Hello everyone, and thank you for attending today's RHI Magnesita N.V. 2025 half-year results. My name is Kenneth, and I'll be your moderator today. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call, with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would like to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to pass the conference over to our host, Stefan Borgas, to begin. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning from Vienna. I’m here in the conference room together with Ian Botha, our CFO, and Chris Buchnell and the IR team. We’re happy to give you insights into what happened. These are turbulent times, so bear with us over the next 20 to 25 minutes. We’ll tell you what happened in the first half and how life in the refractory industry will continue. Let me start with the safety share. Safety is our number one priority, and I want to share with you an event that happened just a few weeks ago in our plant in Fei Yue Qian, China.
Two years ago, we had a very unfortunate and sad fatality in one of our plants in Austria, where an employee was suffocated and crushed by a large raw material bag weighing more than one ton. That bag slid and squashed the employee, who later died. We were very open about this incident within the company, showed it to all our plants, and subsequently changed our entire material handling policy and infrastructure worldwide. Two weeks ago, in Fei Yue Qian, China, a delivery truck came to the plant to deliver big bags of raw material exactly the type that caused the previous incident. The employees at our plant in China opened the truck and saw that the bags were stacked two on top of each other.
It was very clear that the moment they released the security belt, some of these bags could slide out of the truck and fall. Two employees from the delivery contractor were close to the truck, ready to release the belts to offload. Our employees immediately stopped the offloading and halted the operation until they could bring in equipment to do it safely. This is positive news showing how our safety culture is spreading across the company, where frontline employees now have the authority and the confidence to stop any industrial activity if there’s a safety risk
With this, we are actually quite encouraged to see how the culture change program that we have initiated since this fatality all over the world is taking effect. Let me show you also the numbers on safety that we have. They more or less reflect this. We remain on a very low level, low accident level. We will start to report to you once we have the systems in place in all the plants all around the world. Also, the serious injury fatality potentials that we're identifying, because this would be the new safety KPI that RHI Magnesita would focus on in order to continue to improve the safety into the future. With this, let me give you the summary before we go into the details of the market.
Let me give you the summary of what happened in the first half of the year and maybe the three takeaway messages for this semester. First message is about the market. The business environment in which we are with the third year of industrial recession is extremely challenging. Still, the profit performance of the first half of the year for RHI Magnesita does not reflect what we believe that the business is capable of delivering even in this very tough market environment. As a management team, we know that we can do better. We have implemented a very detailed recovery implementation plan already in May this year that contains all of the necessary steps to restore profitability in the second half of this year and actually catch up what we haven't, what we don't have in the P&L and balance sheet in the first half.
You will hear a lot of details about this during the course of this call from Ian and myself. Second message is we are very confident that the steps that we have already taken, that we have actually already started to develop and implement since the beginning of 2024. When we saw this development starting, this market deterioration starting, these steps will increase our EBITDA markedly already in the second half of this year. This will deliver the necessary uplift in earnings so that we can reach our targets. Still, as a result, we have moved the full year guidance on adjusted EBITDA if we include the currency effects. If we exclude the currency effects, 1% to 6%, this is the new range, lower than it has been before.
So it's a $380 million to $400 million EBITDA level based on constant currency or $370 million to $390 million if we account for the reduction, especially of the U.S. dollar here. It's somewhere between 1% and 6% lower than what we expected before. The single largest item responsible for the lower EBITDA in the first half is the movement of non-ferrous metals project deliveries from the first half into the second half. Basically, this is the reason for the large difference between H1 and H2. These non-ferrous metals projects are in our order book since a long time. Customers have partially already paid these in the form of deposits. Most of the products have already been produced and they're ready for delivery in the second half of this year.
A large part of the price increase initiatives that we need for the second half uplift have already been agreed with customers, and almost all of the cost reduction measures that we need in order to deliver the second half are already in full implementation or have already been implemented, and the money has been spent in the first half so that we can harvest the benefits in the second half. The third message is on the strategic direction. We believe that growth through acquisitions remains by far the best route to continue to generate value for shareholders in our industry.
Currently, we are, of course, very focused on the integration of Resco in North America, and we have also in the same region been able to make a small hold on investment in a new recycling joint venture in the U.S., which is extremely complementary with the Resco site infrastructure, which will help us very much, especially in this current trade environment, because we can introduce full circular economy business models in North America now with having this infrastructure. Allow us now to take you through into some more detail through the first half presentations, and let's start with the financial highlights. As I mentioned at the start of the call, we don't consider the financial results for the first half to reflect what RHI Magnesita N.V. is capable of doing. We could see this development. We could see this developing during the course of the year.
Therefore, we have been talking to you as well, so hopefully this is not a total surprise for you that we adjust our guidance a little bit for the second half of the year. We have still achieved 35% of the annual target profits in the first half of the year, which is within the guidance that we have been talking about since the beginning of the year, where some of you told us that we are very bearish and very conservative. Unfortunately, that conservatism now proves to have been prudent. Already during the year now, we have been taking steps to address the root causes of this, and as you can see, the revenue line here is not the main issue. Revenue is actually not fine, but it is moderately lower, with 2% lower. The main issue is margin, where we have a 260 basis point reduction.
This is the real issue. Gross margin increased even more, of course, 330 basis points. Cash conversion is okay due to a little bit of working capital release because the business performance is a little bit lower. We are pleased to see that the contribution from Resco is more or less on plan. It's one of the success stories here. Our Americas business, North and South America, contributes to the vast majority of our profits in the first half of this year. The recovery has to come from the other regions in H2. Our confidence in the recovery in the second half is demonstrated by the fact that we're able to recommend an interim dividend of $0.60 per share. The discussion in the board was very short on this, so we're quite confident here. This is in line with our policy. We don't need to change this.
Gearing has reached a peak of 3.1 times. This is not because of high debt, but it's because of a little bit lower EBITDA in the first half. We should take this with a grain pinch of salt because, of course, it's a way that our probabilities with the weighing to the second half here, and then the recovery will be there. Let's go and dig a little bit in what happens, and here's the margin view. As you can see from the summary bridge here on the EBITDA, the main driver of the decline in the EBITDA versus last year is price and mix, which accounts for $80 million of the total reduction.
On the pricing side, we have seen heavy competition from Chinese exporters and from local players fighting for market share because our customers are also faced with Chinese imports in their respective markets all around the world. It's pretty much the same story everywhere. Therefore, of course, local refractory suppliers to local steel, cement, copper, glass producers are fighting for a share of a smaller market there as well. Those two effects compound the pricing pressure that we have seen, actually not surprisingly in the first half, but still pronounced there. That's a development that has been ongoing for the last 18, even 20 months. The unfavorable product mix that we see in RHI Magnesita N.V. is caused by a relatively stable sales performance in steel, and at the same time, a strong decline in the industrial projects business, mostly in the glass industry and non-ferrous industry.
These are higher margins because of the very high complexity of these projects compared to steel. As you can see, they're also more volatile. That contributes in the first half to this unfavorable product mix development. On top of that, like I mentioned before, the non-ferrous business in the first half has been much more focused on repair activities, which is ongoing supply of materials and services to customers, rather than big capital projects, which again have a little bit lower margin than these large capital projects that are more complex. Those have all been, almost all of them, all of the ones that we wanted to deliver in the first half have been pushed into the second half.
At the same time, the cement business, which is also part of our industrial business, is relatively strong, but it's overall also a little bit lower margin segment than these complex industrial projects. That contributes to the mix as well. The strength of the cement industry indicates that the underlying construction industry is actually not as weak as sometimes it is written about. The good news now is that this reverses in the second half of this year. We can see the higher value projects that are in our order books scheduled for delivery. Several of them were postponed now in the second half, like I have explained. Mostly this was triggered by the trade uncertainties. Companies all around the world are waiting until these new tariffs are settled so that they can then, with more confidence, finish up their capital projects.
It's a problem almost in all regions around the world. We are not simply waiting for the market to turn around for us and wait until these projects come through. We are also taking decisive action now to make certain that those projects' orders are fulfilled. We are also very focused on increasing prices in the steel business to reduce costs in our plants, but also in our administration and selling costs. We will start to see the synergies from the Resco integration coming into the P&L in H2. In H1, this integration has mostly cost us money, but in H2, this will reverse and it will start to deliver. All these management actions put together, we'll then be able to deliver about €120 million of better results, better EBITDA in the second half.
We have moved still our full year guidance to this €380 to €400 million under constant currency terms in order to take care of the risk that, of course, is still there because everything is so concentrated in the six months period. Let's go one level deeper yet and talk it on price and on volumes to tell you what's happened here. You can see in the bottom left of this chart that prices for both steel and industrial deliveries have declined quite significantly since the beginning of 2023. This is not new and we're not surprised about this. We saw this coming. At the beginning, this was in line with lower input cost for the industry, so it didn't have a large margin effect.
As compressive pressure has increased due to these two effects of lower local market volumes and additional Chinese imports pretty much everywhere, now this is weighing on margins. There has been a 5% decline in average pricing. The difference in the first half is that our cost base has not declined anymore. With flat costs, that, of course, now has reduced margins. This is the difference between the first half of 2025 and all of 2024. Competitive pressure is most intense in India, East Asia, and META. The sales volumes in steel were actually not so bad. They're only down 1% if we exclude M&A. Our M&A activities contribute to the fact that volume-wise we're actually not down, almost not down at all. The main volume decline that we have experienced in the first half of 2025 before M&A are in the industrial business, where the volumes actually decreased.
If we include M&A, respectively, the Resco acquisitions, our industrial volumes are actually up 3% because the Resco business is very focused on the industrial markets. Now let's talk about these two segments, steel and industrial, more in detail. The gross margins in steel declined by three percentage points, by two percentage points, and revenue reduced by 3%. We're not so worried about the revenue level. This will come back with activity, but the margin decline is what we are focused on. In steel, there is a part of the very broad range of products that our customers use, which are increasingly commoditizing. They are the ones that are most prone to this price competition. It's not the entire portfolio, but it's the commoditized part. At the moment, customers are very price sensitive. They're not so focused on product performance.
They accept lower performance products as long as they can get a quick deal for the short terms because the plants of our customers are not running at very high levels of capacity utilization, so high performance refractories are not that necessary. This is a cyclical issue. At this point in the cycle, they are therefore able to use these lower quality products. This means that price concessions are more in the discussion and price increases are very necessary. Even here, there are slight differences by region. Here's the regional view that you see. We are looking at the world now in six regions rather than five because we have split the India region and the Middle East, Turkey, Africa, which we call META region, just recently at the beginning of this year.
This gives the India region management now an opportunity to focus 100% on the growth opportunity in India and in the META region, which is super diverse, gets much better attention from a new management team. This was a really good decision as we can already see these two teams acting and taking things forward. There's also a change in the Americas where we moved Mexico into Latin America, but this is maybe a little bit less important, although Mexico now gets more attention, especially with the U.S. team very much focused on the Resco integration. The world steel data shows that steel production declined in all of the six regions except India. Our base business sales volume performance is broadly in line with this, so we don't also have a market share issue.
Actually, we recovered a little bit because we were more disciplined on pricing than many competitors, and we lost a little bit of market share in late 2024 and beginning of 2025. That will now start to recover in the second half of 2025. North American revenue growth is strong, but this is entirely due to M&A and not because of the market. In India, we keep pace with the volume growth, but revenue declined by 2%. This shows the effect of price competition. It is concerning. Let's look at the industrial business overview. In the industrial business, the gross margin decline was pronounced, falling from 27% to 21%. This shows the effect of price concessions, but mostly product mix differences. Glass and non-ferrous were very weak, while cement business was quite resilient, actually. That excused the business for lower margin segments, like I have explained before.
The weakness in glass and non-ferrous, however, is for different reasons in both. In glass, it's really due to the weakness of the glass end market. The sales of glass products are down pretty much everywhere, so our customers are suffering, and we need to be with them during this time. In non-ferrous, the end markets are okay. They have a healthy outlook. This was simply a postponement of projects due to tariff and trade uncertainties. That's what we get from our customers, and they will complete these investment projects because they're almost all very far advanced. We're not worried here about the business itself. We can provide, because the industrial business is so relevant in this semester, additional context for the industrial performance so that you get confidence in the second half.
The chart at the bottom left sets out half yearly adjusted EBITDA from the industrial business going back to 2020. Remember that we've had the recovery from COVID and significant M&A since then. That's why you see an all over positive development here. In 2023, the end industrial EBITDA was $169 million. In 2024, it was $151 million. Based on the guidance we have now given, we see a $50 million EBITDA benefit in the second half, largely coming from these NFM projects that are already in the order book and that have been prepaid for partially and that are also mostly produced, but that have been delayed for shipment. We are effectively guiding for a H2 EBITDA in industrial to be around $97 million. This would then deliver an industrial business of $144 million, which is not super optimistic because it's lower than 2023 and 2024.
We are quite convinced about the fact that this step up is achievable in the second half of this year. We are just talking about a shift here from the H1 to the H2, and that has to do with timing of deliveries and nothing else. The remaining risk here, ladies and gentlemen, is that one or two or three of these deliveries slip into January or February. Therefore, we took this risk into consideration and adjusted our guidance. What are the other management actions that we have taken? We provided this in the RNS in writing as well, but I want to point it out again. We separated all the management actions that we have for the second half of the year, and we consider them to be higher or lower in risk on the delivery.
The SG&A savings, the plant closure cost savings, and the Resco synergies and ramp-ups are known. This is very highly certain. Why? Because it's already all been announced, agreed, and in implementation. You just won't see it in the P&L yet, but you will now in the second half of this year. We also have contracted around 70% of the price increases in steel that we need. It's already contracted and signed, and the new deliveries are at this slightly higher price. It's not a massive increase, but it's slightly higher prices to bring back the margins to the normal levels and recover these 2% lower margins. This is classified with high certainty, maybe not the highest, but high certainty because some negotiations are still ongoing. The phasing of the industrial projects that contribute $50 million of the step up is in our order book. We have to fulfill them.
Nothing has to slip. It's a matter of operational delivery, so it's highly likely also. The uncertainty lies in securing the remaining price increases in steel. This is about $10 million risk or a little bit less than this, and in securing the additional steel sales volumes in our demand plan because we've had some individual customer adjustments, and that volume increase needs to come. Here, this also depends on the local market recovery, country by country. There's a little bit of risk, again, quantified at around $10 million. The total of the actions show that there's a $120 million step up that would actually get us to a $400 million adjusted EBITDA for the full year, even after the Forex headwind. Including Forex, it would bring us to $410 million, which actually is above our original annual guidance.
We took a risk discount on this and therefore moved our full year guidance down to this $380 million to $400 million or $370 million to $390 million, depends on whether you include or exclude the currency. Let me move a little bit more to the strategic update, and of course, here everything is focused on the Resco integration. The integration of Resco is progressing well. We recently completed our review of the first 100 days. We are very pleased with the progress on all fronts, and I tell you the feedback we get from the people, both from the RHI Magnesita North America side and from the Resco side, is really encouraging. It's a lot of fun to travel to these plants and see the energy that happens, and we see hundreds and hundreds of before and after pictures.
From a culture perspective and an atmosphere perspective, it's very encouraging to see what has happened here. It's truly America at work there. Resco has been dealing with the same difficulties in the end markets, of course, so their base business is slightly down. The financial contribution has to be seen in that context, but still we expect a €10 million uplift from a full six months contribution and the benefits of the synergies in the second half, just from that integration. Health and safety is our very first priority, always also there. We made lots of changes. This is part of the energizing cocktail that moves the teams forward because, of course, this is a, it makes the work environment just so much better and increases the consciousness in this.
We have completed the early basic integration tasks and are now planning with more significant structural changes such as product transfers from Europe to the U.S. and from Brazil to the U.S. Based on this new, stronger U.S. network, there's a huge amount of detail involved in this, and of course, customers are trialing and testing these products as we go on, but this is all under really good execution. The North America region also will be the early adopter of our new ERP upgrade that will be launched at the end of this year, and then we will have the platform also to bring all the plants digitally into RHI Magnesita. This will happen in the first quarter of next year. Next topic I want to touch on quickly here on the strategy update is the tariff environment.
I'm sure you're going to have questions on this, so preempting this here, some of our view. The tariff situation can change at very short notice. We have become very, very flexible here, especially in supply chain adjustments. This is a snapshot view. It could change next week, so please forgive us if we have a little bit different perspective in the future on what we present now. This is based on the trade agreements that have been announced today, including the recent one in Europe. The European finished goods will most likely face a 15% tariff under the agreement. These are specialty products and specialty materials. Some of them will not be able to be produced in the U.S. unless we build totally new plants, and this doesn't make sense because the U.S. market is too small for this. That burden has to be passed on in price increases.
Brazil faces a potential 50% tariff. That's very fluid because it's under negotiations at the moment. That could have a much greater impact if that happens. Even if the manganese-based raw materials are exempted because they're critical minerals at the moment, that will dampen the 50%. Still, this is a very serious discussion here. Add a 50% tariff on finished goods from Brazil would clearly make those products uncompetitive in the U.S. We could seek alternative sources in the short term, but in the medium term, we are planning to transfer these products to be made onshore in the U.S. This is a big focus of the Resco integration at the moment. When we consider the impacts of tariff on RHI Magnesita N.V., it's also important to consider the relative impact that will be felt by our customers here. Many refractory producers worldwide rely on Chinese raw materials.
They now face a 20% tariff when shipped to the U.S., the raw materials. The tariff on finished goods that is higher is at 30%. Whatever the precise, and of course here RHI Magnesita N.V. has a different situation because we can bring raw materials from other places also. Whatever the precise tariff levels are, we always seek to locate our production close to our customers. This is our local to local strategy. This works for 80, maybe 85% of the product portfolio. The rest has to be adjusted price-wise, and it will have to fit in the overall portfolio. In the U.S., we plan to increase the domestic production ship 75% on 50% before the acquisition. This is the short-term view. There might be more potential eventually.
Last topic, before I hand over to Ian, sorry for taking a little bit longer today, but I think the situation rewards this. The last topic I want to show you briefly is the U.S. recycling joint venture that we were able to complete just a few weeks ago with a company called BPI. They are a leader in minerals recycling, family-owned with a super honorable, very knowledgeable, very engaged family fitting very well with our culture. We've had lots of really good interactions with them, and of course they continue to run this business. It's very important because it allows us now to source secondary raw materials also in the U.S. In light of trade barriers, this gets an additional impact here.
We are basically following the same strategy that we have successfully implemented in Europe through our joint venture, now known as Miraco, also with a German family, equally honorable, and we're actually establishing contacts here. The BPI deal will enable us quickly to increase the source quantities of refractory raw materials from customer waste. This is currently a bottleneck in recycling in the U.S. We have the technology to upgrade this. We're bringing this now into BPI, and we target an increase of the recycling rate in North America. This is the percentage of raw materials coming from waste from 15% currently to 20% because this is the level we've already achieved in Europe. Hopefully, it is obvious that by developing recycling capabilities in the U.S., we can avoid entirely the issues we were discussing on the previous slide to do with tariffs, and especially on the raw material side.
Why? Because it's a local for local strategy also for raw materials, at least for a good portion of them. The tariff environment actually gives us a turbo booster for this business, which I guess is the intention also of the U.S. administration. Let me hand over to Ian to give you a bit more granularity on some of the fundamental numbers. Ian, please. Thank you, Stefan, and good morning, everyone. As discussed, we faced a material drop in industrial projects' demand alongside a competitive pricing environment, particularly in India, in China, East Asia, and our new region, META, which together were the key drivers of the weaker P&L performance in the first half. Gross margin declined by 330 basis points as average selling prices fell, while we continued to operate on a largely fixed cost base. The decline in adjusted EBITDA is driven by this gross margin pressure.
Further down the P&L, foreign exchange effects also weighed on adjusted EPS. These are reported within finance charges, where we recorded a $13 million charge compared to a $14 million gain in the first half of last year. An interim dividend of $0.60 per share has been declared in line with the group's policy to pay one-third of the previous year's full dividend. Based on our forecast full year adjusted EPS for 2025, we expect dividend cover to be restored back towards three times. Moving to revenue, first half revenue was $1.677 billion, with the base business down 2% year on year in constant currency terms. At the revenue line, we faced an FX headwind from the weaker U.S. dollar and Indian rupee. Sales volumes were down 2% year on year, with steel down 1% and industrial down 4%, all before the impact of the Resco acquisition.
This volume decline reduced revenue by $31 million. Price and mix declined by 5% or $91 million, this due to the aggressive price competition and a weaker sales mix. This reflects both a sharp drop in the high price and the high margin industrial project volumes and volume growth in lower priced markets, particularly India cement steel and in China. Resco contributed $90 million in revenue during the five months following its consolidation after the acquisition completed at the end of January. Turning to EBITDA, at the EBITDA level, there was an FX tailwind primarily due to the weakness of the Brazilian real, the Turkish lira, and the Argentinian peso. In these countries, we produce in local currency while generating a portion in hard currency of our revenue, and this creates a favorable margin effect. Currency has actually turned into a headwind given the weakness in the U.S.
dollar, and this puts pressure on our second half EBITDA. As you saw in Stefan's analysis, it reduces our second half EBITDA by around $10 million when compared to the first half. The segment contributions for both steel and industrial were down by around $50 million each. In steel, the decline was mainly driven by the price weakness in India and lower prices and volumes in META in Europe. Steel EBITDA declined by $7 million, primarily due to lower volumes. In industrial, the decrease was almost entirely due to lower margins in industrial projects. This was then partially offset by lower SG&A costs, including a reduced bonus for 2025 provision and an $11 million EBITDA contribution from Resco during this period. The combination of factors that we experienced in the first half resulted in a very low refractory margin of 7.3% for this six-month period.
This is well below our historical track record of steadily improving margins and is not representative of what the business can sustainably deliver. We expect margins to recover in the second half with refractory margin guidance for the full year at 9.5 to 10%, more in line with recent performance levels. Raw material margin contribution remains very close to record levels at 1.1 percentage points and is guided at 1% for the full year. Taken together, this suggests group guidance for an adjusted EBITDA margin of 10.5 to 11% for the full year. As mentioned, a key reason for the margin decline in the first half was the 5% fall in average selling prices, whilst cost of goods sold remained broadly flat. You can see in the charts on the right that we faced pressure in several areas.
Firstly, there was a sharp spike in aluminum prices during the fourth quarter of last year. You can see that shown in light blue, which then quickly reversed in 2025, resulting in the group carrying high-cost inventory produced in the fourth quarter of last year into 2025. As a reminder, RHI Magnesita N.V. is not vertically integrated in aluminum-based raw materials, and we purchase all of this material externally. Because aluminum prices normalized rapidly, it became difficult to pass on those cost increases to customers who were resistant to higher prices under these circumstances. Labor inflation remains a persistent theme across all regions, although CPI inflation has eased from its peak in 2022. It continues to rise, though, in markets like Brazil and remains in positive territory globally. Finally, we saw a deterioration in our fixed cost absorption. This is due to lower industrial project volumes.
These are fired bricks, which are inherently more complex and more capital intensive. These require substantial infrastructure and fixed overheads. Today, we're operating only 27 of our 52 tunnel kilns globally, which further impacts efficiency and fixed cost absorption. Moving to working capital, working capital has been a positive contribution in the first half, with a reduction of over $100 million versus 30th of June 2024 and excluding M&A. This is a normal trend for us in a weaker demand environment, as business activity decreases with both inventory and accounts receivable reducing. Inventory coverage for both finished goods and raw materials is at target levels for the expected higher second half demand, and we maintain our guidance for working capital intensity of around 24% at the year end.
We continue to work on sustainably reducing working capital as a tool to improve our return on invested capital in the medium term. Our digital upgrade program and the increased local for local production are very important enabling steps in this process. Much of our management focus during this period has been on taking steps to improve our margins, but we've also actively been working to strengthen our cash generation. To this end, we completed a review and a reprioritization of all capital projects and have reduced the capital budget for 2025 to $130 million from $145 million previously. In addition, we are investing approximately $35 million per year into our digital transformation program in line with IFRS requirements. This investment is charged through the income statement as incurred rather than capitalized.
Following significant M&A activity, and in light of the structural overcapacity in certain of our markets, we are taking the next steps to optimize our plant network and to reduce fixed costs. As announced in February at our full year results presentation, we are closing certain sites in Europe, in South America, and the U.S., whilst modestly expanding capacity in the U.S. to support customer demand. To execute this program, we are spending a total of $100 million between 2025 and 2027, comprising $40 million in CapEx and $60 million in restructuring costs. We expect a fast payback for this work with an EBITDA benefit of $10 million in 2025, $20 million in 2026, and $30 million annually thereafter. In the first half of this year, we finalized the closure of Mainzlau and Weitrau, both plants in Germany.
The $10 million EBITDA benefit from 2025 from these closures is included in the market guidance and is realized entirely in the second half. This forms part of the high certainty management actions to restore adjusted EBITDA. Our operating cash flow reduced to $175 million, reflecting the lower adjusted EBITDA in the period. Our cash conversion, though, remains strong at 124%, supported by the release of working capital. Free cash flow reduced to $70 million compared to $103 million prior year. We expect a recovery in the second half as margins and activity improve. Our net debt reduced by $7 million to $1.245 billion before accounting for the Resco acquisition, which added $333 million to net debt, both the cash consideration paid and the net debt assumed as part of that transaction.
Finally, our gearing increased to 3.1 times at the half year, driven by the Resco acquisition and the drop in our adjusted EBITDA, which reduced down to $517 million on a trailing 12-month basis. Gearing is expected to reduce to 2.8 times by year end, based on the management actions taken to restore margins and to improve our cash flow. Our average cost of debt remains attractive at 390 basis points, with around 70% of our interest at fixed rates. We continue to benefit from a broad range of financing solutions and long-term relationships with supportive lenders. I'll now hand you back to Stefan for some closing remarks.
Ian, thank you very much. Let me summarize the outlook and the guidance. In this very challenging market environment, other than operational delivery, measures have to be around price improvement and cost reduction. We are reducing our full year adjusted EBITDA guidance to $380 to $400 million before currency changes. This still leaves us with a large uplift in earnings that needs to be delivered in the second half. We have high confidence that this can be achieved, and hopefully we gave you all the components that you can also get the same confidence. In many cases, we identified these issues very early on. We started to take action and prepare this at the beginning of 2024 already. Network adjustments, plant closures do not happen within days or weeks or even months. They need to be planned a long time beforehand, just as in.
We know that the business could perform better than we have performed in the first half of this year. We are taking all the necessary steps to get there. We have a really good focus inside RHI Magnesita N.V. to execute this. People are all aligned around the measures and actions. We have no infighting and no blaming and no frictions from those kinds of sentiments. We do not simply tolerate lower performance. Our people are ambitious, and so is the management team. We do not just use the market conditions to blame it on them. The measures that we have defined in an optimal way could even allow us to exceed our previous guidance. Last but not least, let me put this back into the context of our investment case. I want to remind you of the strategic vision and the reasons to consider investments into RHI Magnesita N.V.
We are already the leader of the global refractory industry, and we are following an explicit strategy to grow our own company through acquisitions. Acquisitions have been shown by our internal analysis to be by far the best way to generate value for shareholders. This in a market where no one can rely on top-line growth to do value creation for you. We have strong momentum in this strategy, with 11 companies acquired since 2023 at a total value of over €1 billion. We want to have a broad geographic presence across a very wide range of customer industries to be able to provide total solutions for our customers' needs and be balanced on the dependence on the individual and industry. With this, we continue to have ample opportunity for acquisitions also going into the next decade.
The network that we have built today through acquisitions has further scope for optimization that no individual company would have had before, and it also offers high operational gearing in any kind of recovery in the market because it gets more and more flexible as we can make the same product in different plants all around the world. From a valuation perspective, you can invest into all of this with a very attractive dividend yield and driven by a free cash flow yield, which is very attractive when you compare us to our UK-listed group. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening. Ian and I are now happy to answer your questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, if you are using a speaker phone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking a question. We'll take our first audio question from Jonathan Hearn from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hey guys, good morning. Thanks for the presentation. I just had a few questions, if I may. First, just coming back on those comments about M&A, obviously it's a big focus here in terms of the roll-up strategy for RHI Magnesita N.V. If we look at that sort of leverage, it is pretty high this year. I know it's going to come down by year end, but it's still going to be quite elevated, it feels, in 2026. When do you honestly think you can get back onto that sort of M&A track or M&A road and start doing deals again? That was the first one. The second one, maybe for you, was just in terms of those sort of cost-saving actions.
You spelled them out for the second half of this year, but I just wanted to get some sort of color of what are the savings in the bridge for 2026. You called out $20 million from network optimization. I think is it fair to say there's another $10 million to come from SG&A savings in 2026 and then potentially some more synergies from Resco? The third and final question was just on India. You're calling out it being tough in terms of pricing and so forth. I just wondered if you can give us some color. What have been the dynamics Q2 versus Q1? How's it actually working there in the second quarter versus the first? Is it a thing still deteriorating? Those are the questions. Thank you.
Jonathan, the last one was India, right?
Yeah, the last one was India. Yeah, just in terms of that sort of Q2 versus Q1.
Okay. All right. Look, on the acquisitions, this is always a combination between opportunity and capability, right? Of course, our leverage is relatively elevated at the moment, but our de-gearing speed also is very high. We don't need to wait ages in order to make additional acquisitions if the opportunity comes along. Having said that, all the focus operationally at the moment is on making this acquisition work, and we don't have anything big in the pipeline in the very short term. If a big opportunity comes along, we have the necessary firepower and support by shareholders and our bank in order to not walk away from it, at least not at the beginning. I think I cannot say much anything different here, but hopefully it's consistent with what we said before.
On India, before Ian goes into the cost-saving bridge, on India, the situation is, I think you have to see it in a little bit longer context than just Q1 versus Q2. The India market is really the only growth market worldwide or the only major growth market worldwide that has been in our industry, like in many other industries, already since two or three years. As a result of this, many entrepreneurs in the country and most of the foreign companies have invested in India in order to participate in this growth. Like we have remarked several times before, also since many years, overbuilt. This is now coming into the market. These overinvestments, if you look at them cumulatively by everyone, are being ready and are offered to the market at the same moment when Chinese imports are also increasing.
A headline, you have a capacity growth in our customer industry of 8 or 9%. They experience the same problem. They bring half of what they have announced onto the market. The actual real growth for us is more around 4 or 5% because of that effect in their industry. All of this happening at the same time when new capacities are coming on stream in the country. That puts the pressure in India, especially on the margins. We saw this happening in the second half of 2024 when we were extremely disciplined on pricing ourselves, and we lost quite a bit of market share, especially in some of the very commoditized segments of the steel market. It's a little bit less pronounced in industrial because it's more differentiated here and the business is more complex.
In the commoditized part of the steel market, this happened in the second half of 2024. You see the poor performance of the India business now in the first half of this year, not a huge difference between Q1 and Q2. What we started to do, starting at the end of last year, we went back to our customers and said, "Okay, we need to become more competitive," and we became more price competitive as well. Therefore, our margins declined, and you will now, in the second half of this year, see the volume recovery of our own business in India. Therefore, our overall India volume development at the end of this year will reflect this kind of 5% volume growth that the market has also. Maybe we'll even be a notch above this because we have the recovery effect.
For sure, the price discussions in India are super challenging, especially in the commoditized segments, and they can only eventually be completed successfully if you add additional technologies. We have a fantastic robotic project in India that we just published and are implementing, and I think this is the way of the future in that market. It's a difficult environment.
Jonathan, on your cost question, you're exactly right. There are three components to this. The first is the MIP optimization will deliver $20 million run rate in 2026. The second half.
In 2026.
The second piece that on a run rate basis in 2026, we will expect to see $20 million coming through from the SG&A measures that we've put in. Clearly, one of the cost pressures that we have is this labor cost inflation, which constantly bites at the improvements that we deliver. The third piece is around fixed cost absorption. All the focus that we have on driving operational excellence in our plants at the moment, that's being used to contain our fixed cost under absorption, which at the moment is running at around $60 million as our plants are operating at about 65% of their capacity. Clearly, as demand improves and therefore that drives an increase in our production, there is quite a lot of operational leverage that comes out of that.
Resco will also do.
Indeed, we continue to see clearly the growth in the Resco synergies next year.
Very nice question, please. Thank you. We'll check our next question from Harry Phillips from Kilhunt. Please go ahead.
Good morning everyone. Three from me as well. In terms of looking at the industrial project delivery profile for the second half, you've made very clear that the order book is there and deposits are being paid. You talked a little bit about the possible risk of further deferral running over into 2026. I was just wondering about the sort of cancellation risk that might be in there, because when you look at the geography of the industrial period, it's got a European skew. Thinking about that European platform in totality, do you think you've got the cost base right for Europe post these current initiatives? Lastly, just again in the detail, looking at the steel META performance and seeing that was down 22%, which seems pretty aggressive. I was just wondering if there's a particular reason for that.
Yes. On the projects, for the second half of this year, there's no cancellation risk. There's a postponement risk. This is a delivery issue, but there's no cancellation risk because the contracts are all there and the investment projects are there. No,
Nothing to worry about, even on cancellation. The EU cost base needs further work after the measures that we already have. That is under scrutiny. Expect additional measures, both on the production network as well as on the SG&A side. The European is super focused around this. The measures are already under preparation, but it's too early to announce. Steel META, yeah, that was a very disappointing first half, especially in this region. It is also due to the fact that we have some rather lumpy customer deliveries that contributed to this here. This will recover. This is a volume, there's a pricing challenge in META, actually relatively comparable to India. There's a strong commoditization happening in this region, also very much pushed by Chinese exports. There is also a lumpiness of the delivery here. This volume aspect will come back in the second half.
That doesn't give us that big of a concern. It's a bit of a risk here because of postponements as well.
Fantastic. Thanks very much indeed. Next question, please.
Thank you. We will take Mark Davis-Jones from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, Stefan. Hi, Ian. Can I come back to the very helpful bridge chart you have on page 11, showing that big step up into the second half? It's all good stuff, but it's focused on the things more directly under your control or in your backlog. Can you just talk a bit more about the broader context in which you are pitching that step up, i.e., what you expect from the second half in terms of volume and broader pricing trends? I guess part of that is a question about how net that price increase number is. Those are specific price increases you've got in some of your volumes, but how big a proportion of your steel output in the second half is covered by those sort of pricing agreements? How much is going to be negotiated as you go through?
OK. The price increases, and then Ian can give you the other specifics, but on the price increases, we have $21 million out of the $30 million is negotiated, agreed, and we see it in the shipments. It is very high certainty. The $9 million is under negotiation, identified areas where simply we have margins that we cannot accept anymore. This is uncertain. For practical modeling purposes, expect only a part of this to come through.
The price increases are purely net increases.
Yes.
From a steel perspective, that $20 million, it's roughly equally split between India and META. In Europe, there is no meaningful change in the second half. We have an 8% increase in steel volumes in the second half on the first half, which, as Stefan highlighted earlier, is the same 8% that we saw in 2024. From an industrial perspective, that $50 million, that's about $15 million of that comes out of Europe. In India, META, and North America, we've got around $10 million. From a volume perspective, there's non-ferrous metals up by around 10% and glass around just below 15%, but off a very low base in the first half of this year.
Maybe two other pieces of information here. The steel volumes increases in META and India are of different nature, as I have explained. In India, it is existing contracts for existing new plants that are coming on stream, and it is the recovery of the market share in the commoditized segments that we lost over the course of the second half of 2024 because of price discipline. This is India. As these plants come on stream and as we get this volume recovery, there's the uncertainty related to this. That's why we don't make it green, but keep it red because it's ongoing business, but it's pretty focused. In META, this is the lumpiness of the business where we've had some very large customers that took very small volumes in the first half and that have already committed, placed orders to take much larger volumes.
Also here, the possibility that there's a change that could, that there's a postponement could also happen. That's why we keep it red. Glass and non-ferrous, also these are two very different dynamics. In non-ferrous, it's existing orders for existing projects. In glass, there's a lot of new things that are on the horizon that are not yet negotiated. The H2 step up in glass is also existing orders that have been delayed and delayed and delayed because of the bad situation of the glass industry or the difficult situation of the glass industry that should be delivered. This is a little bit more risky from my perspective for postponement than the non-ferrous ones. The recovery of the glass business is much more uncertain, although we see a very significant increase in new requests. In non-ferrous, this is much more stable.
OK, thank you very much. That's helpful. One other, if I may. Obviously, as you said at the beginning, this sort of downturn pressure on some of your customer segments has been going a long time now, and there's clearly signs of distress amongst some of the European steel customers. Are you seeing any emerging sort of bad debt issues, any concerns on exposure to any of those distressed customers?
No, Mark, no. We've not seen an increase in bad debt. We manage our counterparty risk very carefully, and we continue to have around 70% of our accounts receivable covered by credit risk insurance. No uptake.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for dialing in, listening to us. We look forward to staying in contact with you and in the discussion over the course of the next hours, days, weeks, and months, like always, and look forward to meeting you individually. Goodbye from Vienna.