Hello, and welcome to the Bodycote Trading Update. Throughout the call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and afterwards, there'll be a question-and-answer session. Just to remind you, this conference call is being recorded. I'll now hand over to Stephen Harris, Group Chief Executive. Please begin your meeting.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Stephen Harris here. I am with Dominique Yates, our Chief Financial Officer, as usual.
Morning.
So we're gonna just take you through this trading update from the top. This covers the four months to the end of October. If we start off with the headlines here, basically 8% higher at constant currency for the period, and that's 7% constant currency up for the full year, year to date. Overall, the business underlying, I think, the fundamentals are very strong. Things are moving ahead. There's one bump in the road, which we'll talk about in a minute, and that's in automotive. But overall, we're seeing quite nice growth, pretty much in every other place other than automotive. So let's just dive in without further ado onto the automotive issue.
So we are actually looking at a modest downgrade on our automotive expectations for the full year. What we are seeing is quite a weak Q4 coming up, I believe. We said quite clearly that we thought Q3 was gonna be down, but Q4 would be quite strong and covering over for Q3. And I know that in many areas, people said, "Well, you know, why are you so confident of that?" I think the issue there was that we were quite confident because we were told that that was the case, particularly in North America. And as it's turned out, it's North America that is the weakest part of the piece.
In fact, our European automotive revenues are flat, and the total problem that we've seen is actually in North America, and it's all about supply chain issues. And funnily enough, the one OEM that actually told us that they were gonna be strong in the fourth quarter turned out to be the weakest, such is life. I think everybody was caught out, particularly the North Americans were, with the Asian supply chain issues, particularly in Southeast Asia. And indeed, I've talked in the past about tooling sales being an indicator, leading indicator for car and light truck, and this is a car and light truck issue, by the way. It's not all automotive. Heavy truck and bus is up quite a bit, but car and light truck is where the weakness is.
Tooling is a leading indicator, and indeed, we saw tooling rising, so there was in the Q3, there was quite an expectation for sales in Q4. But in fact, it's come up short, we won't be able to catch up, and our customers are not able to catch up, particularly the one in North America. But around the place, the rest of the automotive business is actually staying well ahead of the decline. I mean, we've got flat sales pretty much everywhere there, slight rise in the emerging markets, except for Mexico, which of course is the supply chain for the U.S., and there it's off 50%.
Just moving into that, in terms of a forward look, this is not an absence of demand. This is purely a supply chain problem, and therefore, one would expect the sales for this business actually to just move to the right. The unknown for us is when it will start picking up, because indeed, that will require some resolution to the supply chain issues that are there. Certainly, customer demand is extremely strong. You've seen that with the sales of secondhand cars, for example. People just can't get new cars these days. And so it will come back, and it'll come back strongly.
Whether we will see that, call it bubble, get into 2022 or move into 2023, depends on the timing of the resolution on the supply chain issues. And that's something that we can't tell at this point in time. Moving on to the rest of the business, actually, it's sort of lots of ticks in the box and good news elsewhere. Civil Aerospace revenue is up 25%, and its activity is starting to build. It's doing quite well. And indeed, Europe is strong at the moment, but the U.S. is accelerating. It's also strong, but not as strong as Europe, and it's accelerating. General Industrial is a very good story there. So it's almost back to 2019 levels.
Lots of parts of GI kicking in strongly, very few parts of it are weak. In fact, you know, it's just looking at it cursory, it's very small segments for us, like rail, that are weak. Everything else is very strong. So GI is doing well. Emerging markets, they grew 4% in total, so that's a result of the GI side as much as anything else, counteracting the Mexican downgrade in automotive. And nicely, Specialist Technologies, they grew 10%. They are continuing to outperform the Classical Heat Treatment side of the business. One of the big questions on people's minds, I think, has been: What about inflation? And the big cost inputs for us, obviously, are energy and labor.
And I'm happy to say that we're doing quite well in that area. Even though there are significant energy price increases right around the patch, we're covering those. We cover them with energy surcharges. They've gone in immediately, and we're well ahead of the game there. And labor inflation, we've got price rises going through to cover that as well. So definitely covering our costs on the inflation side, so no problems there. And our cash flows, as usual, are nice and very strong. In terms of the outlook, too early to say really what the short-term outlook is past the end of the year.
So into 2022, it's a bit difficult to call, but into 2023, I think we're looking at a quite a strong growth in the business in 2023, for sure. Maybe a little bit earlier, coming into the second half of 2022, we might get some good growth there, but we can't call that just yet. So overall, the outlook, I think, is very strong. But that's into 2023. With that, we'll open it up for questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please dial zero one on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask your question. If you find your question is answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial zero two to cancel. So once again, that's zero one to ask a question or zero two if you need to cancel. There'll be a brief pause now while we register your questions. And our first question comes from the line of George Featherstone at Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Oh, hi, morning, everyone. My first question would be in civil aero. I wonder if you could give us some color on the change in inventory levels in the supply chain compared to H1, and if there's been any change in your expectations about when these will normalize?
Yeah, sure. Hi, George. Well, the change in the inventory levels is something that is quite hard to call in detail because it's quite a spread-out supply chain, as you would imagine. What we are seeing is the piece of the supply chain that's closest to the OEs, so this is getting towards the final assembly side on the engines, which is the biggest exposure we have. There, certainly, production levels are picking up. They don't have a lot of stock there. That's starting to be eased out.
There's still quite a bit of inventory at the very beginning of the supply chain, which is the raw forgings and castings, and that is, that to be the last, part of the supply chain to actually move up, in terms of revenues, and they still have a little bit of stock there. But, overall, it's not anywhere near as, what it was like at the end of last year. And as the 737 MAX, starts to ramp up here, then I think, you'll start seeing things moving quite quickly. It's, it's notable, though, I think, you're probably well aware of the fact that both Boeing and Airbus are both saying they're going to sell a huge amount of planes.
If you add the two together, it's more than the likely demand is out there. So one of the guys is going to win and one isn't. But for us, we're on Boeing, we're on both platforms. The big narrow body platform that we're on is the LEAP, and whether it's a 1A for Airbus or a 1B for Boeing, it doesn't matter, we've got it. In some ways, we'd rather Boeing get it because there are more LEAP engines going onto the Boeing platforms than there are Airbus, because the Airbus platform is shared with the Pratt & Whitney, which there's not a lot of work outside of our house there. They've got a lot of it in-house. I hope that answers your question, George.
Yeah, it does. Thank you very much. My second question is beyond the energy costs that you mentioned earlier. I just wonder if you could remind us the proportion of your cost base that's related to energy. And I know you mentioned, surcharges, but any other mechanisms you have to offset power cost inflation into 2022?
So historically, and this is an average across our business and does vary in certain parts of the business. But as an average, our utility costs, energy costs, are around 10% of revenue, or an eighth of our cost base. And in terms of other ways of mitigating it, I mean, clearly, passing the cost on to the customers is easy and straightforward in many respects for us as a company. I shouldn't say easy, it always takes difficult negotiations, but it is straightforward for us. In some respects, the higher energy prices drive a little bit in the direction that we were already going, which was to try and move into far more energy efficiency. It helps our carbon footprint in the first place.
So, that's a journey that we were already on, and the actual higher prices that are out there make a lot of the projects just that much more beneficial in terms of return on investment. So, we are doing that, but that, of course, is a longer cook, as it were.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Andre Kukhnin of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions. So I have to go back to automotive just to understand the trends a little bit better there. Firstly, on Europe versus North America, looking at least car production rates from IHS, those saw equal to the amount of downturn over your period of July to end of October. In fact, I think Europe was actually a bit worse. Could you talk about what drove your outperformance in Europe? And how do you view that as sustainable, or is there a kind of gap in terms of timing between what we see in car production rates and your demand?
Yeah. Morning, Andre. So yeah, it is, it is interesting. It's an interesting question. Clearly, the European performance is outperforming the background market. I will say this, actually, our North American performance is outperforming the background market, too, as is our emerging markets. So we're doing better than the background market right across the piece. It's just that the North American side is much weaker in terms of the specific OEMs that we are dealing with. So, do I think it's sustainable? On the basis that I... My belief is that this is going to start to resolve now, and certainly the supply chain issues are slowly resolving.
There's a lot of chatter about the fact that semiconductors in particular won't reach, quote, "market demand" until the end of 2022 or into 2023 even. But I think what we need to understand is that even getting towards market demand still implies growth, and there's quite a bit of growth there. It's just the market demand is so much higher than the background supply at the moment. So sustainable is not a term I like using very much. Do I see it getting worse? I don't think so. I think it's probably on an improving trend, but clearly I've been wrong once on this, so who knows? I hope that answers your question, Andre.
Yes. Yes, thank you very much for the color. Just second one on this, and I know you don't like going through monthly cadences too much, but I just wanted to understand the shape of it, what you said about tooling as a lead indicator. You said it turned up but came short. So kind of what was the shape for you in North America? Was it kind of down from July onwards, and we are flatlining at this, and there is a lead indicator that tells us that it should tick up, but not enough, or is there a different shape to it?
No, so I think to understand what tooling is all about, I mean, basically, the tooling is required for production.
Mm-hmm.
They need to tool up before they produce, and while they're producing, they need to renew their tools. So we saw quite a surge, actually, in Q3 in tooling, so there was a big expectation that production was gonna climb. And it slowed down, but we're only talking about October. It slowed down into October, but it's still growing. I mean, it's still up in the, you know, reasonably high growth in October, high single digits. So there is an expectation in the OEs for sure that their production is going up.
Indeed, the comments out of Mary Barra at GM, who is particularly important for us, of course, is that they expect their volumes to rise significantly in Q4, just not back to where they thought they were gonna be. I think that's the big issue. So yeah, the tooling is actually a judge, not of output, but of the OEM's production outlook.
Great. Great, that's, that's very helpful. And last question, just in terms of any cost action, could you just remind us where we are on that? And, are you planning anything in relation to this kind of near-term demand volatility?
So, I think that this is, in some respects, this is business as usual for us. So, we're always on the costs. You know, it's a full-time job, managing costs. I don't see this as anything exceptional. We're not into closing any plants down or mothballing or anything like that. This is just, you know, carrying on in terms of managing our labor and energy costs, which are the big inputs, you know, closely. So I don't see any more restructuring, if that's where you're going. And the restructuring program that's already in place is actually coming nicely to a close, and it's all, you know, as expected.
Great.
Is there anything else?
No. Thank you for your time.
Thanks, Andre.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Tyndall at HSBC. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Morning, James. Thanks for taking my questions. Two, if I may. Emerging markets up 4%, am I right in thinking Mexico within that was down 50%? So I'm guessing the rest of emerging markets was very, very strong. So I wonder if you could maybe point out some of the highlights there. And then the second question, I know you've mentioned to us in the past that PMI is not a good indicator of the direction of your business, and really, it's a question of looking at your business in aggregate internally. I'm just wondering if, given all the supply chain issues we're hearing about, what does that internal barometer look like at the moment? Is there any sense that customers are looking to kind of start to build inventory to try and compensate for the supply chain issues? Thanks.
Yeah. Okay, Mike. I'll tackle the second question first, if I might. That's about inventory build, if you like. We don't have evidence at the moment of inventory build going on. I mean, the inventory build would occur if people had sufficient supply to be able to build inventory, and so they don't at the moment. What we're seeing... And there will obviously be some exceptions to this, but what we're seeing generally, I think, is that people are shipping as soon as they can get enough components to be able to build. And indeed, you know, we've even got in... The automotive industry is the one that's suffering the most from all of this stuff, I think, as everybody knows.
We've got supply chain members, tier ones and tier twos, actually sharing components in order to try and keep the production lines flowing of the OEs, which is a first. I've never seen anything like that before. But so they are sharing it around, and so you're not seeing a build of inventory because it just flies out the door as soon as you've got it. General Industrial, more of a mixed picture, but I haven't yet seen any strong signs of anybody actually stocking up. They're still quite lean and shipping as fast as they can get their hands on stuff. Aerospace is on a build, and they've got a little bit of inventory, as we've already said. So I guess that's it.
As far as emerging markets are concerned, I'll let Dominic take that.
Yeah. So I think it's fair to say that first it's worth mentioning that two-thirds of our emerging market business is automotive. So inevitably, that business across emerging markets hasn't been immune to the supply chain issues that we've already been talking about. So China, which is predominantly automotive, the growth there was weaker. But where we have a sort of more, a greater balance across the business or where General Industrial are a significant proportion of the business, then we've shown very strong growth. And general industrial revenues in emerging markets were up 27% in that four-month period against last year. So it's a mixed bag, but really driven by where the automotive mix is.
Got it.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Just to add, just to add to that, I mean, you know, power and light truck in, in China, I mean, it's up, you know, nearly 7% there. So it's weaker growth, but it's still, you know, it's still kicking in there.
Yep.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Davies at Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. My first one was just, I think, on U.S. labor availability. Just given your order production comments, I think, from Mexico into the U.S. and GM, just be wondering, is that a particular pinch point or not something that's really been a significant issue through the quarter? Thank you.
Sorry, Robert, could you just explain the question on the pinch point? I didn't quite understand that.
Sorry, just in terms of your labor availability, given that labor and energy are one of your two major costs. Just wondering how big of a factor with getting hold of people in the U.S. was for you at the moment?
Okay. Not a problem in Mexico right now, I don't believe.
Mm-hmm.
The U.S., it's quite interesting because, I mean, you can read in every U.S. newspaper about, you know, labor shortages. In fact, I was over there quite recently. Just anecdotally, you drive along the road, and every restaurant is hiring.
Okay.
But one of the things is that it's certainly labor is certainly very short in the U.S., particularly in people-facing jobs.
Mm-hmm.
It's less of a problem in factories, as it were, where you don't have to, you know, see strangers all the time. And then-
Sure.
It's obviously COVID, I would think. Nevertheless, there is a shortage of labor, but it's manifesting itself not in a lack of people totally, no, but you know, it's eased a little bit, but certainly, we're seeing labor inflation in place in North America, in the U.S., and that is driving up wages for sure.
Mm-hmm. Thank you. And then my follow-up question is just, just wondered with all the sort of disruption in the market in the last 12-18 months, whether there was any new segments that you're looking at in terms of potential acquisition targets. Has that, you know, brought more distressed assets to the market or forced people to, you know, family-owned businesses to sell? Have you seen any change in behavior from sellers?
Yeah. There was initially certainly a PE lunge for the market, I think, but the asking prices were crazy high.
Mm-hmm.
So not much happened there. But yeah, as time's gone by here since the beginning of the pandemic, we are starting to see more assets coming on the market, and a couple of them seem to be relatively good. More in terms of Specialist Technologies targets, funnily enough, than in Classical Heat Treatment. What's happening in the Classical Heat Treatment side is that there are distressed assets, but the ones we've looked at are not very good. And there are
Okay
... a couple of reasonable ones out there in terms of size, but they're not, they're not very good assets, not something we would want anyway. Somebody will buy them for sure. But, as I say, some small plays in Specialist Technologies that, who knows? With the following wind, maybe we'll, we'll close something off there. But, it always takes two to tango in these things with acquisitions.
Great. And then maybe just one final one, if I could. You mentioned, I think, China Auto was a big exposure in that business. Just outside of Auto, I don't know if you have much general industrial in China. Just be kind of interested. There's been very mixed data points recently. Just, if you could shed any color on your China business ex Auto, if you could, thank you.
Not a lot of color, really.
Mm-hmm.
- I mean, it's GI business. Dominic, do you want to add anything?
Well, I'd say whatever we're doing in China isn't going to be representative of General Industrial in China in any way, because it is a tiny business.
Okay
... in the context of our overall business. So. Yeah.
No, no problem. Okay, that was all my questions. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Robert.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dominic Convey of Numis. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, both. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess just to try and explore a little bit more about the new guidance for the full year. The statement says that page one, so second half revenue shortfall of up to GBP 10 million. I just wonder whether you could give us a little bit of clarity about what assumptions explicitly you're making about Q4 auto volumes relative to Q3, and thereafter, how we should think about the drop-through, given that I think you said you'd be treating this really as ordinary course of business, therefore, no extra measures on the cost actions. And I guess an alternative way to frame this would be where you now expect second half sales and profits to land relative to the first half. Thank you.
... Well, just a quick note on the volumes. I think we will see stronger volumes in Q4 than we saw in Q3, just not enough to make up the whole that has arisen, actually. In Q3 was always going to be lower. We just expected Q4 to be higher, and Q4 volumes will be higher. They are going up at the moment, albeit too slowly. So, in terms of more detail on that, in terms of the full year guidance on that, Dominic?
Yeah, so, so current consensus is around GBP 628 million, which is more or less where we thought we would be, when we came out with our interim results. So, if you take GBP 10 million off that, that gets you to 618. At the time of our interims, consistent with that revenue, we were looking at a headline operating profit of GBP 100 million-GBP 101 million or so. So with GBP 10 million off that, at a 50% or so drop through, you get to the GBP 95 million-GBP 96 million headline operating profit range, which is where we're now anticipating to come, come out at the end of this year.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sanjay Jha of Panmure Gordon. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to check whether, in the last few months, we have seen quite a shift in, especially in Europe, towards battery electric vehicles. I just wanted to see, to what extent do you think your customer base is being impacted by that, and, how do you see that panning out next year?
Yeah, so the shift to electric vehicles, I mean, it is starting to pick up more, for sure. We are seeing the impact of it, mostly in our Eastern European business, at the moment. And, is it negatively affecting our customers? Not that I can see, not at this point in time. There's too many other things going on to be able to pick that out of the mix. But, our potential exposure to the EVs, when they get bigger in volume, is certainly looking quite good. We've done quite a number of requests for quotation. These things take quite a few years before they get into production from the original RFQs.
I think an interesting point, Sanjay, though, is that, and I think it surprises me as much as anybody else, is that the size of the vehicles that are turning electric, is quite interesting. I never expected to see an F-150 Lightning, an electric F-150. But there is, it's there. And we've had a few issues in terms of, helping them get their production lines going, but, a larger vehicle than I expected, to see at this stage of the game in EV. But yeah, definitely a trend. Should be positive.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Harry Philips at Peel Hunt. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Good morning, everyone. Just a couple of questions, please. The first is just trying to get sort of some clarity, maybe around 2022 and what you're suggesting at the outset, Stephen. I mean, I was just trying to interpret it. I don't have any pink points or anything, but just trying to interpret what you were saying. Basically, auto apart, you should see good growth. I mean, GI just kicking along well, recovery in aerospace, and so on. You know, we can look at IHS or BSI. IHS's forecasting has been even worse than mine in the last 18 months, but, you know, should we use IHS as a sort of, you know, crude rule of thumb for where auto might go?
And then secondly, just particularly around LEAP, I mean, there was a big finished engine inventory with Safran for a long time. Just how do you see that? Where are you actually seeing an uptick, a reasonable uptick in Safran volumes off your sales at the current time?
Hi, Harry. Yeah. So reversed order. First one, the aerospace, Safran. So I think the answer is, clearly, the European sales are doing quite well. But we have to remember that the... And by European, I mean the, the Airbus, LEAP-1A sales. They're doing quite well, and I think, the LEAP-1A inventories are the ones that are most, most down. And that's because the 737, which is the other side of the pond, is moving, but not as fast, yet, but it, it's expected to start moving very, very fast soon. And don't forget, the, the LEAP-1A and the LEAP-1B are, are built both sides of the, the, the Atlantic.
So the cold sections are in Europe, and the hot sections are in North America for the 1 A and the 1 B. So the growth we've seen so far is primarily driven by the 1 A, with the acceleration coming quite strongly now with the 1 B coming through. Inventories, you know, declining. I think can't give you much more color than that, actually. The next part of your question was the automotive and the shape going into 2022. And I think one could look at the fact that demand hasn't gone away. There's still, you know, there's still a requirement for all these components that just aren't coming through the system at this point in time.
So it moves to the right. The question is at what point do those components become available? One can imagine that if they, you know, fantastically became available December thirty-first, then 2022 would be a very good year. I just don't think it's going to switch on that fast. Most of the players are talking about delays in getting enough components through to really start moving here sort of in the Q1, Q2. But it is a real gambling game at the moment. People don't know... Because it's a global supply chain issue. And people have been caught out. They thought that the components were being manufactured, and then they just couldn't get them on the containers and into the ports. And then they had COVID hit the component manufacturers.
So, it's a very, very difficult one to call. IHS, it's not my favorite. If I can say that, Harry, I wouldn't use that. But then I have other tools at hand. If you could repeat the third part of your question, if we were-
It's more. Yeah, it's just more generally, I would say auto has the uncertainties around it, about visibilities, as you've just been outlining. But elsewhere in the business, the sort of growth prospects for 2022 sort of remain unchanged from where you anticipate, say, the half year. If anything, you could argue that aerospace is maybe a fraction ahead. Is that... I just wanted to be clear that for 2022, beyond the debate around auto, nothing has really changed in your thoughts and expectations around that.
Correct.
Excellent. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jonathan Hurn at Barclays. Please, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, guys. Two questions from me, please. Firstly, can we just come onto margin? Obviously, you have an aspirational target of getting group margins to 20%. Is that more a 2023 possibility, or do you think there's a chance that that could actually come through in 2022? That was the first question.
Okay, margin questions. The margins are actually pretty decent at the moment in terms of where they've come from. They're moving ahead. Hitting it in 2022, I don't think so. I think that it, this you know, this 20% number that we've been talking about, it's more likely to be a run rate that we hit, probably in the back end of 2023, to be honest with you. So I'm not saying that we're gonna be there in 2023 for the whole year, but by the time we get into the second half, fourth quarter, one would hope that we'd be hitting that as a run rate.
That's very clear. Thanks. And the same question just, just on spec, Specialist Technology, obviously, 10% growth. Can you kind of break that out, where that growth is coming from? And how do we think of Specialist Technologies in, in 2022? Obviously, as aerospace starts to pick up, can we expect that growth rate in Specialist Technology to essentially accelerate from, from where it is right now?
Yeah, I think that's a good call. So certainly our stainless business, S³P, is continuing to march ahead. I mean, it's astounding. You know, it's hardly touched by any of these other issues going on, which is what you would expect in many respects. But even its automotive exposure is still marching ahead, doing very well. The HIP Services, which is a big chunk of Specialist Technologies, is the piece that is most exposed to aerospace. And indeed, as aerospace accelerates, that HIP Services business will do well. HIP Services is mostly on the front end of the supply chain. In other words, the raw castings and forgings, that's where most of that work is done.
There is a little bit at the other end, but mostly at the front end. So that's longer to recover, in terms of the turn-up, because you've got to burn off that inventory that's at that end of the supply chain. So the good thing about HIP Services is, of all of our businesses, it has the highest drop-through. It's because the costs in HIP are more fixed than the others. And so when that does turn up, that will help boost the margin that we've been talking about.
Great. And then, and then, and maybe just one final one. I know it's a very small end market for you, but it wasn't mentioned in the statement, just energy. What are you starting to see there? Are you starting to see a pickup coming through in where you have exposure to energy?
Yeah. Well, so energy for us is in three pieces. One is industrial gas turbines, and there is growth in industrial gas turbines. Another one is power generation, and that is in decline for us. Part of that is deliberate, of course. And you know, we've been withdrawing from these sections, sectors. And then the third part, which is the one that people most focused on, is oil and gas, in terms of onshore and subsea. The subsea piece, there are projects, mostly for gas, that are being let, and we're doing quite well in that, fairly successfully. But it's a small business in group context, as indeed is the onshore oil and gas.
Onshore oil and gas is actually mostly exploration exposed as opposed to production. And there we are in decline. We've actually withdrawn from a significant part of that business anyway. But the characteristics on the energy side are that energy prices are high, and production is the area where there's demand. Not many people are expanding on exploration. So, exploration, you know, is down quite a bit actually. But overall, it is a small part of our business these days.
Great. That's very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We currently have further questions in the queue. So just as a reminder to participants, if you do wish to ask a question, please dial zero one on your telephone keypads now. And the next question comes from the line of Maggie Schooley at Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning, Stephen. Good morning, Dominic. Just two very quick questions from me. First of all, within General Industrial, which was particularly strong, is there any particular sub-segments that stand out? I know, medical has been quite good through the year, but if there's anything that you can highlight to us that's looking particularly of interest. And then the second question, I know we talked about M&A, but are you starting to see any traction or movement as companies stop firefighting and emerge from the crisis in terms of outsourcing? Has there been any further indication that perhaps that could be looking more bright as we move through FY 2022?
Yeah. Hi, Maggie. The outsourcing question is pretty easy. I think everybody's so tied up with trying to get production going, they don't have time for outsourcing.
Yeah.
Uh, indeed.
Okay.
Yeah, they're just firefighting like crazy. In terms of the general industrial sectors, you know, the standout issues, I'm just looking. The medical's not growing as strong as some of the others at the moment. You know, so general manufacturing and machining seem to be doing quite well. And funny enough, so is agriculture.
Okay.
So, medical is doing okay. It's just that,
Yeah
... the other ones are starting to pick up, frankly, and, and doing very strongly.
Okay.
Good stuff. All right?
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Thank you. As there are no further questions coming through at this time, I'll hand back to our speakers for the closing comments.
Yep. Thank you very much, everybody. Appreciate your time, and hope to see you shortly.
This now concludes the conference. Thank you all very much for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.