Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Before I even start, let me first of all just acknowledge the people in the room here with me. Thank you for being here this morning. It's a great team that works tirelessly to get the results ready, and we thank them for that. Before I get into the detail of the presentation, I think it is important to ground today's discussion. We're focusing on the first half of 2026. We provide short-term prospects for the full year, but then I want to move the conversation into our longer-term focus. The first half was disappointing, and I share that plainly. We don't intend to overexplain the result that is below the level that we expect from our businesses. We also need to be fair and recognize the context behind it.
Mark will take you through the financial performance in detail. I don't want to preempt every number. I'll touch on the part of the conversation that we want to get to around what are we doing about it and how do we think about the business. As you're aware, I started in the company on the 1st of February, working with Alan Dickson. Appreciation to Alan Dickson, who I've said that a couple of times over, Alan, for everything you've done in helping me integrate into the company. I fully appreciate it, and it's been a privilege to work alongside you. We are moving into the next phase, and we are going to focus on a couple of other areas of what we want to think through in terms of the medium term. We're honest about the result today. We're objective about the causes.
We are also respectful to the teams who managed through these difficult conditions. We have 17 businesses in Reunert, they represent three segments: electrical engineering, ICT, and applied electronics. We employ almost six and a half thousand people in this group. We take the responsibility very seriously for all of you as stakeholders as we head into the next phase of Reunert, we're focusing on sharper growth options, stronger participation in the markets where we already have the right to win, and more consistent execution. It was always a half with good progress. It was also a half with good progress. Our circuit breaker exports into the U.S. continue to grow. Applied electronics showed strong momentum, our ICT mergers are bedding down. Our capital discipline was maintained, we concluded two value-accretive transactions that we list in our results, we're very proud of those.
I would describe the half as mixed, disappointing in outcome, but enough quality and opportunity in the portfolio to support a more positive second half of the year and a stronger medium-term story. I'll now hand over to Mark Kathan, our CFO, to take you through slides 14 to 13. I'll then come back and talk about the segment reviews, the strategy update, and the prospects. Mark's going to join us on stage now.
Thanks, Anthonie. Good morning to everyone on this live webcast, and thank you for taking the time to join us. Firstly, I would like to contextualize how some of the market conditions have impacted our group over the past six months. We continue to operate in a structurally constrained macro landscape, particularly in South Africa. The global environment has been unpredictable and has been driven by geopolitical instability. I've prepared a slide, and I don't want to sound like an economist, but really it describes our macro economy that's drivers for Reunert. The SA GDP has been pedestrian with a slight positive uptick. South Africa's growth trajectory remains subdued, typically in the low single digits, and that has been for a long period of time now.
That has driven other factors, and that is weak investment, which in turn suppresses demand in infrastructure-linked sectors such as our Electrical Engineering segment. Unfortunately, GDP has been revised downwards as part of a revision on the Iran conflict. If you look at infrastructure spend and investment, our GFCF at 14% has adversely impacted our cables business in South Africa. The latest CPI has increased to 4%, and that's on the back of increased Brent Crude because of the conflict in Iran. We have experienced record high prices in copper, which has already touched $14,000 a tonne, and in ZAR terms, it has increased from ZAR 182,000 per tonne to about ZAR 214,000 a tonne. When we look at the interest rates, the interest rates over this past period has decreased, and this will negatively impact the returns on our Quince business.
On the positive side, we have seen strong growth in military spend over this period of time. Our Applied Electronics business has benefited from this spend. With that as a backdrop, let's unpack the financial performance for the period. If we look at the profit and loss statement, analyzing the profit and loss statement, we note that the group's revenue for the period increased marginally by 1%. The Electrical Engineering and Applied Electronics segments revenue also increased by 1.5% and 5% respectively, while the ICT segment was down by 5%. The Electrical Engineering segment had contrasting narratives between cables and circuit breakers. In respect of cables business, the material impact was double-digit volume declines in both Zambia and in South Africa, and that was really due to weak infrastructure demand and commodity price increases.
As highlighted previously, the price of copper increased by 17% and was further exacerbated by a strengthening kwacha against the U.S. dollar in Zambia. On the positive side, the circuit breaker business was supported by strong exports into the U.S. market. Our defense cluster in the applied electronics segment is benefiting from changes in structural defense spending, cushioning domestic weakness. The applied electronics segment growth was due to execution of healthy orders from a strong order book. The strengthening of the currency was effectively hedged at more favorable exchange rates, resulting in good foreign currency exchange gains. If we look at operating profit, operating profit declined by 23%. This performance can be analyzed in two areas, one on our trading businesses and the other on non-financial transactions. The performance of the trading businesses was bolstered by the applied electronics segment.
The ICT business was more or less flat year-over-year, that was in line with our expectations. The negative volume growth in the cable business primarily drove a 40% decline in profitability. The increase in the ECL allowance in trade debtors was due to certain SOEs not paying us timeously. The non-trading IFRS 2 ESOP and CSP adjustments will be unpacked in the next slide. If we look at the share-based payment remeasurements, firstly, let's just talk about the ESOP. We are really proud of our ESOP scheme, where it sits currently. The inception was in 2022, the vesting of the share scheme is expected to be in April 2027, a year from now. That was a 60-month scheme.
If we look at the ESOP and if we compare it to how the share price has moved, and the share price has a direct impact on the charge of the ESOP. Over the past 18 months, we have seen the share price being fairly volatile. In September 2024, the share price was ZAR 81, and if we look at last year, as the share price dropped to ZAR 60.55, we actually released income into the provision of ZAR 13 million.
If we compare that ZAR 13 million to a ZAR 65.16 ESOP, that was a ZAR 19 million expense that came through our accounts this year, and that was a ZAR 32 million movement. We typically use the Monte Carlo simulation to value the ESOP. The same applies to the CSP. The CSP had a ZAR 20 million movement, and together, these transactions delivered a ZAR 52 million movement in the share price.
Sorry, in the charge that came through on the income statement. We go to the next slide and we look at the consolidation of where the HEPS and the EPS ended up. HEPS was 22% down. That was ZAR 0.53 per share. EPS was 24% down at ZAR 0.58 per share. We focus on how we analyze HEPS. What you can see is that the applied electronics was positively up and contributed to 19% growth in HEPS. That was offset by the negative electrical engineering underperformance. The ZAR 52 million that I spoke about on the previous slide, that contributed ZAR 0.24 to the HEPS line, which is largely a non-trading performance. We look at the statement of financial position. Upfront I'd like to say our balance sheet remains strong.
The group remains in a net cash position with the reduction in net cash primarily due to a ZAR 468 million final dividend that was paid. The group remains in an un-geared position, giving it a healthy capacity to grow. This reflects on an ongoing disciplined capital allocation that Anthonie referred to early on. If we look at how we analyze our cash flow, our cash generation remains robust. Net cash generated for the period was positive, with a ZAR 214 million positive free cash flow achievement, which remains sufficient to cover our interim dividend at one and a half times cover. The group invested ZAR 197 million in working capital, primarily due to the high copper input costs and an inventory build to support order execution in the second half of the year.
If we focus on capital expenditure, our ZAR 69 million of capital expenditure shows a disciplined commitment to capital deployment, with expansion in Reunert Connect's infrastructure having been our focus for the six months. We will always invest in good growth projects that meet our hurdle rates. A strong balance sheet provides the group with an opportunity to grow, and our capital allocation philosophy remains paramount in guiding our decision-making. I will now hand over to Anthonie as we go into the segment review.
Thank you, Mark. In the next couple of slides, we're going to cover the segment reviews. Again, I'm not going to delve into too much detail about the six months. I'll give some short data points on that.
I'll focus on the prospects or the shorter-dated prospects, and then we'll shift into the conversation, as I mentioned earlier, around how do we think about the longer-term growth prospects for Reunert. First of all, let me pick this up. The segment remains central to Reunert's industrial relevance, and it plays into key structural theme, the energy transition. It's connected to the energy infrastructure, electrical protection, control and automation, and the broader infrastructure cycle. It contributes about 55% of our segment revenue, and you can see the challenge, 25% of segment operating profit. It reflects the exact challenge that we experienced in half one. We had meaningful scale, and we have meaningful scale in this segment, but the margins are under pressure, pointing to the need for the quality and the resilience of earnings to improve. We move over to slide 16.
The half year performance was clearly affected by the power cable environment, as Mark mentioned. Revenue increased to ZAR 3.5 billion, but the operating profit declined by 40% to ZAR 138 million. The circuit breaker business, CBI-electric: low voltage , continues with good performance. It's supported by stable South African volumes, but very strong growth into the U.S. CBI-electric: low voltage has products and customer positions and capability that compete internationally. I think coming in from the outside into the business, I was positively surprised by exactly what we have in CBI-electric: low voltage . I think it's a very high quality business and very exciting path forward for that business, and we continue to figure out how do we get that company also to reach its full potential. The pressure came mainly from power cables.
South African gross fixed capital formation fell to its lowest level in 25 years at around 14% of GDP. That's simply not good enough for a business that is exposed to the macros, exposed to South African activity, but in particular exposed to infrastructure spend. That infrastructure spend has to start to get moving. The distribution grid spend needs to get moving, and we will benefit from that as we fill our factories and we increase the utilization in our factories. In Zambia, the kwacha strengthened sharply against the U.S. dollar, and that created both margin and volume pressure. Our customer orders and our recognized raw material prices added further pressure. These external factors are known, they are quantified, and we can impact them even more to the extent people need.
What is important is our response, it must focus on cost control, it must focus on our sales force effectiveness, it must focus on our manufacturing efficiency when utilization is down. We need to ensure that our investment in working capital is appropriate so that we are geared up for when the volumes do recover.
It's not criticism. It's making sure that our business is resilient, better positioned for the infrastructure recovery when it comes. Our teams are working hard. They are working on elements of our strategic refresh for cables, and they're thinking through these elements that I've just touched on. The second half is more encouraging. I think our circuit breaker business, we expect the export orders to continue there. The order book looks healthy. On Zambia, we also believe there will be an improved situation with orders coming through, and we've got renegotiated contracts, and pricing for those contracts, which we think should come through in the second half. In South Africa, the transmission development plan is starting to translate into activity, albeit slow, and the multi-year framework agreements and orders are expected to come from the National Transmission Company of South Africa.
I'm also pleased to announce the appointment of our new Segment CEO for Electrical Engineering, Graeme Eddey. Graeme has been with Reunert for a very long time. He's also spent time in the Electrical Engineering and in particular in the cables business, and he'll start on the 1st of June. Graeme has deep knowledge and experience in this segment, and I'm sure he's going to add value as we work on the various initiatives in Electrical Engineering. Again, I wish to express my sincere thanks to Alan, who's been caretaking the segment since the 1st of January, and Graeme will take over from him. Graeme, as I mentioned, will work with underlying Business Units to drive the immediate requirement of stability and recovery.
In the medium term, we will have a sharper focus on the full potential of this segment, taking into account the uncontrollable factors that continue to impact on it. Moving over to slide 17, we're now into the ICT overview, and there's a different message for the ICT Segment. It remains very resilient in a fairly weak economy. As Mark mentioned earlier, and we'll touch on it now, our revenues are fairly stable, which is adequate, and it's in line with our expectations, and it makes up about 56% of the segment operating profit. To remind investors, we have four business units in this segment. Again, when we get back to our strategic refresh and our communication around the ICT sector, we will explain a lot clearer in the coming months, in the coming periods on how exactly our ICT Segment hangs together.
We've got a communications and connectivity business. We've got a solutions and systems integrator company in IQbusiness. We have our access to the channel, which is Nashua, our total workspace provider, where we distribute through a channel and have access to about 25,000 mid-sized businesses in Southern Africa. Finally, we've got a funding business, Quince. Quince Capital, that has got a book of around ZAR 2.2 billion that provides rental-based funding. Revenue declined to ZAR 1.8 billion and operating by about 1% to ZAR 1.8 billion, the operating profit increased to ZAR 321 million. In the current environment, as I mentioned, I think that is a solid outcome, it does reflect that recurring revenue is strong, and operating discipline is strong, and the work that we've done is starting to come through. Clearly, we need to lift the growth profile of the ICT segment.
Reunert Connect is now merged, and the related merger costs have been accounted for in H1. IQbusiness has also improved following the leadership refresh with Rob Godlonton taking over the reins of that business and driving the restructuring. The cost base in IQbusiness is leaner. Our go-to-market strategy is becoming more focused. We announced as part of the results the bolt-on acquisition of Silversoft into IQbusiness. This acquisition is not a large acquisition, but it's a very important acquisition, as strategically, it now strengthens our ERP capability, but it also gives us access to a customer base in a number of different countries. Nashua remains a very resilient cash generative platform, and Quince continues to perform solidly with credit losses and collections supporting the earnings quality. The point I would like to make on the ICT segment is that it's not only a defensive platform.
It's a strategic growth platform. We are building a stronger position in digital integration. I want to repeat that we are building a stronger position in digital integration and AI acceleration through the services that we can offer in this group. We are busy recruiting a new segment CEO who will support our business units to drive this initiative. Applied Electronics is where the growth momentum is most visible. Opportunity is also time sensitive. Let me pause for a second and just talk a little bit about the time sensitivity. Our Applied Electronics business operates based on large orders that come into the business. It has a process to actually get those orders approved and cleared. That sometimes takes an extensive period of time.
From a timing perspective, we need to ensure that we get the orders in, but then we also get them through the approval processes in time, and that creates points in time volatility. We are pleased with what happened in the past six months, that's actually the order execution has been excellent in the business. Our seven businesses that focus on defense technology and manufacturing and systems integration delivers advanced electronic fuses. We deliver radars, tracking systems, secure communication, precision electronic components, and full engineering solutions. Moving over to slide 20. In defense, our revenue increased to ZAR 1 billion, our operating profit increased by 41%. I think it's important to also just pause there, because the currency strength in this period would have impacted on our performance at a revenue level more.
You can clearly see as we fill our factories and as we deliver our orders, the benefit of operating leverage comes through dramatically in this business. We increased relative to the prior year by 41% to ZAR 110 million. The order book reduced to ZAR 2.4 billion. We are not concerned about the order book. I think it's moment in time, order book perspective. We are looking at the medium and the longer term order book, and it's largely because of timing and delayed export orders. The underlying fundamentals remain extremely strong. As far as the fuses cluster is concerned, they delivered well. They're supported by export orders, and execution and improved product efficiency contributed to their performance. Strategic IP co-development programs are also progressing, which is important for the longer-term technology position of the segment.
Our secure communication strengthened revenue and operating profit with good local order intake and a large export order pipeline, which we are very positive about. Our logistics was affected by OEM platform delays. Again, we expect a better second half for the year. The defense opportunity, in short, is real. Again, as I move into my perspective of where I see the next while for the group, I think that there's a lot of positive things happening on the defense side which will impact our business. It's supported by global rearmament. There's a lot of stock replenishment taking place. There's a need for reliable supply chains. Our challenge is to convert our intellectual property, our technical credibility, and our incredible engineering capability into scalable growth while managing the execution, the regulatory, and the capacity risk, and the constraints very carefully.
We have two legs to our renewable energy cluster, Apollo and Terra Firma, and we provide renewable energy solutions and wheeling through these two businesses. We support commercial and industrial customers to reduce their electricity costs in accelerating South Africa's energy transition. Moving over to the renewable energy slide. It's been a difficult first half for it. These are two earlier-stage companies, and clearly these businesses are affected by slowdowns or delays, and we need to focus on ensuring that we actually set these businesses up for success. We had lower build rates in the first six months. There were site readiness delays, and heavy summer rains affected the EPC execution, and our fixed cost recoveries and margins were under some pressure. The underlying direction remains positive.
Our effective interest in our solar build and operate assets increased to 102 MW, our BU income increased in line with portfolio growth. Apollo Africa is progressing and signing GPPA, the first GPPA is expected to unlock first revenues in the second half of 2026, a large solar project is expected to reach commercial operation in the second half of 2027. We are pleased with the progress also in Apollo, the announcement last week of a significant CPPA which Apollo signed with Tiger Brands is a step forward, we're appreciative of the relationship with Tiger Brands. Our message on renewable energy business is straightforward. As I mentioned earlier, it's an attractive and important growth platform, we must convert our pipeline into earnings.
We also need to be very mindful how we deploy the capital into it, and very disciplined in the way that we allocate capital into it. We need to remain focused on improving our build rates, and the energy trading needs to become a reliable contributor to Reunert's performance, and that's what we're working towards. Shifting in our strategic updates and internationalization. Turning to strategy. This slide I'm not going to spend a lot of time on. It's included in the integrated report of Reunert, and it sets out the investment case for the company. As part of the leadership transition from Alan to myself, we made it very clear to investors that the strategy of Reunert was not going to change. There would be areas of emphasis and areas of execution focus that might shift, it would not change.
There will be strategic continuity, and that's what we are committed towards. I think what is important, and at the core of it, are three things. You would have heard Alan mention this before. We've got three segments with quality assets in those three segments. These segments are positioned with growth strategies that can drive accelerated earnings growth. We've got a strong balance sheet with disciplined capital allocation. The balance sheet gives us the optionality, but the optionality will only create value if we allocate that capital with clarity, discipline, and pace. I'll talk to that a little bit later. That is why our strategic refresh matters. It's not about producing a strategy document, and it's not about sharpening the choices we make or the capital we allocate.
What is important is that we take full accountability, we define our strategies, and we work towards disciplined capital allocation to play into these growth spaces. Internationalization is important, and I provide on this slide a couple of data points just to demonstrate to investors the progress that we've made. On the international revenue side, it increased over the first half of 2026 by 9% and has grown at 10% CAGR since 2021. We would hope that we can accelerate that growth going forward. In electrical engineering, international revenue now represents 44% of the revenue of the segment, and circuit breaker export revenue was up 6% despite tariffs in 2025. We continue our strategic drive to reduce the dependency on the local macros.
That is why internationalization is important for this business, and that's why it's important also that when we think about the growth opportunity for Reunert, we don't only focus on the macros in South Africa, and we don't only focus on the macros in the neighboring countries, but we focus on broader super cycle growth narrative. We're not internationalizing for the sake of it. We are doing it where we have product relevance, technology access, and a credible right to compete. That brings me to a very exciting announcement that we put out on Friday, the Fuchs Electronics Europe and CSG partnership. It's an extremely exciting move for the business. It's something which the company's been working on for the last four or five years as they thought through their internationalization strategy for the applied electronic segment.
The media release on Friday covers the mechanics of the JV, but let me call out a couple of points. This gives Reunert an in-market European manufacturing presence. Reunert, Fuchs will set up an in-market manufacturing presence in Slovakia alongside CSG. Reunert retains the majority shareholding and control, which is very important for us, over the JV. We are the technology originator and design authority. We keep our IP. CSG is a great strategic partner for us to have. They are the fastest-growing defense business in Europe. They bring European industrial capability, they bring infrastructure and customer access. Both those elements are extremely important. When you partner with somebody with IP and with technical know-how and capability, you want somebody that can bring the additional part to it. CSG brings that for us.
They bring that access to a manufacturing capability, they bring access to customers, but they also, very importantly, bring access and deep regulatory licensing expertise. That is excellent partner to have, a fast-growing partner that can provide that access. We have the proven fuse technology and a longstanding technical know-how, and CSG brings the other elements. Third, this is also very important, the model is deliberately independent and OEM-agnostic. We are not tying to one OEM. We are out there. Fuchs Europe or Fuchs Electronics Europe is positioned to serve multiple ammunition OEMs and defense ministries rather than being tied to one customer or one platform. The last bit, point 4, is that the structure is capital efficient. I think that is always a concern from investors when you are driving international expansion.
The question is, how much capital do you put to work, and how do you ensure that that capital that you put to work is managed in a controlled manner, but also in a capital-efficient manner? Our expansion or our capital employment into Europe is supported by a binding launch order for the first three-year ramp-up period. We've got an order in place. The order will actually support the funding of the investment that goes into Europe. That's a very big positive. The business is expected to become self-sufficient, in a short space of time, approximately three years from the start of operation. Again, I can't emphasize enough that it's a capital light investment that we're making. The strategic logic is very clear. Europe needs secure, reliable, and modern supply chains for defense. Electronic fuses are critical components of that ecosystem.
This partnership gives us proximity to the market, a credible European platform, and a way for it to scale Fuchs's technology into this growing demand cycle. We are excited about this. We will be disciplined in our execution, and the opportunity is very attractive. It still required very focused execution, governance, regulatory follow-through, and capital discipline. The transaction is also subject to customary CPs for a transaction of this nature, and we would hope that we could close that out by around September this year. Now moving into the final couple of slides, and I want to share with the investors what I've been sharing internally in Reunert with our management teams. It's a very simple slide, and it's a slide that really tries to provide a message that I bring into the company. For me, the longer-term strategic investment lens for Reunert is three things.
First of all, it centers around super cycles, centers around full potential, and it centers around the culture of Reunert. On super cycles, Reunert must be an active participant in three structural growth cycles where we already operate. We operate in energy transition, we operate in AI and digitalization or digital acceleration, and we operate in defense. Energy transition, AI and digitalization, and defense. We have businesses in each three of them, and we are refreshing our strategy to challenge our ambition and focus and pace. When you operate in super cycles, and I just want to pause on this for a second, and I've raised this internally a number of times. When you operate in super cycles, they don't wait for you. The super cycles will happen. They will take place.
Capital will flow into super cycles, resources will flow into super cycles, and a significant amount of financial wealth will be generated in that process. What is critical when you have businesses operating in super cycles is for you as a management team to challenge your ambition and your focus and your pace and ensure that you participate in it. On the full potential question, we are asking every business, every segment, every functional role in our company a very simple question. What can Reunert become if we are clearer on their market opportunity? We carefully consider the constraints, and we are very thoughtful about the risks and willing to allocate capital behind the right opportunities. Finally, you can operate in super cycles, and you can have the ambition, but if you don't have the people to execute, you will never actually capture the opportunity.
The federal model of Reunert is a real strength. That will not change. I'm not suggesting that we move away from accountability at business unit level, but the federation must become more connected. We need more collaboration, more pace, more urgency, and we need clearer accountability for group wide value creation. I cannot emphasize enough that Reunert has got incredible people, incredible engineering, technology capability, fantastic support structure. We've also got an incredible machine measuring and monitoring risk in the company and accounting for that on a monthly and a quarterly basis. What is important is that we now shift, and we make sure that we participate in these cycles that we operate in. Let me close with the final slide. Looking ahead, this again is slightly shorter dated, but the refresh will focus on the longer dated opportunity.
The macro environment is probably going to remain subdued over the next couple of months. South African growth remains constrained. The FX, who knows where the FX will be. It seems a bit stronger at the moment. Inflation is going to be under pressure. Commodity prices and energy security will continue to create volatility and probably remain at a fairly high level. The global geopolitical tensions will remain. I think all of those factors, as I mentioned, are factors that the business will feel, and there's no doubt we'll feel it. We'll probably explain some of that when we get to the second half. The important thing is we have an opportunity in this, and the opportunity is going to become clearer and clearer as we continue to think about how do we participate in these cycles.
Our strategic operating, our operating priorities are clear. As I mentioned, strategically, our priorities are becoming clearer and clearer, and we're going to focus on that in the next while. We have a Capital Markets Day in September. When I started, we engaged with a couple of investors, and we mentioned we thought initially it was going to be in June. We shifted that out so that we can be ready when we get to September. By September, we are going to focus on our Applied Electronics segment to give the investors a clearer perspective of how we see the potential for our Applied Electronics segment. This is a very important milestone, and we look forward to that engagement, and we would encourage people to join us at that Capital Markets Day. Let me end where I started.
The first half was disappointing, yes, we understand that. We also don't want to play that down. We're happy to discuss it, analyze it, and demonstrate to investors that we understand the nuances of what happened over the first half, and we're not normalizing it. That is also important. We're not losing sight of the quality in the portfolio or the opportunities in front of us. In the next phase for Reunert, we will focus on creating better growth options. We will focus on sharper strategic execution, and we'll focus on disciplined capital allocation. We are not going to lose disciplined capital allocation for sure. The culture ultimately, which I hold very dearly and which is very important, ultimately will be the thing that's going to unlock the full potential for Reunert.
That is the opportunity we are excited about, and that is what we're going to chase with urgency and with discipline. I want to thank the investors. I want to thank you for your interest in the company, for your time, and for joining us this morning. We are going to take a couple of minutes just to get ready for the questions, and give us about two or three minutes and we'll deal with the questions. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. We're back, and I've got next to me my colleagues, Mohini Moodley, Alan Dickson, stepping down end of the month, and then Mark Kathan, CFO at the end, as you saw earlier. We're going to cover a couple of questions. A couple have come in from the portal.
Mohini is going to direct the questions, and then hopefully I can answer them. The difficult ones I'll pass on to Alan.
Okay. Thanks, Anthonie. Good morning to everyone on the webcast. There are four broad questions that have come through, and they cover the defense cluster, the Electrical Engineering segment, and then there's a question on financing as well. Anthonie's going to answer the questions with respect to the defense cluster, Alan will respond to the question on the Electrical Engineering segment, and then Mark will answer the questions on finance. For ease of reference, I'm going to group the questions so that we deal with each set together. The first question is from Rowan Goeller, Chronux Research. The question is: Are there any bottlenecks to growth in the defense cluster? This is with reference to capital, time to negotiate contracts, and available partners. Anthonie?
Thank you for the question, Rowan. I think when you look at the bottlenecks, there are always going to be constraints. Capital is not a constraint. I think the investment we need to make certainly is not a constraint. The time to negotiate contracts, I think that is already core process to negotiate contracts. I think we've got an incredibly efficient team and an effective team that negotiates contracts. I think, at time, the challenge sits in getting the approval processes ready. The defense industry is regulated, and it's regulated through the South African regulatory processes. Also, when you export into the European market, you also enter a regulatory process around the EU and NATO, which we take very seriously as a business. Clearly, there are always some challenges in terms of getting those contracts approved in a speedy time.
I think the other important thing I would raise there is, it's important for us, to the points that I raised earlier, is to increase the order book and increase the optionality, so that we can accelerate these processes. As far as partners are concerned, I think that as part of our strategic refresh is to look very carefully around the partnerships that we can create, in-country partnerships and the localization partnerships that we can have in the different geographies that we intend operating in.
Okay. Thanks, Anthonie. The next question from Rowan, also relating to the defense cluster. What portion of defense revenue do you expect to be linked to IP and support services as opposed to product manufacturing?
Well, Rowan, that's a very difficult question, and I don't have the answer to your question. Our strategic refresh will include our perspectives on exactly the component parts of where it will come from. At the moment, I don't have an answer for you. Alan, I don't know if you've got a better view on what portion of it will come from that.
Similarly, I don't have the exact number. If we were to look at it from a broad point of view, I would guesstimate around about 90% of the revenue comes from product and about 10% from the IP. That IP portion is an absolutely critical element on it, because the successful conclusion of that is what leads to the long-term production orders that flow from that. We've seen the very successful completion of the radar IP in this period, and we look forward to those production orders coming online, which will give us long-term access into that market from the back end of this year out. We've got a number of other projects around fuses, around Etion Create, and further in radar, that will continue to accelerate that. Those IP sales are people sales, so it's man-hours.
I don't really expect those to increase much more than that, but the strategic importance of those remain absolutely critical.
Maybe one further data point is. We are thinking through deeply. In terms of the product, there's a lot of IP actually captured in the product that we have at the moment, and we are thinking through how do we also invest around the developments of those products to also make them future-ready and future relevant.
Okay. Thank you. Ax Majola from RMB also has a question with respect to the defense cluster. The question is: In terms of the defense cluster order book, how many years do we expect this to cover?
Thank you for the question. We really appreciate it. The defense order book is multi-year order book, and it's increasing at the moment. I think what we are finding at the moment is because of the demand that is out there, customers and partners are looking for longer term strategic certainty and product certainty, and it's shifting very much into the longer-dated order books. I think as far as the immediate pressure is concerned, there are also shorter-dated elements that are coming through quite aggressively in the short term, where people need solutions right now as they focus on their restocking in the short term. Very much longer-dated order book. I think when we get to September, we are also hopeful that we can unpack the order book in a couple of different ways to give investors more clarity on that.
Thank you. The last question with respect to the defense cluster comes from Kgosi Rahube from Melville Douglas. The question is: Is there meaningful customer overlap between CSG and Reunert? Additionally, could the new JV potentially displace or reduce orders currently fulfilled from South Africa over time?
The short answer is no. There's no major overlap in the product, the electronic fuse that we're going to be putting into the European market. Clearly, there are customer overlaps in other areas, that's actually not going to displace any of our products that we are selling into the European market at the moment. I think the partnership will focus on electronic fuses.
We're already selling automotive fuses into the European market, the electronic fuses. That's where the partnership's going to be, and that's where we're centered. We've got a very low exposure to electronic fuses at the moment. Really a complementary relationship. Can the relationship strengthen into other areas? Potentially. Obviously right now we're taking it first step at a time and focusing on electronic fuses, with very little overlap, and we don't have any concern about the customer base and cannibalization.
Okay, thank you. That completes the questions on the defense cluster. We're now going to move on to the questions on the Electrical Engineering segment, which Alan will respond to. The first question and second question come from Axolile Majola , RMB. The question is, "On the EE cables business, may we kindly have a view on when we expect the SA orders received to flow to revenue?
Thanks, Ax. I think the specific question that Ax is asking about is the transmission grid expansion. Just a quick reminder, there's two parts to the transmission grid expansion. There is what's called the TDP, which specifically Anthonie spoke about, which is the Eskom-driven and own-funded expansion of it. Then there's the ITP, which is the triple P's, where we will have private money that will go into it, those two elements. They are running in parallel, but at slightly different time frames. Importantly, on the TDP side, which is the Eskom side, as Anthonie had mentioned, those framework agreements have been signed. They're 5-year framework agreements and multi-billion rand agreements. Those are in place. We have received ours. From that, there will be a suite of orders that will be drawn down by Eskom over the next 5 years.
Those orders have commenced, although at a relatively low value, and we expect that to ramp up over the next couple of years up to the full capacity that we anticipate. On the ITP side, the PPP side, that's slightly running behind, and the latest information we have indicates that those bids will be out in the back end of 2026 or early 2027, and then those will slowly and steadily pick up orders onto that. The TDP is slightly ahead, and we already have those orders, and the ITP probably running about 12 months behind those. We anticipate at the moment, before we get to full capacity, it's probably about 18 months away.
Okay, thank you. The next question from Ax, "May we confirm the ability of the Zambia business to pass through cost to customers, as we note that copper prices have fluctuated and resulted in delayed orders?
Thanks again, Ax. Just again to highlight, the Zambian business has got two parts to it. The first part is a copper rod business, and the second part is a power cable business. On the copper rod side of the business, we have 100% pass-through on those orders. They are directly linked to the movement in the copper price, and we pass those on a monthly basis, and it's back to back the cost that we take on and what we sell it to. On the power cable side, there are three market segments. The first of those is the state, of which the biggest player is ZESCO, which is the Zambian Eskom. Then we have mines and the general market that play into that. On the ZESCO side, those are historically fixed price contracts, so we do not pass on.
As we described in the presentation, we've renegotiated those now as the raw material prices have gone up. Although there were delayed orders, those we expect now to flow and catch up in the second half. The other two market segments I described, the mines and the general market and the rest of the market, those are also back to back, and we escalate those on a monthly basis. The delayed orders we talk about from a pass-on point of view are those that go into ZESCO, and we negotiated those, and those took some time. The other dynamic of the delayed orders really comes around customers' budget capacity. You can imagine if you've got a fixed amount of budget, the higher the raw material price goes, the lower the volume that you can buy. That's the second part of those delayed orders.
It's not linked to pass-through, it's just linked to the capacity of the customer to buy product.
Thank you. The last question in this grouping comes from Kgosi Rahube of Melville Douglas. The question is, "How much of the U.S. tariff increases were successfully passed on to customers, and what impact did the remaining portion have on margins?
Thanks, Kgosi. We roughly passed on about 75% of the duties or the tariffs that we passed on to our customers in a variety of mechanisms that we were able to negotiate with our customers. Fortunately for us, the margins that we make, particularly into that U.S. market, are such that we can sustain that 25% additional amount that we weren't able to pass on, but that did compress margins into the U.S. market. Still, they were profitable into that area. The strategic decision we took when those tariffs first came in the portion of last year, not to walk away from that market and to wear some of the margin, I think has proven to be correct. Now that we see the easing of that tariff environment, we are now seeing a really strong pickup in those orders, as Anthonie had spoken about earlier.
We do think that as we move forward into future periods, we should have some release of pressure on those margins, although the strong exchange rate at the moment does continue to place some pressure on those. That U.S. market is, and remains, a very strong market for the Circuit Breaker company.
Thanks, Alan. The last question for this morning also comes from Kgosi, which Mark will respond to. Question is, "South African banks are increasingly expanding into the SME and mid-market funding space. How do you expect this trend to impact Quince Capital's growth prospects, margins, and competitive positioning?
Yeah. Thanks for the question. Quince is directly linked to Nashua. Nashua does play in the SME space, we've got several thousand customers in that space right throughout South Africa. Quince is currently already following that strategy by expanding itself into the SME space. I think where we see Quince, we see it as quite a strategic asset that we have, and we will unpack that growth and the full potential of that asset in our strategy refresh in September.
Thanks, Mark. That brings us to an end of the questions for today. If there are any questions that you have going forward, you're welcome to send an email to Karen Smith. Thank you.
Thank you.