Hi, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Houston. For those of you online, welcome as well. First thing I want to do is provide a little bit of context for the heading we've got here, Leaving Base Camp: From Turnaround to Scalable Growth. As we were turning around Sims, and that sort of began about three years ago, we used the concept of must-win battles, and I might talk a little bit about those later. I think what our must-win battles have done is they've got us to a level of really good sustainable scalable growth, and we now describe that as leaving base camp. I want to go through the presentation for today, through the disclaimer there. On the agenda, the first thing I can say, happily for those of us who were here last time, there are no TSA issues.
We don't need to rush through this presentation and miss the tour, so we can take it at a leisurely pace today, which is good to see. I'm going to start off with, I guess, an overview, looking at group strategy, but with more of a focus on metal. Tomorrow is about SLS. Rob's going to come up and give us a more in-depth presentation on the metal business. Warrick will come up and do what CFOs do, and he will cover off on everything to do with capital management. We'll come back for Q&A. If we could just hold questions to the end, that would be great. That'll enable us to get through the presentation. Then we're going to do a tour of the Woodhouse Terminal. We no longer, I guess, refer to it as TCT as such.
The Woodhouse Terminal is where it's located, and it's part of the business now. It gives us plenty of time to head off to the airport, and I guess I'll see everyone tomorrow morning again in Nashville. That's the run-through for the day. Let me first of all, I guess, set the scene. We've had a purpose for a long time now to create a world without waste to preserve our planet. That has been a purpose that's guided us for several years now, and I think it's going to guide us for the next foreseeable future as well. Within that, we've got two businesses. We've got the metal business and we've got the SLS business. I n many ways, they're complementary around the circular economy.
Obviously, in the metal side, we focus very much on recycling steel, aluminum, and copper, and clearly, the non-ferrous is going very well at the moment. We service the infrastructure manufacturing markets, and we've got operations in Australia, New Zealand, and in the U.S. We've got operations right throughout the U.S. Some of them we own 100% through NAM, some of them 50% through SA Recycling. The SLS is also all about circularity as well, but it deals much more with hyperscalers and enterprise-type activity.
It recovers it slightly differently. It's more about reusing, redeployment, resale, as opposed to straight-out recycling, but the principle behind circularity is there. I t has a global footprint. It's all throughout the U.S. is where it dominates, but we're in Europe, we're out throughout Asia, India in particular, Australia, Brazil. V ery much a global business, as is NAM, but in more locations.
I think the two businesses work really well together. For both businesses, we've got significant growth coming up over the coming period. This is a slide that we've presented a lot over the last two or three years. I want to maybe put this into a real-life setting. How did our strategy to repurpose and recycle, how did it drive our thoughts around Tri Coastal Trading, TCT, when we purchased that back in, I think it was January this year? What was the actual essence of that deal that fitted in with our strategy? I want to go through each of the vertical blocks there and talk to you about it. If we look first of all, under customers is developed domestic channels and global network. That sums up TCT. It's got both access to domestic channels and the global through export.
It fitted very, very well within that category. In terms of suppliers, efficient access to supplier hubs in large markets, the second point down there. Houston is an extraordinarily large market, and that's what Sims does very well in. I t fitted nicely within that part of the strategy. If we go to the third column, aligned end-to-end supply chain. Houston and TCT very much delivers on that. It's typical of our whole business, from getting in scrap, doing some level of processing, and then having access to either a domestic or export market. I t fits very much in that category. Fourth column, innovative and agile. I guess one I'll call out there is one called simplified structures. I think TCT delivers on that. We have a third-party supplier that does the processing for us out at TCT, and you'll see them today.
Really what TCT for us now, or the Houston business, is very much a commercial operation, so it's really simplified the business, and I think that drives value as well. Fourth column, under the one of strong capital management. To me, that summed up the TCT acquisition. It allowed us to free up land that we no longer needed. It allowed us to consolidate onto that site and right now we've got three pieces of sizable land on the market, all at various stages of due diligence.
V ery much delivered on that shared strong capital management. Last comment I'll make on this slide is on the right-hand side with the ROIC of 11.7%. It's these type of transactions that we've been putting together over the last few years and driving the business through the must-win battles, which has allowed us to deliver this 11.7% return on invested capital.
Let's be honest and frank, it's been a while since we've returned above our cost of capital, so it's very, very pleasing to see that in FY 2026, and no reason why we won't continue that. I want to move on now onto the North American platform. I guess what I would say, the way I look at ourselves and SA Recycling within that platform is we're better together. We have slightly different market structures, but there's no doubt that the combined operations work better. The way I think shareholders should think about it is, as far as the North American businesses go, is look at that map. We are really nicely laid out right across the U.S. We're where we need to be in terms of domestic, where we need to be in terms of export.
We're where we need to be in terms of getting supply. The way I think you should think about the business is you own 100% of some of the facilities, and you own 50% of some of the other facilities, because believe me, they really do work in tandem. If we just go into that a little bit, if we look at NAM first, and these are broad generalizations, but like all generalizations, they are a very useful starting point. NAM tends to have large-scale shredders in large metropolitan areas. Think New Jersey, think San Francisco. Think Chicago. We've got very large facilities in those types of places. We have very extensive access to global markets, and that gives us true optionality. I'll explain, Rob will explain that actually in a little bit more detail.
It's also worthwhile noting that for SAR's ferrous exports, we act as the sole agent for that, and we act for the majority of their non-ferrous. We very much hunt in a pack when it comes to that from a selling point of view. If we look at SA Recycling, it's got a very dense network of feeder yards and shredders. SA Recycling has really excelled in that, probably starting 8 - 10 years ago. It's built itself up very dense feeder yard networks around shredders, and as a result of that, has really secured an awful lot of at-source material. If you look at the map, you can see there in the blue, very, very strong across the southern states and in Southern California down to Florida. Very complementary sites to where we are.
As a result of that and their more hub-and-spoke model, they've got a really deep local sourcing, and that becomes clear as well later on. When you put that all together, I think the five bullet points summarize it there. Broader sourcing and customer reach, exposure to distinct regional markets, greater domestic and export optionality, shared safety standards. That's actually worth pointing out. We do share operational and safety approaches. We have some different technology, and we really do get the best of both worlds there. Amongst the whole facilities, we have really good domestic exposure to what is a growing market in the U.S., particularly around EAFs and the ferrous side of it. Very much complementary platforms, and I think that's the way we should think about it. What that does is it gives us what we call a structurally advantaged position.
To me, I can use the must-win battles language here again and run you through these five areas here. Strong sourcing position. Our diversified feeder yards allow us to buy right, and that's one of the first must-win battles that we talked about. Buy right through strong sourcing positions. Next must-win battle was process best, and you look at that valuable processing infrastructure. Between the two companies, we have extraordinary access to technology, to experience around how do we process this material best, because that's the nub of Sims and where we add value is by taking unprocessed in-feed, upgrading it to produce processed output. The third one, the attractive domestic demand with export optionality. That's the sell right part of the must-win battles.
If you think about where Sims in particular was three or four or five years ago, we talked about optionality, but we didn't really have an enormous amount of optionality. We had the ability to export extremely well, but we didn't have the same opportunities domestically. We have solved that problem now, and between the two entities, we have fantastic access to EAFs right across the U.S. Multiple routes to market, also a sell smart must-win battle. I've talked about the domestic mills, strong relationships. We can get there by rail, barge. We can export via port. We have so many different ways that we can access both the export and the domestic market. I think what this gives us in the last point here, the market in the U.S. is still pretty fragmented.
What it gives us is the ability to consolidate that market. I'll deal with that on the next slide here. If you look at both NAM and SA Recycling over the last few years, there has been a consolidation of the market happened already. NAM's acquired 24 sites in the last five years, SAR, 72 in the last five years. I think that's really helped to cement our position in the market and given us a good platform for going forward. Let's look at the two charts on the bottom there. Clearly, what we're seeing between 2024 and 2026 is a robust growth in underlying EBIT. 2023, which is also a particularly strong year. Think about that. We were still benefiting from, frankly, the Ukraine shutdown of their steel mill and what that did to world markets, and ferrous was going great guns at that point.
If you look from 2024 to 2026, it's very much been self-driven. There's no doubt that we've had very strong non-ferrous markets, and we'll talk about that. Look at NAM there in particular. FY 2024 is when we set out across our must-win battle growth, and the growth has been quite extraordinary. Look at the right-hand side of the chart, and to me, there's a few. There's two main points to make here. Firstly, NAM's growth and EBIT hasn't come through just growing volumes. It's come through growing the right volumes and giving up volumes that we didn't want. You see, there's actually a slight trend down in volumes in NAM over that period. T here's very much a strong trend up in EBIT.
To me, that's a proof point that showed on our Must Win Battle of buy right, that we've been sourcing the right material, we've been buying more unprocessed, buying less processed material, and really driving margins. Second point I'll make is that NAM has absolutely increased its trading margin percentage there. You see when we began the Must Win Battles, we were down around the 17% trading margin. We're up at 21%, 22% now. I f you look at SA Recycling, SA Recycling's typically been around 28%, 29% of trading margin, and that is very much driven by the number of shredders that they have and the amount of Zorba that they produced and their non-ferrous capabilities as well. I don't see any reason why over time, NAM cannot lift itself to those types of margins as well. We've just begun this journey.
We're three years into it, and we're about to leave base camp. Let's particularly look at the ferrous market. What this map now adds is it adds in where the EAFs are located and also adds in our barging facilities. I n the green dots, you'll see barges. The gray dots are where EAFs. What that to me really highlights is, whether it be SA Recycling or NAM, we're really nicely positioned to take advantage of these domestic EAFs. SAR benefits there from established port access and scalable barge transportation. You should expect to see in the coming periods more barge transportation. You should also expect to see more rail, domestically from us as well.
We are really nicely positioned to take advantage of this growing EAF market, and it has grown a lot over the last seven or eight years, and it's still got more growth to go through the balance of this decade. The other point I'll make is on the bottom of the chart there, you'll see the ferrous sales volumes are domestic versus export. You'll see NAM is definitely more export-oriented than SA Recycling, and I guess that's driven largely by shred versus cut grades. A gross simplification here, but generally speaking, cut grades will head offshore and shred material will be onshore. Looking next at non-ferrous. It is fair to say that over the last two years, non-ferrous has been the hero of the metal result. That doesn't matter whether you're in ANZ or the U.S. or in fact, probably anywhere else in the world.
The non-ferrous market has really driven the results. Look on the left-hand side there, and what we're showing is the combined NAM and SA Recycling results. If you look first of all sales revenue, you can see that non-ferrous has in fact exceeded across the two entities. Non-ferrous exceeds ferrous from a total revenue point of view, and when you break it down, so you see that 53.7%, you break that down, 70%- odd of that is retail and that's your plumber bringing in some copper, your electrician bringing in some wire, just whatever we get the non-ferrous part from. The balance is NFSR, close to 30%, and that is largely Zorba, and that has driven a significant amount of our results over the last couple of years, and particularly in the last year. Zorba's currently sitting at AUD 2,600, AUD 2,700 a ton.
It has a very low short-run marginal cost, so you're really managing to upgrade an in-feed at, say, I don't know, let's call it AUD 200, AUD 250 a ton. You're able to upgrade a portion of that to AUD 2,700 a ton Zorba. Before I hand over to Rob, I just want to look at what I say that the foundations that we've established and why I believe we're now ready for the next phase. This slide here is particularly as it relates to NAM. What have we achieved over the last three years, and where does that take us to the next phase? Can't underestimate the point around stronger leadership and accountability. Under Rob, who's been, how long have you been with us, Rob, now?
Four years?
4. 5 years. Under Rob, we have had stronger leadership.
We've really managed, I think, to unite NAM around a cause of getting ourselves back up to base camp, and that's worked very well. Under better integrated planning, sales and operating plan is the core of the way that we run NAM, and that allows for just much better efficient use of our resources and much better targeting of the scrap that we want to buy and where we're going to sell it to. Improved operation on commercial discipline.
We do run extremely good shredder operations. We run extremely good downstream operations, and that allows us to extract as much value as we can from every ton that comes in. We've integrated the acquisitions into the network. Like I said, we've acquired 20- odd sites over the last five years. They're now fully integrated. TCT being the latest one. I think you'll see how integrated that is within our operations.
Stronger relationships with domestic mills. We have really driven that over the last two or three years, and if you want to have domestic optionality, you've got to have those relationships. Greater logistics and sales opportunity, whether that be barges, rail, truck. We now have access to the domestic mills we need to have access to, but we still have that export optionality. We will still export a fair amount off the East Coast here, particularly in cut grades through to Turkey, off the West Coast into Asia. Last point here, increased focus on unprocessed material. When we put in the must-win battle of buy right, one of the biggest benefits from that was just a focus on making sure we're getting the right material into the yard, because that gives us the opportunity to upgrade it and maximize our margin.
If I look to the next phase where I think we're heading, we want to have increased control of our source material. That is about filling in feeder yards around our shredders. Moving on to our shredders, we've got plenty of room in our shredder capacity to increase throughput. W e can infill without having major capital expenditure on shredders. I think that's a big advantage. Recover more non-ferrous value. We have put an enormous amount of effort to making sure that we're not sending non-ferrous to waste. It is such a waste of EBIT. We've been working very hard on that. Some of the downstream work we've been doing around fines recovery plant, which basically takes the very fine material, which has got a lot of copper in it, and making sure we extract that. Integrate TCT into the broader network. We're well on the way there.
I'd probably say I almost declare that a won battle. When we further expand strategically into the broader network, we have got ourselves a very favorable starting position. We've got ourselves great facilities in the right locations. We can expand into that network. I think we can expand without disruption, largely from inorganic growth. Directing material to the highest value market. That's key to what we do. S&OP allows us to do it. We've really driven improvements on that, and I expect future improvements. The last one, I guess, sums it all up, is purpose-disciplined, organic, and acquisition opportunities. This market is going to consolidate. Rob will probably talk a little bit more about that. We are in a position to be a really lead consolidator of that with high-value transactions. On that, I will hand over to Rob.
Thank you, Stephen. I am going to spend a little bit more time on this first slide because I think it will help with speeding through the rest of the slides. Stephen said, I think the self-help journey, as I call it to my team, really started back in the end of 2024. It coincided with the divestiture of the U.K. assets, a re-look in the mirror at what was working and what was not working, and a strong change in the leadership organization.
I will talk to you a little bit more about some of the things that we have done. Stephen mentioned some of the transactions and acquisitions we made. Some of the best things we got out of those, on top of the synergies and the consolidation opportunities, were the leadership that came into the organization. It really started to take hold as we integrated those assets.
People that were willing to look at the data, look at the facts, the market intel, and the analytics. That really started to drive that change. You can see in the left-hand column there or the left-hand chart on margin. We changed the motivation. Competitive people want to do competitive things. We put margin as more of the discipline or the obsession rather than just pure volume. Without sounding too boring, it was a back-to-basics sort of strategy here. We needed to get back to a strong foundation. We had a very solid market in North America. We already had two iterations of tariffs. There was a strong demand curve that we needed to be able to penetrate in a much more meaningful way.
On the trading margin side, Stephen mentioned this a lot, so I will not dwell on it too much, but really focused on the products, the raw materials that were going to be sought after. Mostly shredder feed, but ferrous and non-ferrous. We have not been a very non-ferrous-focused company in the past. It is not just capturing the non-ferrous fraction from the shredder feed, it is also being able to participate in buying non-ferrous retail products as well in the feeder yards that we have and the ones that we want to have in the future. We used the capacity that we had already invested in. It was very important for us to. There was tens of millions of dollars deployed, state-of-the-art equipment, and we were not taking advantage of using that capacity, let alone capturing that margin.
Non-ferrous retail, non-ferrous NFSR, very much an optimized new sales approach as well, and we had to have the capability to do what we said. I t was very good operations to load vessels. What else could we do? We had to spend a lot of money, and you can see that on the far right-hand side of being able to get our products to markets as well. The last couple of years, as we learned and started to grow our margins. A lot of that was on the buy side, buying the right things, as Stephen said, but a lot of this was focused capital investment in things that were going to add value. Those are the things like the rail line expansions that we have.
In many of our yards now, we've doubled the capacity of being able to bring in rail cars on a daily basis and get those cars out. We've invested in rail cars themselves as well. We not only have the capacity, we have the cars to be able to get to markets further away in a very efficient way. A more resilient Sims NAM. Stephen had a very similar slide. I'm not going to dwell so much on where we came from, but suffice it to say, we've got a strong foundation now. Very results-motivated team. Again, focusing in on the unprocessed side. That won't change for a long time. That was on the buy side. As we said, now there's opportunities.
We're going to show you a slide of some voids where we had in the past and just give you, I guess, a bit of a comfort that we know how to do this. We've done it very well in the last couple of years as well on buying feeder yards. The buy/sell spread sort of discipline in ferrous and non-ferrous. In particular, just to make a point, as we pivot towards a better optimized sale, the buy/sell margin gets hedged naturally in a calendar month, when you're buying and selling in a local market. That resilience of margin trend is also in focus for us. The optimized sale or the go-to-market, as we call it, that optionality, we have to have that capability to move to different markets when we require it. That investment sort of discipline as well, very prioritized. Again, the use of data.
A lot of little things, repeated over and over again. This is the example I wanted to kind of bring up this morning. We probably don't talk enough about the Baltimore opportunity. Prior to my arrival, Atlantic Recycling Group was acquired by Sims back in 2021. It was one shredder and three feeder yards. As you look down the map from really Philadelphia south, we had a big void between Philadelphia and where we existed in Virginia. ARG started to fill in that hole, and our existence started to become a little bit more consolidated. The opportunities with EAFs were motivating us, but at the same time, the synergies, we had trucks passing in the night, and those costs were real. Now enter the Baltimore Scrap Corp opportunity in 2023. Four shredders, 13 feeder yards starting to fill in that network.
This is where we'll continue to bolt on this and the Northeast region, along with the Chicago region and the Western regions as well. Now fully integrated. I would say very optimized, realized synergies. The costs are down and as you would expect, the normal market consolidation benefits are coming. A little bit more on greater material at source. We really, again, I'm repeating myself a little bit here. We took control of a much more disciplined buy and sell on the ferrous and the non-ferrous side. Stephen mentioned it, I'll repeat it again. We weren't ashamed to shrink to be able to grow EBIT and value in the organization.
We did make some very difficult decisions to walk away from, what I would call, more wholesale volume in favor of, again, that discipline in the buy/sell and utilizing the assets that add value for us and really chasing the demand curve. As Stephen mentioned and we will talk about in a slide or two, the demand on the EAF side, and we are a raw material provider to those EAFs, is real, and it is continuing to grow beyond GDP normal growth.
S o has the aluminum side and so has the copper side, driven by a very strong market here in the U.S. We drove capacity through our existing assets. We have added capacity to those assets, both in ferrous and non-ferrous capture as well. We have gained those efficiencies now. They are well embedded into our results, and we are getting the benefits now of that fixed cost per ton dilution as well.
Capturing that high-value non-ferrous NFSR, larger volumes, and then as I mentioned before, that sales optimization all contributing to the results that you are seeing here. TCT, some of you that are with us are going to finally see this. As Stephen said, hopefully, there is no unexpected TSA situations today. It is really, in a nutshell, to be very simplified, we took two ferrous operations, ours and the Tri Coastal operation. We consolidated into one site here you see in the slide. We still have an ongoing non-ferrous operation that is at a different site. We will drive by that as well today. Really got a lot of cost benefit out of that consolidation, as you would imagine. We call it an asset-light operation now. We basically have given the operation to our longtime partner. This is not a new thing for us.
We deal with Enstructure at multiple sites, and they have a world-class facility that you will see here that we have allocated a large portion of. Improved competitiveness with added deep sea. That was a difference between our old existing yard that you will see. It had good bones, I would call it, good barge access, rail access, good processing capability. We have transferred all of those good things over, and now we have also deepwater access with a cost benefit and the consolidation in the market. Stephen mentioned it, I will say it one more time. Houston is a fast-growing market. It is the fourth largest population in the U.S., rumored to be the third in the next several years. Very heavy industry here.
It did, and we are under contract, and I am sure Warrick will mention, at the three properties that we had in mind when we looked at this strategy, does this make sense. That monetization, if you will, helping to fund some of these strategies in the journey here. We are very actively looking at relocating the non-ferrous business as well for growth. It is a very big contributor to our bottom line. The site you see here, and I will explain this a little bit more on our tour, but for those on the website, it is a 55-acre site.
What you see there, more or less visually, we occupy somewhere just north of about 20 acres, 15- 16 acres inside the secure port. Then I will explain this when we get out in the bus, another 5 acres outside. It is important to know that because we want to be able to attract smaller dealers as well. Going into a large port like this is a little bit, let us just put it, you will see it today, a little bit intimidating at the best of times.
We have the same capabilities to torch and shear. We have cranes and excavators with shear heads. We have stationary shears. We have ukes. 20-car rail spur. It is switched daily. We have access to two major rail lines out of the Houston port on top of deepwater barging, river barging, and the slip on the left you can see there, I will say this is just under has just over 13 meters of water. The front boat is a Supramax. The other slip that is dedicated to us is able to handle handy-sized vessels, so 30,000 tons. If we want to go international, we can.
The Mexican market is right around the corner, so to speak. The North American market is either by rail, truck, or barge, and containers. On the market optionality side, I am not going to spend a lot of time here. We have talked a lot top of that buy discipline. We have really been driving in, we call it bolts in the gun, it is a little derogatory, but if we cannot get to market, then actually it is not our market. We are creating those opportunities, both ferrous and non-ferrous, to actually be able to execute the buy and the sell plan. That is a very integrated plan in North America, soon to be in Australia. It is working capital discipline, but it is also just that margin discipline as well. Just a little bit on the market. I am not going to dwell too much here.
A couple of things when you look at this. The ferrous on the left, and I will raise your attention to, you can see sort of some seasonality in there. Stephen talked about the demand growth. The shred portion of the raw material demand growth is a real thing. I say this a lot to our team internally, say this a lot to our customers. There is not a lot of new manufacturing happening in the U.S. that is producing prime industrial scrap. There is a lot new, more capacity of steel making. Those steel makers are going to have to make steel in their EAFs using a different recipe of raw materials. I use the word recipe, it is a mix for them. Shred is going to be highly sought after. It already is on the international front when you break down raw materials consumption.
It is going to be even larger here in the U.S. We are in the high 70% in terms of steel making capacity by EAF. It could go to 80%, 83%, 84% in the next 10 years. That is mostly scrap, 75%-80% scrap, with not a lot of new prime scrap coming to market. Shred and high-quality shred are going to be highly sought after. You see the blips in January, February, that is seasonality. Those are supply problems during the winter months here in North America. W hat I want to draw your attention to now is it did not drop in March and April and June as far as it did the previous years. That is the value, perhaps the new value that shred is going to have as that demand curve continues to commission.
We've been talking to you about the 20-some-odd million tons of new capacity coming online. It's starting to take shape. As you see that international Turkish price, it's staying closer because the domestic market is forcing the international market to be more competitive. If you want to buy scrap here, you have to pay a higher price. Similar on aluminum. The aluminum industry also does benefit from tariffs, I should phrase it that way. They always had tariffs, but they were 10%. You can see where we denoted when the big adjustment was made to 50%. Not only were some of the aluminum projects that were sort of on the back burner expedited, new capacity, new demand is coming online, but a scarcity, or the words that some people were bringing, has driven the price and the value for aluminum as well.
We're going to show you another slide in a minute on the demand curve that's going to keep that real. You can see with Zorba's driven a little bit more by aluminum, but it also has a copper-bearing portion to it as well, and those, I would say, are going to be higher for longer for the foreseeable future. This is that strong demand curve that I wanted to mention here. You can see the growth beliefs that we have. These are facts from publicly made available investments. This isn't just our idea of where GDP might go or where consumption may go. These are projects that either have steel going into the ground to build the new steel factories or aluminum facilities that are going to be either projects that we believe will come to market. Why are they coming to market?
Some of you have seen that slide on the right-hand side. If you go back a few years of our trajectory, you had the COVID phase where the Amazon fulfillment centers or Walmart fulfillment centers were driving the growth for steel. They were driving the growth for more racks and conveyors and digital systems and weighing systems, and all the aluminum and copper that went along with the innards of those facilities and garage doors, those types of demand curves. You get to the next phase, probably want to talk about the Biden administration, where traditional infrastructure came back into things with the Build Back Better. You had docks, you had airports. That demand was pulling through. There was the green phase with renewable energy, wind towers, and solar, and those tax credits still exist today. These steel mills are very busy.
These aluminum producers are incredibly busy right now. This is all on top of the world's largest economy by GDP. In this phase, we can't keep up as an industry, building new plants every day, data centers, and the water filtration and the cooling systems and the infrastructure, the buildings around them, the racks, the copper cable that has to go to the grid, that has to go into the air conditioning. We've got from Bloomberg, I believe the source was, that per megawatt- hour, you can see here, about 11 tons of copper and aluminum per megawatt- hour on top of all that steel demand. T his isn't a flash in the pan. This isn't a supply problem or seasonality. This is a driven market with state-of-the-art infrastructure that's being built here, both in steel making, aluminum furnaces, and copper refining as well. Model for growth.
More of the same, but it is a rinse and repeat. I say and preach all the time to our team that we have to keep doing this right over and over again. It is relentless on securing more unprocessed material. We are going to now graduate into not keeping the balance in markets, but we're going to grow into some other, I'd say, tucked-in markets where we have a void, where we have a logistics opportunity to reduce cost, where we have an opportunity to consolidate a market again. We are taking a hard look at our footprint. Where should our central processing facilities be? Where should our mindset of innovation be on separation technology? We've done a lot of this already. We are now looking at should we have more furnace-ready aluminum products? Should we have more copper granulation and furnace-ready refinement there as well?
Bring those value propositions to the end market and to the customers. That's both in the non-ferrous recovery side of the shredding side, but it's also in the non-ferrous retail side. Of course, religion with sales optionality and really optimization. What we want is the best price. It's obvious in trading margins, and it's-
Thanks, Rob, and good morning from Houston. We introduced our capital management framework back in 2024, and it's really been a driver of how we approach both our investment philosophy, but how we manage our balance sheet. For us, it's really important that we do reward shareholders along the way, but we aren't a yield stock. At the end of the day, our opportunity today is really through growth. Both Stephen and Rob have talked about leaving base camp and earning the right to grow. That's really, I suppose, the focus for us going forward. At the center of our capital management framework is value creation, obviously for our shareholders, and how we drive that. W e are in a commodity-based industry. We're a low-margin operating entity. It's really important that we maintain strength in our balance sheet and be able to operate through the cycles.
Are we seeing a lift in the cycles, in the cycle or a step up in the cycle? I think that's still to sort of evolve. W e will respond to that after we get a little bit more experience from what we're seeing at the moment. F or now, it's really about making sure we've got the right operating assets and we're investing in those assets and maintaining those to ensure strong operating performance. Rob has talked about that. The balance sheet strength in order to grow and then, as I said, rewarding shareholders along the way, but in the sense of ultimately our opportunity is around capital growth. Working capital is a key component of that as well. Obviously, with the increase in non-ferrous pricing, we need to carry that.
I think that's some of the opportunities that we see coming onto the market where other players haven't been as robust in terms of their capital management framework and their balance sheet strength and are struggling with the rise of non-ferrous pricing and the ability to actually purchase that material. That's been one of our strengths in terms of being able to do that and then see the reward come back in through our margin performance. Okay, so one of the things I just wanted to highlight because I think there's been a bit of feedback as to how we think about our dividend policy. As I said, one of the aspects is that we're not a yield stock at the end of the day, but we do want to reward shareholders along the way.
I think that the easy reference, part of our capital management framework is that out of pre-growth, what we term pre-growth free cash flow, we want to pay a portion of that out to shareholders. 25%-35% is our capital management framework. There's a couple of aspects, though, that I wanted to highlight around how we think about our pre-growth free cash flow, and this is actually highlighted in our OFR within our reporting structure. I t is a readily available calculation. I think it's useful just to go through a couple of the aspects of it. The first one is when we think about our tax expense, we use what we call our underlying tax expense. F rom a payment point of view, that's slightly different.
Obviously, there's a timing element there, but we obviously from our earnings performance need to make sure that we can deliver our tax payments at the end of the day. W e use an underlying tax calculation in that. The other aspect of our pre-growth free cash flow is the timing of receipts from our joint venture interest and participation in SAR. T here's two aspects there. One is that SAR retains some of the earnings in order to fund both the capital program and their general capital management within that business. The other aspect is we get paid quarterly in arrears. W hat we saw in the FY 2026 results was an extremely strong fourth quarter performance from SAR. That money came in in the first quarter of the current financial year. T here's a timing element that flows through there as well.
We have to manage against that, and that's included in the calculation of our pre-growth free cash flow. What we've then shown on the right is how we actually think about it. I f we take the AUD 180 million, 25%-35%, we've got around about 193 million shares on issue. We paid an interim that the board declared at AUD 0.14. There's a bit of give and take there, so it was rounded up. That's how we calculated our final dividend.
I know that sometimes we get that question about how do you actually work out what that dividend is. I thought it useful to-[audio distortion] Capital discipline is extremely-[audio distortion] That we've gone through a process. What we've done over the last 12 -1 8 months is actually improve and evolve our capital investment framework so that we really move that through a testing and challenge period.
From us, one of the things that we changed early on in my tenure was to move that sort of growth in the business from something that we held centrally to the business. It is really important that the business knows the business. The business puts forward its propositions about where it sees growth. The role of the center is really to manage the overall capital portfolio. When we have got some competing criteria, we put those against each other. Then one of the things that we do now is actually challenge those or go through a rigorous review process around those capital proposals. Have we done the calculation right? Have we undertaken a risk assessment? What are the risks that come with those elements? I suppose really working through those together with the business to challenge ourselves.
Then we bring that forward to our executive team to, again, continue that review process. There is a lot of investment opportunities out there. Rob and the team get approached every day about opportunities that we can consider. W hat we need to make sure of is that we are actually making those right decisions. As Rob said, it is not about expanding our footprint per se. It is actually about the infill that we need. We have got the existing infrastructure. Our target is really about infilling, improving our unprocessed feed and using that existing infrastructure to its maximum advantage. I suppose, one of the things I just really wanted to highlight today was that we have done a lot of work in terms of our capital allocation processes. We have got a lot of discipline around the way that we approach that.
I know sometimes it actually annoys the business that we go through that process. I t is a really critical part of what we need to do to make sure that we are making the right decisions in line with our capital management framework. U ltimately, our growth funding, we split it up into three different areas. That smaller productivity and feeder yard, some of the opportunities that Rob is I know currently focused on. A lot of that we can do through our existing cashflow. That is really smaller spend, $5 million -$ 10 million sort of U.S. dollars, something that we can certainly cater out of our existing operations. The bolt-on acquisitions like TCT, what can we do in terms of recycling capital?
What are the opportunities to rationalize our portfolio, and fund that through either our existing balance sheet capacity, or recycling something like the property sales as we have done here in Houston with TCT, a combination of both. Ultimately, though, there are larger strategic opportunities as well. As we continue to improve our operating performance, continue to grow those feeder yards, improve our infill, I think ultimately we see that opportunity to really add some more of those, I suppose Baltimore style acquisitions into the portfolio. How we fund those will depend on where we are at that point in time. It is really a case-by-case basis, but it comes back to our capital management framework. Are we maintaining balance sheet strength? Are we able to operate through the cycle? What does that cycle look like?
We do a lot of work today in terms of our own internal modeling about our way forward over the next 5 - 10 years. What does our cash flow look like? What are we able to sustain? And how we should do that. As I show on the slide there, our considerations include all those principles around our capital management framework, our liquidity, making sure we maintain a buffer. What do we see as the market conditions going forward? We can't provide an answer in terms of how we actually do that. I think one of the things, again, I wanted to highlight is that we do see those opportunities come across our desk, and they are ones that we would like to ultimately pursue as well. I think that's it from me.
Thank you, Rob and Warrick. B efore I get the guys back up to go through Q&A, I want to just really summarize or bring together for Sims. R eally for us, it's around four structural increases we see in demand. Let's go through them quickly and talk about how we are exposed to those structural increases. Well, at the moment, and it seems to anti-decarbonization. The reality is the world is still decarbonizing. It's going on very quietly despite the noisy voices that are out there. We are very nicely exposed to that decarbonization theme. The recycling of any material, whether it be ferrous, non-ferrous, data center equipment, very nicely exposed to that decarbonization theme. Secondly, electrification. The world is electrifying. T hat's not going to stop either. We are very nicely exposed to that.
Our non-ferrous business, very good franchise around collection, very good processing facilities, turning messy copper wire into beautiful copper, ready to go back into smelting. Same on the aluminum side with Zorba. Very nicely exposed to that. AI infrastructure. Rob mentioned it. I think probably if it wasn't for the development of the AI data centers here in the U.S., I'm not sure whether steel demand would have gone up Rob, over the last 12 months, 24 months, there's a huge amount going in there. We're nicely exposed to that. It's about EAFs producing that steel. We supply the EAF markets. Clearly, that is ongoing.
We'll talk about this tomorrow, the amount of money being poured into data centers is almost uncountable. We're very nicely exposed to that. On the technology refresh, well, that's all about SLS, and we'll go through that in detail tomorrow. I think the key takeaway there is those four significant demand drivers, I think they've got decades to play out. Between our metal business and our SLS business, we are very nicely exposed to that. I'm going to call the presentation over there. I'll call back up Rob and Warrick, and happy to take your questions. Also, Mark's got a microphone there for the benefit of our people online so that they can hear the question.
Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for the presentation. It's Lee Power from JPMorgan. Stephen, just on the trading margin, you talked about lifting it towards where SAR is. There's obviously some differences between your businesses. I think they got 50% more shredders. There's differences in unprocessed and processed, and the non-ferrous piece. What do you actually think you can get to, and what's the bit that you need to change in your business to-
Yeah?
get us there?
I'll get Rob to answer that one in detail about where we're looking. T he principle is, it's around infill. It's around growing our feeder yards. If you look at what SAR has done very well over the last 8 - 10 years, it's acquire feeder yards around their large shredders and really have a very dense supply network. That's driven more unprocessed ferrous into their business, and they can turn that into Zorba. By having more feeder yard networks, you get more non-ferrous retail as well.
T hat is the biggest difference between the margin percentage that we make. There is no reason why we can't do that. It's not going to happen tomorrow, growing strongly there. Maybe I'll get Rob to potentially talk about the sort of opportunities we look at and really what our filter is around deciding to take on a feeder yard or, in fact, a medium-sized acquisition like we did with Baltimore Scrap.
Yeah, Lee, I do not have a tremendous amount to add. Warrick has mentioned this. We are getting offered a lot of opportunities to have these tuck-ins or these fill-in feeder yards. As much as this is a good market, these prices are driving smaller operations, I would say, into difficulties with the working capital requirements. T here is a generational succession problem as well in this metal recycling industry, and we are taking advantage of that. It probably was not as much in our DNA in the past at Sims Metal North America. It is absolutely on our radar now as a must to capture more and more of that faster margin that is out there.
Sure. Then, more of a shorter-term question. Just freight and the diesel price, how does that actually impact feed into your business? You obviously have a focus on getting less processed scrap, but what does it actually mean day to day of getting feed and people bringing it to you, I guess?
Yeah, it is real now. I would say about six months ago, it was not translating in the price increases. Some of the steel price increases around are having to raise rebar price to cover the price of the end-use products. In terms of our suppliers coming into us, they are being driven. Again, price is motivating those individuals to go out and find scrap and bring that supply into us, and we are mindful of the costs affecting us, and we are having to be mindful of the price that we pay to get them out of their bed and bring those supplies in. W e are maintaining those margins, and you can kind of see that price escalation also kind of matching.
Kind of medium-term question, given that comment. Is there any chance that the non-ferrous side of the business goes from a trading margin business to a dollar business? So rather than having a percentage margin on a very high number, people start shifting to almost like a dollar per ton?
Yeah. I think we have always looked at both. As the prices get higher and higher, as you go more and more to non-ferrous, the dollar per ton will become more of a feature. In many ways, the trading margin percentage is an output. We do not target a specific trading margin percentage. We target the highest margin that we can possibly make, and that flows into a trading margin percentage.
Y ou are right. If the business goes more and more and more to non-ferrous, in that situation, you would expect to see the trading margin percentage fall because you are obviously not going to make a 21%, 25% trading margin on a AUD 14 ,500 , AUD 15,000, AUD 16,000 copper price. W e look at both, we balance both. I think what probably drives our decisions is the dollar per ton, and that results in that trading margin percentage outcome.
Good. Thanks. One more, if possible.
Thanks. It's Daniel Sykes from Jarden. I was just wondering if you could help us a little bit with the unprocessed share. I think it was on slide 11, you had about 70% was unprocessed. Just in terms of the timeline of that, how did that look three years ago? I think in SAR, it was 90%-ish . Is that where you'd expect to get through with this focus now? Are there any kind of steps we should look out for in achieving that?
Yeah. That growth to 50%, it was probably closer to 50% about three years ago. It's been a lot of hard work. It's been a lot of difficult conversations with old suppliers that we now compete with. The trajectory should continue. We're not stopping with that, whether it's shredder feed or it's material for non-ferrous bailers or ferrous sheers. Yeah. It really bolts down to what Stephen's been saying about these tuck-ins. If the more we buy at source or direct across our scales of unprocessed, higher margin, obviously, we're adding value. That's going to be the target. We have that internally within our organization and our joint venture investment. We're looking to continue on that journey.
Thank you very much for your explanation. I'm very pleased to hear that NAM has made a significant progress in the last two, three years. My question is that, what level of earnings do you believe that NAM can achieve over the next five years? Do you have [audio distortion] NAM?
What do we see in the growth and the level of earnings over the next five years? That's something I'm not going to comment on specifically. I'm always very reluctant to give out our view on. What are we looking about at the fundamentals over the next five years? To me, if you believe that decarbonization, electrification, AI infrastructure, and technology refresh are all growing, then it would be, I think, a very logical case to conclude that Sims will grow with those.
In terms of where we haven't and we won't put out a target growth percentage over that period, otherwise, we'd be constantly having to come back and revisit it. I think it's fair to say that we are comfortable that we are nicely exposed to those four structural demand themes. We are comfortable in our position in the market, whether it be NAM, SA Recycling, or SLS. We are a major player in point of view.
Thank you very much. Another question is about the capital allocation. Given the significant improvement in earnings, strong cash generation, the share price performance, do you see any scope of revisit the current shareholder return framework over the time? Do you have any ?
I think, again, we come back to our capital management framework, which is that we will reward shareholders along the way in terms of that percentage. We don't see that percentage necessarily changing in the current environment. Our focus is really about how do we continue to grow the business from a capital reinvestment perspective. Yes, 25%-35% of earnings, whatever those earnings are, we target to come back to shareholders from a pre-growth free cash flow perspective. T he rest of the earnings, we want to reinvest in the business. That's really the opportunity to provide longer-term shareholder returns at the end of the day.
Thank you.
I might as well ask a follow-up. Just on the SAR business. We had Tyler here earlier in the year, I think it was. If you think that you've acquired 24 sites in the last five years and they've acquired 72, is there any sense that you get, and it seemed at the time he didn't suggest that pace was going to slow. Is that still the operating assumption for the SAR business?
Yeah. There's two aspects to that question. One is, it's willing buyer, willing seller. What SAR has done very well over the last five to eight years is build long-term relationships with scrap yard owners. It's the type of thing, you just can't go into a scrap yard and say, "Here's some money. Do you want to sell it?" There's legacy involved. There's family dynamics involved. T hey've done very well at that. It's fair to say that they haven't stopped doing that, so I would expect determined by whether or not people are willing to sell. I'll make two comments on that. One is, I think the consolidation of the industry is going to continue.
- capital, the demands on downstream processing to maximize the non-ferrous that's sitting in your in-feed. The second point is, I guess I can assure you that the Adams family hasn't slowed down the relationships with prospective scrap yards that they could buy. Is it going to be 70? I don't know, but it could well.
Really when you run the non-ferrous business. What kind of level of ferrous do you actually need? So what can you get the mix to, and how important is ferrous as a kind of a non-ferrous feed generally? So where do we end up at, I guess is what I'm asking.
Yeah, I would have to answer it two ways. In a feeder yard, you really need to be like you would think in any business, a one-stop shop. Typically, a feeder yard, depending on the country or the city that you are operating in, it is going to be around a 10 :1 in terms of weight. Y ou are bringing in 1,000 tons, I am giving you tons of non-ferrous retail. On the other hand, the second part of the answer is, we actually operate some fairly large.
If it is a feeder yard that you are just tucking in where you are going to, again, that spoke and hub sort of consolidation, or you are buying into a major processing non-ferrous operation, it could be thousands of tons as well. You do not want to take or not take ferrous, but you do not deliberately look to go and buy it either. It kind of comes in as a bit of an accident, if that makes sense.
It does. Thank you. I might just end with one for Warrick. Just the broader property strategy. I cannot remember, it was a year or two ago, you talked about the AUD 1.5 billion of opportunity. Where are we kind of tracking with that?
Yeah, o ur focus at the moment is on the Houston properties in terms of TCT. As Rob mentioned, we have got all three properties going through different stages of due diligence. Our current expectations are to capture those funds through this financial year. In terms of when we released, provided that information, it was really to, I suppose, just, it was not to say we were going to sell all our properties. It was just to really show the opportunities, I suppose, that we had. It really falls into our longer term planning options. We often talk about Claremont, for example. Gentrification around our sites is an important factor. T hey are longer term plans in terms of how we actually need to think about our business.
What that information actually assisted us with is some of our roadmap work in terms of where do we need to go next, what plans do we need to put in place, because we want to protect our business at the same time, but capitalize on the opportunities that might exist in some of those assets. T ransparently, there's nothing sort of major on the market to look at those smaller opportunities and rationalization where they make sense. Some of those opportunities will also come up in terms of our acquisitions. Some of the acquisition opportunities will give us an opportunity to free up some of those assets. T hey need to work together, so nothing to sort of put on the table, Lee. Y eah, constantly part of our capital management.
Thank you.
David Wilson, First Sentier. Perhaps a question for Rob. Just on the industry consolidation bit. Historically, you saw Cliffs, Nucor, BlueScope all buy scrap businesses or scrap assets. Are we still going to see more of that in that consolidation? Or do you think that was more a sort of strategy about putting your hand on having some level of vertical integration?
Yeah. Just to kind of go back in time. In North America, this is a very common practice. The steel mills being in of the raw material requirements. Nucor has long had a scrap raw materials arm. They've invested in DRI facilities now. I will say, on the contrary, Cliffs has exited that space largely. SAR was able to acquire some of those assets and divest some other ones. Gerdau, CMC, they're all in a, I would say, in a good place. What we understand of our customers, they're our customers, their attention is now in the upstream. T heir attention now is in buying rebar fabrication plants or garage manufacturing, sort of the customer inside of their customer base. D on't really see a scarcity of product here. I think they're comfortable in that regard.
In the section on capital management. You talked about productivity in feeder yards, bolt-on and strategic opportunities. With the strategic opportunities, are they larger versions of your smaller acquisitions, or are they strategically different investments?
I will maybe cover the overall answer, and Warrick can go into a bit of detail. I see, looking forward, the bulk of our acquisitions will be bolt-ons in terms of feeder yards infill, with periodic opportunity to buy something more significant. An example of that is Baltimore Scrap. When you think, before then we had bought a couple of smaller ones, and then Baltimore Scrap came along, and it was a good example of a much larger one. Larger ones will come with shredders and feeder yards. I think it is probably fair to say they will not be in completely different locations to where we are now. They will still be part of our network. From on the East Coast here, we have got a great network going all the way through Virginia and everything in between.
Expect to see predominantly bolt-ons, AUD 5 million, AUD 10 million, AUD 20 million type range with the occasional larger one. The timing of that is interested in selling. Warrick, do you have anything more to add to that? Okay. It does not look like there is any more questions in the room. We have one more down, Norio, down the front here.
Thank you very much. 350,000 tons of scrap. Are you buying from dealers, or are you buying at the-
It is a mix. We do not have other feeder yards in the manufacturers, etc. It is a combination. It is also the other side that is not for today's education class, but the size of the dealer matters. If they are a large, capable of shipping, have to move the material off a site, and they need a good location to be able to operate and ship to you seven days a week, 24 hours a day. We can offer those sorts of things and still make margin.
That is another difference, I would say, between Sims NAM and Sims, not exactly all of SA Recycling. We are in the big cities in the U.S. We cover nine out of the top 10 combined in the U.S. This happens to be one of the bigger cities in the U.S., so we are going to be more prone to some of the dealers. T hat is when we have to have that margin discipline. We pay what we want to pay, and we know what we can get for material.
Okay, thank you. Another question is, slide nine said, the number of sites that you acquired in the last five years, NAM at 24 and SAR at 72. There is a 3x gap. How do you see what made this difference? In the next five or 10 years, how you can narrow the gap?
I don't know if I'd necessarily think of it as a gap. I think it's just a number. What's driven SAR Recycling is that they've put many hours starting 8 - 10 years ago into developing the relationships with the feeder yards so that when the owner was ready to sell, they were a natural buyer of that property and the owner was comfortable in selling it. We're putting in that effort now. I'd expect to see us over the next three to five years. Are we going to get 70 sites? I wouldn't even begin to call what the number will be. It will be what the sensible number is. It's about putting in the effort now, developing the relationships, and it's probably driven more from our commercial teams than anything, with our going around talking to various people and yards.
Over that time, you develop a relationship. SAR has been very good at doing that. We are getting better at doing that. If there was to be, I hope there's not a closing of the gap. I hope that we have a lot of sites, and they also have a lot of sites. Whether the gap closes or not, it should be the absolute number that we're talking about. There's no doubt that that is a key part of our strategy going forward, is to build out a lot more feeder yards around our shredders. We've still got plenty of capacity in those shredders, plenty of capacity to shred and produce Zorba and to produce a very good quality shred product for the domestic market here in the U.S.
Can I comment?
You may, yeah.
I think it's sort of an obvious question, but when you actually look at the structure of our businesses, we're in very large populations. The feeder yards there are a slightly different size. The beauty of SAR is it's a lot of smaller areas. T he size of their acquisitions are actually a whole lot smaller. They do acquisitions at AUD 500,000. Y ou can't really look at it as 72 versus the 24. You really need to look at it as, what is the overall growth strategy? So our acquisitions will always, I think, be a little bit larger in terms of outlay, just given the areas that we operate in. SAR will always have those. They do a really good job at picking up those smaller feeder yards. T hey can do them faster.
Thank you very much.
We've got one more from Jacob at the back. We can't deny that last question.
I think you discussed this, or you answered Daniel's question about this, but on slide 11, in terms of the. Could you talk to the direction and where you think that may end up? Or have you got a target, or where you think that'll naturally. I mean, we definitely want to see growth in. I don't know what your thoughts are on that. M aybe you cover off processed versus unprocessed as well, the difference between SAR and NAM.
Yeah, I think the pieces are bringing out a lot more metal. If you think about what is invisible to the scrap metal person, but the scrap reservoir, they call it, that building across the street. When the owner of that building, they will actually execute the demolition of that building, and the copper or the aluminum pay for the remediation of the site along with it. That brings product to. With the demand curve being a real curve, that is going to continue. That circular economy, that is going to drive even more based on the NFSR. On top of wanting to do more in-process to put through the capacity that we still have, our team, SAR, it does not matter if you are in New Zealand or Australia, we are trying to get every single piece of value out of what we put through that shredder.
There is still some material, 150 lbs hammers hitting it, get fines or a 10 - 20 mm and under particle. We do not do, as an industry, I am not saying NAM, a very good job of getting those types of fractured morsels or ounces, but they add up to a lot of pounds and tons at the end of the year. T here will allow us to do a better job of getting that product today. If we are already getting the product, we are not able to capture it, and that has been something we have been working on for several years. You will, because we are already getting it, but we cannot capture it in an economical way. Let us put it that way. The next piece I would, because of that demand curve.
Some of the things that we are doing today where we are selling a, I would call, semi-finished product, you are going to see the non-ferrous retail go up because we are going to finish sorting that aluminum Zorba to a refined, ready-to-melt furnace aluminum raw material. All are underway now. We have already invested in it at NAM to allow us to capture even more non-ferrous going forward. On the unprocessed, it is hand-in-hand. It really is, as Stephen says, and I think I mentioned that we are not fascinated with.
We have already invested in state-of-the-art shredders. I just talked about innovation and state-of-the-art non-ferrous capture systems and refinement to a raw material-ready product for a furnace. We are going to continue to do that, and it is going to drive our motivation to get those input units into those processes where we actually add value and have a value proposition to make margin.
Okay, I think in order to keep to our timetable and get out the visit to TCT, we will close it there. Thank you very much for participating. We will close off the video now, and let us get ourselves ready to head out to TCT, and Anna will take us through what we need to do.