Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Sims Limited half-year 2025 results call. Today's presentation has been lodged with the ASX, along with the results release. It may contain forward-looking statements, including statements about financial conditions, results of operations, earnings outlook and prospects for Sims Limited. These forward-looking statements are subject to assumptions and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those experienced or implied by these forward-looking statements. Those risk factors can also be found on the company's website, www.simsltd.com.
As a reminder, Sims Limited is domiciled in Australia, and all references to currency are in Australian dollars unless otherwise noted. I'd now like to hand the call over to Mr. Stephen Mikkelsen, Group CEO and Managing Director of Sims Limited. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and welcome everyone to our call. Today we are here to present the half-year results for FI25. Presenting with me is Warrick Ranson, our CFO. Also on the call are Rob Thompson, our President, North American Metal, and John Glyde, our Managing Director, ANZ Metal. First up, I will run through our strategy and strategic priorities, market dynamics, an overview of the results, and operational highlights. I'm also going to spend some time detailing the internal and external factors providing positive momentum for our business regions and divisions. Warrick will then take us through our recently formalized capital management framework and then a detailed review of the financial results. At the end, I will return to talk about the outlook, after which we will have Q&A. I will turn straight to slide five, which looks at our strategy and strategic priorities.
At our FI24 results announcement, I presented a similar version of the graphic on the left-hand side of the slide. This is effectively our plan on a page. Our purpose has endured for several years now, and our core strategy is to repurpose and recycle. We deliver this through the five elements of our strategy as detailed in the graphic. However, you can't deliver everything at once. We've had to focus on the strategic priorities that give us the biggest bang for our buck. We've simplified Sims by, among other things, reducing layers and increasing spans of control to speed up decision-making. There's been an enormous focus on increasing margins and not being preoccupied, particularly in NAM, with marginal profit volumes. We've continued to focus on shortening the cash cycle to improve our cash generation. The UK sale has been the most significant contributor to optimizing our portfolio.
It has liberated management to focus on the U.S. and ANZ, where in many areas we have a good market position, and in those where we don't, we have a pathway to a good market position. There could be some further acquisition and disposal opportunities within regions to further optimize the portfolio. Maintaining or improving our market position will allow us to grow from a position of strength. On the buy side, we have been improving our supplier network to allow us to buy more unprocessed scrap at source. On the sale side, there has been a concerted effort to enhance our customer relationships, particularly domestic customers, and this has provided us with genuine domestic and export optionality to manage and capitalize on dynamic market conditions. Part of this relationship building has also been about ensuring we have consistent and high-quality differentiated products to suit different market segments.
The benefits of focusing on these strategic priorities are starting to show in our financials, but before we get to those, I would like to cover off market prices and safety, beginning on slide six. In a nutshell, ferrous prices were on average lower this half compared to the FI24 half, and non-ferrous prices were higher. This continues a trend we have seen over the last 18 or so months. Interestingly, we have seen a bit of recovery in ferrous scrap prices as we enter the second half of FI25, particularly in U.S. shred prices. Our belief is that this is being driven by the pending steel tariffs and also some restocking at the mills. It is unclear whether this upward trend will continue for the second half. Moving on to safety on slide seven.
I noted at the FI24 results that we had moved to managing safety through proactive leading indicators as opposed to lagging, because lagging indicators are simply an outcome. We've successfully improved our safety program by focusing on enhancing and standardizing control measures that have created a safer organization. You can see that our leading indicators shown on the left are consistently strong, which is the key driver behind the improvement trend over the last few years in the lagging indicators and the significant reduction of more serious injuries. Onto slide eight, which is a high-level summary of the financial results. The two highlighted numbers on the page are EBITDA and EBIT, both up substantially. I also want to highlight the 22% increase in trading margin despite flat sales volumes. This is a proof point that focusing on margins, not volumes, is driving better financial outcomes.
While the return measures on productive assets and investor capital are still unacceptably low, there is a definite improvement in line with profit performance. Turning to slide nine, while it is titled operational highlights, it is in fact both financial and operational highlights. Looking first at Sims Metal, excluding global trading operations, an 8.6 percentage point increase in unprocessed scrap helped drive an uplift in our shredder capacity utilization, and together these are good contributors to the 3.5 percentage point increase trading margin percentage. The trading margin percentage increase was particularly strong in NAM, which Warrick will highlight later in the financial discussion. It is also worth noting here that we have changed the structure of Sims Metal back to a more regional model.
While the functional model served its purpose at the time, the current market and Sims' position in it requires Rob Thompson to be responsible for all of NAM and John Glyde for all of ANZ. I am exceptionally pleased with SLS's performance. Strong repurposed units growth contributed to a nearly 21% increase in revenue and a 2.2 percentage point increase in the EBIT margin. Turning to slide 10 now, which drills a little deeper on NAM's operational highlights and what we have been doing to achieve the turnaround in results. Let's start with the top left-hand chart. This shows that we are responding to price signals between domestic and export markets. In July 2024, export prices were $20 per ton higher than domestic prices, and therefore we exported more.
In the current month of February, domestic prices exceeded export prices by $56 per ton, and we significantly lifted domestic sales to 65% of total sales. We've been working hard to develop our domestic channels in the U.S. to enable us to have genuine optionality. Moving to the top right chart, clearly our focus on buying unprocessed material is showing results. We've increased the unprocessed ferrous scrap as a percentage of total ferrous scrap from the mid-50s in the first half of FI24 to approaching 70% in this half. This increase has driven better utilization of our shredders, but also our MRPs, which capture the non-ferrous fraction, driving an increase in Zorba volumes. This is shown on the bottom right-hand chart, where Zorba sales volumes are up 31%. Finally, the bottom left-hand chart, a proof point showing our increased focus on margin.
Despite market conditions that have at best remained flat and depressed over the last 18 months, we have lifted our buy/sell spread significantly over consecutive halves. This increased spread has flowed through to EBIT, as shown in the quarterly NAM EBIT results in the chart to the right. The next few slides show the fundamentals driving NAM, ANZ, and SLS. Let's start with NAM on slide 11. The two charts show the increase in demand coming from EAF production. In particular, the chart on the left highlights the demand for scrap outpacing the supply through to around 2030 as the new EAFs come online. Within the detail, the issue is even more pronounced as it relates to shredded material, because it comprises approximately 45% of in-feed with only 30% being cut grades.
It is also worth noting that this analysis was undertaken before the announcements of the steel and aluminum tariffs. The impact of the tariffs may well add to a consumption line, which will add even further demand for scrap. As the demand for scrap increases, the price will also increase. So the question then becomes, are Sims and SA Recycling well positioned to benefit from this dynamic? The answer is yes, as can be seen on slide 12. The map on this slide shows the location of existing EAFs and EAFs under construction or proposed, where NAM and SAR have the capability to supply those EAFs. As you can see, we are well positioned to benefit from the increased demand for obsolete scrap in the U.S., and as I said a moment ago, tariffs will only turbocharge this growth. I want to move to ANZ now on slide 13.
In many ways, we see ANZ following the path of the USA. There are currently five EAFs being proposed, one in Western Australia, three in Queensland, and one in New Zealand. It is uncertain whether all will be constructed, but it is easy to imagine that two will be built in addition to BlueScope's Glenbrook site. We are very well positioned to meet this increased demand, as the map on this slide shows. Clearly, this will change the dynamics in ANZ, and it's quite feasible that at times in the future, ANZ will materially consume all its domestically produced ferrous scrap, and there may even be a requirement to import. Our yet-to-be-developed Pinkenba site, with its existing deep-sea dock, will play a vital role in the ferrous scrap and steel markets in the coming years. The non-ferrous business in ANZ is strong, producing over AUD 400 million in revenue and growing.
In line with our metal out-of-waste strategy, we are investing in a fines plant in Australia to extract more non-ferrous from our waste stream, further adding to revenue and margin. The Australian market is a complex and challenging one to navigate. Our view is that, as is happening in the U.S., there will be a consolidation of the market, and as in the U.S., we are one of the logical consolidators. Moving from our metal businesses to SLS on slide 14. The magnitude of the numbers associated with data centers were quite extraordinary, even before the advent of AI. Throw AI into the mix and the growing desire to keep data within country and therefore onshore data centers, it is obvious that the USA is going to continue to be the growth engine. The rationale for repurposing data centers is an economic one.
The parts are lower cost, available within country, enable frequent upgrades, and have proven to be highly reliable. On top of all these economic benefits, the carbon footprint of a repurposed unit is tiny compared to that of a new one. SLS has benefited from all this growth, as you can see on slide 15, and it is well positioned to capture further growth. Following the sale of SLS's European compliance business in 2019, the EBIT from the remaining business was AUD 2.9 million in FI20.
We are currently expecting around AUD 30 million EBIT for FI25, a 60% compound growth rate since FI20, even higher than the compounding 40% growth in repurposed units over the same period. SLS's proven growth strategy, as set out in the right-hand box, is set to deliver further growth in the coming years. I'll turn over to Warrick now to take us through the financials in some detail.
Many thanks, Stephen, and good morning, everyone. Before I review some of the detail behind the results, I actually want to take the opportunity to talk about our revised capital management framework and how it feeds into the basis of our capital allocation going forward. It's an area we indicated our full-year briefing that we were working on and an important strategic element in how we continue to strengthen the business, advance appropriate growth opportunities, and ensure we reward shareholders along the way.
We clearly operate in a market that carries an inherent level of volatility and can swing rapidly in either direction from a range of influences outside of our control. As a business that operates on a very light margin, we need to remain dynamically responsive to those inevitable cycles. We're not in an industry that has the benefit of absorbing downward market changes into its existing earnings base for the medium to longer term and wait for recovery. Having a strong balance sheet and remaining conservative in our debt profile are critical elements to how we operate and think about our capital.
We also need to remain agile and responsive to value opportunities as they arise, and so structuring our facilities around varying levels of working capital, maintaining an appropriate liquidity buffer, and recycling existing capital where we aren't generating the returns we need are all part of our considerations within this framework. Of course, our overarching business strategy is connected to our purpose and drives the assets in which we choose to invest.
Trading margin, EBITDA performance, and returns against direct capital employed are our key measures of performance, but these also require a commitment to appropriate levels of maintenance capital as an initial capital allocation priority. We also need to maintain a strong balance sheet at the same time. We've reviewed and established two key target measures based on both our overall risk profile acceptance, which we set at less than 15% for gearing, and an operating leverage rate of 0.5 times underlying EBITDA, which excludes finance lease commitments and supports the management of our day-to-day working capital levels.
These are target ratios, and we will no doubt step outside one or both of them from time to time, particularly to capitalize on growth opportunities. But those opportunities also need to be able to bring us back in line with those levels over an appropriate timeframe. Those considerations and allocations result in an available pre-growth free cash flow outcome. Our framework subsequently prioritizes an ordinary dividend allocation to shareholders before considering growth or other capital returns. G rowth opportunities need to link back to strategy so that all elements of the framework work together to create value.
Moving on to slide 18, and as part of our review of the framework, we've looked to provide additional clarity over our dividend policy going forward. Of course, like most companies, we have a diversified shareholder base, with each shareholder no doubt having their own preference as to the basis of how it might receive returns.
We clearly can't address individual needs, but we do want shareholders to receive returns along the way, and we believe an initial allocation from pre-growth free cash flow, reflective of the performance of the business and in the context of the market, and provided we have maintained balance sheet strength, is an appropriate priority that enables investors to then execute against their own objectives. As the business continues to perform in the U.S., our level of available franking credits will inevitably be constrained against total earnings. However, the sale of LMS last year has provided a significant top-up in our franking balance for the current time.
Going forward, the board aims to provide shareholders with a partial return through an ordinary dividend of between 25%- 35% of the company's pre-growth free cash flow, and has subsequently determined to pay an ordinary interim dividend of AUD 0.10 per share for the current financial year in accordance with the revised policy. In line with the framework, strengthening our balance sheet through an improved operating performance and recycling capital back into the business through our sale of both UK Metal and our residual interest in the Closed Loop investment has helped bring our performance back in line with those success measures I've just talked about.
However, we recognize that we still have some way to go in this area, and there are a number of other initiatives that we're currently working through to further support our position. One of those areas is our land base. While our NTA per share has improved period on period, along with our capital returns, we still have some assets that won't get us there and provide us with the opportunity to further optimize our investment base. In the course of reviewing our portfolio, we've been able to assess an indicative as-is valuation of our land over the recorded book value of some AUD 1.5 billion.
Clearly, we're not looking to physically bank that, as we believe the underlying fundamentals of the business and the market opportunities in front of us are immense, but it does indicate the fundamental foundations that exist in support of the business. Okay, back to our performance now for the half year and slide 20. That we experienced in the latter part of the last financial year through an improved operating performance, particularly in North America, continued through the first half of this financial year.
Underlying EBIT for the total metal business increased AUD 34 million over the comparative period, and the total group performance increased by AUD 47 million, with further growth in volumes at SLS and reduced costs across the functions. Our focus on regaining margin in North America and market conditions more broadly saw a marginal reduction in overall volumes period on period, although we added around 180,000 tons to our total sales volume from the Baltimore acquisition, which occurred towards the end of calendar year 2023. A decline in statutory earnings reflected the inclusion of the LMS sale in the comparative period results.
Specifically on the total metal business, as noted, our overall volumes remained relatively flat but reflected the concerted effort to improve margins in NAM through a greater intake of unprocessed material and to more broadly remain agile and responsive across the business to the markets in which we operate, switching between domestic and export opportunities in line with market dynamics as appropriate. This was achieved against the headwinds of some very challenging market conditions and a significant falloff in steel prices globally.
We've been able to offset some of those challenges with an improved non-ferrous result, given higher pricing in that market and a significant level of cost-out reductions across the business. Normalizing for Baltimore, which added $28 million to our cost base in NAM, and removing the impact of an $18 million cost credit we previously recorded from charging customers for reimbursing environmental processing levies, so our overall cost base remained relatively flat despite increases in labor costs across the board and higher waste disposal levies in Australia, which are now accounting for about 12% of our spend here.
I'll come back and talk further about our cost reduction efforts shortly. On slide 22, SLS continued to perform extremely well and with significant growth in the number of repurposed units we are now managing, has been able to reflect the scalability of its operating model and the returns it is able to independently generate from its revenue uplift. Stephen has already touched on the key drivers of the market in which it operates, and I'm sure we're all experiencing that impact ourselves.
I won't dwell on the result other than to note this business today sits at around 20% of our underlying result, perhaps supporting greater attributable value recognition within the company's total portfolio. On slide 23, touching briefly on corporate and central costs, again, some great work here across the business on cost-out efforts. A couple of things to note here. Firstly, we're in the process of developing new yard management software with support from our existing system coming to an end, and this will contribute to some fluctuation in future costs as we progress its development.
Then secondly, corporate costs include our provisioning for full-year incentive payments for the total business against its earnings performance, which has obviously improved period on period. We had marginally higher costs for Sims Resource Renewal relating to IP commercialization activities. However, these costs won't continue beyond the current financial year. Onto our cost-out program more specifically, and we continue to look for opportunities to simplify and delayer the organization, reducing our operational and central costs and further rationalizing the existing operating portfolio by potentially exiting some of our smaller non-performing areas.
We delivered AUD 64 million in annualized savings last year, for which we're experiencing the benefits in our current cost base and are targeting another circa AUD 35 million in the current financial year. Capturing the full benefit remains dependent on the timing of certain changes and restructuring activities, but we're comfortable in our ability to fully capture those reductions over the next 12 months. I would note that while we have identified additional opportunities going forward and will continue to focus as a leadership team in this area, we are beginning to level out somewhat.
As an example, we've just seen an 80% increase in electricity costs in our New Zealand operations. We're also a relatively labor-intensive business, with labor costs forming some 40% of our overall operating cost exposure. We have some work to go on optimizing our portfolio composition, and we'll need to see what we can deliver on that. But our next major opportunity remains around volume growth at margin to further spread the fixed cost base. That's becoming our focus area. That takes me on to the cost waterfall slide, and you can see the impact of annual increases in people costs, even with our recent rounds of restructuring.
Pleasingly, other cost areas have remained relatively flat despite ongoing inflationary factors, and we've picked up the benefit of some timing variations in the half. Moving on to slide 26, and I thought it worthwhile touching briefly on the sale of the UK Metal business and how that flows through to the net profit result and balance sheet. As previously indicated, our approach with this business has been to maximize cash conversion throughout the sale process.
This has included a significant element of working capital conversion, whereby rather than place that expectation on the purchaser, we were able to work with them and ensure the residual working capital of the business at completion met their requests as a smaller operator. We've subsequently converted agreed inventory and receivable amounts to cash, broadly in line with the stated asset values, and received the first installment of the capital component of the sale as scheduled.
From an accounting perspective, however, we've also had to account for the foreign currency translation reserve, to which we've previously booked the cumulative effect of exchange rate changes on consolidation. Obviously, when we acquired the full business there in 1998, the exchange rate was in a much different position at around 38 pence. Together with transaction costs, that's resulted in us booking a small capital loss on asset sale despite a significant gain on cash, and then finally for me, our overall cash movements for the half. I've talked about most of these already.
Just to note, net operating cash, excluding UK working capital conversion, does also include our residual payment of tax in relation to the gain on sale for LMS, so somewhat understating a strong and much improved operating cash flow performance. As for prior years, we would expect sustaining capital to be marginally higher in the second half and broadly in line with the prior year. Back to you, Stephen.
Thank you, Warrick. Before I go to the outlook slide, I want to run through the key themes for this half year on slide 29. We've turned NAM around from its loss-making position a year ago by focusing on the basics of buying more unprocessed volumes at source and having the optionality to sell those volumes domestically or internationally. ANZ has shown resilience in the face of headwinds, and it is well positioned for the medium-term upside we see coming. SLS is delivering really well, and it operates in a strong growth market.
We've achieved good cost reductions over the last 18 months, and this positions us well to spread fixed costs over larger volumes as the industry consolidates. U.S. policy shifts, particularly those policies that favor U.S. steel production, have the potential to provide an overall positive financial outcome for Sims. Our capital management framework has evolved, and it provides the right balance between flexibility and discipline, which will deliver value to shareholders. On slide 30, I want to discuss the outlook as well as the macro trends we believe will impact us. We have seen significantly different markets depending on where you are in the world over the last 12 months. For example, the announcement of the steel and aluminum tariffs in the U.S. has already changed that market by lifting steel and scrap prices.
Regional differences, probably both positive and negative, will continue. It is hard to see China cutting steel production in the short term and thereby lowering exports. This will continue to dampen global scrap prices and steel prices. Non-ferrous volumes and prices have been robust, and we expect this to continue. On balance, we see supply and demand in the second half being similar to the first half, despite the slow January and February in the U.S., most due to seasonality and extremely cold and wet conditions that we haven't experienced for years.
The hyperscaler data center market is set to continue its strong growth in the short and long term. Broader inflationary pressures have eased. We still have pockets of high inflation, such as our landfill fees in Australia. The cost initiatives we have put in place should enable us to mitigate increasing costs to hold them flat with the first half. Our assessment is that overall, the tariffs will benefit the U.S. and challenge ANZ, and therefore, in aggregate, the impact should be positive, given our larger U.S. business with North American Metal and SA Recycling. What is less certain is the timing of any positive impact, particularly whether we will see it feed into our F25 results.
Looking at the macro trends, as you would expect, they haven't changed, with one exception. We have added in our expectation that the world will become more nationalized, or at least regionalized. This will ultimately create opportunities for our metal business, with our optionality to sell domestically or internationally in both the USA and ANZ. SLS is also well positioned to benefit from USA's desire to keep data in-country. Finally, thanks to the whole Sims team, your efforts have repositioned the business over the last 12 months to be much more resilient to changing market dynamics.
I know I've said it before, but to go through this change while maintaining our safety culture and delivering strong outcomes is impressive. Back to you, Operator.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you would like to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question today comes from Daniel Kang from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everyone. Great to see that North America managed to swing toward the higher-priced domestic market from exports. Just wondering if underlying EBIT and margins have matched that redirection towards domestic sales in the three-Q period thus far. This is a follow-up on the broader group. Can you comment on the three-Q metals profit trend from one-Q and two-Q?
Hi, Daniel. Let me go first. I won't be able to give you specific forecasts for this quarter, but what I can say, and Rob, feel free to add, Rob's on the line with us. What I can say is exactly the same focus that drove the improvements in the first two quarters as we're going into the third quarter. I would expect to see no deterioration in our trading margin percentage. We're still very focused on that. Same with EBIT. We're keeping a strong focus on costs, so I wouldn't expect to see a deterioration in that.
The only thing I would say in absolute terms is, as I said, January and February. I know it didn't get reported much over here because we've been focused on other things in the U.S., but it's just been extraordinarily cold, wet, right throughout the country. That's just timing, though. T he scrap's still there, but it has been a slower start as a result of that weather. Rob, anything you'd like to add?
Substantially, no, Stephen. I think you've hit it on the head. January-February months have been difficult, as Stephen said, with weather. It's just not a collection of scrap. It's also operating. The southern United States, which is typically more moderated and mild weather, have been under ice and snow, which is very unusual.
Just getting people to work to make steel aluminum, let alone collect scrap, has been very difficult the first 60 days of the new calendar year. But generally speaking, as Stephen said, our focus is still very largely on and very obsessed with trading margin.
Got it. Thanks, Stephen and Rob. J ust in terms of the property portfolio, can you just provide some color on the location of the properties? Are they surplus to your current needs? And the potential cost or remediation liabilities that will be required to realize the as-is market valuations?
Yeah, it's Warrick here, Dan. The first thing I'd say is it's not surplus property. It's just the property. It's just the market value on an as-is basis of the properties that we have. It's really just to get a better understanding of what options we have there. W e've still got a fair piece of work to do in terms of opportunities, and we'll come back to the market with those as we work through them. But they're right through, obviously, all our properties in North America, which is probably the largest part of our portfolio now, and ANZ, so quite broad.
Thanks for that. I'll pass it on.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Lee Power from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, Stephen. Hi, Warrick and team. Stephen, maybe if I just follow on from Dan just around that run rate. So I think originally you were saying 1Q was going to be 55 million EBIT from metals. That implies a second quarter of 69. It looks like maybe NAM came in a little bit below what you're originally talking to in the first quarter. So do you want to just give us an idea of what you actually did in the first quarter, just so we can get a better sense of at least what you did into the second quarter? Then any additional color around, is that an appropriate run rate where we sit now?
Yeah, sure. O ne of the good things is we have actually disclosed on slide 10, we've actually disclosed the quarter split in NAM. So NAM ended up, I think we originally said AUD 29 million off the top of my head. It ended up at AUD 24.5 million, and then the second quarter was AUD 22.2 million. NAM was probably the biggest swing. ANZ came in pretty much as we thought, and SAR was probably a little bit less and flicked more to that second quarter as well.
I think by the time we got to the half, look, overall, it was exactly where we thought it would be, a little bit of split difference. W hat I would say, NAM is probably the biggest swing at the moment. NAM's lifted its performance up to that mid-20s per quarter for the first half. L ooking forward, one of the things, and look, it's a little bit, quarters with us is very, very hard because, for instance, right now we're seeing this weather thing. O ur third quarter, by definition, won't be as good because we just haven't been able to collect as much scrap or the mills haven't been running as much. T hat's timing. That'll pick up by the time we get into March, April, May, and June. So I'm not worried about that.
That's just a swings and roundabouts of us. W hat we're saying in the outlook is we're currently seeing supply-demand for the full six months, both periods. We're seeing it similar. W e're seeing all things being equal. We're seeing a similar second half to first half. With the caveat on that, I think you've got to give us some leeway here. It's just hard to know the final impact of the tariffs and when the timing of that is going to happen, when they're actually going to impact the market. That's, I think, something we're all grappling with.
Yeah. Why do you think? T hat's great color. Thank you for that. I f I back out Baltimore scrap out of your NAM volumes, it looks like they were maybe down 10% year- on- year. I know end markets aren't amazing. You've obviously called out weather in the first bit. Look, why wouldn't we expect more volume growth through the on a half-on-half basis? I know, obviously, it's been a tough start to the year, but the step down when you back out NAM still seems acceptable.
Yeah, but that's a fair question, and our answer is it's deliberate. That is we have deliberately not taken volumes where we don't think there's margin. W e were doing, in prior periods, we were doing some dealer volumes, which are quite large volumes, which we just weren't making sufficient margin on. And I think this is quite a good proof point. We've deliberately focused on getting trading margin back into the business. I f that means less volumes for now, that's fine.
The overall impact of that, getting the margin balance with the volume, is we've delivered a much higher result. So I don't plan on us changing that strategy into the second half, again, all things being equal and assuming that it all, the weather sorts itself out and all of that happens. What I think it gets us ready for is the consolidation of the industry, which I think is going to happen over the coming years. W e've got the margin in the business. We've got our costs down, and we're nicely positioned for it. But we will definitely not be chasing volumes if they are marginless volumes.
Okay. Yep, that makes sense. Thanks for that. And then maybe a final one, whether you or Rob has any insight. You've obviously talked about tariffs, and we can read about steel and aluminum, but scrap seems to be excluded from the direct tariff piece. Obviously, there's some influence from what's happening with steel and aluminum. Are you seeing any other players respond when you think about global scrap flows? Because if I look at the imports into the U.S., it looks like they've jumped in the last quarter.
I just don't know if there's something else going on or whether the fact that scrap's excluded, if that makes a difference to what's driving that.
So, Rob, I'll let you answer that. You're live on the ground in the U.S. at the moment, and I'm looking forward to seeing you this weekend when I'm back up there. But maybe you can answer that question for Lee.
Yeah. I think, Lee, if you're asking or I'm sorry, I think it's Dan, is it?
No, Lee.
I'm sorry, from UBS. If you're asking, do we feel there'll be a tariff on scrap, there's no indication of that at this point in time. Typically, imports into the U.S. do happen this time of the year. It's a buying strategy from the domestic consumers. Again, just weather-related, it's a bit of a softening in the market, if you will, for the poor weather that comes. They build up inventories for the scrap that isn't being generated. It's usually very selective grades. It's either imported scrap substitutes, DRI pig iron from Ukraine or Brazil, or it's prompt industrial prime scrap from the European Union. There's a bit of a price market arbitrage opportunity right now for imports to come into the United States at this point.
Okay. Thanks. Really appreciate the color. I'll leave it there. Thank you.
Thanks, Lee.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Peter Stein from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi, Stephen and Warrick. Thanks very much. Perhaps on a similar line, but I'm just thinking about your depiction on page 12 of your locations and SARs. Funny, I can't help but think what it would have looked like if the central region's locations were shut businesses a number of years ago. But beside the point, I was just curious how you are thinking about your positioning in this domestic context from a northeast location with your own operations, logistics complexities, how you coordinate with SAR customer-wise.
Then, to some of the conversation we've been having around the improvements you've been bringing, the need for quality scrap, are you seeing a significant improvement in your value opportunity coming from unprocessed all the way through to a higher grade? What is your perspective of that over the next few years as scrap markets tighten up further with more EAF capacity in that broader region?
Okay. Thanks, Peter. Good to talk. I will make an overall comment, and again, then Rob, I'll get you to maybe provide some more detail. So the first comment I'd make is that every facility that we've listed and shown on that, whether it be a green SAR facility or a blue Sims facility, has the capability to deliver to those mills. W e just haven't scattered our facilities, every facility we've got, and said that that can do it.
I acknowledge I can't turn back time, but we did sell a few years ago those some there in the Midwest. But between barging on the river systems, the rail access that we've now created, and trucking, we have the ability to deliver and even coastal barging. So, feeling confident about that. My overall comment on the domestic quality of scrap, I think you can see in the extra Zorba that we've produced out of NAM that it's pretty high-quality scrap that we're buying, and it's producing not only extra margin in the ferrous, but it's producing margin and Zorba as well. Those are my overall comments. But again, Rob, I'll hand over to you for some more color if you want to add it.
Sure. Quickly, yeah, I'll mention the SAR coordination. It's very much in line. We meet regularly on a daily basis in terms of collection, but also sales coordination and logistics opportunities. Logistics is an interesting one, and as Stephen said, yes, we've put a lot of time and effort into that over the last 12-18 months. In particular, barging, we're very good at river systems, and also, as Stephen said, the coastal region, so barges are very advantageous for the steel mills.
If you look at all the new installations, the majority of the larger steel installations are on the Mississippi River system or at least have access to a coastal region, the Gulf or the Atlantic Ocean, in particular on the eastern seaboard. Rail cars is something else we've done a very good job in terms of getting more capacity, but also having the steel mills who own their own rail cars coordinate with us.
On the quality piece, very interesting question, and this is precisely very in line with our fascination with unprocessed scrap. If you look at the demand for EAFs and the type of steel that these EAFs are trying to make, it's become very apparent that there's not going to be a lot more prompt industrial, low-residual, high-quality scrap being produced. In other words, there's not a lot more manufacturing that's been announced, but there's been a lot of it, or there's been a very significant swing in the way steel will be produced.
That's with electric arc furnaces. Electric arc furnaces, along with blast furnaces, all can use shredded steel scrap. Various qualities of shredded steel scrap exist. We run very high-tech, high-powered, significantly innovated shredders with ferrous downstreams and also, Stephen said, with non-ferrous capture downstreams as well. We call them MRPs. W e are in a very good position, have been growing the unprocessed scrap, chasing the market demand that's coming into the domestic market here in the United States, but also around the world. W e're also, at this point in time, making certain new products for certain mills on a metallurgical basis as per their needs.
Thanks, Rob. Thanks. That was good color. Appreciate it, Steve. And just a very small detailed question. On ANZ, you spoke about timing effects on some shipments. Just wanted to get some detail there so that we can just understand the run rates a little better in ANZ.
I'm sorry, Peter. I can't remember off the top of my head, but. I can. You can, Rob.
Thanks for asking. Yeah. So here in the revenue, we picked up some additional revenue just in terms of the swingover from FY24. T he timing there. T here's probably around about three or four million sitting in our EBIT line around that swing. But that's a period-on-period swing. I t's not to say we wouldn't be repeating that.
Yeah. Sure. Thanks, Warrick. Appreciate it. I'll stop there. Thanks, Gents.
Thanks, Peter. Thank you. Your next question comes from Owen Birrell from RBC. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Just a couple of questions for me. Firstly, on SAR, pretty opaque from our perspective in terms of being able to, get a read on what's happening within their business. I'm just wondering if you can provide us any further color on what they're seeing in terms of current trading and whether they're sitting on any major working capital positions at the end of the period.
Just on their trading position, how they're going, they're going perfectly fine. I'm just looking up where we laid out where we put SAR on slide 21. L ike the rest of the industry, EBIT's down a little bit as a result of it's been a tough 18 months or a tough 12 months or so. But not seeing anything in SAR to cause us alarm. It's still nicely exposed to the domestic market. It has good export optionality out of both its west and the east coast.
I would summarize it as it's been pretty much business as usual. Working capital buildup? No we sit on the board of SA Recycling and obviously receive full detail of their monthly results. No. There's nothing happening there of anything unusual. Oh, and that's probably the best way to describe it.
Okay.
Just a second question for me. Just looking at the North American aluminum markets. This was a big focus previously in terms of things like AluSource and so forth. Just wanted to give us an update on the strategy there and how that's been progressing.
Yeah. I'll give you an overall, and then I'll get Rob again on the detail. So AluSource continues to be an important business for us. It's been a tough time on that business, but I think we're starting to see the benefits of what we've been putting in place. And NEMT was much more of a focus on copper, so probably not me to talk too much about that one. But Rob, maybe your thoughts on the aluminum business there, what we've been doing at AluSource, and how it's all fitting into our portfolio.
AluSource, the last six months to eight months, has been a refocus on cost outs, improvement in reliability, and reorganizing really under our new management structure here. Biggest start, side of our cost side there with AluSource, just like the rest of our NAM businesses, the buy side. W e've really been focusing on what we buy into our facilities for our production equipment with the mindset of what our customers need. A luminum market year- over- year from a production point of view is down slightly. We're optimistic on the go forward. We just had Aluminum Dynamics, which is a company owned by Steel Dynamics, start up this past 30-45 days ago. T hat demand is welcomed. It's flat sheet aluminum for the beverage can industry.
So seeing that pop up as a customer for us, Novelis and Constellium and the rest of the other new installations are still underway, still breaking ground and installing equipment. Q uite bullish on the aluminum market in the short to medium term. Again, just going through a bit of a slowdown at the end of 2024 calendar year.
Just in terms of, from a tariffs perspective, are your assets largely domiciled in the US domestic side of the Canadian border? Yes. They're all in the US. What does that present upside for you?
Yes. In the aluminum sector, we would think so. There is a bit of a study going on right now because the USMCA is so intertwined and the supply chains have been built over two decades, how quickly things will get unwound because of other companies that have assets on both sides of the border, if not all three, with Mexico included. All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks, John.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Paul Young from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Morning, Sir. Morning, Warrick, Rob, and John. First question's on the North American margins. I know they're 21%, and they increased, I think, 3% or thereabouts, but they have been higher. I think they were 23% a couple of years ago. I know you've done a lot of things to improve that margin, Stephen, with accessing more unprocessed ferrous scrap, and you've gone to the regional model, etc. What more can you do to improve margins, or is it now more about volumes and price?
I think there's still more that we can do to improve margin. This is a journey. Do you ever get to the end of the journey? I'm not sure. You're right. We were up at 23% three or four years ago. ANZ's sitting this year at close to 26%, and you've got SAR at a bit above 29%. I think our challenge in North America is to complete the story. We've still got more unprocessed scrap that we can buy. We've still got more processing that we can do. There's still more zorba to be produced from it. I don't think it's finished, is what I'm saying. I'll throw over to Rob as well. But there's definitely more actions that we can do.
We set out on this journey. I remember it was this time last year, and we said that we thought the domestic export optionality would take us nine months to 12 months to put in place. W e thought the whole growing the margin unprocessed scrap was at least a two-year journey. W e're one year into it, and I think there's more for us to do. Rob, your thoughts on that?
Yeah. Quickly, not to pile on, I think what Stephen said is accurate. We haven't had a market at all to support us. This has all been roll up your sleeves and try things a lot differently and a lot of details in the middle of that, Paul. So yeah, there's more to come, and this was all done without any market support. So we're pretty optimistic we can do better. You've got it.
Then just maybe second to that, just competition for scrap in general. I t was a pretty tough first half last year, calendar year. Second half, things look like they improved. We're seeing, obviously, a seasonally weak period at the moment in January and February. A ny commentary around just availability of scrap and competition for scrap?
Rob?
This quarter is going to be extremely difficult. Mill operating rates are going to suffer at the same time. I t's fighting over something that nobody wants is a silly game. A s the sun comes out, as the ground dries up, and as work starts getting done with construction and projects, we expect to see scrap seasonally adjust again upwards as it normally will.
The other piece too, I think here, Paul, is that the tariffs are starting to create some speculation on the steel industry side as well as the aluminum side. W e're starting to see order books of our customers improve, and they're starting to think about how they're going to ramp up their demand. I mproved pricing will also help improve the supply side.
The only last thing I'd add is that specificall we operate in competitive markets, Paul. Scrap is competitive, and I don't think we particularly see an easing of the competitive tensions or the competitive buying of scrap over the second half.
Yep. Thanks, Rob. Thanks, Stephen. Just a quick one, Warrick, on capital allocation and actually capital management. Really good to see the switch to a percentage of free cash flow for the dividend. I think that's the right thing for the business. Can I just ask about the Simplify Sims model, and great to see the U.K. sale, and that was a fantastic outcome for Sims. I'm just curious around how you look at further divestments, particularly in the U.S., if there's any opportunities there. But also, Warrick, anything coming on SLS? Really good trajectory on growth at SLS. But I maybe just ask you, does this belong in Sims ultimately in the long run?
I t's growing its EBIT, and you've got a high-growth business now, which is sitting within a very much a cyclical business or company, I should say, so is there any discussion internally around potentially monetizing SLS, and just any comments you can make around potential of U.S. divestments as well. Thanks.
I think on the first question about US divestments, that is the next step actually in our in our cost-out program. We're really stress testing our portfolio and where we operate. I think there are a couple of areas where we, rather than continue to operate, we might be making a small return there, but it would actually be better to strengthen our position elsewhere. T hat piece of work is something that we're currently just really starting to get into around the overall portfolio. T hat is something that's on the list, Paul. In terms of SLS, we get asked that question all the time.
I think SLS still has a lot of opportunity in front of it. I think one of the things we want to make sure is that we're capturing that full value. Ultimately, will it sit better in or outside of Sims? I think that's still an open question for us. Yeah. I agree with that, Warrick. What I would add is I 100% agree. There's lots of opportunity in SLS, and it's delivering on it now. If someone's willing to pay us the present value of those future opportunities, we're very we're quite an unemotional company like that.
If that would be fine, and if we got that upfront, absolutely. But there is a lot of opportunity, and SLS is really well positioned. Unless someone was willing to pay us on a risk-adjusted basis for that opportunity, we'll continue to grow it. But I do acknowledge the comment that it's harder to value a high-growth business like that amongst a more cyclical entity i n a sense, it's quite a good problem to have.
Yep. Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ramoun Lazar from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi, Stephen. Hi, Warrick. Just a couple of questions. Just on your Outlook slide, just trying to get my head around that slide a bit more. I'm just looking at consensus expectations for the full year. There seems to be a reasonable skew to the second half, about a 60/40 skew to the second half. Just taking your comments, though, around margins holding in NAM into the third quarter, but volumes weaker. Should we expect the NAM results in the second half to be lower than the first half, just on those volume comments?
Then also just your comments around Australia as well, if you can elaborate on your expectations there into the second half.
Let me deal quickly with NAM, and then I might get John in the room with us. I might get John to have a chat about ANZ. No, we're not expecting a lower second half. W hat we're expecting is to be skewed to the fourth quarter. So the third quarter, yeah, the weather's got us. Got the whole market. But that scrap boom still to come out, and we expect that to happen in the fourth quarter, and there's no reason why that shouldn't happen. T hen my overall comment on trying to forecast a year-end position for us, we still haven't bought or sold any scrap in April, May, or June.
It's always tricky to forecast for us those specific numbers, which is why we never give that s range guidance. But Ramoun's right. Specifically asked your question, no, right now that we've got no reason to expect that NAM second half would not be at least as good as its first half.
Gotcha. And just Australia as well, just on ANZ, your comments about ongoing.
Yeah. Thanks, Ramoun. Look, Australia, certainly you're still seeing the challenges that we talked about 12 months ago with respect to supply tightness. Age of vehicles, consumer spend, durable goods, all those things are still challenged. So the supply of scrap still remains tight. January is normally a slow period with Christmas closures, New Year's closures. So January hasn't been a great start in terms of intake volumes. But I've got to say in early February, our volumes have been better.
As Stephen alluded to, our non-ferrous business has been particularly strong in the first half and still looks strong going into the future. Ferrous has been challenged. Zorba prices have been strong. And quite frankly, our volumes of zorba have been strong. And we still have lots of capacity in our shredders. So all up, I don't see a lot of change in the overall picture.
Okay. Great. Stephen, just your comments around NAM margins and just following on from Paul's question on where they could potentially get to. I'm just trying to understand, can you hold those margins, you think, in an environment where you're trying to grow the overall volume base in North America? Or does there have to be some give and take to grow those volumes in NAM and increase that shredder utilization over time?
Two comments on that. Significant growth will come from acquisition. There's no way that we can grow the business organically to that level and not disrupt the market, and we want to be very careful about not disrupting the market, so any significant growth in volumes will come from opportunistic acquisitions where we don't change the market structure. I think that's important to note. The other comment I would make is we can, yes, we can continue to grow those margins, but it all boils down at extremes. If we went back to the 2022-type market where we see scrap prices way up at the $600-$700 mark, we would sacrifice margin percentage then because in absolute terms, we'd be making a lot more money. Now, our margin per ton would still be growing.
Within the normal bounds, , I don't see why with good effort we can't get NAM back up to the 23% margin percentage it used to be. I'm not guaranteeing that, but we've got in place a plan, and we're working it through.
Okay. All right. Good one. Thanks. I'll leave it there.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Andrew Scott from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. Stephen, if I could just start by looking at the corporate line, if I look back to five years or so, FY20, we were annualizing about AUD 50 million. Today's level, it's flat on last year, but we're annualizing close to AUD 130. T hat's despite simplifying the portfolio over that period.
Can I just ask you, how do you feel about corporate costs of that level for a business of the size that you are now? J ust related to that, do you expect any incremental business benefits with the further simplification as you've come out of the UK?
I'll pop out an overall comment, and then I'll let Warrick dive in on the detail. One of the things I would say is that in amongst our corporate costs, there's a mixture of what I call genuine corporate costs and those costs that we have centralized. Then in amongst that, over that period of time, we've had this change in accounting policy where you have to expense all your IT development. And we've been doing a lot of IT development over this period that we didn't used to do.
When we did do it, it was capitalized and amortized over a significant period of time. There's a bit of that going on. Am I happy with it? No. We're still working on it. Warrick has been leading that charge. Maybe Warrick, some detail from you as well.
Yeah. I think there's a few factors in terms of corporate costs. We intentionally don't call them corporate costs anymore because they're central costs. When we move to our functional model setup, we capture costs out of the business around HS&E, legal, IT, etc., that get grouped in there together. Our actual corporate overheads, I suppose, are around about AUD 30 million for the half. I think, as Stephen said, there's still opportunity there.
But one of the things that we've said is that we also, as a listed entity, it becomes quite hard to take too much out of those in terms of some of the a lot of the things that we are required to do in terms of our governance structures, etc. So really, the key for me is about our growth profile going forward. I think the other thing is when you go back a little bit in history and you're trying to compare, you've got to remember that Sims Municipal Recycling, that residual interest that we sold in Closed Loop, sat in that bucket as well. So we had income offsets from SMR sitting in our corporate cost structure. So it's not apples with apples when you're looking at it.
That's clear and probably all fair. Thank you. Secondly, can you just help me understand the removal of the environmental levy for North America? I might be wrong, but I can't imagine those costs have gone away. Is that just a reflection of the competitive environment, or is there something else I'm missing there.
We set up an on-charge to customers, which meant that we were basically giving them less in terms of their scrap purchases. And we were offsetting and picking that up as a credit in our cost base. T hen we realized that actually we were pricing ourselves out of the market effectively. i t's really just a switch between costs and trading margin.
Am I right in saying, John or Rob, I think Rob is in too. We don't have any environmental levy at all now. We have removed that entirely. Yeah. I'm getting nods. Y es, we have entirely removed the levy. T hat has had an impact on the cost line where those credits are no longer there. Good point, John. We still have an environmental levy in Australia. But in the U.S., it didn't really catch on. Our competitors didn't follow.
Okay. Understood. Stephen, big picture, this time you've given us ROIC, so thank you for that. But if we look at it, it's obviously a fair way shy of what we'd maybe consider an appropriate return. What's your confidence if we look at the business and the earnings history? What's your confidence that you can deliver an appropriate return with the business as it sits now on a through-the-cycle basis?
We're taking that from two angles. There's obviously the numerator and the denominator. E verything that we're doing on trying to date, having had some success in turning the business around, particularly NAM, will drive up our return on invested capital. Market conditions are still tough, and I don't think that we're anywhere near what we would call the mid-cycle. W e would expect that. T hen I think the other thing that Warrick has really focused on is our invested capital and making sure, as Warrick said, are our assets returning, the invested capital?
The answer is right now is a lot of them no. But then the next question is, do we think they have the ability to return capital in a mid-cycle market? And those ones that are still no, then we'll be recycling those out of the business to get the invested capital down. But it's a big focus internally. Warrick's leading that charge.
John and Rob will focus on delivering the profit side of that equation, and Warrick will focus on making sure that we've got the invested capital at optimum levels as well. I'm confident that we're working hard on it, and the results are starting to happen.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Rohan Gallagher from Jarden Group. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you, Tim, for the ability to ask questions. Most questions have been addressed already. However, there were one or two comments around the Baltimore acquisition. But could you just help us out in terms of its total contribution and performance and how that compared versus your pre-acquisition forecast, though, Stephen?
Yeah. Baltimore and Rob, I'll pass over you when I've made my general comments. Baltimore has the business itself k been split up amongst the other businesses now. W e can make so yes, it's there. At an EBITDA level, it's actually performing reasonably close. But at an EBIT level, it's still not performing where we needed it to be versus our pre-acquisition modeling. That is in large part due to, frankly, the market conditions right now in terms of its cost structure, its operating performance. It is where we want it to be. But we didn't have the market down where it is for so long. A s a result, it's not yet. Let me be really blunt. It's not yet performing in our business case analysis.
Thank you. And I missed it. I know you touched on it earlier, Warrick. Could you just clarify the comments regarding where you see maintenance CapEx for FY25 and beyond, please? I believe you made a reference to it in your pre-prepared remarks.
S imilar Rohan to our full year 2024. So we always have, let's say, a softer first half. O bviously, capital always picks up in the last quarter as people try to complete work. I'd say we're looking at being in line with FY24.
O n a go forward basis, do you have a real-time run-rate depreciation levels, sales levels, etc.?
Yeah. Run depreciation. Yeah. But with a little bit of fluctuation. It just depends what we have to work on. T here'll be some pluses and minuses there. But yeah, average depreciation.
Finally, from a portfolio approach, Stephen, obviously, understandably, you can't do everything at once. And you've done a fantastic turnaround to date. In respect to the surplus land and reducing the numerator, what timing should we be expecting? Are we expecting surplus land sales in the next six months, eight months, three years? How do you want to approach it? Obviously, we're not going to if you don't deliver in that time period. But it was more the case of, are we going to see something happening sooner rather than later? Or is it a long-term identification? Yeah.
The outright sale of surplus land, you should expect to see in the next two years. We have identified already some surplus land, and we're actively marketing that. So that's quite public down in Houston, a particular place called Mayo Shell. And that's a decent bit of land, but we have no use for it. T hat's been actively marketed at the moment. That's a sizable bit of land, and it takes a bit to negotiate.
Other land, let's say in the next two years, you should see some good movement on us selling surplus land.
Just in context, how much of that would be part of that AUD 1.5 billion above book value of your total land bank, please?
Are we still working through it, Rohan? I wouldn't want to give a number at this stage. Yeah. No. Maybe not right now. No. But good point, Warrick. Thank you, gentlemen. Thanks, Rohan.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Chen Jiang from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Stephen and Warrick. Thank you for taking my question. Just a few questions on your slide 9 and slide 10. A s you mentioned earlier, level, your intake volume's down 1.2%, but sales volume flat because Sims has been prioritizing the metals trading margin and the cost saving versus the volume, which is your strategy you have been implementing the last 12 months. I'm just wondering, what are the key drivers to restore your margin? Is that mainly driven by using more unprocessed scrap proportion to get the value from the non-ferrous like you did for the first half? There's a big increase in the Zorba volume.
Or to improve the shredder capacity, which you had shredder capacity, there's a slide 59% in the first half. T hen for that, how much is under your control or your strategy, and how much is market-driven? Because you mentioned supply-demand fundamentals didn't change this half. T hen if the fundamentals didn't change, it's very hard to say you can further improve the capacity utilization or unprocessed scrap. Thank you. I have more after this.
The answer to your first one about what's driven the increase in margin and the various components, they're interrelated. So I'd say two things first and then how they're interrelated. A bsolutely, we've driven the margin increase at the core of buying more unprocessed scrap without a shadow of a doubt. That's driven it. Second one is we've been focusing on simply buying less dealer volumes where there's lower margins to be lower margins made on it. Go back to the first one. Why that's interrelated with shredders is by buying more unprocessed scrap, we're going to increase our shredder utilization by definition.
Any shreddable material that we're buying will put through the shredder, and we'll produce Zorba, and Zorba is higher margin as well. T he whole piece is interrelated, but it all starts with making sure to the greatest extent possible, we're buying unprocessed scrap at source, and that allows us to upgrade it. It allows us to make higher margins. I nterrelated. On the fundamentals, we don't control the market. What we can control is how we operate in the market.
What I would say is if you look at the market fundamentals first half 2024 versus the market fundamentals first half 2025, at best, as I said, at best, they're flat on those two. I actually think the market has been less helpful in this half than it was in the last half. T he work we've been doing is under our control. We have not been relying on the market to drive that increased margin. I think that positions us well for when the inevitable market increase does happen.
We've got the basics right, and we're operating profitably now in a market where we traditionally didn't operate profitably.
Sure. Sure. Thanks for that. And for the unprocessed scrap proportion, under your current strategy or your planned strategy in the next, let's call it 12 or 18 months, do you think you can further improve the unprocessed scrap? Or your current or whatever you achieved, is that sustainable?
Second one first. Yes, I believe it is sustainable because we've done it sensibly. On the first one, our ambition will always be to try and get more unprocessed scrap at sensible pricing. T hat's about having good feeder yard locations, good supply services, all of those types of things. There's more work that we can do on that. So clearly, our ambition is to continue to grow our unprocessed scrap. We're not saying that's it. We've done as much as we can. So clearly, that's our ambition. But we need to do it sensibly as well.
Thanks. M aybe I'll follow up on Slide 10, the ferrous buy/sell spread per ton. You put a line chart on there, which is very helpful. But I'm wondering how much of your buy/sell spread per ton is from your strategy or is from the market dynamics of the export versus domestic scrap spread? Because the market dynamics can change. It either can be a premium or discount, right, on scrap? How U.S. domestic market scrap versus export? T hen your strategy can change? You can sell more on the export market or sell more on the domestic market?
Yes, we can, and I think that's a good point is that we can. A s the market dynamics change, as I show on the pie chart above it, we have created ourselves more optionality, so look, this time, a year, 18 months ago, we didn't have that level of optionality, and we found it much more easy to export than we did to sell domestically. Rob and his team in North America have done a great job over the last year providing us the ability to sell domestically when it works, and that's through developing stronger relationships with the mills. It's through having more barging opportunities. It's through having more railcar opportunities. It's through differentiating the type of products.
For example, typically now shred is going to be much more, I think, is becoming much more valuable domestically. And maybe more cut grades will go export. D own in the detail, and all of that's under our control. I would argue a little bit that that's not about the market helping us. That's actually about us making sure that we have the flexibility to control what we can control within the market. I think all of that has driven the improvement in the NAM turnaround.
Thanks. Appreciate that. Maybe last question, switch back to NZ. I think you mentioned a couple of times challenging conditions in NZ from intake because the ability of scrap. But would you please give some color on the sales and margin as well for domestic market versus export, which is your sale to Asia?
Do you see the market more challenging in your domestic Australia market, or the challenge is coming from export market from NZ? Thank you.
Okay. We've got John in the room. So I'll let John answer that question.
Thanks, Chen. Look, definitely challenges, and I think Stephen mentioned it in the presentation. The expectation around China and exports of finished and semi-finished products isn't expected to abate, so that is going to continue to suppress export markets into regions that we typically ship into: Southeast Asia, East Asia, the subcontinent, Middle East. So export markets for ferrous scrap are definitely challenged. Non-ferrous commodities, again, as Stephen mentioned, are even in copper pretty buoyant and still plenty of underlying demand there with the electrification of the world. So don't expect that to change much. Sorry.
What I would say around domestic demand, again, Stephen spoke to the five EAFs that are proposed. I n the medium term, longer term, we expect more scrap to stay on shore. T o Stephen's point, ultimately, depending on how many get built, you may see regional deficits of scrap that we are very well positioned to capitalize on. As Stephen indicated, the Pinkenba facility with the three mills that are proposed for Brisbane or around Brisbane, the Ipswich, Stormbaugh, is very well positioned to meet that need. So longer term, our ability to support that market is very, very strong. Okay. Thank you very much, Stephen, Warrick, and John. I'll pass it on. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Brooke Campbell-Crawford from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Firstly, on M&A, you talked about opportunities to perhaps release some value or sell some assets that don't make sense in your current portfolio. Is the just to clarify the plan to do that first before looking at any acquisitions or investments? Or are the two going to be side by side, and you'd be open to acquisitions?
Yeah. I think it's a bit opportunistic, so probably side by side. I n some ways, well, not. In many ways, we have more control over what we sell than the opportunities that come up to buy.N o, we won't be specifically waiting for one or the other. I think side by side or simultaneously or is probably the best way to think of it. Great.
Really quick second question, just around the proceeds from the UK sale, the second tranche of proceeds, I think, receivable at the balance date, just to confirm what's causing that lag and when do you expect to get those proceeds from the buyer if you already have, might not have, you might have got it already, perhaps, after balance date, but could you just confirm?
The agreement with the purchaser was a split payment.F irst installment by the end of calendar year 2024, which they paid. T hen the second one is due by June this year.
Okay. Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Nicole Penny from Rimor Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Good morning and thank you. Could you please provide an update on the rollout of low-copper shred facilities and volumes in the US? Specifically, what proportion of your sites now offer this capability? And what the customer feedback has been, please?
So I'll let. Sorry, Nicole, do you want me to answer that one first, or you've got another question?
Yes, please.
I'll let Rob answer it specifically. But my general comment is it's a function of demand and price, and it's expensive to produce. But Rob, maybe an update from you as to where you see customers are on the low-copper shred at the moment?
Sure. To answer your question, Nicole, we only have one site up and running at this point in time. We have ordered further equipment that we did sell several quarters ago. It's still being produced and will be installed, I'd say, later this calendar year. In terms of the growth, it is growing now, the demand, with the recent startups of the brand new installations. We have four or five customers now that buy our material on a regular basis from the one site from the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.
Thank you very much. Lastly, you mentioned earlier that the U.S. scrap supply remains tight. What factors do you believe are driving these trends, and what changes could potentially shift these supply constraints, please?
I think it's the same that's been happening for a while. You've got less post-consumer scrap coming out. That was originally driven, well, that's been driven by a number of things. High inflation, people weren't buying as many products. We had the COVID lockdown, which has still not found its way through. So during COVID, people were buying things rather than doing things. T here was an enormous amount of consumer white goods, etc., were purchased at that time.
That's meant that that still hasn't come out because people have made those purchases then. They haven't made them over the last few years, but they will come out eventually. You're seeing the average age of cars in the U.S. is still continuing to grow. It's flattening off a little bit, which is a hopeful sign. Again, I don't know what tariffs are going to do to the demand for cars in the U.S. That's all something to be seen yet. I t's really that post-consumer scrap hasn't been coming out. It will come out eventually. We just haven't seen it yet. Rob, I think the new construction's been a little bit light as well. What other activities are we seeing in the U.S. which you're comfortable with driving?H olding production of scrap back.
You've covered most of them. I'll just add the interest rates and inflationary issues that the rest of the world has been going through, very hampering with new projects so if you think about a site clearing with a demolition that happens, that's the scrap metal that we didn't get right now because the project's delayed for the new condominium to go up so those sorts of things.
Stephen talked about the end-of-life vehicles sitting in driveways a lot longer and people driving them a lot more and then, of course, PMIs, manufacturing PMIs have been all in contraction for most of the world. North America is no different there so even the prompt industrial scrap and the maintenance scrap that's generated from those facilities is just not there.
I think the last thing, just to think about the supply chain of scrap metal below us, very much below us towards the retail or the peddler level, if scrap's really staying at a very stable level worldwide in the low 300s for many, many months, when you think down two or three levels to a smaller peddler and fuel prices and labor costs, there wasn't a lot left. There wasn't a lot of motivation for them to be in this industry. All of those things, I think, contributed to the lower supply side. Now, as prices go up, we expect that supply elasticity to kick in.
Yeah. Exactly. Good point.
Thank you.
Thanks, Nicole.
Thank you. As there are no further questions at this time, I'll now hand back to Mr. Mikkelsen for any closing remarks.
Nothing in particular for me. T hanks, everyone, for joining the call. W e'll catch up with a number of you over the coming days. Thank you. Bye.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.