Okay. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today as we discuss our 2022 interim results. It's great to see so many of you here today. Alongside me is Jonathan Davis, and we have Martin and Andrew in the audience. Today we'll follow the traditional format. My first slide is a reminder of our purpose: keeping the world flowing for future generations. We are a purpose-driven organization, and our work means far more than simply our products and services. Each and every day, we are helping tackle some of the most important sustainability issues of our time. Rotork's values are stronger together, always innovating, and trusted partner. In short, we are committed to collaborating and supporting one another to drive continuous improvement and being a responsible business. This slide is a reminder of how Rotork creates value for all of its stakeholders.
Customers are at the heart of everything we do. It's by identifying their flow control challenges to help improve the safety, efficiency, and reliability of their plants that makes Rotork a trusted partner. This is delivered through innovation and developing high-quality products and solutions that automate, electrify, and digitalize our customers' assets. Our aftermarket service and lifetime management programs continue to be a key differentiator, and above all, it's by being easy to do business with and by having a partnership approach that our customers value. We are committed to sustainability and have a major part to play in the flow control intensive new energies and technologies that will deliver a decarbonized economy as well as greater energy security. We do all this whilst providing a great and safe working environment for our people around the world, celebrating diversity, inclusivity, and rewarding our colleagues fairly.
At this point, I'd like to thank all our people for their hard work in the first half. Finally, our strong balance sheet enable us to fund investments, organic and inorganic, that we need to drive growth and generate market-leading returns. The first half of this year saw a continuation of the improved outlook we saw in the second half of last year. Orders were encouragingly 12% higher year-on-year on an OCC basis, with all three divisions having increased bookings. CPI and Oil & Gas saw particularly strong order growth, whilst Water & Power orders were modestly ahead, reflecting a tough prior year comparison. We firmly believe our strategy of focusing our sales teams on specific end-market segments and investing in targeted geographies and in aftermarket activities is delivering results.
However, as anticipated, we continued to face supply chain challenges in the first half, which resulted in revenues being lower year-over-year despite the high order intake. Our Shanghai site was closed mid-April due to COVID-19 lockdown rules. However, the facility resumed full production in June and made very good progress delivering delayed shipments to our customers. With orders up and sales down, we finished the period with a record order book. Returns remained resilient despite the lower sales. Adjusted operating margins were close to 20% and return on capital employed at 27%, demonstrating the flexibility of the business and the cost base. After we hear from Jonathan, I'll provide an update on our supply chain actions, strategic focus, before ending on our outlook. Over to you, Jonathan, for more details on the results.
Thank you, Kiet, and good morning, everybody. It's good to be here with you in person. First half saw encouraging order growth through a combination of price and volume, but the challenges around supply chain continued to hamper our ability to convert this to revenue, particularly in the first quarter. Order intake in the year was 12.1% higher than the prior period on an organic constant currency or OCC basis. Orders grew sequentially in all divisions and were ahead double-digit year-on-year in Oil & Gas and CPI. Revenue was GBP 280 million, 4.8% below H1 2021. Adjusted operating profit of GBP 53 million was 17.9% lower than the comparative period, and margins on an OCC basis were 300 basis points lower.
Adjusted operating margin of 19% compared with 21.8% last year. Adjusted earnings per share was GBP 0.048 , a 15.9% reduction. OCC results are adjusted to restate the 2022 results at H1 2021 exchange rates. Currency was a circa 2% tailwind, increasing revenue by GBP 6 million and adjusted operating profit by GBP 2 million. Cash conversion was 68%, reflecting an increase in strategic inventory and inventory held in the sales channels, as well as a buildup in trade receivables, with revenue weighted to the last two months of the period. Return on capital employed fell 590 basis points to 27%, with the comparative restated as a result of implementing IAS 38 related to software as a service.
The GBP 0.024 interim dividend is a 2.1% increase over the 2021 interim. Revenue fell 2.9%, with the divisions and regions impacted to varying degrees by supply chain challenges, the withdrawal from Russia, and the China COVID lockdown. From a regional perspective, the Americas grew, led by Oil & Gas and CPI. EMEA reported the largest decline in revenue, largely driven by Oil & Gas. Asia Pacific was flat, with growth in CPI offsetting declines in the other end markets. In total, CPI saw the strongest growth, with revenue up 14.4%, continuing the momentum from last year. Oil & Gas revenue declined 5.6% to 44% of group revenue, as good order momentum is yet to feed through to revenue.
Within Oil & Gas, midstream and downstream reduced in line with the division as a whole, while upstream reduced slightly more. Water & Power saw the sharpest decline, down 16.2%. Two large power orders in the prior period didn't repeat this year, and the supply chain challenges were most significant in this division, which has the highest proportion of sales of electric actuators. Rotork Site Services represented 19% of group revenue, as it did in the first half of last year. Although site restrictions due to COVID-19 were less severe in the current period, installation and commissioning of new electric actuators is a key part of the RSS business, and this was affected by the supply chain challenges more than other product lines. This OCC adjusted operating profit bridge highlights the operational gearing impact from lower revenue.
The volume bar shows the GBP 12 million reduction in profit from lower sales. The logistics column highlights the increased benefit from our logistics surcharge. Although logistics costs have increased, these have been covered by the increase in the surcharge. Net price mix then reflects the impact of commodity cost increases, net of sourcing savings and sales price increases, as well as the normal elements of product and geographic mix. The GBP 3 million negative is largely the result of price increases taking longer to benefit revenue than cost increases to impact the income statement due to the larger than normal order book. The larger order book means that price increases benefit order intake far quicker than revenue, and this also contributes to the record order book at the end of the period.
Price increases have been set at a level to at least cover cost increases, and we continue to monitor the changes to the cost environment. Direct costs decreased compared with the previous year, benefiting from our footprint optimization and labor efficiency savings. Overheads saw only a modest increase. Headcount at June 30th was 3% lower than 12 months earlier, although slightly higher than last year-end. In total, people costs are circa GBP 5 million lower than the comparative period, with the phasing of variable pay the largest part of this. Travel costs are slightly up as COVID restrictions progressively reduce. In total, volume is a -GBP 12 million , and all other factors are a net +GBP 1 million .
This results in gross margins of 44.6%, 160 basis points lower, and adjusted operating margin 280 basis points lower at 19%. We started the year with net cash of GBP 114 million, which reduced to GBP 90 million by period end, after GBP 35 million of dividends and a GBP 24 million working capital outflow, and with a cash conversion of 68%. Both inventory and trade receivables were responsible for larger outflows than normal in working capital, with inventory increasing by GBP 17 million and trade receivables by GBP 9 million. We increased strategic component inventory in the period as a means of mitigating supply chain and logistics risks which might impact production. Finished goods inventory also rose as a result of outbound logistics delays and customers deferring deliveries.
When combined with lower revenue, inventory rose from 10.9% to 16.2% of revenue. Trade receivables are heavily influenced by the pattern of sales in the period. With an unusually quiet end to last year and a pickup in sales in May and June, partly as a result of the recovery from the China COVID-19 lockdown, receivables increased in value, but DSO decreased to 51 days from 57 last June. Net working capital as a percentage of sales increased from 22.9% to 28.1%. Now turning to some specific P&L items and our directional guidance on these for the current year. First, looking at the items included in adjustments to operating profit. These are largely the normal items we've seen in recent years.
Gains on property disposals come from the sale of locations vacated as part of the footprint optimization or sales optimization programs under GAP. Software as a service costs are the configuration costs of our new ERP system, which with work ongoing all year are likely to be at a similar level in the second half. Redundancy and other restructuring costs are much lower this year, the final year of the original growth acceleration program. Finally, the cost of the orderly suspension of activities of our Russia sales and service entity is estimated at GBP 3.6 million, largely as a result of asset write-offs and redundancy. Russia contributed around 3% of group revenue in 2021. Looking at GAP and the forecast P&L benefits on the current year, our view on three of the programs has not changed since March.
However, the strategic sourcing team remains focused on security of component supply and particularly chips. Securing supply of critical components and buying these into the future has successfully mitigated many of the challenges faced in the period. We are now buying forward into 2023 for some components where those we used historically are now obsolete. This still comes with a cost headwind and with a requirement for engineering time to test, requalify, and recertify new components. This use of engineering time and resource has, in turn, delayed some new product releases, so revenue from new product development will not reach the original target. So far this year, we have raised prices in January and again in May to offset higher costs. The increases will offset costs over time.
However, our record order book means that while the increases are reflected quickly in orders, they now take longer to feed through to revenue. The positive is that the second half will therefore see greater benefit than the first half. Towards the end of the period, we saw sterling weaken against the U.S. dollar, dropping from 1.35 at the start of the period to 1.22 at the end. If current rates of around 1.20 for the dollar and 1.18 for euro were to apply for the rest of the year, this would be around a 4% tailwind. Finally, tax rates have moved slightly higher this year. The headline effective rate has increased 20 basis points and adjusted effective rate 10 basis points to 23.9%. Now turning to provide a little more detail on the divisions.
We continued to see improving momentum within Oil & Gas markets through the first half, with both price and volume driving the improved order levels. However, while orders were positive, revenue was lower as a result of both supply chain disruption and the loss of Russian business. Revenue was 7.4% lower than the prior period, and global sales were lower in upstream, midstream, and downstream, but there were some positive pockets. EMEA reported the largest decline, with sales lower in each segment and including the loss of business in Russia. In Asia Pacific, good growth in China upstream was insufficient to offset declines in India and China downstream, both of which had benefited from projects delivered in the comparative period. The Americas were double-digit ahead in both midstream and downstream and across a broad range of products.
Adjusted operating profit was 12.9% lower than H1 2021, and margins were 130 basis points lower at 19.3%. Margins were impacted primarily by the lower volumes, with cost increases partially offset by efficiency savings from GAP. The benefit from our recent price increases on revenue in the period was minimal as a result of the large order book at the start of the year, but they will have an increasing benefit in the second half and into 2023. CPI reported the strongest growth in both orders and revenue. As the division with the shortest lead times and generally a smaller order book, it also benefited more from recent price increases than the other divisions. Revenue grew in each segment of CPI, producing a combined 12.4% increase.
Asia Pacific revenue grew strongly with our targeted niches showing encouraging growth. The process industries were particularly strong in China, as were sales of our Instruments products. EMEA growth was modest, with the chemical segment and U.K. market two of the bright spots in the region. In the Americas, revenue was flat overall, with good growth in the mining sector offset elsewhere. Adjusted operating profit was 10.4% higher, but margins declined 40 basis points to 24.5%. The benefits of operational gearing and efficiency improvements were more than offset by higher component costs and a higher share of common costs. One of the characteristics of the Water & Power division is that it has the highest proportion of electric actuator sales. This supports the higher margins, but meant it has also been most affected by the availability of chips in the supply chain.
Revenue was down 18.4% in total, with all regions lower. Asia Pacific revenue was lower, with power largely responsible for the decline. A large power project delivered in the first half of 2021 was not repeated this year, leading to a reduction in revenue. The Americas saw an identical dynamic, with water close to prior period and large power refurbishment project in the first half of 2021 did not repeat this year. In EMEA, the reduction was more modest, but the supply chain challenges ultimately restricted revenue. Adjusted operating profit was 37.4% lower and margins fell 630 basis points to 20.7%. Lower revenue, partly due to the lack of two large projects and lower electric actuator sales driving adverse product mix, all contributed to the lower profitability.
As volumes return and these factors reverse, the division's margins will improve once again. In summary, we see encouraging momentum entering the second half. The supply chain issues we experienced from mid-year 2021 continued into the first half of the current year as expected. The situation has currently stabilized and a number of the mitigation strategies we have in place are yielding benefits. With a book-to-bill of 1.21 in the period driving a record order book at J une 30th and a greater benefit to revenue coming from price increases as we move forward, we're well-placed entering the second half. I'll now hand back to Kiet.
Thank you, Jonathan. I'd now like to give you an update on our supply chain situation and our strategy before turning to the outlook. We look forward to discussing our strategy in considerably more detail at our Capital Markets Day in November. We talked in March about the supply chain challenges we were facing, particularly the material shortages and logistics delays. We're pleased to report that our supply chain improvement initiatives are taking effect. On the material side, we've seen signs of stabilization in some areas, including semiconductor chips. On the logistics side, there's been some modest improvement in sea freight journey times between Europe and USA. However, other important routes are broadly unchanged due to COVID lockdowns in China and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. With these challenging headwinds, we are taking actions to improve our situation.
Our assembly plants are reviewing their supply chain and bill of materials on a daily basis, giving us time in advance to tackle shortages before they become a problem. Where we identify potential shortages, extended long lead times, and component obsolescence, we invest to secure the supply of these components. For example, we have forward purchased more than GBP 15 million in electronics components to secure supply in 2022 and have already invested more than GBP 5 million in components for consumption in 2023. In the case of chip obsolescence, we've completed 29 product re-engineering projects so far, and have another 19 in progress. The time to re-engineer can be anything from one month to six months with recertification typically adding an additional six months on top. In terms of logistics, we've put in place dedicated contracts on our highest volume routes.
This is delivering significant reductions in transit time. For example, nine days on sea freight from U.K. to the U.S. These supply chain actions have helped mitigate more severe outcomes in the first half, and we expect them to bring further benefits in the second. Moving on to our strategy update. During my first six months as CEO of Rotork, I spent time together with my senior team reviewing the group's current shape and formulating the next phase of our strategy. Thanks to GAP's, Rotork's current portfolio is well-positioned for the future. GAP has enhanced many aspects of our business, our culture, our commercial front end, our products and services, our infrastructure and processes, and our operations and supply chain. We continue to deliver GAP initiatives, including supply chain consolidation, improving and standardizing core business processes, and continuing our IT development.
Our ambition remains to deliver mid- to high single-digit% revenue growth and mid-twenties% adjusted operating margins over time. Helping us to deliver our growth ambitions are the industrial mega trends of automation, electrification, and digitalization. We aim to play our part in helping our customers better their own environmental performance while at the same time working to improve ours. This will help drive our eco-transition portfolio. Key to our thinking is the identification of strategic segments where we have the right to play and that we believe offer significant opportunities for profitable growth. The identification of these will be guided by the mega trends that we see playing out over the next several years. We see a world where developing markets grow faster than the developed world, where automation, energy efficiency, and electrification drive premium growth rates, as do digitalization and industrial internet.
We see a world where infrastructure modernization and investment grows faster than GDP. Infrastructure including that used to overcome water scarcity and to provide energy security. Finally, we see a world where climate change is at the fore, meaning growth opportunities in energy transition, including emissions reduction, hydrogen and carbon capture, and LNG, as well as opportunities in water management, desalination, and flood defense. The second part of our thinking is customer value. We want to put the value we provide to our customers at the forefront of everything we do. Every employee at Rotork has their part to play in delivering value for the customer. In addition, we will drive specific initiatives to maximize this value, leveraging GAP's commercial and operational initiatives. Go-to-market enhancement is about strengthening the relationship with our customers and building on our key account management program.
The global supply chain development program will optimize our transportation network and help to reduce our lead times while providing an early warning system to part shortages. We want to improve our customer experience by streamlining our internal processes, allowing us to quote more quickly and further reduce our lead times. Finally, we will leverage the strength of our global aftermarket service offering through Rotork Site Services and identify opportunities to expand this area of the group. Our third focus area is innovative products and services. Innovation is the lifeblood of Rotork. Over the last several years, we've brought our teams together and streamlined how we deliver innovation and development for new products and services. The focus for our future projects will be aligned to our chosen strategic segments and our enabling a sustainable future principle.
Key innovation drivers will include electrification, connectivity, predictive analytics, and product efficiency, as well as the affordability of our products and their ease of manufacture. We will continue to innovate and develop new products while weighing make versus buy arguments to ensure we have the right product portfolio to deliver growth in our chosen markets. To summarize, with the strategic work we've completed. Looking at the macro environment with trends such as energy transition and energy security, we're confident that we're well positioned to deliver on our growth ambition, and we look forward to telling you more about this at our Capital Markets Day in November. Turning to our market outlook, starting with Oil & Gas. Global demand continues to recover. Even before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the division had already seen its customers increase spending on upgrade, refurbishment, and maintenance projects.
The invasion has triggered an acceleration of large project planning and a reconsideration of global energy security risks. We continue to see good opportunities for environment-related activities, such as projects to tackle methane emissions. CPI has good momentum. It is clearly seeing the benefits of its earlier focus on chosen targeted segments. It is also benefiting from industry's drive to lower carbon emissions and is seeing business wins in chemical, mining, and steel markets. CPI also secured project wins with HVAC applications in semiconductor and data centers, which is an exciting new market for the division. As a reminder, the division has a higher proportion of short-cycle sales and a shorter order book than Rotork's other divisions. Water & Power is benefiting from increased global water infrastructure investment, which is considered a priority and expected to continue.
It's seeing investment in several areas, from building new water networks to improving existing ones. Customers are increasing their focus on efficiency and water quality with digitalization an important trend. Water & Power can help in all areas. In power, we continue to see refurbishment opportunities as well as good activity in smaller but high-potential markets such as waste-to-energy and energy storage. Finally, turning to the summary and outlook. Rotork is a first-class engineering group with a strong purpose, keeping the world flowing for future generations. We have a fantastic commercial product and service offering with a great opportunity to create value for all stakeholders. We are committed to sustainability and will play a significant role in the flow-control-intensive new energies and technologies that will deliver a decarbonized economy as well as greater energy security.
We remain committed to our financial ambition of mid- to high-single-digit% revenue growth and mid-20s% adjusted operating margins over time. We look forward to discussing our strategy in November. During the first half, we saw a continuation of the end market recovery that we first experienced last year. Order intake in the period was encouraging, driven by a recovery in Oil & Gas sector and by CPI, which is benefiting from its focus on new markets such as mining and HVAC in semicon. Sales and profits were lower, however, due to supply chain challenges. Entering the second half, we have a record order book giving good visibility, and our supply chain is benefiting from our earlier improvement actions. I'll finish with the outlook we published this morning.
While forecasting remains challenging due to geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainties, we continue to expect our full year results to have a greater than usual weighting to the second half, which will be even more pronounced than our previous expectations if recent sterling weakness continues. Thank you again for your interest in Rotork. At this point, I'll open the floor to questions.
Hi. Good morning.
Morning.
Hi. Good morning. It's Aurelio from Morgan Stanley. I've got two questions, please. The first one is on the supply chain and your expectation that it's going to improve. So what gives you confidence around that supply chain improvement? Maybe if you can answer that, how much do you think the impact was in the first half from supply chain challenges in terms of sales lost?
Okay. I'll take the first one, and Jonathan, do you want to take the second? In terms of supply chain improvement, what we're seeing is some elements of the market improving. As I mentioned in logistics, some logistics routes are improving. Again, there is some improvement in availability of specific chips. However, the biggest change I would say is our own internal improvement actions that we've put in place. We changed the way we purchased our chips.
We brought in additional resource expertise to identify those chips. We have the daily escalation processes. We buy forward where we see that there is an issue, and we've invested. We rediverted engineering resources to re-engineer a significant number of boards. We've also put in dedicated logistics supply routes, which is helping us as well. You can see all of those things are taking effect, and that's why we're confident carrying forward. Jonathan, do you wanna add to that?
Yeah. In terms of your second question, Aurelio, it's really hard to quantify in any precise way. I think the easiest way to think about it is typically in the first half, we average a book-to-bill of something like 1.07, 1.08. It's in that sort of ballpark. This year it was 1.21. That's one way of thinking about the impact of supply chain, I think. Probably the only way I can really quantify it in any sensible way.
That's helpful. Maybe a follow-up to that is, Site Services, it was kind of flat as a percentage of sales. Where do you think that can get, or, where do you think that could have been had you not had supply chain issues?
Again, yeah, Site Services were 19% of our revenues. I mean, it remains a key growth driver for us within all of our end markets. We haven't put a number on that, but it does remain a key significant differentiator for Rotork.
Mm.
Morning. It's Andrew Wilson from JPMorgan. Morning. I've got two, I think bigger picture questions probably. Just on the supply chain, I sort of interested that that was in the strategic objectives or initiatives or certainly areas you're looking at. I guess my question is around this year has been very, very difficult for lots of companies, I think particularly difficult for you guys, just the shape of the business model and the outsource model, the imports, exports, et cetera.
Historically, if you take sort of the last 20 years, I think we've all kind of agreed that that's been a very effective model. I guess my question is to what degree are you actually thinking about sort of fundamentally shifting how you run that? Or is it a case of kind of incrementally taking some of these learnings? 'Cause I guess if the base case is that we don't see this kind of situation every year, then there's obviously a balance to be struck between what seemed very effective and obviously managing some of the challenges we're seeing at the moment. Just trying to get a sense of kind of how big a shift you're actually trying to drive.
Yeah, I think that's a good question. I mean, we're not fundamentally looking to shift our model. We have an assembly model and it's served us very well. We're not looking to become vertically integrated. We will in some processes bring in-house if we see the right thing to do, but they're on a smaller scale. The supply chain strategy that we put in is absolutely geared towards smoothing the supply of the components coming in, giving us contingencies in an event of any more COVID lockdowns, for example. It's really geared around mitigation actions and long-term forward planning to overcome any headwinds coming through.
The second question, and this is probably really is broad, and it might just be my ignorance in terms of not understanding how this would work. But we kind of talked about sort of energy transition as a, as an opportunity for Rotork, and that's both in terms of the existing infrastructure which has been underinvested and then, you know, potentially, I guess the sort of new markets which over time will develop and will need actuators.
I guess what I'm trying to understand is, to what degree are you getting a steer from customers and potential customers in terms of the specs that you're gonna need to either develop or you're gonna need for those applications, and how is that informing the R&D? I guess I'm almost interested how much help you're getting from the market in terms of understanding what that's gonna look like. 'Cause I think I certainly struggle, maybe we as a group struggle to kind of understand exactly the sort of shape of that development.
Yeah. Again, you know, everything we do for me links to the macro trends, and you're right, there's a shift towards energy transition. The next step is really staying close to your customers and understanding what your customers are looking for and wanting. It's not that we're shifting our strategy, we are shifting with our customers, and we are enabling our customers to shift in their transition as well. An oil company before will move into hydrogen production, carbon capture. We're already in with them, we already talk to them, and then we look to understand the new specifications that they need as they transition through. That links to the point within our strategic segments of really improving our key account management.
That gives us the insight that we need to understand what the technology trends are of the markets, and then we take that, and then we feed that into our new product development process. Again, if I go to the third pillar, everything that we developed is linked to our targeted segments, and it's developed with the voice of the customer rather than what we think in general. We are shifting with our customers, we are shifting with the market, and we are taking quite a lot of market intelligence to understand what we need in terms of specifications and also new product developments for the markets.
I guess there are some elements within that that don't really need a customer conversation. In the same way as that we as a business are looking at our emissions and our energy efficiency within our four walls, we know our customers need to do that. Focusing new product development around lower energy usage, whether products in use or products in standby, is a sort of an obvious theme within NPD as well.
I mean, we'll share a lot more of this detail in the Capital Markets Day, and that'll give you a greater sense of how we're doing things.
Yeah. I guess just maybe a follow-up. Is there a sort of an expectation that there needs to be a big step up in terms of, I guess either R&D or CapEx particularly? I know it's probably a hard question to answer at this stage, but historically we haven't really required certainly lots of R, maybe quite a lot of D in terms of the product. It seems as if it's almost an evolution of the product rather than anything you need to do dramatically different. I guess maybe hard to say.
Yeah. I mean, it's R&D is definitely something that we take seriously, and being an engineer, that's a focus point of mine. Innovation is going to be key going forward. Unfortunately, with the R bit, we can't show you because we're gonna give away all of our secrets, but there is definitely a lot of R in the process. Yeah. It'll be a focus point going forward.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
Yeah.
Good morning, guys. It's Andrew Douglas from Jefferies. Three questions, please. Can you give us, please, the price impact on revenue in the first half, price impact on the order book? Just let us know what you're pulling through in May just so we can model our price rises appropriately, 'cause I think some of us aren't. You've talked about being easy to do business with, I think more than once, definitely before today. Can you explain why that hasn't happened over the last kind of couple of years? Is that processes or mindset or both or something different?
Thank you for the strategic overview. No comment on M&A, capital allocation. In fact, there's no comment on M&A throughout the presentation. Is that off the agenda for the time being, or is that something that still plays a big part of the role of the equity story over the next couple of years?
Thanks for your question. Do you wanna take the first one?
The first one, which I thought was three questions in itself.
Point one, certainly, yes.
In terms of price impact on revenue, somewhere around mid-single-digit% in the first half. In terms of price impact on orders and order book, more like high single-digit% in the first half. In terms of price rises in May, they, depending on product set, somewhere between 5% and 8%.
Which is partly in the order book.
Which is.
Both.
Very small amount within order intake and clearly comes through more in orders in the second half. If I do the third one as well, and then you can come back to the other one.
Okay.
In terms of M&A, M&A still does form a fundamental part of what we do and how we will grow. I think Kiet referred to organic and inorganic growth certainly playing a part. It may not feature on slide. It certainly features in our thinking. Nothing changed there. Our appetite remains to do M&A and deploy our strong balance sheet in that way.
Yeah, in terms of easy to do business with, I think the work on that never finishes. It's not a one-time action. It's a continuous improvement activity, and we have made good strides with the Growth Acceleration Programme to do that. We've built a good foundation. I would say where we are at the moment, within a company, we're streamlined. Our business processes have improved. The next leg of that is to streamline the processes across all of our companies. It isn't that we haven't done it. We've started, but there's always work to do. That's the next leg of the actions but being easy to do business with.
Does that go externally? The ability to deal with the customer needs to be or the customer needs to be a lot easier from your perspective.
Absolutely. The mindset I'm driving is put the value we provide to our customers front and center. What is it that you can do that helps provide value for our customers? As a start, we worked on our lean initiatives, but then that's gonna expand now for all of our departments, for example. It's honing our processes to deliver the value to our customers, which is what drives our differentiation.
Thank you.
Good morning. Hi. It's Jonathan Hurn, Barclays. I just have three questions as well, please. I mean, firstly, can you talk a little bit about mix for H2, just what we should expect in terms of revenue, and also in terms of what's sitting in the order book, sort of pneumatic versus electric and how that's gonna play out. The second one was just on fossil power, but on particularly in Europe. Can you just talk about the trends you're seeing there? Are you seeing a tick up in potential sort of refurb opportunities within Europe as we see that sort of shift in power generation? And then thirdly, just on methane specifically, obviously COP26. Are you starting to see increased levels of demand for your electric actuators on the back of that?
Yeah. Okay. Do you wanna take one, and I'll take two and three?
I think in terms of mix in the order book, obviously, we've talked about the biggest impact in supply chain being related to chips, which is very much more towards electric actuators than anything else. I think it's fair to say there is more of that in the order book than normal, whatever normal is. I think really within order book, that's probably about the only thing we can single out. No dramatic shifts within other product sets or geographies. Not that geographies or end markets necessarily make an insignificant impact in terms of that mix dynamic.
In terms of the margin, you could argue because of that mix, it's obviously probably higher than the current margin would agree with.
I guess you could on the basis that, as we've said, there's more price in input than there is in revenue in the first half.
Yeah, in terms of fossil power, as you talk about in Europe, what we're seeing is obviously a shift towards LNG and alternative power. Hence, they form key parts of our strategy going forward. With the energy security disruptions in Europe, we see LNG as a good growth potential for Rotork going into the future. LNG is a absolute area where we are strong and have been strong in the past. There's also accelerated spends in alternative energies as well, so hydrogen production, other forms of alternative power. These are all of the new targeted segments that we're looking to capitalize on as we go forward. Again, at the Capital Markets Day, we're gonna choose some specific markets and go into a lot more detail to tell you about these, but these will form part of that.
That links into the methane emissions as well. We have actually seen good progress in that we have grown our business in that area in North America. The bill that's going through currently also adds to the weight of that, where companies now will be fined for the emissions that they produce, upstream. All of these factors point towards good opportunities for growth for Rotork. That's why we feel strongly about them. That's why they form part of our targeted segments. Again, we'll look forward to going into a lot more detail at Capital Markets Day.
Thanks. Mark Davies Jones from Stifel. We're obviously in a very unusual cycle 'cause the supply chain situation has distorted all the trends over the last couple of years. We're in the odd situation of looking at strong and accelerating growth trends even as we go into a big macro slowdown. Are there any parts of the business where you're seeing a weakening in demand trends? And was the reminder that CPI is the shortest cycle bit designed to sort of flag some slowing there?
Yeah. No, we haven't seen any weakness in the order momentum currently. Actually, throughout H1, we actually saw a strong growth. No signs there. CPI, in terms of the shortest cycle, that's just for you to understand in terms of the translation from input to revenue, and also the pricing translation. It's absolutely not a signal for a slowdown in the markets at all. In fact, June for CPI was the strongest order intake month. Also I think it's good to point out that the CPI business over the last few years has changed the makeup of its portfolio. You know, don't view it as an industrial business. Within CPI, it's benefiting from the earlier move of targeted segments.
We've really focused on the macroeconomics, understood the key potential growth drivers of specific markets, and we've chosen to play in those markets. What you're seeing now is those markets bearing fruit. That should continue as we go forward.
Thank you. Just on Water & Power, you mentioned some of those large power projects not repeating in this period, but they're on the horizon again. Can you just talk about those briefly? Are those the same sort of very high margin refurb things we've had in the past? Why are they sort of quite lumpy? Are they very specific in terms of what you can bid on there?
two
The-
Sorry. Two different types of one-off projects. The first one was a large waste-to-energy project in China, the first of its kind. Those projects are lumpy in their nature, and they will come through. That was the first one, but obviously China has had its COVID-19 problems since. The second one is more of the refurbishment coming through, which we should see more of.
Mm-hmm.
Actually, one is in the new energy markets, and one is the refurbishment projects as you see. What we wanna do is improve our underlying base business. If you think about the input of Water & Power, you know, that did have a modest increase, but it had a modest increase despite having large one-offs. We were able to cover those one-offs with the increase in the base business.
Thank you.
Oh, thank you.
Good morning. Dominic Convey from Numis. Just wanna follow up on this issue around second half, and specifically the risks therein. It's evident from the commentary that actually the pricing increases in the order book are effectively just washing through the anticipated cost increases. So the step up obviously in profits in the second half is all volume related. I just want to understand what quantum of volume you need to do second half on first half, and really whether we understand it enough that you've exited Q2 at the sort of volumes that would support that second half expectation, or just how we should think about the Q3, Q4 revenue phasing.
Unpick that in a variety of different ways, can't we? I think in terms of H1, H2 split of revenue, we've talked about it being more H2 weighted than normal. I think where we probably fall is with H1 representing somewhere in the low- to mid-40% of full year revenue. That's kind of the range where it's likely to fall compared with a normal maybe 47%-48% of revenue. That's the degree to which it's more second half weighted. Obviously, as you rightly say, price comes through more in the second half. That's one of the factors that will contribute to that weighting. Currency also contributes to that weighting. All of those things will have a part to play in why H2 is bigger.
In terms of exit rate from back end of first half into second half, as we said, May, June was very much the biggest months of the first half. Supply chain issues were more acute in the first quarter. The exit rate from May, June into the second half is much less of a step up than those proportions would suggest.
Just that Q3, Q4 split.
Q3, Q4, I'd love to say we were gonna have a nice even spread through the second half of the year. Reality never seems to work out that way. We've historically always been very H4 weighted. December typically is a very large month. History may well repeat. That then puts us at risk of some of those geopolitical or macro kind of things happening towards the tail end of the year, which unfortunately is one of the challenges.
Hi, it's Andy again. One of your peers suggested that 90% of their price rises would stick, even in the event of raw material prices or cost inflation unwinding. Is that something that you think is the case for Rotork, or are you starting to see customers now saying, "Look, the price of logistics is coming, is rolling over. You need to come take your prices down." Now you've put some surcharges in places. Does that actually mean that kind of by definition the mechanism works against you or not against you, but you know, you can't just hold on to everything? Is that not fair?
I think different elements. Deal with the surcharge first. The surcharge was implemented for a very specific step-up in logistics costs in the past. While logistics costs are stabilizing, they're certainly not going back down to where they were before. The 2% surcharge that we put in on that, I think still remains a you know justifiable position at this point in time in front of our customers. I don't think we have any issues with that. In terms of prices sticking, I wouldn't wanna stick a percentage on it particularly, but they are sticking. I think you know where we sit today, they are coming through exactly as we would expect. Clearly, we have some customers with framework-type agreements and longer-term pricing structures that means it takes longer. Apart from that, it's behaving exactly as it as you would expect.
Okay. Thank you.
Hi, it's Aurelio Calderon from Morgan Stanley again. Just a quick follow-up. I think one of your peers was mentioning that the lead times were quite long, and they even had to send letters to some of the customers to apologize for the long lead times. I guess the question is: Are you taking share? How do you think you are faring compared to your competitors in terms of lead times?
Yeah, I think lead times vary across the board and in different markets as well. I would say if I take our CPI markets, our lead times are in line with our competition, if not slightly ahead, hence we've been able to grow that business. Lead times on electric actuation, again, in Americas, you know, market intelligence suggests that we are better than our competition. In Asia, we're about similar. In Europe, we're slightly behind because some of our competitors are private companies and sat on quite a huge amount of stock, which they therefore have got the head start on us. As that stock diminishes, the true lead time of building new components is equivalent.
Okay.
It's Harry Philips from Peel Hunt. Just a couple of questions. Just on working capital and obviously with extended order books, extended visibility and so on, does working capital sort of stay here for a while yet? Or is there, you know, what are the conditions where you might be able to unwind it? Because clearly you've got that balance between sort of customer sort of satisfaction, if you like, and sort of, you know, your own business model. Then secondly, maybe sort of more negative, given the sector so far this year has been very absent, restructuring charges and things like that. But clearly in terms of contingency plans and so forth around the sort of macro clouds and so on, is there sort of plans B and C sort of being put together and filed away for the rainy day possibly?
You wanna take the working capital?
Yeah, I think working capital. I think there are elements of working capital that are very short term in terms of driving where we are at the end of the period, and some of the stuff in finished goods that's around delays is just, I wouldn't say typical. I think we should also bear in mind that normally we do have higher inventory at the June period than we do in December. There's an element of just seasonality within that to the extent that the business really has any seasonality around working capital. Certainly within inventory, the bits that we are holding that are protecting against supply chain disruption, logistics delays, all those sorts of things, I think those do disappear over time. What time period that is, I think still remains. It's, you know.
At the moment, the focus is on very much delivering the second half. That necessitates holding the sort of level of inventory you see at the June 30th. It's something we are developing thinking on and mechanisms around to move forward and think about differently. There's a piece of work going on that, again, will form part of the conversation in November.
Yeah.
Sorry. To explain a little bit more about how that works. Because clearly, inventory and lead times are all part of customer value. It's about satisfying your customers as, you know, with the shortest available lead times. Inventory management is part of that process. More to come on that one.
I mean, it goes into the contingency planning that you talked about as well. I think it's always good practice for companies to have B and C plans tucked away, and we're no different, you know. I think for us, our mindset is how do we put in place actions in terms of executing on the second half? I talked about the supply chain actions. It's carrying on our focus in making sure that we do everything we can to overcome all of the headwinds that come and hit us. The inventory, again, is one of them. But we've tweaked how we view it. We have a term called healthy inventory in our company.
We actually understand the makeup of the inventory and understand what that inventory needs to be to be able to satisfy our customers. It's not a holistic just raise all levels. It's targeted at what our order book is saying. They're the kind of action plans that we're putting in place to mitigate the headwinds.
I suppose, I mean, maybe just adding something more or asking something more. Traditionally what happens in industrials is that everything goes along fine till one day everything just stops and falls off a cliff, if you like, and particularly around sort of working capital and so on, hence asking the question. I suppose given the momentum you're potentially gonna have through the second half and into next year, sort of unwinding that in your normal sort of big December might be more difficult, excuse me. Just might be more difficult than in other years, if you like, just given that sort of.
I think.
-the-
I think though if you look at the I was looking at one of the slides in the appendix earlier, you know, this level of inventory as a function of revenue in the first half is actually, you know, we've been there in multiple years back. If you go back not that far, what we haven't had at this point in the year is the size of the order book we have at the moment. So if we were to do a comparison of order book with inventory, actually it's really which is a slightly strange ratio, but it's, as we don't give you the numbers, but it's healthier than it would've been in those prior periods. How about that one? Any other questions?
Any other questions?
Just on that backlog.
Bruno, sorry for the people online, you
No, that's cool.
Yeah.
Just on that backlog point, could you just shed some color on how much coverage you have within that backlog today, just roughly, just to give us a vague feel?
Coverage in what sense?
In terms of revenue. If we're looking at, is H2 covered, then you've got some coverage for H1 of next year or how far does that coverage extend to?
I think we haven't given order book size for quite some time. I think what I would say is, there are already a proportion of orders in the backlog at thirtieth of June that are for delivery in 2023. Equally we still need some orders through the second half to meet the sort of rough revenue targets that we're talking about if you look at the second half. It's not a perfect kind of sequential use of order book ever. Naturally we've got large parts of the business, like the whole of Rotork Site Services tends to work on very much quicker conversion of order to revenue. We'd always expect to have some to convert, but it's a much more proportion this year than normal. That's all I'm really gonna say in terms of the composition of the order book from that perspective.
Right.
Sorry.
I guess if we take a step back and look at your Oil & Gas markets, where do you think we are in the respective investment cycle? Do you think we have a few years of high growth ahead of us, or do you think growth moderates? Where do you think volumes can get to, and placed in a historical context, do we get past 2019 levels, or how do you think about it?
Yeah. Depending on which reports you kind of look at. If I aggregate them all, I think there is an anticipated uptick in spending in Oil & Gas, which could see us through over the next three to four years. If you're looking at the elements of Oil & Gas, you've got companies now upstream. The price of oil is way above break-even points for them, but they're slightly changing the way that they go and explore. Instead of large, big mega projects offshore, they're going back to onshore, or they're going back to their subsea projects as before. It's a smaller project with capacity expansion opportunities. That means that the paybacks for them are smaller than the big exploration. That's what we're seeing, but we are seeing investment there.
If you look at LNG is a huge potential for Rotork because already there is demand for LNG and there's contracts being put in place in terms of that delivery of LNG. Now predominantly U.S. and Qatar, they've got to build their new LNG plants, which takes a number of years to come through. For Rotork, we'll see that come through, let's say back end of 2023.
Those projects are in FEED stage at the moment for design, and then they'll come through. You've got the infrastructure within Europe, for example, of having to distribute that additional LNG. Over the course of the next, let's say four to five years, we feel really good about the natural uptick in Oil & Gas, but also coming through LNG to cover all of the energy requirements needed.
Thank you.
Okay. Very good.
Any other questions? No?
Very good. Thank you all very much.
Thank you very much for your time. Really good to see you all today.