Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Orica's 2025 full-year results. I'm Delphine Cassidy, Chief Communications Officer, and I'm delighted to have you with us today. In the room with me is Sanjeev Gandhi, our Managing Director and CEO, and James Crough, known as Jamie, our CFO. Both Jamie and Sanjeev will be presenting shortly. We thank you for your support and value your participation and interest in Orica. As per normal, there's ample time for questions after both Jamie and Sanjeev present, so feel free to queue up, and we'll address your questions as soon as possible. I can confirm that the materials that we'll be covering today have been lodged with the ASX and can be found on the ASX and Orica websites. Before we start, can I ask you to have a look at the disclaimer on slide two? Thank you.
With that, I hand it over to Sanjeev.
Thank you, Delphine. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining the call today. I'll start very quickly with page three, which is just a very brief recap of who we are: the world's leading mining and infrastructure solutions company. Let me start with our number one priority, safety, on slide number five. I am extremely pleased to report that this year we've had zero fatalities across our operations, and our serious injury case rate has fallen to 0.093, the lowest ever on record for Orica. This outcome reflects our focus on safety leadership wherever we operate. We have empowered our people to speak up and stop work whenever they identify risks. While we celebrate this amazing improvement, we remain absolutely vigilant. Safety is non-negotiable given the environment that we operate in.
We are continuing our targeted safety programs, for example, focusing on preventing vehicle and equipment collisions to ensure every Orica employee and contractor goes home safe. I'm also pleased to note that we recorded zero significant environmental incidents in FY 2025, underscoring our commitment to operating responsibly in every community where we work. Turning now to sustainability on slide six, there is a small typo, and I'd like you to correct that, which is under the scope three column in the second last line. The word "phase" is missing, so it should read as "reduction pathways as part of the next phase of decarbonization." I'm sorry about that. Our commitment to decarbonization is delivering measurable results. We have significantly cut our greenhouse gas emissions and have already eliminated one million tons of CO2 equivalents at our Kooragang Island site alone through new abatement technology.
Overall, our gross scope one and two emissions are now 51% below 2019 levels, well ahead of schedule, and we are firmly on track to meet our interim target of a 45% net reduction by 2030. This puts us in a strong position as we work our way towards our ambitions of net zero emissions by 2050. During the year, we completed the first full year of tertiary abatement at Yarwun and commenced sourcing renewable electricity in Australia and in Canada, lifting our renewable power coverage to 22%. Renewable electricity procurement in Australia and Canada is currently supporting our goal of achieving 100% renewable electricity by 2040. We continue to explore emerging low-carbon technologies, from renewable hydrogen to alternative raw materials to carbon capture and utilization.
These efforts demonstrate that our focus on sustainability is not only the right thing to do for the planet, but it's also supporting efficiency and innovation in our business. Turning now to our financial results for FY 2025 on slide seven. Financial performance in FY 2025 has been outstanding: double-digit profit growth, strong free cash flow, and value generation for shareholders, all while strengthening our balance sheet. This gives us a great platform to build on for the future. Let me walk you through the highlights. Our EBIT rose 23% to AUD 992 million year-on-year. This is the highest earnings we've achieved in the last 13 years. This reflects the strength of our strategy, the resilience of our business model, and the outstanding execution of our global teams. Net profit before significant items increased 32% to AUD 541 million, and earnings per share rose by 29% to AUD 1.118.
This represents the value we are delivering to shareholders through disciplined growth and operational excellence. Notably, we've seen earnings growth across all three of our core segments and across all of our regions. Blasting solutions, digital solutions, and specialty mining chemicals have contributed to the strong earnings growth. This demonstrates the strength and resilience of our diversified portfolio and the success of our Beyond Blasting strategy. Our cash generation remains robust, with net operating cash flow up 18% to AUD 949 million. Leverage ratio is now at 1.39x . Return on net assets has improved to 13.8%, reflecting our continued focus on capital efficiency, asset utilization, and profitability. The growth in earnings has translated into higher returns for shareholders, enabling the board to declare an increased final dividend for FY 2025, bringing our full-year dividend well within our targeted range of 40%-70% payout ratio.
We are pleased to share our success with investors in this way. In addition, our on-market buyback of up to AUD 400 million is nearly complete, and the board has approved an increase of the buyback by a further AUD 100 million to a total of AUD 500 million to be completed by March next year. This capital management initiative, our first-ever share buyback in more than a decade, reflects our confidence in Orica's future and our commitment to maximizing shareholder value. Jamie will talk more on the financial performance shortly. Looking at the earnings across our segments and our regions, earnings were up across all regions and all business segments. Starting with Australia, Pacific, and Asia, APA delivered EBIT of AUD 658 million, up 23% on the prior year in an environment with significant weather events in Australia and also in Asia.
In blasting solutions, growth was driven by higher demand for value-added products and services, which improved our product mix and margins. We benefited from successful contract renewals and wins and increased manufacturing output due to the non-repeat of the major turnaround at Kooragang Island in the prior year. These gains more than offset some softness in demand in some areas, for example, lower thermal coal volumes in Indonesia. We also realized a one-off AUD 15 million benefit from selling carbon credits generated by our abatement projects in Australia. In digital solutions, robust fundamentals in gold and copper fueled greater uptake of our Axis mining intelligence products, and we saw significant customer adoption of OREPro and OREPro 3D for blast modeling. In mining chemicals, strong gold demand drove record sodium cyanide sales, supported by new customer wins and our ability to reliably supply customers through our global network of assets.
Moving to North America, North America reported EBIT of AUD 212 million, up 15% year-on-year. Our technology leadership and focus on future-facing commodities like copper and gold has provided a strong platform for growth in this region. Demand for our premium blasting products remained strong, and adoption of our patented WebGen wireless blasting system accelerated, driving growth in the region. These positives helped offset external headwinds, including reduced demand from the U.S. thermal coal sector and a subdued quarry and construction market in the United States. We continue to maintain disciplined cost control in our business. In digital solutions, North America saw an uplift in demand for blast measurement tools like FRAGTrack and for in-situ geotechnical monitoring instruments. In mining chemicals, we successfully completed major safety upgrades at the Winnemucca cyanide plant in Nevada, which will support higher production going forward.
The integration of the Cyanco acquisition in North America is substantially complete, and we are already unlocking customer synergies between explosives and the cyanide business. In EMEA, which is Europe, Middle East, and Africa, EBIT delivery was AUD 101 million, which is up 18% on prior year. This strong result was underpinned by increased demand for advanced solutions in underground mining, as well as a pickup in construction and mining activity in key markets across this region. Leveraging our global experience, we achieved deeper penetration in important emerging markets across Africa and Central Asia. At the same time, we maintained a firm focus on commercial discipline and strategic portfolio optimization, which improved the quality of our earnings. In digital solutions, EMEA's earnings benefited from new contracts in major growth regions, and several new partnerships were executed for environmental monitoring solutions.
We also saw growing uptake of OREPro and OREPro 3D software and continued growth in GroundProbe radar deployments and services across the region. In mining chemicals, better customer mix and the use of our multi-supply sources boosted cyanide margins, and we expanded our emulsifier products into new emerging markets. Finally, to LATAM. Latin America's EBIT was AUD 90 million, up 4% on the prior year. This was a good outcome given the challenges in this region. We achieved rapid customer adoption of new blasting technology, notably increased use of WebGen wireless blasts and 4D tailored explosives. While the competitive dynamics remain challenging in this region, good progress has been made on securing new business and new contract wins. The Latin American team has also implemented portfolio adjustments and operational improvements aimed at managing costs and the ongoing supply challenges.
In digital solutions, Latin America saw very strong uptake of our Rhino monitoring technology and continued growth in GroundProbe and Axis product sales. We are leveraging the Terra Insights acquisition synergies to accelerate adoption of our geo-solutions products. In mining chemicals, we successfully expanded into new high-growth mining regions in Latin America and benefited from customer synergies between Orica and Cyanco, which are driving higher market penetration for our cyanide and blasting offerings. We also ramped up our scientific technical services in the region, providing added value to our gold mining customers. Moving to a segment view starting on slide number nine. Starting with blasting solutions, across all our regions, the core explosives and blasting services business performed exceptionally well. EBIT for blasting solutions was AUD 868 million, up 15% year-on-year. We achieved margin expansion by shifting further towards higher-value premium products and by deploying more of our patented entities.
The non-repeat of last year's ammonia shutdown at Kooragang Island contributed to the earnings uplift. Moving to digital solutions on slide number ten. The digital solutions segment is rapidly scaling up and has firmly established itself as a key growth engine for Orica. EBIT from digital solutions was AUD 92 million, up 32% versus prior year. This step-up in growth reflects accelerating customer adoption of our digital products and the integration of the recent acquisitions. All parts of the digital portfolio contributed strongly. In ore body intelligence, improved exploration activity drove higher demand for our Axis analyzers and sensors. We are also advancing a strong pipeline of new products for release in 2026, focused on gold and copper exploration and production.
In blast design and execution, recurring software and sensor subscriptions are growing steadily, supported by robust gold prices that encourage mining customers to invest in ore-precision tools like OREPro and OREPro 3D. In geo-solutions, cross-selling is driving growth, with many blasting customers also adopting our monitoring systems. GroundProbe's recurring monitoring services revenue continues to increase. Terra Insights, which we acquired last year, delivered earnings ahead of its investment case. Cross-selling opportunities are being realized, for example, by offering monitoring solutions to our blasting customers. The high customer retention demonstrates Orica's delivery of technology-focused growth, reinforcing our position as a leader in digital mining solutions and a clear demonstration of growing beyond blasting. Turning now to slide 11, which demonstrates how Orica is driving growth by expanding not only our addressable market but also deepening our market penetration in the digital space.
We continue to see robust fundamentals in the digital space. Exploration activity is accelerating, and the mining industry's rapid digitization is driving demand for advanced instrumentation and integrated digital solutions, areas where Orica is setting the pace. Orica's innovation and R&D are not just responding to market needs; they are actively creating new markets. By bringing innovative solutions to the mining sector, we are expanding offerings to our customers and, in turn, growing the total addressable market itself. Our total addressable market has expanded at a 39% compounded annual growth rate since 2023, driven by both organic innovation and the successful integration of strategic acquisitions, Axis, and Terra Insights. Digital solutions revenue has grown even faster at a 30% compounded average growth rate after adjusting for the timing of the acquisitions.
The years following the Axis and Terra Insights acquisitions have delivered clear synergy benefits, accelerating both our TAM and the revenue growth. As shown on the previous slide, the high proportion of recurring revenue and low churn demonstrates the value and stickiness of our offerings and the strength of our customer relationships. Moving on to specialty mining chemicals on slide number 12. EBIT was AUD 101 million, up 47% on the prior year. Robust gold market fundamentals with gold prices and demand hitting all-time highs have driven significant demand for sodium cyanide and our services. We achieved strong sales volume, supported by new customer wins and by leveraging Orica's unrivaled global manufacturing and distribution network to ensure reliable supply. Our integration of Cyanco, which we acquired in 2024, has progressed very well, and we are beginning to realize the synergy benefits across the blasting and the cyanide businesses.
During the year, and as previously disclosed, we completed planned safety upgrades at the liquid cyanide facility at the Winnemucca plant on plan. Similar safety upgrades are being completed on the solid cyanide facility in October. We expect full production at Winnemucca from FY 2027 onwards, and we expect to start up the Winnemucca site with full production from the end of next week. Our Yarwun and Alvin cyanide plants ran at record rates, and despite undertaking major safety and maintenance upgrades at our Winnemucca plant, our global supply chain allowed us to meet customer needs without any interruptions. We have continued to expand our emulsifier product portfolio, increasing exposure to copper and iron ore markets and entering into new regions and growing our revenue streams. We've launched the new OptiOre range of mineral processing reagents targeting future-facing commodities like copper and critical minerals.
Our scientific technical services offering for gold processing has seen steady uptake, providing extra value to customers beyond the chemical itself. In summary, our specialty mining chemicals business today is the world's largest mining-focused sodium cyanide producer, with an integrated sodium cyanide production network of approximately 240,000 tons annually. This, along with the positive outlook and demand for gold, underpins the continued growth forecast in the medium term. I will now hand over to Jamie to talk about our financial performance in detail.
Thank you, Sanjeev. Good morning, everyone, and thank you again for joining us today. I'll move to the key financial metrics shown on slide number 14. As Sanjeev mentioned earlier, the continued successful execution of our strategy is reflected in our financial performance.
Whilst top-line sales revenue grew by 6% to AUD 8.1 billion this year, our earnings before interest and tax rose to AUD 992 million, an increase of 23% compared to the prior year. I'll provide more details on this in the next slide. Net profit after tax, pre-individually significant items, increased by 32% to AUD 541 million. As previously disclosed at the half-year and our business update in September, significant items totaling AUD 379 million after tax have been recognized this year, primarily relating to impairment and restructuring of our Latin America blasting business, in addition to litigation costs. Of the total significant items, approximately AUD 235 million is non-cash in nature, mainly relating to the Latin America impairment. After inclusion of these significant items, statutory net profit after tax finished at AUD 162 million for the year.
Net operating cash flow finished at AUD 949 million, an increase of 18% versus the prior year, reflecting continued strong cash generation across the business, in addition to disciplined working capital management. Return on net assets improved to 13.8%, an increase from 12.8% in the prior year. Our strong performance in 2025 has enabled us to deliver continued improvement in EPS, pre-significant items, to AUD 1.118 per share, an increase of AUD 0.254 per share, or 29% from last financial year. A key highlight of our results throughout 2025 is the strong alignment between improved earnings, stronger cash generation, and, importantly, maximizing total shareholder returns over time, in line with our refreshed capital management framework. Turning now to slide number 15.
We shared our refreshed capital management framework in March this year, and the framework is designed to provide clarity and transparency in how we think about deploying capital across the business and through the cycle. We've applied the framework consistently throughout this year, and the quality of our earnings demonstrates a number of proof points. These include continued strong operating cash flow, efficient working capital management, disciplined capital expenditure and investment, and, importantly, we have safeguarded the strength of our balance sheet and, as a result, delivered increased returns to shareholders. A clear example is our successful on-market share buyback. In March, we announced an on-market buyback of up to AUD 400 million to take place over the following 12 months. I'm pleased to share that this initial program is substantially complete, with AUD 399 million of shares repurchased to date, representing 4.1% of issued capital.
Given our robust position, the Orica board have approved an increase of up to an additional AUD 100 million to the existing on-market buyback for a total program of up to AUD 500 million. The buyback is expected to be fully completed by March 2026. Over the coming slides, I'll talk through the key aspects of our 2025 results in more detail, which highlight the continued successful application of our capital management framework. Turning now to the EBIT bridge on slide number 16, where you can see that we've delivered improved earnings across all reporting segments. Starting with blasting solutions, volume, mix, and margin increased by AUD 81 million from the prior year, inclusive of AUD 15 million of proceeds from the sale of carbon credits recognized in the first half.
This was driven by continued strong demand for our higher margin premium products and technology solutions, a positive recontracting cycle, and continued commercial discipline. Growth in volume, mix, and margin slowed in the second half due to lower sales volumes in Indonesia and the U.S. due to reduced thermal coal demand. Margin growth from our blasting solutions technology product range increased by 46% in 2025, on top of the 55% increase delivered in 2024, with strong continued demand for the safety, efficiency, environmental, and cost benefits delivered to customers through our WebGen, Wireless Blasting, 4D, and Fortis specialty emulsion ranges. In the digital solution segment, earnings increased 32% to AUD 92 million, an increase of AUD 23 million from the prior year.
Growth was underpinned by strong customer uptake of our digital platforms and sensor technology, an acceleration in global exploration activity, particularly in the gold and copper segments, and increasing recurring revenue. We also benefited from the full-year contribution of the Terra Insights acquisition, continuing to realize the benefits of cross-selling opportunities across the geo solutions portfolio, with the integration of GroundProbe and Terra essentially complete. Our FRAGTrack, OREPro, and OREPro 3D products continue to attract significant customer demand, together with our Axis mining technology business acquired at the bottom of the cycle, well-positioned to support existing business and new contract wins in line with strong metals exploration activity. In the specialty mining chemicals segment, earnings increased by AUD 32 million to AUD 101 million, an increase of 47% from the prior year.
This growth reflects the full-year contribution from the Cyanco acquisition, a critical investment supporting continued strong demand for sodium cyanide amid sustained high gold prices, together with new contract wins in both the cyanide and emulsifier product ranges. Pleasingly, our recent acquisitions have created opportunities to further bundle digital monitoring and optimization services with cyanide supply. As Sanjeev mentioned earlier, Scientific and OptiOre provide opportunities to expand revenue streams and, importantly, grow the segment beyond cyanide. Across our blasting solutions and specialty mining chemicals manufacturing assets, we've also delivered improved performance versus the prior year. Earnings increased by AUD 36 million, primarily attributable to the non-repeat of costs incurred from the six-year Kooragang Island ammonia plant turnaround conducted in the first half of 2024.
Pleasingly, the strong production performance at our Yarwun cyanide facility continued throughout the second half, which is important as we progressed through critical safety upgrades at our Cyanco Winnemucca production facility. Maintaining uninterrupted supply to our customers and having the flexibility to adapt supply points across our chemical supply chain reinforces Orica's position as the world leader in the mining-focused production of sodium cyanide. Finally, global support costs are lower than the prior year, primarily due to the classification of litigation costs as a significant item in 2025, some small property sales, and ongoing disciplined cost management. In summary, our earnings growth has been broad-based, supported by increased contributions from every segment, with a continued focus on execution and commercial discipline. Consistent with our capital management framework, this demonstrates our objective of resilient through cycle performance, and pleasingly, this has continued into the start of the new financial year.
Turning now to trade working capital on slide number 17. Encouragingly, the improvements that we've focused on over the past 18 months have been maintained this financial year. Total trade working capital cycle days on a 12-month rolling basis are in line with the prior year. Days sales outstanding remained consistent at 46 days, reflecting our sustained commercial discipline as sales revenue grew by AUD 482 million, or 6%, during the year. Days inventory held increased by two days, seen as a prudent measure given significant geopolitical uncertainty, particularly in the U.S., and raw material shortages occurring through 2025. Importantly, we've been able to fully offset this through a two-day improvement in rolling days payable, closing at 51 days and moving us closer to top quartile total trade working capital performance relative to industry benchmarks. Absolute trade working capital finished at AUD 620 million.
Foreign exchange had a AUD 30 million unfavorable impact, partly offset by AUD 14 million in efficiency improvements, with ending trade working capital to sales finishing the financial year at 7.6%, improving from 7.9% at September last year. This disciplined working capital result supported the increase in net operating cash flow and remains a key focus area for the organization. Turning now to slide number 18. Total capital expenditure for 2025 was AUD 460 million, broadly in line with the prior year. Of this, AUD 286 million was allocated to sustenance capital expenditure. This included successful completion of turnaround events at our Carseland and Kooragang Island sites in the first half and the Winnemucca and Alvin facilities in the second half.
We continued to invest in our mining services downstream business, including enhancements to our mobile delivery systems fleet in growing markets to support increased sales of specialist emulsions such as 4D, together with investments in our Cyanide Sparge fleet to support increased sales. Allocation to growth capital expenditure was slightly higher this year, with AUD 172 million invested in line with our strategy of supporting growth in the digital solution segment, capacity expansions and efficiency improvements in our continuous manufacturing plants, and further development of technology-focused blasting solutions. Growth capital expenditure is closely managed in line with the capital management framework, where investment must achieve hurdle rates significantly above our pre-tax weighted average cost of capital, as evidenced in our growing margins this financial year. Sustainability-related capital expenditure was AUD 2 million following completion of key projects such as tertiary catalyst abatement across our nitric acid plants.
We expect 2026 capital expenditure to remain broadly in line with the prior year. Moving now to slide 19 on the balance sheet and liquidity. We continued to strengthen our balance sheet during the year with a number of key funding initiatives successfully executed. During the year, we refinanced or extended AUD 461 million of existing committed bank debt facilities and added a new AUD 90 million debt facility. In July, we also announced the successful issuance of AUD 390 million in long-term notes in the U.S. private placement market. Now, as an indicator of how Orica's balance sheet is viewed externally, investor demand for the notes was strong, with a total order book of circa AUD 4 billion, and this resulted in funding at favorable pricing.
As a result, at 30 September, the average tenor of drawn debt was 5.5 years, an increase from 4.7 years at the end of September 2024. Net debt ended at AUD 1.9 billion, excluding lease liabilities, an increase of AUD 304 million from the prior year. This increase was driven by cash outflows, including AUD 630 million of on-market share buybacks and dividends, together with AUD 415 million of strategic capital investment. This was partly offset by our strong operating cash inflows. Consistent with our capital management framework, our leverage ratio is 1.39x EBITDA and sits comfortably within the lower half of our target range of 1.25x-2x . We maintained a robust liquidity position. At year-end, we had AUD 747 million in cash and AUD 1.6 billion in undrawn committed facilities. In December 2024, Standard and Poor's reaffirmed Orica's BBB stable investment-grade credit rating. In summary, our balance sheet is strong.
It positions us well to weather external volatility, support continued delivery of our strategy, and ultimately, increase returns to shareholders. Turning now to the dividend slide on page 20. Under our capital framework, we have maintained our target dividend payout range of 40%-70% of underlying earnings. The Orica Board of Directors today have declared a final dividend of AUD 0.32 per share, which brings the full-year dividend to AUD 0.57 per share, unfranked, representing a full-year payout ratio of 50.2%. This represents a AUD 0.10 per share or 21% increase on the 2024 full-year dividend of AUD 0.47 per share. This increase, together with the successful on-market share buyback, demonstrates our commitment to delivering enhanced returns to shareholders in a sustainable and disciplined manner, consistent with our capital management framework.
In closing, Orica's outstanding financial performance and disciplined capital management have positioned us for sustainable and enduring growth and to maximize shareholder returns. Our resilient strategy, talented global team, and commitment to innovation ensure we are well-prepared for future opportunities and to drive continued success for all of our stakeholders. With that, I'll now hand back to Sanjeev.
Thank you, Jamie. Moving now to slide 22. Our strategy is driving growth and market leadership by delivering innovative solutions that create value for our customers. This approach has underpinned consistent performance improvement over the past five years, and notably, the strong performance in FY 2025, a 13-year high. The successful integration of acquisitions, the technologies we have deployed, and the markets we've entered are all translating into strong results. Orica today is an exciting and innovative company with a resilient business model and continues to deliver shareholder value going forward.
Moving to slide 23, we continue to increase our exposure to resilient commodities while reducing reliance on thermal coal. This shift ensures we are aligned with global trends and future-facing commodities, supporting both growth and sustainability. Our strategic priorities remain fully aligned with the growth drivers I've discussed. Continue to grow our core blasting business, drive uptake of digital solutions and the recurring revenue they bring, and expand our specialized offering in mining chemicals. Underpinning these priorities is an unrelenting focus on commercial discipline and quality of earnings, operational excellence, and collaboration with our customers on new technologies. Turning to slide 24, I will give you an update on our strategic scorecard. Orica remains firmly on track with our safety, sustainability, and financial targets.
We are maintaining a strong safety record and have achieved our 2026 net scope one and scope two emission reduction targets ahead of schedule, with further reductions planned by 2030 and 2035. We are driving organic growth, accelerating technology adoption, and expanding into high-growth markets and future-facing commodities. Our average three-year RONA is tracking within the target range of 13%- 15%, and this has been increased to 13.5%-15.5% for FY 2026-2028. We maintain a dividend payout ratio, and our annual capital expenditures align with strategic priorities. Turning now to the outlook for FY 2026 on slide 25. We remain excited about Orica's future. The strong performance in 2025 has given us excellent momentum entering the new year. Despite external uncertainties, our core markets and business fundamentals remain robust. We expect to continue growing EBIT across all three business segments in the year ahead.
In blasting solutions, demand for premium products and advanced services is expected to stay strong, driven by increased customer penetration and ongoing technology adoption. Earnings growth will be supported by improved product mix, recontracting margin uplift, and commercial discipline, despite lower thermal coal demand in Indonesia and the U.S., and a planned turnaround at the Carseland plant in Canada. In digital solutions, we see continued strong earnings growth. Mining companies are increasingly embracing digitization, automation, and productivity analytics. We plan to further use the adoption of our digital offering across our customer base and use AI to improve productivity outcomes. This, combined with recurring revenue streams and an expected further uptick in exploration activity, will drive earnings higher in this segment. In specialty mining chemicals, the outlook is very encouraging. Gold prices remain elevated, and industry forecasts point to sustained strength in demand for gold and hence sodium cyanide.
With our integrated sodium cyanide production network, we are well placed to supply this demand and win additional contracts and anticipate further earnings growth from this segment. Beyond the segment outlook, we expect depreciation and amortization to be AUD 520 million-AUD 540 million, slightly higher, reflecting recent investments. Given the ongoing geopolitical challenges and external market volatility, we will increase our focus on cost management to protect and strengthen our business performance. Net finance cost, effective tax rate, and capital expenditure should be broadly in line with FY 2025. The sale of our stage two surplus land at Deer Park is on track to complete during 2026. We do expect ongoing litigation costs will be around AUD 50 million-AUD 60 million, as previously disclosed. As Jamie mentioned, the increased share buyback of up to AUD 100 million is expected to be completed by March 2026.
Following the recent incident at CF Industries' Yazoo facility on the 5th of November, we received a notification on the 10th of November from CF Industries claiming force majeure that will impact certain of its contractual obligations and indicating that it is presently unable to manufacture industrial ammonium nitrate. We are assessing the notice, and we will leverage our global manufacturing and supply network to minimize any potential impacts. Looking beyond 2026 on slide number 27, we are confident that Orica will deliver sustained profitable growth and accelerate value creation for shareholders, some key drivers over the midterm in the next three to five years. In blasting solutions, we expect our core blasting business to deliver GDP plus earnings growth through the mining cycle. We expect to grow faster than the mining industry.
This will be driven by increased penetration of our products and services, continued rollout of our advanced blasting technologies, and further improvements in our margin mix. The fundamentals of our core market are strong. Commodities like gold, copper, and critical minerals are in high demand, and customers are seeking productivity and sustainability improvements that our solutions provide. In digital solutions, we expect further acceleration in earnings growth, moving from low double-digit percentages into the mid-teens EBIT growth. The mining industry's digital transformation is just beginning, and Orica, through our BlastIQ, orepro, GroundProbe, and Axis technologies, is at the forefront of this trend. We have opportunities to grow our digital services in both our existing customer base and in new markets like civil tunneling and infrastructure. High recurring revenue and low churn will underpin this growth, making it a prominent earnings stream.
In specialty mining chemicals, we now expect earnings will grow from mid-single-digit to high single-digit EBIT growth over the medium term, reflecting the strong fundamentals in gold and potentially increased demand in base metal processing. We will continue to be laser-focused on translating growth into improved returns. We are targeting to deliver a three-year average RONA of 13.5%-15.5% over the next three years, an upgrade from the previous 13%-15% range. This will be driven by higher earnings and disciplined capital use. We will maintain a strong balance sheet with a leverage range of 1.25x-2 x EBITDA and continue our dividend policy of 40%-70% payout ratio. In summary, the outlook for Orica is very positive. We have built considerable momentum in FY 2025, and we expect that momentum to continue into this financial year.
Our markets, especially in commodities like gold, copper, and critical minerals, are favorable. Our technology-led strategy is resonating with customers, as demonstrated by the uptake rates, and our financial discipline provides a strong foundation. We are confident in our ability to continue delivering profitable growth across all segments and to create substantial value for our shareholders and customers in the years ahead. With that, I'm now open to Q&A.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star, one, and one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star, one, and one again. Please stand by as we compile the Q&A roster. First question comes from the line of William Park of Citi. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Sanjeev. Thanks, Jamie, for taking my questions.
Firstly, just with respect to the headwinds that you've called out in Indonesia and the U.S., could you be able to provide some quantitative color around the earnings impact that you've seen in FY 2025 for your blasting solutions business and your expectation of those headwinds in 2026? Please, thank you.
Yeah. So I'll start with the U.S.. We've seen a, William, we've seen a 10-year trend of coal extraction in the U.S. declining gradually. That has not changed. Now, we do have the new U.S. government talking about bringing out more coal, and that might give us a bit of an uplift, but it's still early days. Now, I'm not sure whether this is going to happen, but I can tell you structurally the challenge that the United States has today. There's a lot of investment going into data centers driven by AI.
As you all know, data centers need a lot of energy. The U.S. power grid is kind of maxed out at the moment. There has not been significant investment there, and they have shifted from coal-based power to gas-based power, obviously because of the cost arbitrage, because gas is still very competitive there. Now, if there is this surge, this predicted surge in electricity consumption as these data centers come online, the grid does not have capacity to supply power. The only latent capacity that the U.S. grid has is coal-based power plants because they are not running at full loads today. If that comes true, then we will see an uptick in coal consumption. I cannot predict if that will happen and when that will happen, but that is a possibility.
In our forecast for 2026, we have expected and we have anticipated a continuous gradual decline in coal output in the Permian Basin in the United States, and that is reflected basically in our forecasts. Indonesia is interesting. Indonesia has been a relatively new trend since June of this year. We've seen a decline in exports of Indonesian coal into China and into India. It has been recent, and it has been low, I would say around 10% decline in exports of coal from Indonesia overseas. There are two reasons for this. One is obviously the coal pricing has corrected downwards, and the gap and the premium that customers pay, power customers, for the high-quality coal, so the low ash content, low sulfur content, high calorific value coal versus the lower quality coal which Indonesia offers has shrunk.
This means that the higher quality coal, which is mainly Hunter Valley coal and Mongolian coal, has stronger demand. There has been a bit of a shift from Indonesian coal to the Hunter Valley coal and to the Mongolian coal. This obviously benefits us because it is a shift from the Indonesian demand into Australia and Mongolia where we are active. That has been the first trend. The second trend is that there has been an increased coal output of Chinese coal. As a result, we have seen this decline in Indonesian coal exports, and we have seen a similar trend in India. India has been increasing their own coal production where we are active as a mining services provider, but they have slightly reduced imports from Indonesia.
Now, whether this is a long-term trend, whether this is going to continue, it's hard to say because China issues coal quotas once a year. We will have to wait till after Chinese New Year to see what the new coal quotas are, which are indicators of how much China will import in 2026, 2027 onwards, and what would be the impact of Indonesian coal. That is all I can tell you at the moment. It is a very recent development. We are watching it closely, but obviously we do have exposure to thermal coal in Indonesia because we are the largest mining services provider in that country.
Thank you. That is very clear. My second question relates to the force majeure that you have alluded to involving CF Industries. Can you just remind us, the volume take-up on an annualized basis was around 800,000 tons from memory.
Presumably, all of this is at risk. Can you just provide some color around some of the options that you have available to effectively replenish these volumes and maybe some color around, I guess, the contracted price and spot price? Any color around that would be great. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, William. Look, it's a very recent development. We received the force majeure letter two days back. We are obviously looking through it and analyzing what it means to us. You're right. The contract has an obligation to offtake up to 800,000 tons, but our nominations depend on our market needs. Obviously, given in mind the coal decline and all of that, we have not nominated to the full extent. The risk is not 800,000 tons if it is a risk at all. That's the first answer.
The second answer is obviously we have our own global network. We've got the big manufacturing in Carseland. We've got all the other alternatives. At the moment, we are busy mobilizing our global network. You have to remember, this is not the first supply disruption that Orica has faced in the last five years. We've gotten, unfortunately, pretty good at managing supply disruption. The team is busy working, and we have lined up supply, and we don't foresee any immediate disruptions of supply to our customers. We need to wait and see what the supplier tells us in terms of duration. Once we know that, we'll have more information, and then we'll have more planning. Again, just to keep in mind, we've got this notice just two days back, so it is very early days now.
Our focus today is first to ensure that our customers do not get disrupted, which we are planning to do with our internal network and obviously through sourcing options.
Thank you. Just the last one around the trend, I guess, with respect to exploration that you are seeing and the acceleration in momentum, particularly in Axis that you have alluded to. Could you provide some comment around some of the observations that you are having with respect to the exploration levels across the regions that you operate in and how Axis is sort of performing in the first month and a half in FY 2026? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, William. I mean, look, you know the exploration market well. You have been following us. We have been telling the market now for the last 18 months that we have seen an uptick in exploration after a nearly four-year decline in exploration activity.
We've seen some record lows in exploration and with the juniors not investing capital and all the other challenges. On the other hand, demand continues to grow. We're falling short on supply. It was inevitable that exploration would pick up. We first saw this in gold. We've seen this now for the last 18 months, extremely strong pull in exploration activity in gold. We now start to see this in copper. This is obviously going to go forward into critical minerals and rare earths. We continue to see a strong uptick in the exploration pipeline. We are a global player today. We've scaled up Axis globally. We operate in all parts of the world with the major drillers everywhere in the world. We are at the front line and seeing what the pipeline is. It looks very, very promising.
That's the first piece of good news. The second news is when we met in Sydney when we did our digital roadshow there, we did say that we are going to launch into production drilling. We are on the verge of launching the first Axis products into the production drilling market, which is obviously another exciting market entry for us. This, by the way, will double the TAM that we have in the exploration market. Just another example of when we bring in new technologies, we acquire new businesses, we grow the TAM very, very strongly, and then we obviously increase our penetration and market share. It's looking very promising. Obviously, the pricing reflects the need for more exploration and more mining to happen and follow. Let's put it this way. I'm very optimistic about the exploration market.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Just a moment for our next question, please. Next, we have Brooke Corfield from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks for taking my question. Hey, Sanjeev, just a quick one on the outlook. Just notes that you expect growth in blasting in FY 2026. Just want to check if you expect GDP plus type growth levels in FY 2026 in blasting, I guess, adjusting for the carbon credit benefit you had in FY 2025, which would be similar to the midterm target. Thanks.
Yeah, thanks, Brooke. So yes, that's the guidance that we are giving you that through the mining cycle over the midterm, we are expecting GDP plus growth, which means growth faster than the mining industry because of increased penetration. I did call out that for next year, we have a major Carseland shut at the end of the financial year, and you know what this means.
This is a big shut. It is more than a month, and this is basically led by our own maintenance schedules, but also our supplier turning down the ammonia unit for their own maintenance. This, as you can imagine, as it did in 2024 with Kooragang Island ammonia, has an impact obviously on the blasting business and then the non-repeat of the carbon credits. Despite all of that, we do expect the blasting business globally will grow and we will perform better than in 2025 for a couple of reasons. One is obviously we still have recontracting benefits coming through, not just from 2025, but also new contracts that we are winning as we speak. We have further penetration and scale-up of blasting technologies. Wireless, 4D, everything else that goes around with it, specialized emulsions, and all the other products and services that we have there.
That is another area where we continue to see growth in mix and margin. We obviously have also new wins in new regions, in new markets that we have entered now in the last 18 months, and that starts to scale up as we speak. We will also see some tailwind coming from that. Overall, the segment will be growing, the blasting segment, but there will be these two impacts. One is the one-off carbon credits that has to be taken out, and then we will have the Carseland shut, which, as you all know, has some impact on our earnings.
That is helpful. Thanks. Just on the buyback, you have increased it AUD 100 million. It does seem a little bit light. I mean, for context, I think you did more than AUD 100 million in the month of September alone.
Just want to check why perhaps it is a conservative increase in that program through to the end of March. Thanks. Yeah, thanks, Brooke. It is a good question. As you can imagine, we have discussed this intensively with the board. Look, my view is this is the first buyback we have announced and successfully completed in more than a decade at Orica. It is all about building our credibility, and we tell you what we will do, and then we do what we tell you, as I have been saying now for the last five years. First of all, I am very happy that we completed the first tranche. We were expecting to do this over 12 months. We finished it earlier. We have purchased below VWAP, so that is all very, very positive. We still have a few more months to go.
We thought the best thing to do was to just extend the buyback so that we still completed within the 12 months. We did want to buy 5% of our equity, and we ended up with 4.1% because the share price went up. Obviously, we still want to do that 5%. In the new year, once we are finished with all of that, we have a board refresh. We will have a new chair coming in. We are also thinking about a strategy refresh with the new board. We will put all of that together, and once we finish the March milestone, then everything else is again on the table, back to the table. I'll hand over to Jamie. He wanted to add a few things there.
Good morning, Brooke. It's Jamie here.
As Sanjeev said, we were targeting around 5% of market capitalization for this buyback. To date, we've bought back about 4.1%. I think I said at the investor day in March that we were targeting this over the 12 months. We've been quite successful in terms of volume and cost. The weighted average purchase price has been around AUD 20.15, and you can see we've been trading about 12% above that recently. Given the timeframe that we've got until March of next year, another AUD 100 million would get us up to about 5%. I quite like the March timing for a few reasons. We deliver the net operating cash flow to our results in September. We release our results in November. We do our strategic planning cycle in February.
We look at what does the business look like for the next two, five, ten years? What are the growth options that we have in front of us? How do we deploy capital to support that? What delivers the greatest return to shareholders? I like the March timing. We will complete the balance of the AUD 100 million, and then we will come back next March and talk about what the focus is for the business then.
Thanks. Just really quick one on the blasting midterm growth. Just want to confirm, are you talking nominal or real GDP growth? Thanks.
Nominal, Brooke, just to make things easier for everybody.
Great. Thanks.
Thank you. Next question comes from Mark Wilson from RBC. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much, Sanjeev. And Jamie, just a couple of quick comments about the CF Industries force majeure, and I realize it is early days.
Just with your contractual arrangements, should this be a prolonged shutdown and you do have to take on additional freight and sourcing costs, would you be able to recover those from either customers or from CF Industries or insurance?
Yeah, I cannot comment on CF. We've got the legal team looking at this force majeure announcement, and it's an old contract, a complex contract. We look through all of that. Yes, we will do everything we can to ensure that this does not come back and hurt us in terms of earnings and margin. There will be increased costs if we have to source for a longer period of time. We do not know. Our supplier has to tell us how long they're out and when the supply will restart. We have a valid legal contract in play for the next six years.
It is obviously a discussion we'll have with them. Their clear focus right now is to look at the safety of the operations, and then there will be an investigation and all the other stuff that happens around the regulation. It is still very, very early days. As I said, we've covered supply. At the moment, we are fine. The most important data point is how long is the outtake so that we can start preparing for all kinds of eventualities, including passing on costs and managing costs and everything else that gets related with this kind of disruption.
Okay, that's great. Thank you very much. Just on the cash flow, good improvement there, particularly on the trade working capital side. Just wondering how much more progress you think you can make. I did notice there was a reasonable increase in non-trade working capital.
Can you just touch upon that? Thanks.
Yeah, thanks for the question, Mark. We focus very heavily on working capital and have done for a number of years now. We've done some benchmarking work on where we sit in the industry. We have looked at as many companies in the blasting business or the agricultural space or the chemical space to sort of benchmark each part of our working capital. I think on the receivable side, if you look over the last five years, the region has done a great job renegotiating terms as contracts have come up for renegotiation, which is the best way to improve DSO. I think in terms of benchmarking, we are probably in the top half in that space. There is more that we can do there. On the inventory side, it's interesting.
We're quite hard on ourselves in the way that we manage inventory in the business. Comparatively, we're in the top quartile. If you look at our DIH, it's relatively strong, particularly if you look at inventory to sales. In our benchmarking work, we were top two in that space. Our issue was really around DPO. Comparatively, we were very much in the bottom 25%. I don't think that we were leveraging our buying power as well as we could have. This year, the supply chain team's done a great job. We've renegotiated around AUD 400 million of supply agreements. Around AUD 250 million of those were below 30 days. They're now above 30 days. Around AUD 150 million were between 30-60 days, which are now on greater than 60-day terms. That has supported the increase in DPO.
That remains our area where I think there is the most room for improvement. We are very, very conscious of the conversion of EBITDA to cash, given we are a very working capital intensive business. The increase in non-trade working capital was basically due to restructuring costs, which have since been paid.
Okay, great. Thanks for that.
Thank you. Just a moment for our next question, please. Next, we have John Patel from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good day, Sanjeev and Jamie. Hope you both well. Just had a couple of questions, please. Just the first one, obviously, you have upped your medium-term EBIT growth targets for mining chems and digital. I know you have alluded to some of the factors, Sanjeev here, but obviously, the gold price moves around.
I'd just be interested in what are the factors outside of the gold price that are giving you the confidence to up those targets?
Yeah, thanks, John. I'll touch briefly on digital, and then I'll go back to chemicals, which is a very special macro that plays out there. Digital, it's just a matter of us getting comfortable with our recent acquisition Terra Insights. The acquisition is complete. The business has delivered above acquisition business case. We just get more comfortable with it. You know it was a new technology. This was the part of the sensing and monitoring piece in the value chains, both in civil and in mining, that we were not active in. We were only active in monitoring through GroundProbe. We have significantly expanded, doubled basically our offering in that industry.
The first year was all about integrating, taking control of the business, and getting comfortable with the technology. Now we feel comfortable. We see the runway. That is why we've said instead of the low double digit, we'd like to grow this thing, the digital business in earnings in mid-teens. This also then goes back to Axis. Axis has been with us a couple of years. We've invested capital. We've scaled the business up. Today, we are a global player with a significant market share, a clear number two in the exploration space. As I said earlier, we are entering into production drilling. That's going to double our TAM, and we are starting from zero market share. We're going to go there and increase our growth.
Our core blasting technology business is all about optimizing blast outcomes, fragmentation, and less waste, and all of the other stuff that we do there, which is very, very successful and appreciated. Digital business will grow, earnings will grow harder to mid-teens, as we've said. Chemicals is interesting because it's not directly connected. Our business is not directly connected with the gold price. It obviously helps that gold is at AUD 4,000 an ounce. There is a structural issue in the gold industry. There's not been enough exploration. The ore that exists today, proven ore or deposits, is very, very dilute. We are talking one gram, two grams per ton of rock blasted, and the demand is there. What this means is, first of all, you need to explore more, which is what we have seen in the Axis business. That's coming through.
Secondly, you see marginal gold assets who are on the right of the cost curve. They become more competitive now with the pricing of gold. They start to come back into production. That means more demand for us. Thirdly, because the ore is so diluted, you have to blast more to get that gold ore out, and then you have to use more extraction chemicals to get the purity we want. Even if gold supply does not increase, you have to increase servicing of the gold industry to keep with your output. That is a very interesting macro that plays to our favor because we do the digital part in Axis. We do the blasting for the gold customers, and then we do the extraction using sodium cyanide. That is the first macro that gives us confidence.
The second one is that we are now nearly finished with the Winnemucca safety upgrade. We had one major turnaround planned. We split it into two to straddle the financial year 2025 and this one because the demand was so strong, I did not want to shut the site down. We kept some part of the site running to cater to customers. We have got three lines there. We shut the first line, then the second line for the liquids. We finished with the safety upgrades. We will finish the solid safety upgrades by next week. We will have the plant up and running. We are going to test capacity, and we are going to max out production. That is where the uptick will come.
That is why we said, let's increase our earnings forecast from the middle single digits to the higher single digits earnings. That is what gives us confidence to do that. John.
Thank you. Just a second question on the profit bridge slide there, the margin mix is obviously up AUD 81 million for EBIT in blasting. I think you mentioned that includes the AUD 15 million carbon credit benefit. So you have a AUD 66 million underlying there. I think the broader question is, do you think you can maintain that level of improvement in 2026, or is that going to be difficult given some of the thermal coal regional weakness you have called out?
John, our focus has always been mix and margin optimization, right? I have told the market several times, our volumes do not really drive our earnings. It is all about scaling up our blasting technologies.
The WebGen has got a lot of runway to go, right? We have now gone open cut in WebGen. We started with underground the first couple of years. We have launched the second version. We are now looking at even the next iteration of WebGen, which is very, very exciting. This thing has a long, long way to go. Our biggest success has been our new emulsion, the variable density emulsion, where we are able to basically control energy intensity within a hole and to provide the outcomes that the customers need. Now we are bringing it together. Now we are selling solutions, including WebGen and 4D together. The upselling potential there because of the value propositions is huge. This is going to drive continuously our earnings. We are launching new products. We are launching new emulsions for cold climates.
We are launching new products for the underground sector. We are going hard into the metals industry. As you know, the macros in mining are, it's going deeper. It's going underground into more difficult geographies. We are so strongly placed with our global footprint to cater to new demand coming everywhere in the world. That is why mix and margin will continue to drive this. On top of that, the digital business is all mix and margin, right? There is no volume there. It is all about services, recurring revenue, SaaS. That is continuing to grow. The specialty mining chemicals expectation is that volumes will grow and margins will also grow. Yeah, pretty confident. The only call out, as I said earlier in the call, is 2026.
We've got the Carseland shutdown, and you have to pull out the AUD 15 million from the carbon credits that was a one-off.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next, we have Scott Ryall from Rimor Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks very much. Sanjeev, I just want to follow up on your carbon credits comment just then. You still get carbon credits issued under the scheme that you've agreed with government, right?
Yes, Scott, that's a good question. Look, we are generating the highest, one of the highest quality. I should temper that. One of the highest quality carbon credits in Australia. We've started on this journey even before the safeguard mechanism existed. We obviously have got a head start over the other 214 heavy emitters in Australia who are under the carbon credit regime. At the moment, we are banking them, right? That's why you see the difference.
If you look at our sustainability results, you see a difference between gross and net emissions, which is significant. That difference is basically the carbon credits that we are generating every day at Kooragang Island and at Yarwun, but which we are not monetizing or we are not surrendering. We are banking them at the moment. We will continue to do that until 2029 when the safeguard mechanism kicks in, which is basically a 5% reduction year on year. At that point of time, we will be well under any kinds of penalties, right? What we are doing is we are banking these carbon credits for future because at a period of time, as our production grows, our emissions, we continue to mitigate them. At some point in time, we are going to be caught by the safeguard mechanism credit.
That is when we are going to start to utilize those carbon credits. My expectation is in the foreseeable future, we do not expect to pay any kind of penalties under the safeguard mechanism. If we have excess carbon credits and if the market is very strong and if a good customer or a partner comes to us and says, "Can you help us out?" At the right price, we are willing to sell them. Our base strategy is that we would like to bank them because we do not need to sell them today. We can bank them and keep them in our inventory. At the right time, we can either monetize or use them to offset our emissions in future.
Perfect. Thank you.
If I can touch on the CF Industries issues again, you have given color, I get that it is all very recent. If I look at the facility in question, it does just show 600,000 tons of ammonia, which if that was all channeled to ammonium nitrate, would be over 2 million tons. You have said you are up to 800,000, but obviously less than that. Do you have a sense of how this puts the U.S. or the North American market more broadly than just your supply of ammonium nitrate? I guess what I am looking at is you made the good comment that during COVID, you managed your supply chain pretty well as a global player. Do you have regional players who are highly exposed to this incident as well?
I mean, look, I do not think the numbers you quoted are correct, but you should check up the website to see what the right numbers are because I think these are published numbers. They are a big fertilizer player. They are not really an explosives player. We are the biggest explosives customer. A lot of the excess capacity that they might have in their system mainly goes to the first industry. It does not really go into the explosives industry. If you look at the U.S. supply and demand for nitrogen, the U.S. market is long. It will remain long because obviously the ag business is a seasonal business. Because of the coal decline over the last 10 years, we have seen length coming in the U.S. market. The market was never short or tight. It has been long.
We have to see now what the tenure of this shut is and when can they get these assets up and running. We have to decide if at all there is a longer-term impact. Again, it is really, Scott, early days. I cannot really tell you more than that.
Okay. It is fair to say you are more focused on your internal ability to service your own customers' needs as opposed to the competitive advantage that may give you from being a global player.
Absolutely. Because we do not produce in the U.S.. Right, we are kind of agnostic to what happens to other people, and especially the first industry, because we do not play in that industry.
Yeah. No, understood. Thank you. That is all I had.
Thank you. Next, we have Nathan Reilley from UBS. Please go ahead. Afternoon.
Sanjeev, just with your East Coast gas supply, I know previously you've indicated that you've recontracted there, I think, out to 2031. Can I just confirm, is that you're fully contracted out to that period now? Can you also maybe sort of talk through cost impact? Doesn't feel like it's that material going forward.
You're touching a nerve here, Nathan. No, no. We are fully contracted till 2031 on the East Coast, both at Yarwun and at Kooragang Island. These are not easy negotiations, but we've got leverage because we are big. I think we are one of the largest consumers of natural gas in New South Wales. So we've got some leverage. I'm not happy because I have to pay more. But as you said very rightly, we have smart ways of managing that and mitigating that through internal efficiency measures and then also through pass-throughs.
I don't expect any kind of material impact on our margins on the East Coast of Australia. This whole gas discussion is now really coming to a head. I think both gas suppliers and gas consumers like ourselves, we have come to the realization something has to give. The equation has to be more equitable. The government is working. We have submitted our own submissions to them and our own inputs and facts and figures, and everything is in black and white. In this country, gas has quadrupled in the last 12 years, gas price, right? We used to have average gas prices of AUD 4. Today, the market talks about AUD 18-AUD 19. That's just ridiculous. It's not sustainable.
I'm now hoping and waiting for the government to come up with some kind of reservation policy, first step on the East Coast, because getting more supply in, that ship has sailed, right? It'll take three to five years to get in more supply. The first thing to do is use the Western Australia model, have reservation for genuine users like Orica, and in a second step, to get in more supply, and then also look at the pricing so that everybody has an equitable stake in this industry. That's where I'm hoping, Nathan, and we'll watch what the government does.
I got it. Pretty clear. Thank you. Finally, just on your legal fees, I think you've guided that you're expecting that to be albeit a significant item, but AUD 50-AUD 60 million, I think, in 2026.
That's on top of the expenses you incurred in 2025. Seems like it's an awfully big number. Can you just give us a breakdown in terms of what's—I mean, obviously, there's the CF arbitration issue in there, but just give us an idea of what else is hitting that number.
Yeah. So this is ongoing. We've had legal fees since 2020, 2021. We always had legal fees. Given the nature of our business, we are global. There's always some kind of contract issue with a supplier, with a customer, some IP issues. Last year, we spent some money on a significant IP issue in Australia, and we came out winners there. That was money well spent. We are going to continue to invest in protecting IP and defending our IP also in 2026. There's a bit of that.
are a few legacy issues about some acquisitions and divestments made in the past where we are tackling some of these, either claims from our side or claims on the other side that we are defending. Obviously, we have the ongoing litigation. It is a mix of everything, but it is in a similar ballpark as to what we had in 2025, and we will have them in this new financial year. Post that, we will see what happens in terms of the ongoing litigations, and then we will take a call.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Next, we have Daniel Kang from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Sanjeev and Jamie. I just have a few questions which I might just ask all at once.
Firstly, just on your upgraded medium-term EBIT forecast for digital solutions and especially mining chemicals, can you just help us with your medium-term margin expectations? Secondly, given the strength of gold markets, just wondering if you can provide some color on sodium cyanide pricing trends. Is there scope to improve pricing terms on your customer contracts? Just finally, your digital solutions slide on slide 11, I think. Great to see TAM has grown by 39% CAGR, but it seems like revenue has lagged that at 30%. Theoretically, it does imply some share loss. Can you just talk about market share trends?
Thanks, Dan. It's the other way around. The day you acquire a business, the TAM comes into your accessible market, and then you grow your market share. If you look at the timing of the acquisition, we have grown faster than the market.
The fact that the market has grown faster is because the full TAM is accessible to us with our new products and solutions which are now integrated. We have the potential to increase our penetration by increasing our market share. It is the other way around, not the way you put it, but it is the other way around because you first get the TAM, and then you get the growth and the earnings out of it. That is an upside that we will do better. I mentioned in Axis, we were doing only exploration. The TAM included just the exploration. Now we are launching this year into production. The TAM has doubled, but our sales are still zero because the product is being launched now. As we grow into the production market, you will see our sales revenue catch up.
That just tells you there's more upside. It's not a share loss. It's basically us starting into a new market and then bringing in new products and solutions and growing our share in that market. In terms of margins and pricing in sodium cyanide, pricing is not that relevant. It's a commodity. It's the margin that we make out of it. What we do here is play our supply network. We've got three manufacturing sites in two continents, and we've got four distribution centers globally on top of that. It's all about landing the product at the lowest landed cost to our customers, which basically gives us the best net back. There's nobody else in the world who can do this because there is nobody else with multiple locations and supply chain facilities that we have. That's where the upside is.
There are situations where sodium cyanide price might come down because the byproducts producer might ship a consignment through a distributor and dump it somewhere. That does not decide margin. The margin is decided by how you optimize delivery and supply chain and handling of the product, which, as you can imagine, is a very difficult product to manage. It is not directly relevant, the pricing mechanism. It is an input. It is a factor of input. There is natural gas in there. There is sodium hydroxide in there, and there is a bit of ammonia that goes into conversion. Obviously, the cost of these ingredients is very different in different parts of the world. It is more a margin game and a net back game in this business. It is not so much a pricing game there.
Thank you. Just one moment for our next question, please.
Next, we have Ramoun Lazar from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good afternoon, Sanjeev and Jamie. Just one from me. It's just around the capital position. Obviously, you've got Deer Park that you're expecting to monetize at some point in 2026. I'm just trying to understand how you're thinking about capital deployment. Is there anything in the M&A space or in the portfolio that you think you need to add to continue to add to the strategy of growing beyond blasting, or should we think about those surplus funds coming back to shareholders via buybacks?
Yeah. Thanks for the question, Ramon. Just your question on Deer Park. We look at all of our land portfolio and whether it's surplus to need. Just in Deer Park in particular, the market engagement so far has been very positive. I think we're approaching conclusion of discussions with all interested parties.
I think we'll know more by around March of next year who the most likely successful party will be. In terms of funds from that, I think it's going to be Q4 next year. The challenge will be, is it Q4 of our financial year or Q4 of the calendar year? I will know more about that in March of next year. We're also looking at the land that we have at Botany. Now, first and foremost, our priority here is our environmental and community commitments and remediation. That's the primacy and the thing we focus on there most. As we work through the individual lots through remediation milestones, there may be opportunities to divest parcels as we move through remediation. That probably will not be until 2027. Obviously, if you look at the location of the land, it's in a very favorable spot.
You can imagine that that would be well valued, but that will be probably 2027. What do we do with those funds? It really comes back to the capital management framework, right? If we have surplus balance sheet capacity, we will look at what options we have to deploy. If it is M&A, it has to be enduring investment consistent with the strategy. It has to deliver the requisite return above pre-tax WACC to be accredited to shareholders and accredited to EPS. We look at things all the time. We probably look at 50 things a year. Most years, we do none. Last year, we did three or two. If there is no way to deploy that capital in terms of M&A that is consistent with strategy and EPS accretive and enduring, then we will look to return it to shareholders.
That's exactly the reason why we spent so much time on the capital management framework this year.
Yeah, understood. I guess what I was trying to ask is, is there anything in the portfolio that you think is missing that you could look at potentially adding to via M&A that you can't, I guess, develop internally?
Yeah. It's a good question. We're obviously the market leader in terms of the provision of sodium cyanide into the gold industry. If you look at the energy transition, right now, we don't have a chemical offering in the copper space. Now, we won't get into sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid. They're very much commoditized. Some of the specialist chemicals in the purification process, we will potentially have a look at. Don't expect that to be significant M&A. They're probably smaller bolt-on acquisitions at this stage. We're actively looking at that.
We may do something in that space next year, maybe not, but there is no significant M&A that we are looking at as we sit here today in that space. I do not know, Sanjeev, if you want to add to that.
No, Ramoun. I do not think there is anything else missing in our portfolio. What we are trying to do at the moment with specialty mining chemicals, given the business is so successful and we understand chemistry, we were a chemical company or we are a chemical company, is look at offerings beyond gold. Replicate the same model, do digital blasting and extraction in other commodities. Copper is an obvious target. We are also looking at rare earths and critical minerals because there is also a lot of processing that goes into that. For processing, you need to handle hazardous, difficult chemistry, reagents, flocculants, frothers, extractors.
This is specialized chemistry. This is basically, I would say, a black box chemistry where you sell small ingredients at very high margin, very high pricing. It is all about value delivery in terms of optimizing extraction. That is the area that we really would like to grow into because we do not own the chemistry there. The chemistry is available in the market. We know who has it. We have been engaging with quite a few people. Whether we make a deal or not, time will tell. It has to be at the right value for us. If it is not, then we will continue with the capital management framework here. In digital, we do not need anything else. We are investing in AI, but it is all homegrown AI. We are developing our own agents.
We are developing our own AI tools to leverage our sensors, our data, our software, and the cloud that we have put into place to monetize more value out of that. That is more organic growth. I do not expect, unless something falls into our lap at the right valuation, that we will buy anything in digital.
Very clear. Thanks for the color.
Thank you. Our last question comes from
Lee Power from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, Sanjeev, James. Sanjeev, just on slide 10, where you chat to churn rates that have come down, is there something specific going on with the type of contracts up for renewal or something else going on around how you are approaching pricing or your competitors approaching pricing that might explain the change in churn rate?
Yeah.
The churn rate has improved, which is a positive that tells you that the churn rate basically means the percentage of businesses that we are losing, and that's come down, which is great. This tells you that our offerings are getting better. The business is getting stickier, and customers are seeing value. We are obviously winning new business with new customers. What is really exciting is we win a lot of business in digital at our competitors' blasting sites, which is a lot of fun, as you can imagine. We are also able to retain businesses and then expand businesses because digital business is fast-moving. We come up with a new offering every one of our six, eight, nine, ten weeks.
It is all about putting stuff together and then adapting the solution to your particular ore body or your particular mining method or your particular commodity and then coming up with a new solution. Churn rate going down is very, very positive. This means the business is getting stickier, and customers are loving what we are able to offer.
Yeah. I guess I was coming from the other side. Often, churn rate and price go somewhat in opposite directions. I was trying to work out if there is something else where maybe the rest of the industry has kind of started pushing price as well, and that is starting to show through in churn rates.
We use the same philosophy as we do with blasting. We are price leaders. We are the market leader in the digital space globally.
We are the one who sets pricing and benchmarks. We are not a price taker. We have not yet seen a reason to compete for share on pricing because our products are just superior and better.
That is a good sign. Sorry, just to go back to Brooke's question around blasting solutions, is your point that you have obviously got the medium-term targets. You are going to grow, but given the casual chart, you might be below that medium-term target you have set. Is that what I should take out of your answer to Brooke's question, or have I mistaken what I should be taking out of that?
I did not hear you very clearly because I lost you for a minute there. Would you repeat that and summarize it, the question? Yeah. Sorry.
I was asking just to follow up on Brooke's question around blasting solutions and the 2026 guide. There is obviously a lot of moving parts. You said there is going to be growth. I'm just trying to work out, do those moving parts end up that your growth rate will be positive and yet below the GDP plus EBIT growth target you have in a medium term, or is it going to be at or above that rate?
Look, we'll try and grow earnings as hard as possible. I'm just trying to remind everybody of the one-offs, which is the AUD 15 million carbon credit and the Carseland shut, right? Always keep that in account when you factor in earnings growth in blasting for 2026. Going forward, obviously, because these things will not recur in 2027 onwards, then we will go back to a more normal cadence.
Why am I calling out Carseland shutdown? Because this is as significant an event as we had at Kooragang Island in 2024, where the whole site was down for a very extended period of time. That is why I am calling that out specifically. Yeah, obviously, that will have more of an impact in 2026, and then it will wash out in 2027. Again, that is just something to keep in mind. Otherwise, we are committed to the forecast we have given you, which is GDP plus.
Yep. No, that makes sense. Excellent. Thank you. Appreciate your time.
Thank you for all the questions. That concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the conference back to Delphine.
Thank you all for joining us today. If there are further questions, please feel free to reach out to me. We look forward to meeting you over the next couple of weeks.
Thank you and have a good afternoon.