also cater, for example, to steel producers in India who mine their own ore. And the demand there has been going up very, very strong. Each of them have potential to grow their business further. And then obviously, they are a huge importer of Australian products. So that's been going very strong. In China, construction market's still difficult. I mean, we are also doing some Q&C work there, so we see that firsthand on the ground.
But the e-mobility market, so the battery-operated vehicles which consume a lot of steel, they are going quite strong. China, I don't know if anybody followed this, recently announced a couple of weeks back that they are starting a cash-for-clunkers concept.
This means that every old car which can be returned, which is not a battery-operated car, gets a credit, which is significant. I think it's close to $2,000. And this is going to drive further demand for e-mobility within China, which will in turn drive demand for steel there and then clearly for us here, iron ore, as well as for met coal. So I'm quite positive on most commodity outlooks. The weakness I do see, not a surprise to anybody, is lithium. We have seen lithium slow down because of the pricing fluctuations. And nickel, but here, nickel specifically here in Australia.
I mean, we do cater to nickel in Indonesia. We have not seen any slowdown there, also other parts of the world. But in Australia, we have seen some slowdown in nickel and also a bit in lithium.
Got it. That's very clear. Thanks, Sanjeev. Maybe just a bigger picture question about Australia. You mentioned that the supply-demand balance is still tight. Probably looks like it's going to be tight for another couple of years. I mean, is there any good reason here why we can't get EBIT per tonne back up above pre-COVID levels, especially if you've got the added benefit of that technology margin coming in?
No, there's no reason. There's no excuse not to do that. And that's obviously a clear target. That all comes back to ensuring our assets are operating at full loads we are able to cater to our customers. It's also all about commercial discipline for Orica. We have led from the front here. So we have done all the right things in terms of supporting our customers, but also getting value for our products and services. It's all about the technology rollout and scaling up that comes on top, clearly. So the premiumization of products, helping our customers manage ESG, helping them manage their carbon footprints, helping them to manage inflation of costs, improve productivity, all of that comes through. And then it's the recontracting cycle. So we have gone through. We started this in 2021. Now we are in 2024.
So we have done, I would say, most of the hard work. A little bit left for the rest of the year. The teams will take a couple of days off. 1st of January, maybe 2nd of January, we'll start again with the recontracting. This time, the recontracting will not just be the tons. It'll be the tons plus the service plus the technology plus the premium products plus the cyanide plus everything else. So the kind of products and services we are offering today is unbeatable. And we are a very, very attractive supplier. And on top of that, it's all about the reliability, about giving first access to a wireless technology or to a variable density product. All of that comes on top.
So I'm quite excited, frankly, Reinhard, about next year and the new recontracting cycle that will start.
Perfect. That's very clear. Thanks, Sanjeev. I'll hand it off.
Thank you for the questions. Our next questions come from the line of James Wilson from Jarden Group. Please go ahead.
Hi guys. Just a couple of questions from me. Firstly, just two quick ones on Cyanco. Can you guys confirm that that $40 million-$45 million EBITDA contribution you've guided to, that that's net of the $38 million of funding costs for the acquisitions?
That is before the funding costs. You'll see the funding costs come into the interest line, and that's part of the outlook that we've provided for interest.
Okay, understood. So then if we take that, I mean, the guidance implies a second-half EBITDA run rate for Cyanco of around AUD 51 million on a six-month basis. That's a little below what Cyanco booked for each half in 2022 and a fair bit lower than in 2023. Can you maybe run us through what you're factoring into your expectations for Cyanco to cause it to be down relative to 2022, especially given that in that period you were also hurt by lagging raw material pass-throughs?
Yeah, it's the post-integration number there, James. So obviously, we'll be spending upfront on basic things like upgrading safety, cybersecurity. All of that happens more or less day one. So that number's net of all the costs that we will be incurring in the next days in terms of bringing the Cyanco team in. So that's net of integration.
Are you able to give us a split of the AUD 38 million that's integration versus higher funding and interest costs?
Sorry, James. I'm not sure where the AUD 38 million is coming from. We have guided to higher interest costs, but we're not talking to AUD 38 million on interest costs there.
Yeah, in your presentation for the Cyanco acquisition, you guys have disclosed $38 million of acquisition and taxable costs.
Transaction costs. Yeah. So those costs relate directly to the transaction. Thank you for clarifying that. If you look at our significant items for the first half, James, you will see that we've recorded AUD 41.3 million in transaction costs in the P&L. That covers both the Cyanco and the Terra Insights transaction. So the AUD 40 million-AUD 45 million that we've guided to for EBITDA excludes those transaction costs and excludes the funding costs.
Okay, great. Guys, just one final one from me. Understood that you had some sort of key management leave over the period at Axis. Are you able to talk about maybe what went on there and where they moved onto?
Yeah, James, maybe I can dig that. And if there's a need, we can get Angus to also step in and answer that. So when we acquired the business, we acquired, I think, four promoters. Angus, if I'm—
Four founders?
Yeah, 4 founders, of which two of them are commercial and two of them were the R&D brains behind them. They're based overseas, so they're not based in Australia. So those two founders who were the technology creators and the innovation pipeline creators, we have done the handover with them. We've put our own teams in place there, and they have decided to roll off. The ones who were with us from day one, who were doing the commercial business, are still with us. They're based out of Perth, and they will continue to be with us. So it was just a matter of we successfully integrating, getting the IP, the technology, the know-how, and the lab and the manufacturing facility we have in the UK. All of that is now being run and operated by Orica Digital Solutions people.
That is why we decided to part ways because their task with us was done.
Right. Thanks, guys.
Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next question. Our next questions come from the line of Scott Ryall from Rimor Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much. Sanjeev, I was wondering, you've obviously the ROIC has continued to increase, which is great. You've talked to Digital Solutions, and I just wanted to get you to kind of sense-check the way I'm looking at that. Is it fair, given the capital that you've spent on the two major acquisitions in particular, to think that if you were to replicate the group ROIC in Digital Solutions, that that would require an EBIT of, in the order of magnitude, AUD 150 million? Is that a good way to think about it?
Scott, I'm sorry. I'm a bit lost there. Not sure what we're getting at. I mean, what I would suggest, if you can, can we take that offline so that we better understand what you're trying to calculate?
Yeah, sure. Sure, sure, sure.
Sorry about that, Scott. I couldn't get the question. Maybe I'm a bit dazed. Sorry.
No, that's all right. I'll take it offline. And I guess the other one, just on specialty mining chemicals, I'm just wondering if you can talk to any thoughts around the chemicals that Orica doesn't offer at the moment that look attractive to you in that specialty space and what's your right to play or competitive advantage in those areas, please?
Yeah, sure, Scott. The obvious one was gold because we are a leading blasting services provider to gold, and we also do a lot of digital work, by the way, with gold. Expanding our cyanide footprint and then getting access to North America where we had no presence, that was mission-critical to us. It also kind of now helps us to manage the risk of being single-sourced. I think we mentioned on the call that our gas supply to Yarwun is curtailed because there was an incident at a gas pipeline, so we are not able to run at full loads. In the past, that would have been a huge problem.
Now we have a network, so we are able then to move product around as we do with ammonium nitrate and ammonia. That just adds to the reliability of optimizing our supply chain.
So that was absolutely critical for me. It was a no-brainer. What is missing? If you look at our specialty mining chemicals portfolio, it's two parts. One is clearly the sodium cyanide business, which you're very familiar with. The other one, which is quite interesting, and that's a highly specialized, customized formulation business, is the emulsifiers that we make. These are proprietary emulsifiers that are basically produced, consumed both captive by Orica, but also supplied to the market. And they are basically used to create performance in our explosives when you put them in the hole. So that's a very specialized, proprietary, high-margin business. We are the largest producer of specialty emulsifiers in the world. We manufacture here in Australia. We have a joint venture in the U.S. So we are by far the number one in the world.
That's a business we will obviously grow by creeping up capacity, making some capital investments to expand, adding shifts to our manufacturing sites because that demand is clearly growing, both for internal captive needs but also third-party. And then what is, if you would say, missing in our portfolio is exposure to future-facing commodities and to the exciting commodities like copper. We don't really have direct chemistry that helps extraction and purification of copper or lithium, as an example. So that's an area where we could look in future to grow. But again, this means this is relatively lower capital. So it's not like you build a new sodium cyanide plant, which is very, very expensive to do and difficult to do.
It's all about acquiring a lab somewhere, perhaps, and maybe acquiring a reactor, either at our existing facilities or in a new facility, and start to formulate these products and take them to the market. Now, we are obviously the biggest supplier to the copper industry. We are the biggest to gold. We will grow with lithium, with hard rock lithium. So there's a lot of opportunity there. We just don't have the chemistry. So that's something we'll continue to look at and see whether there's an opportunity to partner with somebody or to do a small bolt-on. So that's maybe something for the future.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next question. Our next questions come from the line of Richard Johnson from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. Just thinking about the revenue line and particularly the revenue decline in APA, Kim, do you have a sense of what the impact of the ammonia rise and fall was on revenues in the half?
Yeah. Richard, maybe I'll take that. We are indexed to a basket of gas, ammonia, and ammonium nitrate in our contracts. The ammonia prices obviously came down since November when we gave you these indices. The gas price hasn't moved, unfortunately or fortunately. The ammonia price did move down, and that gets reflected in the indices, which get reset every three months, as you know. That has an impact on top line. If those prices go up, our selling price goes up. If the prices come down, our selling price comes down. We don't focus on that so much because that's an automated mechanism. Our focus is on margin management and retention. Our margins improved. That's where the commercial discipline comes through. This will stay volatile because it all will depend on how these different indices move.
There's another important one, which is CPI. So there was an expectation CPI will come down. It's not come down. It's holding. So that's kind of also impacting those indices. If CPI comes down in future, that will then be passed on as a benefit to our customers. So we'll do those resets every quarter, but there is a lot of volatility. So it's very difficult to predict where we are headed with the top line. That's why I don't really focus too much on what the top line is.
Got it. Thanks. And then Sanjeev, you've talked about improved commercial discipline for a long time now. I was just wondering if you could sort of expand. I mean, you've talked about a lot on this call as well, but whether you could sort of expand on it in a practical sense. And I'm interested to get a sense of how embedded it is now across the organization and the extent to which you see further upside from ongoing improvements in commercial discipline. And perhaps you could then link that through to the volume outcome in the first half. I'm just curious as to whether some of the volume declines is actually related to commercial decisions.
So that's the easy one. The volume decline was related to two things. Frankly, the volumes were flat. They did not decline. They did not increase if you include the IS volumes there, which did grow significantly. We were volume-constrained here in Australia, so we had to bring in a lot of product, which converted basically OMP into trading margin. And then we had to continue to cater, obviously, to our customers because we don't interrupt supply. So that had an impact on margins, but we managed to mitigate that in terms of our commercial management of these contracts. So you saw the earnings improve despite the volume restrictions. In North America, we had a couple of issues. I called them out. One was clearly the weather-related issues.
What happened this year is that we are dependent on the ice roads to take our product into the interiors of Canada, into the remote mine sites. These ice roads got commissioned later than normal. As a result, our shipments and our road deliveries were delayed. That had quite an impact on the tons that we have sold in North America. The second was the spillover of the strike in Mexico. That strike got resolved in October, and then the ramp-up happened only after mid-November. So we had one and a half months of very low volumes in Mexico.
That also came through. Then it was the seasonal slowdown of the Q&C business in the U.S., which happens every year. So that did impact the tons in North America. In EMEA, we did see a slowdown in infrastructure projects and Q&C.
This is weather-related, but it's also related to the European economies, especially the Nordic economies, cutting back on infrastructure spend. So we've seen demand reducing. We've also seen a reduction in demand. If you go to Latin America, in Chile, copper output was down. Business was slow. We saw more competitive tension. And we then decided that we need to be very commercially disciplined in terms of market share because we are dealing with traded volumes. So we've also taken a few calls in LATAM.
Asia was very strong. So Bontang is sold out. Asian volume is going into the Asian region, India, Southeast Asia, Indonesia. Very strong, very good business. So that continued strongly. So there is a bit of seasonality. You know, Richard, our first half is always a bit slower because of also Queensland wet weather that came into play. Second half is seasonally higher.
We'll see a little bit of catch-up there. It's a mix of seasonality, special one-offs, as well as a bit of commercial discipline coming through.
Great. Thanks. And then finally, can you just talk a little bit about the global AN supply chain? I know you made a reference to it and that it still remains relatively tricky. Is it still the case that supply out of Russia is quite constrained?
Yeah, unfortunately. So the quotas for exports of nitrogen from Russia have been extended till the end of this year, and they have been in place for the last 2, 2.5 years. So my expectation is exports out of Russia will remain flat. There'll be no growth. They obviously have much more capacity, but they have been restricting exports. That's the first challenge. The second challenge is the most popular port where also our ships left Russia was Saint Petersburg. And the Russian authorities have banned any handling of nitrogen through Saint Petersburg.
And this happened a couple of months back. This has been a significant disruption because we had to rechannel ships to other ports, which were not equipped to manage this, right? You need to warehouse. You need to load. You need to unload capacity, reroute shipping channels. Nothing is easy.
So all of that has constrained supply. The third challenge has been we've been suffering from low water levels at the Suez. That has improved now. And then we had the problem in the Red Sea with the disruptions because of the Middle Eastern conflicts there. So our ships had to take the scenic route, unfortunately. That adds lead times, cost. So the supply chains are significantly challenging. And we experienced it firsthand because we brought in product from all over the world into Australia East Coast to supplement KI. And we realized how difficult it is to handle AN, and here are the experts doing it for 150 years. So this is not an easy business to do. Supply chains are very, very challenging.
That's very helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you for the questions. The next question comes from Owen Birrell from RBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Sanjeev. Just a quick question for me around, I guess, the competitive landscape here in Australia. We saw at the Wesfarmers Strategy Day, they talked about future expansion of their West Coast explosives and sodium cyanide operations led by, I think, what they referred to as very competitively priced gas and innovative gas sourcing arrangements. I just wanted to get a sense of the outlook that you're seeing for your gas supply and given the potential pricing differentials between East and West Coast, whether you're likely to see any major competitive pressures emerging over the medium term.
Yeah. So the West Coast market is a special one given the location and the logistics challenges of West Coast. There are two producers there, us and our senior competitor there. I have a lot of respect for them. So they obviously have to do what they have to do, and we do what we do with Burrup. Our capacity is sold out. I've always said that. And wherever there's spare, we just supplement this by bringing it into our network. So we are running maxed out.
We are not back to gas in Western Australia. We are back to JKM, which is the Asian Index for Ammonia. We buy ammonia there. We don't buy gas there. So we watch more the ammonia price movement because that has an impact on our costs and the rise and falls, not so much on the gas market.
I really can't comment on the gas pricing. The arbitrage for gas between Western Australia and the rest of Australia is nothing new. They have favorable policies in terms of gas reservation. We don't have that in the rest of Australia. They've always had favorable gas pricing, better gas pricing than we have had. I don't like it. I've learned to live with it, and we'll continue to manage that with our mix of buying gas, buying ammonia, buying ammonium nitrate.
We are able to mitigate those kind of challenges. What I do see, the big difference is that when gas prices started to escalate on the East Coast of Australia, that started, I think, in 2015, 2016, 2017, something like this, we were the only ones impacted. There was an arbitrage between us and everybody else. That arbitrage is closing.
This means we are playing now a more level playing field than we did in the past. We were the only disadvantaged, marginal producer 10 years back. Today, everybody is in the same boat, unfortunately. So gas is a real challenge for this country. It's not an Orica issue. We are contracted for the foreseeable future. We just renewed it was public. We renewed our gas contract for Yarwun at AUD 12, hit the price, but that's the price we get. So we took it. And we are contracted at KI. So we'll start those negotiations with suppliers in 2025 and 2026, and then we'll see where we land in 2027. Too soon to tell you.
That's great. Thank you.
Thank you for the questions. Our next questions come from Nathan Riley from UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Sanjeev, just perspectives around future M&A. Cognizant, you've just spent short of AUD 2 billion over the last couple of years. Pro forma gearing at 29%. So still below, I guess, your target range. But where are you at with respect to appetite for the M&A in the short term?
Thanks, Nathan. Nothing in the pipeline at all. Heads down, focusing on integrating Terra and then Cyanco, focused on scaling up AXIS, focused on rolling out all our beautiful tech that we have, which is now really starting to pay off. So there's nothing on the horizon. There's nothing planned. I've always said that we keep screening. I mean, we have a team that does that, and they'll not stop doing it. But that does not mean that we intend to do anything because there's only so much bandwidth you have as an organization. We are a small company, so we don't have those kind of resources.
Now, if there is an opportunity that comes up in the future, which I don't know of today, I always want a seat at the table. And I'll take a look. And I have to say, we've been quite disciplined here.
We screen 50 a year. We've done, what, 4 in the last 2 years. We've been pretty disciplined and quite happy with what we have. Then we now need to put more resources into managing the integration and getting them to scale up and delivering value. That's where we are at. I've said before, never say never, but there's nothing active, and we are not looking actively.
Understood. Just a follow-up question around your maintenance scheduling outlook. Appreciate what you've indicated there in terms of the Yarwun pull forward. Looking into 2025, business as usual?
Yeah. So 2025 will go back to normal. The reason for pulling forward the decarbonization at the nitric acid plant in Yarwun was because when we ordered the equipment and the catalyst and the reactors, we did this for both the lines. We successfully implemented the first line. By the way, that line is delivering a 98% reduction in CO2 equivalent. So it's a massive success. And you know that we've got an agreement with the government that every ton we abate, we get an ACCU for that, which is basically for us money to fund our future decarbonization activities. So the team managed to implement that so successfully. And I think that's our fourth nitric acid plant, or fifth one that we've implemented. They had a lot of confidence.
They saw the equipment waiting in the warehouse, and they asked whether we could do the last one also this year. And I said, "Look, you can do it as long as you don't interrupt supply. And the benefit is that you can start generating carbon credits earlier, and it's just the right thing to do in terms of decarbonizing Yarwun." So we pulled that forward. That will surely benefit next year because then there would have been an additional shut there around our normal maintenance. We'll not do that. So we'll be lighter next year on the maintenance turnaround. This also means our capital for sustenance will be slightly down, and this frees up more capital to grow business. So new MMUs, new mine sites, new digital products, expanding cyanide. So all of that will then come into play.
So more growth, lesser sustenance in this year, and a more normal schedule. Team is still working through some of the moving parts because we pulled forward the NAP1 decarbonization, and Carseland is prepared. So in November, I'll give you a very clear schedule of what's happening in 2025, but it'll be much lighter than this year.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you for the questions. Our next question comes from Brook Campbell-Crawford from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just on Australia, interested to hear your views on where pricing for ammonium nitrate is in recent contracts and how that compares to import prices. Sort of when we look at the data, you can see that low-density AN seems to be coming into the country at about sort of AUD 900-AUD 1,000 a tonne, including your own product coming from Bontang to KI. And I guess relative to recent contract prices seem to be below that level. So just wanted to confirm if that is the case in terms of that gap and what you need to see to perhaps start repricing contracts closer to the import price.
Thanks, Brook. Brook, I don't call out pricing. You know that. I don't know where you got the information that we've recontracted below any price. We don't talk about pricing in contracts. I can tell you from our own experience, IPP is in the range that you mentioned, so around $1,000. And looking at the cost that we incurred in bringing in product, even from our own network, I think that's a—I wouldn't say it's a fair price, but that's a representative price. So for us, there is no reason to price anywhere differently. We'll remain, as we have always been for the last three years, very, very commercially disciplined.
And obviously, our focus is not on gaining tons. That's a business we stopped doing. We focus on full-service selling and premiumization and then selling our products, services, technologies, digital chemicals, and all of that. So that's the focus.
So recontracting next year, we'll have a different approach to the last cycle. The last cycle was getting the basics right, getting the margins to the right level for reinvestment, which we have achieved. The next phase is about how do we do end-to-end connectivity. So we are talking about design for outcome. We are talking about value guarantees and value sharing. We are talking about bringing benefits to customers and then bringing all our products and services, which are, by the way, unmatched in industry, bringing that to play when we talk about new contracts. And given that we have built this track record, you want a wireless detonator, we can talk about it. But how about we give you a wireless detonator plus productivity gains plus safety and ESG issues? That's a different value proposition.
So we'll have a different conversation with our customers, and I'm quite excited about that. So looking forward to it.
Sanjeev, good. And last one from me. Given the recent acquisitions, you talked about some integration costs happening this year, including with Cyanco. Are you able to quantify how much cost has been taken above the line for Terra, Axis, and Cyanco, or anything else this year that might not repeat next year?
Yeah. Sure, Brook. We're providing guidance from both EBITDA on Cyanco and EBIT for Terra that includes those costs. You are correct. Some of those won't repeat next year, but we'll give guidance next year when we come towards the end of the year, and we've done our budget.
Okay. Thanks.
Thank you for the questions. As a reminder, to ask questions, please press star 11. One moment for the next question. Next question comes from the line of Daniel Kang from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Morning, everyone. Just a few quick ones from me. Sanjeev, can you shed some light on the current recontracting negotiations with BARAP?
Dan, I don't talk about customers and contracts. You know that. Let's say that we are at the end of our three-year recontracting cycle and the existing contracts run till end of this year and then 2025 calendar year's a new year. So the team will take a couple of days break, and then we'll start the cycle again. So yeah, can't say much more than that. But yeah, looking forward to 2025.
Yeah. Okay. No problems. No problems, Sanjeev. And Kim, just on net interest cost guidance of AUD 100 million, well, up to AUD 175 million, implies nearly AUD 100 million cost in the second half. Should we be assuming this run rate into FY25?
Yeah. So we've uplifted our outlook this year to include the financing costs for our two acquisitions, and you'll see about half of the cost of that this year. We've got that acquisitions funded for about half the year. So you will see a further similar increase into next year as we cover those costs for the full year of funding.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you for the questions. Once again, to ask questions, please press star 11.
Thank you. Given there are no more questions, thanks for your time. Further questions, you can certainly come to me, and we'll take that offline. Scott, the same with you. Thank you, everyone, and have a good afternoon.