Good morning, and welcome to our 2024 first half results presentation. I'm Nimesh Patel, Chief Executive of Spirax Group, and I'm joined today by Phil Scott, our Interim Chief Financial Officer, and also in the audience is Louisa Burdett, who joined the group in July to be our new Chief Financial Officer. The first half of this year has been more challenging than we had anticipated. Our financial results are slightly below our plans, and we have taken a more cautious view for the remainder of 2024. Overall, group organic sales growth was 1.3%, reflecting a weaker macroeconomic environment in key markets in the first half, particularly in China. Estimates for industrial production growth in China vary significantly across different forecast providers, and they've changed materially and often.
Therefore, we focused on global IP, excluding China, which in the first half was up 0.8%. This compares to our group organic sales growth, excluding China, of 2.7%, so well ahead of IP. In STS, where China represents nearly 20% of sales and is amongst our most profitable operations, sales and margin were lower on an organic basis. ETS was up organically, driven by continued demand for the electrification of thermal energy and delivery of operational improvements, increasing manufacturing throughput, all of which supported the Industrial Process Heating division. Semiconductor demand in the Industrial Equipment Heating division has yet to improve, although our customers are signaling a return to orders growth by the end of the year, which would only impact sales next year.
Watson-Marlow was also up organically, and we have seen early signs of an improvement in biopharm demand, which is encouraging, but we do not expect a material recovery in sales in the second half. Our adjusted operating profit margin was down organically, with progress in ETS offset by STS. We maintained our cost discipline, but while preserving investment in our sales and manufacturing capabilities to sustain and enhance our future growth. We faced material FX headwinds in the first half, leading to reported sales down 3% and adjusted operating profit down 6%. Reflecting our confidence in the group's return to high levels of growth, we are declaring an interim dividend of GBP 0.475, which is an increase of 3%.
Now, I've referenced the challenging macroeconomic environment in the first half, so I'll explain the trends in industrial production growth for IP and set out our expectations for the rest of the year. Global IP was weak throughout the first half, and in the second quarter of the year, it was weaker than forecast at the time of our May trading update. In key markets such as Germany, France, and the US, which account for close to 40% of group sales, IP contracted in the first half, the largest reduction being -4% in Germany. As the table shows, there have been material downward revisions to second half IP, particularly in Europe and the Americas, while the second half in China is forecast to be materially lower than in the first half.
Although estimates continue to be revised downwards, there is still a large recovery forecast in global IP growth, excluding China, from 0.8% in the first half to 1.6% in the second half. We remain cautious about that outlook, particularly the scale of this forecast improvement. Therefore, we've taken a more conservative view in our planning for the second half, factoring in a smaller improvement in IP over the first half, and this is reflected in our guidance. So I'll now hand over to Phil to talk you through our financials before coming back to talk through our operational performance.
Thank you, Nimesh, and good morning, everyone. So as always, the numbers we'll be discussing today are the adjusted results. A full reconciliation between the statutory and adjusted operating profit is included as an appendix to today's presentation. Just to remind you, the difference between our reported and organic growth rates reflects the effect of currency movements on sales and profit. These impacts are reflected in our reported numbers, but are excluded from our organic growth rates. So as we messaged in March, and again, at our trading update in May, currency movements represent a material headwind of 4% to our first half sales and 6% to profit. This reflects sterling strengthening materially versus the comparative period in 2023.
Whilst reported group sales were 3% lower in the first half than in the same period last year, this decrease was impacted by the exchange rate headwind of 4%. On an organic basis, sales increased by 1%, reflecting increases in ETS and Watson-Marlow being partially offset by a decline in STS. Group operating profit declined 7% or 1% on an organic basis to GBP 160 million. A decline of 2% in STS, driven by the lower sales, more than offset organic growth in both ETS and Watson-Marlow. This decline in operating profit, alongside the resulting mix of group sales and profit, resulted in a lower margin of 19.4% compared to the same period in 2023.
Our net financing costs increased to approaching GBP 22 million, reflecting the impact of higher market interest rates on maturing fixed rate debt, which we refinanced in the second half of last year. As we guided in March, the group's effective tax rate increased by a hundred and about ten basis points. This increase reflects the profit mix of the countries in which the group operates, including the impact of exchange rate movements, together with the first year of the BEPS Pillar Two minimum tax rate adjustment. Our adjusted EPS of 137.2 pence per share was 12% lower, above the rate of decline in operating profit due to the higher net finance expense and effective tax rate.
As Nimesh said, we're increasing our interim dividend by 3%, reflecting our guidance for a stronger second half trading and our confidence in the resilience of our group. Turning now to the sales bridge. As referenced earlier, you can see the material exchange rate headwind of GBP 34.5 million or 4% on sales. Against a very strong YoY growth comparator of 15% in 2023, organic sales in our Steam Thermal Solutions business fell by 1%. This fall was driven by contracting IP in a number of our key markets, as Nimesh highlighted, together with the weaker macroeconomic outlook in China, which impacted large projects that are funded from our customers' capital budgets. In China, in the first half of last year, we benefited from catch-up expenditure following the easing of COVID-19 related lockdowns.
This included the tail end of capacity expansion in the pharmaceutical sector, together with growing demand from the EV battery sector, in which we have built a strong position. This half year, lower large project sales in China were impacted by the tariffs on EV exports, which resulted in lower demand from the battery sector, in particular. ETS half year organic sales growth was 5%. This was supported by strong growth in Industrial Process Heating , which comprises our Chromalox and Vulcanic businesses. We continued to benefit from strong demand for decarbonization solutions, as well as an improvement in throughput from Chromalox's manufacturing facilities. Organic sales growth in Industrial Equipment Heating , that's our Thermocoax and Durex Industries businesses, continued to be impacted by weak semicon demand. In Watson-Marlow, sales grew by 3% organically.
While we've seen some early signs of an improvement in year-on-year demand from biopharm customers, this is not yet translating into material sales growth. Sales to customers in Process Industries are much more directly correlated to IP, meaning organic growth was dampened by the relatively weak macroeconomic environment. The next bridge today details the movements in adjusted operating profit and adjusted operating profit margin for the six-month period. Currency movements again had a negative impact, this time on profit of over GBP 10 million or 6%. This is as a result of both translational and transactional impacts. Profit in Steam Thermal Solutions reduced by 2.4% organically, reflecting the organic fall in sales, together with the adverse mix effects of lower sales from our higher margin business in China.
This led to the adjusted operating profit margin in STS falling by 90 basis points or by 30 basis points organically to 23.5%. In ETS, profit increased by GBP 3 million or by 12% organically, reflecting the strong progress across our Industrial Process Heating divisions, being partially offset by the adverse mix effect of lower, higher margin semicon sales in Industrial Equipment Heating . The ETS margin grew organically by 80 basis points to 14.7%. The increase in manufacturing volumes in our Chromalox sites are supported by continuing investment in people, processes, and operating efficiency initiatives, which are also helping us prepare for the completion of the expansion project in Ogden in the first half of next year.
Watson-Marlow's profit grew organically by 2.4%, with the benefit of organic sales growth being partially offset by a full six months of cost relating to our new U.S. manufacturing facility in Massachusetts. As a result, Watson-Marlow's adjusted operating profit margin was flat to the first half of 2023, at 24.6%. Our corporate expenses as a percentage of group sales increased slightly year on year as a result of ongoing investment to support key strategic initiatives, such as developing our digital solutions for customers. The group adjusted operating profit margin fell by 80 basis points or by 30 basis points on an organic basis, reflecting the mixed impact of both lower sales in higher margin countries, together with the overall sales and profit contribution of each of our three businesses. Turning now to cash flow.
Our operating profit to cash conversion rate was 53%. This was broadly in line with our expectations, albeit capital expenditure was slightly lower than forecast. In the first half, CapEx amounted to 5% of sales. This shortfall was driven by changes to the phasing of payments on ongoing large capital projects, together with the sale of an existing building in Australia, where the proceeds reduced our net CapEx spend. Working capital increased in the first half of the year, reflecting typical seasonality. We continue to anticipate an inflow in the second half of the year, which would move our working capital to sales ratio back towards our historical year-end position. For the full year, we continue to anticipate cash conversion will be approximately 75% in line with our guidance from earlier in the year.
Following the payment of the final 2023 dividend, we ended the period with net debt of GBP 718 million, which equates to 1.9x EBITDA. Thank you. I'll now pass you back to Nimesh.
Thank you, Phil. In the six months since I became CEO, I've completed a comprehensive series of visits to our local operating companies around the world and across our three businesses. I've also engaged in conversations with customers and my colleagues across the group. My intent has been to take a fresh and objective look at the Spirax Group, working with my executive team, and I'll shortly share with you some early thoughts on our commercial, operational, and financial priorities. But where needed, we've not waited to take action to deliver on the opportunities which we have identified. So over the past six months, we've made progress in a number of areas, and I'll cover these across the next two slides. Starting with building on our commitment to preserving the safety of our colleagues through, for the first time, implementing mandatory safe operating practices for machine guarding across the group.
I have made changes to our executive leadership team. Armando Pazos, MD of ETS, will leave the group at the end of August and will be succeeded by Andrew Mines, currently the MD of Watson-Marlow. I'd like to thank Armando for his contribution to ETS, including his leadership of the Vulcanic and Durex Industries acquisitions. I also want to thank Andrew for taking this new role as he brings extensive experience leading U.S. and European-based manufacturing and sales operations, as well as strong leadership skills, which will support greater collaboration between an integration of the four acquisitions that comprise ETS. The search for Andrew's successor has already begun. We invested in our future growth drivers. Just this week, we agreed to invest EUR 4 million for an initial 12% stake in a technology start-up in Germany that is pioneering the development of high-temperature heat pumps.
We have an option to increase our holding, adding this technology to our portfolio of Target Zero solutions to electrify the generation of Steam focused on critical, high-temperature applications where Steam is used directly in our customers' industrial processes. I'll speak more about that later in the context of our ambition and our unique ability to support our customers with delivery of their decarbonization goals. We have also continued to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 9% in the first half of the year, and we're well on track to meet our target of a 50% reduction in emissions against our 2019 baseline by 2025. Over the past six months, our teams have adapted to internal changes while also navigating and responding to a more challenging macroeconomic environment.
I would therefore like to thank my colleagues for their ongoing passion and their hard work. Now, turning to operational progress within our businesses, starting with STS. Sales and margin were down organically in STS, particularly due to China, where our high-margin operations account for close to 20% of sales and where demand declined 12% in the first half, entirely due to a reduction in large projects, as explained by Phil. Large projects account for approximately 15% of group sales, but a much higher share of STS sales in China, aligned with the past trend of customers expanding their production capacity, driven by growing exports. Looking forward, our local team is working to pivot from a heavier reliance on large expansion projects towards process optimization and MRO, but that will take time.
Looking towards our end markets, sales to our larger target sectors of food and beverage, oil and gas, and chemicals, which account for over 30% of STS sales, grew organically in the first half, demonstrating the continued benefit of our sectorized go-to-market strategy. Turning to our strategic drivers, as I've mentioned, we made an investment in emerging high-temperature heat pumps, which will add to our Target Zero suite of solutions. We are piloting our ElectroFit technology, which is the retrofit of steam-generating boilers, and we are about to commence a pilot of our SteamVo lt, which is the first fit of steam-generating boilers working alongside boiler OEMs. Moving to ETS. Our order book in Industrial Process Heating remains at historically high levels, with continued demand for our thermal energy electrification solutions, helping customers achieve their greenhouse gas emission goals.
Industrial Process Heating was the principal driver of good organic sales growth in ETS, and we have started to deliver operational improvements, increasing throughput from our manufacturing facilities and shortening lead times on customer deliveries. This remains a key priority for us, particularly in the Ogden facility, given its role in manufacturing large, bespoke, low-voltage and medium-voltage heaters to meet global demand. We've now built a detailed understanding of the issues that impeded progress historically, and we've taken concrete steps to build an improvement path, including the appointment of a new head of manufacturing in ETS and general manager in Ogden. The early progress we have made in improving throughput is encouraging and will continue to support ongoing ETS margin expansion.
Just to remind you, this is one of the most important self-help opportunities that we have and a key component of improving ETS margins towards our 20% target. We are seeking to deliver value from our recent acquisition in Industrial Process Heating by aligning our regional sales teams and leadership of our global manufacturing sites under a new organizational structure across Vulcanic and Chromalox. In Industrial Equipment Heating , sales have yet to benefit from a recovery in demand from the higher margin semicon sector. While customers are signaling high expectations of placing increased orders in late 2024, that will mostly benefit our sales in 2025, so we don't anticipate a meaningful recovery in semicon sales in the current year.
Examples of increasing collaboration across Industrial Equipment Heating include migrating Thermocoax's U.S.-based production to Durex Industries, and we are leveraging the combined team's expertise in our new product development projects. So through changes to the leadership, as well as organizational changes, you can see how we're focused on delivering value from our recent acquisitions in ETS. And finally, turning to Watson-Marlow. We saw organic sales growth in sales across both biopharm and Process Industries sectors. We've seen some early signs of improving demand from biopharm customers, which is encouraging. As these customers take shipments of orders placed in prior years, we're also continuing to see our order book normalize to a lower historic level as sales continue above order intake.
We do not expect a material increase in biopharm sales in the second half, with a recovery more likely later in this year than previously anticipated, but it remains challenging to forecast the precise trajectory. In April, we launched Watson-Marlow Architect Solutions to biopharm customers and have seen strong traction. This is an example of self-generated solution selling, being a bespoke solution that enables customers to connect disparate systems and equipment along the fluid path while preserving the safety and integrity of their processes. Process Industries grew organically, although demand was dampened by the weak IP environment, with strong growth in the wastewater, food and beverage, and mining sectors, partially offset by weaker demand in our industrial sectors.
In light of the challenging demand environment, and to manage our cost base, we reviewed Watson-Marlow's manufacturing footprint in the USA, consolidating two small facilities into our Devens facility, which is new. During the first half, we also made progress on our digital ambitions, commencing a pilot of a machine learning pump in the mining sector. This technology is designed to limit process downtime through preventative maintenance alerts based on monitoring of fluid path parameters through the pump. I'll now briefly set out our outlook by business and for the group. Starting with STS, where for the full year, we anticipate low single digit organic sales growth, driven by our usual seasonality and a higher IP than in the first half.
Margins, as we said in March, will be lower than last year's record, 24.6%, reflecting strong currency headwinds, the lower contribution from our high margin operations in China, and partial reversal of temporary cost containment measures taken in 2023 as we preserve investment in our future growth. In ETS, we expect ongoing operational improvements in Industrial Process Heating and the continuing strong demand for electrification products to support further growth in sales, profit and margin in the second half. In Industrial Equipment Heating , we don't anticipate a meaningful recovery in higher margin semicon sales for the rest of the year. For ETS as a whole, we anticipate mid-single digit organic revenue growth and continuing margin progress. In Watson-Marlow, we anticipate continued organic growth in the second half against the weak prior year comparator.
In Biopharm, as I said, demand's shown some early signs of improvement, although we anticipate lower sales growth than we did previously. So for Watson-Marlow, we anticipate mid-single digit organic revenue growth for the full year, with incremental sales dropping through to profit at a high rate, supporting margin progress. Bringing this guidance together for the group, we therefore expect second half organic growth to be stronger than the first half, which will support mid-single digit organic sales growth for the full year. And we anticipate that the adjusted operating profit margin will be in line with the constant currency adjusted 20% that we achieved in 2023, reflecting our mix of sales with lower sales from higher margin STS in China, a greater proportion of group sales from ETS, and the partial reversal of 2023's temporary cost containment measures.
We also expect strong FX headwinds to continue, as Phil has guided. Now, moving to look at the medium and long term, let me update you on some of the work we've been doing. We are planning a capital markets presentation in October, where we will present our longer term commercial, operational and financial priorities. Today, I'd like to share with you some early thoughts, which, as I mentioned earlier, are informed by the time I've spent in our local operating companies and with my colleagues. My aim being to see the Spirax Group through a different lens and to educate myself by listening. Working together with my new executive team, we have sought to take a fresh and an objective look at our group to assess our strengths, what can we do better, as well as our opportunities and how we must adapt.
Through this process, this is how I see the Spirax Group and the things that we do well today, which we will preserve. Our products, solutions, and expertise are critical to the operating efficiency and safety of our customers' industrial, thermal, energy, and fluid technology processes. Our organic growth and industry-leading margins are achieved through a unique business model, engineer-led, direct sales, a focus on consultative solution selling, and pricing based on customer economics. We benefit from being highly diversified across geographic regions and sectors with a high proportion of sales from defensive end markets, and because our sales are mostly funded from customers' operational budgets rather than their capital expenditure. Looking forward, I believe that the value we have delivered to our customers over the past 136 years remains just as relevant today.
But importantly, and additionally, we can and will benefit from new structural drivers of growth. Through our end market and sector exposures, we are attractively positioned, thanks to the work of my predecessor, and through the fundamental strengths, which I've just described. But we recognize there is work to do to get after these opportunities by targeting investments towards new growth drivers and focusing on the opportunities we have for self-help, operational improvements that we can make to help us be both more effective and more efficient, helping us to fund the investments we need to make. Through these actions, I believe that we will be able to accelerate our long-term compounding organic growth at attractive margins. And as you heard in the first half results, we're not waiting to get after these opportunities. We've made some tough decisions on people.
We've invested where it's important to our future, despite the challenging environment, and we are driving manufacturing improvement and consolidation. So I want to talk about four things this morning: how well-positioned we are to capitalize on four key global trends that are shaping our customers' businesses. These are the growth drivers for us as we position ourselves to meet their future needs. How we are focusing investment on growth opportunities that will help us strengthen our bonds with our customers, how we're accelerating the pace at which we deliver operational improvements through self-help programs, and what this means for our growth. These four points are encapsulated in our work to develop a new group strategy, aligning around a common set of objectives for our businesses, preserving what we do well and focusing on self-help and growth drivers. We call this evolving for tomorrow's world.
We are working to position Spirax Group to benefit from global trends that will drive our long-term compounding growth for decades to come, starting with the emerging middle class, characterized by an additional 800 million plus people, largely across Asia and Africa. This demographic will drive increasing consumption, impacting sectors such as food and beverage, and energy and power, as well as mining, sectors which today account for over a third of our sales. This increase in demand will drive the need, first, for process efficiency and productivity improvements, and secondly, for capacity expansion across our customers' operations, all areas in which we are a leader. Moving to resource efficiency and sustainability, our customers are setting reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions and water use. Today, industrial thermal energy accounts for 20% of global carbon emissions, which is comparable to global transportation.
Reducing energy waste is what STS has been doing for over 100 years, building a deep understanding of our customers' industrial processes. The unique combination we have of STS and ETS and our products to reduce customers' carbon dependency through the electrification of thermal processes is a powerful differentiator for the Spirax Group in developing decarbonization solutions, both for the generation of Steam, which tackles 30% of all industrial carbon emissions, but also through the electrification of thermal energy generated from burning directly fossil fuels, accounting for a further 60%. Through our electrical thermal energy expertise in ETS, we are also supporting expansion of the nuclear and energy sectors as the world moves away from fossil fuel dependency. Within Watson-Marlow, we are leading in the wastewater sector.
The next global trend, an aging global population, is going to need increased healthcare provision, with the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, as well as healthcare, accounting for close to a quarter of our sales, principally in STS and Watson-Marlow. Over the next decade, it's expected that one in six people in the world will be aged 65 or over, close to doubling this global population to 1.5 billion people, and we all expect this older generation to be significantly wealthier than the younger generations following them. This is fueling innovation in the biopharm sector to develop and produce new treatments. Through Watson-Marlow, we are already a world-leading provider of products and solutions to the biopharm sector that is growing at above 10% per annum. And finally, we're also investing to expand our addressable market in other growth sectors driven by changing lifestyles.
For example, through our Industrial Equipment Heating division in ETS, we are a leading provider of critical thermal energy solutions to the semicon sector. Watson-Marlow is building a presence in the future food sector, which includes working with cell-based protein startups as they seek to address global food shortages through more sustainable production, with technologies that are highly adjacent to biopharm. Both STS and Watson-Marlow have built a presence in the complex production chain of electric vehicle batteries. Overall, these four trends underscore our potential for growth through the structural attractiveness of our existing end markets and scope to expand our addressable markets, and this is how we will sustain and accelerate our compounding growth over decades.
Let's now look at how we're gonna target our investment in these large and growing addressable markets to strengthen our existing bonds with our customers by delivering solutions to the problems that matter to them. We're uniquely placed across STS and ETS to influence the energy transition choices facing our customers through the trust we have established with them, our technical expertise, and our process insight. This energy transition will have a multifaceted impact on our businesses over several years. Starting with the decarbonization of Steam, helping our customers optimize their use of Steam , and therefore, their energy consumption, has long been our focus, historically, to reduce costs and now also to reduce emissions. That's not new, but it is important.
What's new is our developing range of Target Zero products and solutions that only we, as a group, with both s team and electric thermal expertise together, can do. So for example, as I said earlier, we're piloting our first fit products to decarbonize steam-generating boilers working in customer sites. And as we learn from these pilots, we're continuing to develop this technology ahead of full commercialization. And as you heard, we are pursuing new technologies to build our range of solutions to bring a more comprehensive offering to our customers. So high-temperature heat pump technology further expands our electrification products, but let me explain for a minute why it's important. High-temperature heat pumps will be utilized in critical applications where Steam is used directly in our customers' industrial processes, essentially our target niche.
This will be a highly engineered, bespoke technology, allowing our customers to recycle waste process heat to generate Steam while reducing their operating costs and carbon emissions. This is not the same as hot water heat pumps, which are a commodity technology utilized in low-temperature applications that contribute towards decarbonization in less critical processes, and usually alongside existing Steam systems. Through becoming a broader solutions provider to our customers, we'll be best placed to advise on the breadth of technologies available and what's most appropriate for their process needs while meeting their emission reduction targets. What is clear is that the decarbonization of Steam generation represents a significant expansion of our addressable market.
To successfully deliver this capability, we are now working to design an operating model to bring together customer insight and sector-based expertise from across STS and ETS for the decarbonization of Steam , and we will build on our capability in design engineering and the manufacturing of bespoke products. Secondly, the broader scope for electrification of thermal energy beyond heavy users of Steam is an opportunity to support customers to reduce their carbon emissions, and it is significant. Through the Industrial Process Heating division of ETS, we already have a leading competitive position and innovative technologies, such as medium voltage offerings. But we need to invest further in R&D to expand our technology. For example, developing higher temperature elements and products capable of operating at higher voltages, all of which will increase our addressable market opportunity. Now, turning to digital.
We are investing in technologies to accelerate the delivery of our business model through increased customer bonding based on deeper insights. Digital will enable us to leverage the expertise of our direct sales engineers by more frequently accessing data from our customers' processes, which will drive more solutions and an enhanced ability to demonstrate how we deliver economic value to them. And of course, alongside all of these things, we'll be investing to make sure that we develop our organizational capability, building the new skills and ways of working that will be needed to serve our customers' evolving needs. As I've listened to my colleagues' perspectives on the group and where we stand today, it's also clear to me that we have scope for self-help, by which I mean how we prioritize operational improvement opportunities and then accelerate the pace at which we deliver.
Areas that I believe we need to focus on, which will allow us to strengthen our foundations, include: leveraging best practice across our geographies and businesses to further embed execution of our business model, growing the proportion of our revenues from self-generated solutions, and deepening our understanding of customers' evolving needs to increase our competitive advantage. Improving the efficiency of our manufacturing facilities in all three businesses, something that was not previously a focus, given the group's high growth and high margins. Reducing the organizational complexity that is built up as we've grown from under 70 operating companies to over 140, and improving our systems and processes across the group to address areas of past underinvestment. Delivering value from ETS, focusing on operational improvements and integrating the four acquisitions, benefiting from increased collaboration and revenue synergy potential.
These self-help areas will help us fund our future growth, and we'll speak more about them in October. What does this mean for our growth? Through the actions I've outlined, in the long term, I believe we can accelerate the rate at which we deliver compounding organic growth in sales and profit. I've outlined some of the areas where we'll need to invest to deliver on this potential, which will be funded by our growth. Of course, this is not an overnight transformation. In the medium term, we can sustain our good historical track record of mid-single-digit organic sales growth and mid- to high-single-digit organic profit growth. While STS remains a very high quality business, today, our higher growth businesses, ETS and Watson-Marlow, account for close to 50% of group sales.
So the mix of sales and profit growth across our three strong businesses will be different from the past. We also have an important self-help opportunity to drive top line and bottom line growth while creating the capacity for investment and increasing our adjusted operating profit margin to between 22% and 23%. Our organic growth in profit, combined with management of our invested capital through capital discipline, working capital efficiency, and strong cash generation, will also deliver improving returns on capital. Thank you for your time. Thank you for listening to me. I'd be happy to take your questions. And can I encourage you to review the detail we've included in our half year release? Thank you. We start with, I think, Andy, you had your hand up first.
Hi, good morning, gents. It's Andy from Jefferies. Can I just play a little bit of devil's advocate on the strategic update you put out today? I totally get the high temperature heat pumps is a brand new thing that I've never heard you guys talking about. But with respect to the geographic long-term, big picture trends with regards to decarbonization, digital, that, that's kind of what you've talked about for years, is this now just a question of things that you've been working on for the last however many years are now coming through to drive growth? Or is this just a repackaging of kind of what you've previously had.
Yeah
As a big strategic update? Because it feels to me like there's not a huge amount new in there.
So the question is, what's new? So the things that are new is, so the question, the answer about what's new is how we get after some of the opportunities. So previously, what we were thinking about was Target Zero as a series of very exciting products that would help electrify customers' generation of Steam . And we had three products in the Target Zero suite, you probably remember. One was a first-fit electric boiler, the other was a retrofit for an existing Steam generating boiler, and the third was a thermal energy battery that essentially stores thermal energy in the form of Steam . Those things are still important, but we're talking about going beyond that.
So number one, we're talking about how do we move from being a provider of these discrete solutions to becoming a partner for our customers over the total suite of their industrial processes and the issues that they need to grapple with to be able to achieve their ultimately net zero targets. And that requires a much more holistic relationship with those customers, bringing together expertise that exists in different parts of our group and expertise that today doesn't exist in our group. High temperature heat pumps is one example of bringing in something completely new that expands that range. That positions us as a genuine consultative partner for our customers, with access to a broader range of solutions and an ability to give them better advice about how they get to zero.
So, so how we execute is very different, and because we're executing differently, the size of that opportunity grows. The second thing that I'm not sure that necessarily everyone has, has really fully understood is that there is a massive opportunity that goes beyond simply decarbonizing Steam . If you think about total thermal energy, 30% comes in the form of Steam in industrial processes, but 60% comes from direct burning of fossil fuels. That needs to be electrified. That is a real opportunity for ETS. That means we need to grow that business. We need to grow our capability around sales. We need to grow our capacity in manufacturing. We need to grow in new regions around the world. That is a very big additional opportunity that's gonna require significant investment. The third thing is digital.
So the way we are pursuing digital is also likely to evolve our business. So we've talked about capturing customer data and using that to be better in the way that we deliver to them today, our business model, but actually, digital takes us beyond that. Digital could take us into the realm of thinking about services and how we produce different services alongside products that we offer our customers. It can deepen the bonds that we have with them and give us much better insight as to what their evolving problems are, not just the problems that we can solve today, so we can better position our business to be ready to deal with those problems. So fundamentally, in the past six months, have the key global trends that drive growth, not just for us, but so many businesses around the world, have they changed? No, they haven't.
So that's the bit that's the same. What has changed, is I think our level of ambition for what we can achieve against those global trends, and how we get after that, both what we do, but the pace at which we do it as well.
Okay, cool.
Thanks.
Thank you. On ETS, there's been a change of management on the manufacturing side. Is that driven by anything specific? Does that potentially means that the risk of it gets shifted to the right?
So we made that change at the beginning of the year, which is why I've captured it here in the half year. So I did actually talk about it in March. So it's not another change on top of that, just so you know. And yes, it was driven by the need to make progress on the operational improvements, and it's worked. We are starting to see that real progress come through, as you can see in the results. And there is more to go for. That journey will take through the balance of this year and 2025, but I want to show the continual progress that we're making in that space.
Yep. Last one for me. Clearly there's a lot of investment needed across the group for the next kind of 5, 10 years. You talked about systems, the dreaded systems word. Does that involve big ERP implementation, big costs, like we've seen across the sector that's been a bit of a disaster for a few companies? Where are we on that, please?
So as you know, we were already working on ERP implementations, and as you know, we had to take a write-down on the project that was furthest ahead, which was in Steam, which we took last year. I'm changing our approach to how we apply the ERP. So previously, we had three programs across three businesses. I don't think that's the right approach. I think the right approach is to do this together and to learn from each other, and to have more alignment across the ERPs that we put in place, because there are many processes that can be executed in the same way, but there are also a meaningful number of processes that can't be, because there are differences between our businesses.
So the way in which we execute those ERPs will be different, and we will fund that through our ongoing growth. We will fund that in part through CapEx, but maintaining our discipline. So fundamentally, I do not believe that anything has changed in terms of us being a low capital intensive business. Thank you.
Yeah. Hi, Stephan Klepp from HSBC. I have some follow-ups on actually, Andy's questions. So you talk about systems here, but at the same time, you talk about capabilities, medium voltage, electrification, et cetera. Is it changing as well, the CapEx profile that we should see? Because you talked a little about investment, having the right capabilities to invest. That's my first question.
Yeah. We'll remain a low capital intensive business, and so I expect our CapEx to be at or even slightly below where we are today. Because bear in mind, we've just embarked on a series of very large projects, building a new factory in Devens, in Massachusetts. We're building a new factory to expand our Ogden facility, in Utah, in the US, at the moment. Prior to that, we'd built BioPure in Portsmouth, Aflex in Huddersfield. We'd built a new Thermocoax facility in Normandy, so I don't see a material increase in CapEx versus those levels. We're still a low capital intensive business.
Okay, thank you. And then on ETS, so you alluded to, obviously, sales rep story within the company, within the firm, and Ogden is obviously, has been a sore spot for some time now. So the question here is, would you like to help us a little bit with regard to sales in Ogden, where we are, what kind of growth rate they are, and what kind of margins they have at the moment, and what should be the potential in those two years out, would it take to turn around the business, as you alluded to?
Stephan, I'd be happy to help you. It may not feel like help when I'm done, but let's see. So absolutely, within Ogden, we've seen a material step up in ex-factory gate sales. And, as a result, we've seen an improvement in margins. Are we where we want to be? No, we're not. There's definitely more to do. These problems are complex. It's not so simple as you've got a manufacturing facility, and there's a challenge there, and we need to fix it. It's about how the whole process works from end to end. So it's thinking about, how do we engage the client? Remember, these are highly bespoke products. What level of bespoking is valuable to the client and to us? What value of bespoking isn't?
So we need to develop that muscle to make sure that we've understood clearly upfront in the process, what it is we're committing to. We then, because this is different for our group, not so different within Ogden, but for the rest of our group, this is different. This is not so much what we've grown up doing. We then need to make sure that we've got the right processes and understanding for having taken that order, how do you continually engage the customer all the way through? Because there are always changes, changes the customer wants to make, changes in the materials that are available, changes in how this product is going to be used, and therefore, you know, we need to be aligned with the way that our customer is thinking, their understanding of what we're doing, and how it aligns with their needs.
So there's a real project management skill that needs to be built there. We need to make sure we've got the right skills and design engineering, so we can take those concepts and turn them into drawings that can be manufactured on the shop floor. That requires technologies that actually we don't have fully implemented today, in terms of the tools we use to do that. Then, you've got to make sure that whole, you know, right the way through to manufacturing, that whole process is joined up. People are talking to each other all the time. So it's a more complex thing to do. We've made real progress on the manufacturing side. We're making progress on the design engineering side. We've made progress on the project management side as well, and now we're linking all of that up.
Of course, the great news here is that this is something that's in our control, because ultimately, the demand is still there. The demand is growing. Once we get this right, it will really help us accelerate the growth that we have in ETS.
And probably last one here, from my side. FX. So it feels a bit like Groundhog Day, 2014, 2015, and I would rather like to know, is anything changing with regard to elasticity? I don't want a FX forecast here. I'm rather thinking ETS is new to the mix. Is it rather, yeah, accelerating or magnifying the problem with FX and the sensitivities you're having in the group?
So your question isn't elasticity of demand as a result of FX, it's about mix within our group, correct?
Yes. ETS coming new to the mix.
Yes.
The last place when you have problems.
So on a reported basis, i.e., after FX, yes, it will have an impact, probably more at the margins. For example, we've got a bigger FX headwind in STS. Why? Because it's positioned in a lot more emerging markets than the other two businesses. So what you would expect to see is perhaps a reduction in the proportion that's coming from STS, and therefore, a corresponding increase in the proportion of the whole that's coming from the other two businesses. Probably more so, you're right, from ETS, because it's North American and European-based. And I think that's what you're seeing reflected when we talk about our margin being impacted by the mix of sales in the group as well.
Thank you.
Jonathan, I think, was next. Yeah.
Hi, good morning. It's Jonathan Hurn from Barclays. I just have three questions. The first question was just on that new facility in the U.S., Watson-Marlow. Obviously, there were costs associated with that in the first half, that obviously delayed them. What were those costs? What would the costs be in the second half, and do they actually continue into FY 2025 as well?
Yeah. I don't think we've disclosed the absolute amount of the cost, but I think Phil can give you a shape, the shape of the cost.
Let me give you a shape, and let me give you, try and give you a bit of shape of the Watson-Marlow margin profile as well. So if we look at that Watson-Marlow profile over perhaps the last three halves, sequentially, we've had a couple of one-offs that we've called out. You'll recall, in the second half of last year, we took a large inventory provision, which artificially moved the margin lower. The extra costs we called out this half year for the Devens manufacturing facility, you should think of that they're the last set of one-off costs that we would expect. So going forward, we won't be calling out any bridging items on that facility. And then the third piece is, obviously, we've had some variable compensation changes in accruals and releases as we've trued that up against our internal targets.
But the underlying message, if you look at the H1 last year, H2 last year, and H1 this year, and you normalize for those three elements I've talked about, you would see sequential progress, half year on half year.
Be clear. The second question was just on Steam. Obviously, you've gone into detail in terms of China, but I just wonder if you could sort of give us a little bit more color on other regions, you know, particularly the U.S. Obviously, a lot of stuff there goes through distributors. What are you seeing in terms of distribution channel there? Are we seeing an element of destocking? Could that happen in H2? And also what we're seeing in terms of European Steam.
So, let me start with the second part of that question. So Europe has been a geography, a part of the world where we've seen, again, a challenging IP environment and in fact, a contraction. So you mentioned Germany, but also France and the U.K. have been challenging in Europe. And of course, as you can imagine, you put those three markets together, that's a very material proportion for us. We outperform IP. That's why I wanted to show you what our numbers look like, excluding the China IP numbers, which I'm gonna be honest, I don't believe the China IP numbers, which is why we took them out. So we outperform IP. We are continuing to outperform IP in Europe and in the U.S. But IP is a bit like gravity.
You can't escape it, so it's always going to have an impact on our business, and that's what we're seeing in Europe, and that's what we're seeing in the US. I'm extremely aware of the talk of, you know, further economic weakness in the U.S. in the second half of this year. That's why we have built in to our internal planning and our external guidance, a more conservative view on the level, the scale of the step up in IP in the second half. We believe that that protects our guidance. We should be able to deliver against that in the tougher IP environment that we expect through the balance of this year. However, there are no guarantees. Okay, a lot of this will depend on exactly what happens macroeconomically in the second half of the year.
The last question, and the last question, just, I suppose, quite similar to that. If we look at the business, obviously, there's probably two more order book-driven businesses, ETS and Watson-Marlow. If we look at that second half revenue, there's quite a, obviously, big step up for those. In terms of that revenue coverage by order book, can you just give us a feel for each of those businesses, please?
So I think you're right to pick out the difference between the three businesses. Watson-Marlow is more like STS. So there's quite a high proportion of book and ship in the month for the orders we get. So order coverage is not going to give us a huge amount of comfort over Watson-Marlow, because you need to see the orders growth, get the sales growth, and you'll get that in a you know, it's more aligned in timing than you might think. In ETS, it is different. The lead times on deliveries are much longer. We have pretty much close to record levels of orders in our ETS backlog. The challenge there is not demand, the challenge there is improving our manufacturing throughput and our output. So that sits within our hands.
So, I'm looking less at what's happening in terms of macroeconomics and demand. I'm looking more at our ability to ramp up that manufacturing through the second half, and that's where—that's what sits behind our forecast.
Very clear. Thank you.
Should we pass over to Lush and then we'll come to the phones, and then I'll come back in the room.
Hi. Hi, guys. It's Lush Mahendrarajah from JP Morgan. I've got a couple of questions as well. Just the first one's just on the midterm margin of 22%-23%. I guess, if we're assuming what similar sort of 30, low 30s, ETS sort of 20, that implies Steam is sort of low 20s, which is, I guess takes it back to sort of pre-COVID levels. I guess, just some of those points you made around sort of operational improvements and simplifying the structure of the group, I guess, you think margins could potentially be higher than pre-COVID levels? I appreciate there's more investment coming in. Just try to work out that sort of bridge, I guess, in terms of why perhaps the Steam margin might be higher midterm.
Yeah, how does the margin puzzle fit together? It's a fair question. So I think your analysis is broadly right across all those elements. I think that the first two points I'd make, one, the more recent margins in Steam are higher than I think we should expect them to be, and probably than they should be. As part of a group, when we had challenges in Watson-Marlow because of the drop-off in biopharm demand, when we had challenges in ETS, more of the burden in making sure that we continued to maintain our profitability was carried by Steam . That can happen for a short period of time. It cannot happen for a long period of time. That's one of the things that we are correcting.
There is more investment that is required, not just to sustain that business and its growth, but actually to deliver against the long-term opportunities that I talked about. So that's why I think the Steam margin comes back to closer to its pre-pandemic levels. The second thing, which is a sort of, I think, a bigger picture point across the group, is we need to make those investments. You know, we want to invest more in developing the technology for Target Zero. We want to invest more in digital. These are great investments to make. The returns on these investments are extraordinarily high when we execute well, because of the long-term compounding growth that they will drive in our business.
So, you know, one of the most important judgments I can probably make in this role is what is the right level of profitability for this group, so that we're not under-investing, and so that we're also not frivolous with the resources that belong to our shareholders. And that is exactly what I'm setting out here in this update, is that I believe that that margin target should be between 22% and 23%. That's how we get the balance right. And that is, you know, we should remind ourselves, an extremely attractive level of margin across the industry. Thank you.
Thanks. The second question is on Steam as well. Just the second half, I guess, the comps are easier in the second half, and I think part of that was sort of China was soft in the second half last year. I guess, you've obviously called out sort of the EV stuff, the pharma stuff, in terms of last year, those big orders. Were there much of them in the second half last year, think about when we think about the comp as well, or how that all ended by that point, so the comp's a bit cleaner?
I'll let Phil talk about the comps in Steam .
Yes, you'll recall, Lush, that the first half of last year, Steam grew at sort of 15%+ . So we have definitely got some math in the comps. And also, as we alluded to, I think both Nimesh and I mentioned, that the comp in terms of China last year on that, especially on that large project, bounced back post the COVID lockdowns, was particularly strong. So I think that we are expecting a stronger H2 for Steam in terms of. As you would expect, Nimesh has alluded to, we have what I would call provided an internal haircut on that IP forecast in our forecast. But if you look at the table in the RNS, you do see a material uptick H1 versus H2 in IP in our key markets.
You know, historically, our Steam business has had an H2 bias, if you looked at the sales splits, and we expect that bias to continue. I think that they're the key drivers.
Last one on Watson-Marlow and Biopharm in particular. I think from sort of some of the peer read across, that there seems to be a bit of a sort of a two-tier recovery. I think consumables seem to be recovering a bit quicker and sort of the equipment side a bit slower. I guess when you think about the pumps, the tubing, the clamps, how do you sort of categorize those between consumables and equipment? And are you seeing different trends among those categories?
I think it's a good question, Lush, about the trends in biopharm recovery. I think it's less about the products and more about the channels. So, we're seeing encouraging signs of improvement across our end users and across our distribution partners, across smaller OEMs. The biggest challenge where we're not seeing the improvement, and this was also somewhat expected, is in our sort of larger global key accounts. Levels of orders there and sales remain very, very low.
In a way, that makes sense, because during the pandemic, and then very swiftly after that, as a result of supply chain constraints, those larger players with the greatest clout in the market and the largest balance sheets were the ones who heavily bought product from us, from others, and built up their inventories in anticipation of the demand they were likely to see from their customers for increasing capacity for vaccine manufacture, and in order to protect themselves from those supply chain disruptions. There is where that stock is taking longer to unwind. Of course, the challenge is because we're so small, something I think we pride ourselves on as part of the overall supply base for these businesses, we are a little bit more of a rounding error to their overall numbers.
They don't really know how much of our product they've got in their stock, so they don't really know how to forecast when they're gonna come back and order from us. And as a result of that, we see actually quite a lot of volatility in what we get back from those customers. The other thing I'd say is that there are high degrees of variation. There are some winners, and there are some losers. The good news for us is because we are across the entire space, I mean, we have, h ow many customers do we have, end users? Four.
Over 4,000.
It's over 4,000 customers-
Biopharma customers.
End users in biopharm, and even in the OEMs, we'll be present in all of those OEMs. And so the consequence of that is, even though there are winners and losers, we'll be okay over the medium term because it'll all balance itself out. So, you know, that, that's what makes this so very difficult to forecast.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Lush. Can I just, before we come back to the room, I'll come back to you, Bruno, and then I'll come to the back. Can I just check? I think it's Sandra. Are there any questions on the, on the conference line?
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. That's star one one for questions on the telephone. There are no questions at this time.
Let's come to Bruno then. I think you were first.
Thank you for taking my questions. Just, just wanting a little bit more color on those biopharma trends that you called out as encouraging. Sequentially, have orders grown in Q2 relative to Q1, and have we seen that improvement over Q4 as well? Have it been a stable uptick, or has it been more volatile in terms of order trends recently? And the commentary in the release hinted at Book- to- Bill being below one in the first half. Also wondering how that compared to prior halves. So perhaps if you could disclose what the Book- to- Bill was, specifically for Watson-Marlow Biopharma, I think that would be useful.
Okay. So let me start with trend, and then I'll disappoint you on Book- to- Bill . But on trend, there is a large amount of volatility for the reasons I just described in response to Lush's question. And so it's difficult to read too much in from one month's or one quarter's numbers. What I will tell you is that we were seeing a steady improvement trend, which gave us actually quite a lot of confidence in May. And of course, at that point, we had four months of actuals, and we had a kind of sense of where May was going. Since then, we know where May is, and now obviously we've got a sense of where August is going. So we've got another three to four months of data, and that trend slowed, okay?
So that pace of recovery changed, hence the updated guidance. However, if you look i f you stand back and look at the picture for the first half, in fact, even for the year to date, what you do see is that it is improving. That's the encouraging signs. So if I measure that against second half of last year, first half of last year, second half of the year before, whereas it was very flat up to pretty much the beginning of this year, we're now starting to see that improvement for the first time. So that's what we're really calling out. So I think that's the good news.
In terms of the Book- to- Bill , this trend that we've called out very explicitly here in our release is exactly what we've been seeing pretty much every quarter, going right the way back to the second half of 2022. So what happened is that, one, we had a lot of demand, and we shipped a lot, but we were constrained in the amount we could ship, so we had a rapidly increasing backlog. I mean, I think it's fair to say more than twice the normal level that you would expect. And so over time, that needed to be pulled down. Now, when our customers cancel orders, we charge them, right? So there is a reticence to cancel orders, but what we will do is help them rephase the deliveries.
But when we rephase, we do it at the prevailing price, not at the price that they had when they put the order in, so we increase the prices as well. That's how we protect our margins. So that's worth bearing in mind. It gives you a sense of how disciplined we are in how we manage that exposure in Watson-Marlow. And so, what we saw was a lot of customers take, originally, of course, deliveries that they were, you know, absolutely desperate to get in 2022. That very quickly became, we don't need it till 2023, which very quickly became, we don't need it till 2024. We do expect that broadly, by the end of this year, we'll be back to a normalized level of orders. So that will have worked its way through the system.
What it does mean, as we've said in the release, is that orders is less - orders are less than sales, your point on Book- to- Bill . So in terms of forecasting, which is such a difficult thing to do in biopharm, the orders growth needs to be materially above the sales growth, okay, in order to achieve forecasts as we look through for the rest of 2024 and 2025. So it's just worth bearing in mind as you think about the business.
Also, just in terms of underlying demand, I think in prior releases, you've maintained, or Spirax has maintained, that underlying demand has been actually quite strong growing at a double-digit rate. I know there's a lot of moving pieces, and maybe assumptions may change. Do you still hold that belief, that underlying demand over the past five years has compounded at a double-digit rate within biopharma? And then, okay, so if that's the case, and then in Q4, we've come back to that normalized level, it suggests that we should revert very sharply back to trend because we've sorted out the inventory issues. So how far below are we 2019 levels by the end of this year, and do you expect that sharp reversion back to trend in 2025?
On the first part of your question, which is underlying growth, absolutely no change in our view. We talked about over 10% growth in the biopharm space, and we're really well positioned. We're in monoclonal antibodies, we're in recombinant proteins, we're in cell and gene based therapy, as well as being in vaccines. So we're in the attractive parts of that biopharm market, the parts that are growing because they represent the future of biotechnology. So absolutely confident in that underlying growth. The reason we're confident is not because we read it in a report. The reason we're confident is because we've got 4,000 customers that are end users, and we visit them, and they tell us that they're confident as well. And you can see the investment actually coming back into that biotech space.
So it's, you know, it's confidence founded on real engagement. I think, Bruno, the part of your question, which I would probably say is a key assumption that you're making, that I'm not sure I'd be as confident, wholly as confident as you are, which is, we'll be back to normal in Q4. We expect a recovery. We expect that recovery to continue. We expect that recovery to come later in the year than originally, but we've been really clear that it's so challenging to forecast the trajectory of that recovery, that it's not necessarily the case that you're all the way back, back to kind of, a normalized level of demand by Q4. Maybe it's Q4, maybe it's Q1. I don't know, exactly when that will come. And so that's, that's the difficult bit to estimate in this.
My point was.
But it will come.
Yeah. My point was more around, I think there are specific distortions that means that your revenue is far below, where underlying demand is the market, in the market today, perhaps 25% below. Once those distortions are cleared and, say, inventory levels are completely normalized in Q4 or close to, by 2025, that means your demand, your revenues should be right back up to underlying demand. If it's not, then perhaps we underestimated or overestimated rather, how sharply.
No, totally.
Underlying demand has grown.
I agree with you. I'm just saying I don't know what the timing for that is. I can't tell you if that's exactly in Q4 or if it's a little bit later, but in terms of the shape, you're drawing for what should happen, that's exactly right.
And just in terms of the margin, the 22%-23% midterm ambition, it seems like there's a lot of heavy lifting or investment in the early phases or in the early years, which I guess makes a lot of sense. So would you expect a steady kind of improvement year- over- year towards that 22% or 23%? Or, essentially, how should we be thinking about 2025 margins in this phase of more investment?
That's a great attempt to get me to give some 2025 guidance. I applaud you for it. I'm not gonna give 2025 guidance at this point in time, but I think what I will say is that we're not gonna get back to that margin target, so it's gonna take time. The second thing is that, it won't be perfectly linear. That's just not how businesses work. It will be, w e want to make progression in the margin, but some years it'll be a bit bigger, and some years it'll be a bit smaller. It will depend in part on what the investments are that we want to make and which are lumpy and which aren't. So I think there's a reason we said that 22%-23% is a medium-term target.
Lastly, on ETS, I think the wording in the release mentioned that the backlog remained very, very high. Did orders actually grow in the first half for ETS as well?
Orders are, orders are growing.
Orders are growing.
Yes.
And I guess, how are competitors reacting to some of the operational challenges that you've encountered at ETS? Do you think they're gaining share, or is it such that the solutions are so bespoke, it's quite hard for anybody to really gain share, as you guys struggle to ramp up or have struggled to ramp up on production or getting product to the market?
I think you're. It's a great question. The long lead times, principally, are a challenge for us. I had a conversation with a customer of ETS, who's waited over a year for their products to be delivered, and they said to me, as a CEO, very large company, and they said to me, "Why does it take so long? What is the challenge? Can we," They even said, "We'll pay. If we need more money to make investment, to bring more people in, to run more shifts, we'll pay. But what's it gonna cost, and why does it take so long? Just help us here." And I said, "Well, look, let me just, let me just share one thing with you. The product that you've ordered, it's been ordered from us only 3x in the last 12 years, okay?
And as far as we're aware, not one single, competitor of ours can manufacture that product, okay? So it is complex. That is what takes time. But we are focused on making those operational improvements, we will get it to you." And actually, we delivered it. Of course, it was later than was originally forecast, but we got it to them ahead of the schedule. It actually just shipped in the last few weeks. We got it to them ahead of the schedule that we had committed to them. So then I got a call saying: "That is fantastic. I want you to know that I really appreciated that, and you have our business going forward." So I think the point here is that, yes, it's a competitive disadvantage to have really long lead times, but only if your competitors can make the product, number one.
Some products they can, some they can't. Secondly, as we fix these problems, customers are actually they want to work with us. They understand that we have that expertise, that world-leading technology that we can deliver for them. They see that we're making a close to $60 million investment in expanding our facility in Ogden. They know we're in it for the long term. So, yeah, I believe that we have a strong business here, if we can deliver against that self-help, which we will. Thank you.
Thank you.
Do you wanna just pass it back there? Hi.
Mark Davies Jones at Stifel. Just a quick one. Interested in the timing of the management changes you've made. ETS seems to be delivering a little better, and the margins are trending up, so why change out the management there? And why bring in someone from Watson-Marlow, where presumably there's quite a lot to do in Watson-Marlow over the next six months, too?
Look, I think what I'd say is, as I think about my team, I'm immensely grateful to Armando for having brought the business to where he's brought it. In three years, we've bought two additional businesses. We have grown the business in terms of demand. We have undertaken a new investment for a facility in Ogden. So I'm really pleased that he's been able to achieve those things, and I thank him for it. But we are also thinking about how we grow the business from here. Where does it go from here? What do we need in order to deliver against those self-help programs? What do we need in order to integrate those four businesses and make sure that we get the most out of them?
And Andrew is somebody who, you know, you've seen the results that have been delivered in Watson-Marlow, taking the biopharm issue aside. I mean, that is a fantastic business that has done very well. He's got deep experience, not just in the U.S., but in Europe. He's run manufacturing as well as sales operations previously. I have very high confidence that Andrew will be able to deliver on that long-term promise that we have within ETS, including getting our margins to where we want to get them to. And, and so it's incumbent on me to make that decision and, and, and ask Andrew to take up that role, and I'm really pleased he has, he has, agreed to do that.
Running Watson-Marlow?
We've got a search underway to find Andrew's successor. It's also a good opportunity to bring some fresh perspective into the executive team as well, and we have interim leadership in place whilst we do that. And, you know, Andrew's left Watson-Marlow in a really good place. It's a really strong foundation. We've made investments in our manufacturing capacity. I think we're further ahead in Watson-Marlow in manufacturing excellence and operations than we are in other parts of the business. We've built out our global sales force. We have a very attractive suite of products. We just need, you know, we need to get after it, and we need biopharm demand to start coming back, and, you know, that remains a fantastic business.
So that is not an area of the portfolio where I lose sleep. Thank you. Thanks, Mark. Let's come to the back over there.
Thank you. It's Tore Fangmann from Bank of America. Thank you for taking my questions. I've got two. We started speaking about the capacity constraints in ETS being more of the growth, let's call it, hinderer than it's the demand. By when do you think these constraints can be lifted away so that we see the ETS part growing again?
So I think there's two constraints in ETS to further accelerate the growth. Remember it grew in the first half quite dramatically. Constraint number one is in the Industrial Equipment Heating part of the business. We need semicon demand to improve. The good news is our customers are confident of placing higher orders at the end of this year. I will caution by saying we have heard that before, so we'll know it's true when we see it. I think that will help sales next year, though, rather than this year. So that's part of it. So that's the demand piece. On the Industrial Process Heating side, it's about delivery of the operational improvements we've talked about. I think that will be into next year.
But you'll see continual progress, which will be reflected in our top line growth as we deliver that.
Okay. Thank you. And, secondly, without trying to get a 25 guidance from you, but maybe on the other two segments, where it's less about the capacity, but more about the demand. If we speak about, like, pre-orders, so basically, if we go for the current backlog that you have—not backlog, for the pipeline you have in these two segments, do you see a substantial pick-up there? We spoke, as you just said, about semis, but, like, about the other two segments, do we see a pick-up for demand there, which is not reflected in the orders right now?
So in Watson-Marlow, as we see the recovery from biopharm, we would expect to see a pick-up. In Process Industries within Watson-Marlow, very much depends on the level of IP growth next year. And to be honest, that's really difficult to call at this point in time. So it's, again, to this point I made earlier, which is we will outperform IP. That's what we aim to do, but we can't escape IP. We can't escape gravity. So the IP forecast for next year will be an important driver, of, of growth for Watson-Marlow. Even more so for Steam , because Steam is used in every industry in every part of the world, and it's used in industrial processes. It has even a closer relationship to IP than there is in Watson-Marlow.
So those will be some of the things that drive that growth profile in Steam in Watson-Marlow next year.
Thank you.
Thank you. Who's next? Yeah, come over here. I'll come back to the phones after this question, see if there are any more, if there are any questions on the phone.
Thanks. It's Andrew Sims from Berenberg. Just a quick question. You mentioned complexity of the business in your comments on strategy. Is there anything that doesn't belong in the group anymore, given what's happened over the course of the past few years in terms of acquisitions?
No. As you can see from the way I set out the trends, I think there is huge commonality across the group's businesses. Yes, we sell different products in each of the group businesses, but the drivers of growth, there is huge commonality. Remember, there's a very big pharmaceutical exposure in Steam, not just in Watson-Marlow. So that's point one, and I think point two is that the business model is absolutely the same across those three businesses, and I think we can get more value still from that business model in all three businesses. So yeah, short answer to the question is that. Thank you.
I suppose just quickly on ETS, is there any, I suppose, underlying macro weakness, which is being masked by the order book at the moment? I appreciate it has an order book, and is slightly different therefore to the Steam business, for example, but is there anything underlying in that business that we should be aware of, certainly heading to the back end of this year and into 2025?
Yeah, it's a good question, and I think the answer is yes, inevitably. Because customers' expenditure will be driven by their outlook for their own business and their financial health. And so when you see macroeconomic weakness, that's gotta have an impact on our customers, which has to have an impact on our demand. However, the one thing I would say is that which is perhaps a change from a decade ago, even in times of macroeconomic difficulty, where electrification in order to achieve lower emissions is a very important goal to our customers. And, you know, they're all moving at different paces in terms of how much they're focused on delivering against those goals. Where it is a very important goal, you'll still see that demand come through.
So we're still linked to macroeconomic strength or weakness, but, but there's this additional driver that slightly transcends that.
And then finally, while I've got the mic, just in terms of, I suppose, you know, thinking about ETS again, you know, going forward, do you see customers having challenges with their own projects? You obviously are, have been a bit of the bottleneck, but in terms of them getting electricity connections and thinking about power demand for their own businesses, in the medium term, is that gonna be a challenge, given the, I suppose, the competition for power?
Yeah, totally. I mean, there is significant investment that is required in grids all over the world in order to support the electrification. There's also significant investment that's required in greening of grids, because switching from natural gas to electricity only makes sense if you can get access to renewable electricity. Some of that our larger customers in particular will do for themselves. They'll invest in renewable power on their own site. But for the smaller customers who are reliant on the grid, they need that to green to get their Scope 2 emissions down to zero.
So we've talked in the past about rates of adoption, and customer rates of adoption of some of these technologies will depend on their ability to finance it, the level of commitment they have to delivering against their emissions targets versus other priorities they have. It'll depend on their access to electricity and the cost of accessing electricity, and it'll depend on whether that's the right path, because they've got access to renewable power. And that's why this isn't something that happens overnight. This whole decarbonization, electrification trend, I mean, will last one, two, three decades. But over that entire period, it will continue to be an additional driver of our growth.
Right. Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks, Andrew. Let's just check on the phones. Any questions on the phones, Sandra?
Thank you. We have two questions. First one from the line of Mark Henderson, shareholder. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. Earlier in the year, you made a modest investment in the Norwegian company of Kyoto, which is now the subject of a bid. Do you envisage working with the new management or just taking a profit and walking away?
Oh, thank you, Mark. That's a really good question. Yes, there is a bid, and as you might know, we're represented on the board, so we've been engaged with that process since the beginning. The real value for us in Kyoto is the partnership that we have in their Heatc ube design, development, and ultimate manufacturing and sale. Because through Vulcanic, we provide a very critical part of that technology through the heating elements. And so we've taken the opportunity, actually, to cement our commercial relationship with them. We are perfectly comfortable to maintain what was, as you probably recall, a very small economic stake in the overall company, but we've been talking to the potential new owners about continuing that partnership, and they're very keen to do it, and we're very keen to do it.
And actually, I would go so far to say is our technology is really important to their product. So it remains a really good investment for us. It's not one that was driven by financial returns on the initial investment we made, which is very small, single-digit millions of GBP. It's more about the ongoing relationship and the future demands that it can generate for us. Thank you, Mark.
Thank you.
I think. Are there any other questions in the room? One more. I think this will, then this will be the last question we take, and then I think we'll wrap up then.
Josh Miller from Morgan Stanley. Just a quick one on the China weakness. You mentioned sort of lower battery demand from tariffs. Is there anything more broad-based than that, or is it very sort of concentrated there?
Wanna take that?
Yeah, I think on the tariffs one was one that stuck out quite materially, hence we mentioned it. Partly because clearly the buildup, that's been quite a fast growth sector, and also the drop off as a result of the tariffs. That was quite an extreme buildup and drop off. We mentioned it. But I think from a wider China perspective.
If we're seeing, as other businesses have called out, this, what I'm gonna call it, perhaps a macroeconomic pivot, where the Chinese economy, in terms of investing for expansionary growth for export, is starting to become a bit more internally focused, perhaps in line with that, that globalization and the tariff piece we talked about. So I think we are seeing a wider trend of lower expansionary CapEx, and our team, as a result in China, are pivoting to focus on that process optimization side. We have every confidence that the team will successfully do that.
So I think, exactly as Phil described, I think it is about EVs, which is particularly emphasized because of the rapid buildup and then the falloff. But actually, it's more generally about this trend of sales in China were quite often towards capacity expansion of manufacturing capacity, because China was exporting all over the world. That is changing, so the team are now focusing more on process optimization and MRO. That's the underlying trend in China, and that's how we're adapting our business to address that trend.
Thank you, and then, maybe another, just, a quick one on sort of the Target Zero segment. All those solutions, obviously, there's a lot of focus, a lot of innovation behind those. When should we start to expect that to see, to sort of hit the top line, right and start to benefit those, divisions?
It is unlikely to materially hit the top line at a group level, for a couple of years, because we are still in development of that technology. We are still learning from the pilots. We are still adapting technology. You've also got the challenge that we talked about earlier, around adoption, by customers and when customers are ready, to start to think about how they invest behind their net zero roadmaps. So, I think it will take some time to come through, so it's not something I would expect to have a material impact, this year, next year, certainly.
And maybe last one on the sort of IP haircut. How conservative, I mean, maybe you could give us some more color on how much of a haircut that is, how conservative you are actually being relative to those IP forecasts?
So it's a fair question. It's a very difficult one to answer because that's not how we forecast. We don't start with an IP number and an output number. What we do, particularly intra-year, is every single operating company we have, you remember I said we've got over 140 of them, will develop their own bottom-up forecast, looking at what they've seen in the first half, the local economic situation, what their customers are telling them, et cetera, et cetera. There's a very strong correlation between how they forecast and what we see in IP, and that, you know, for us, as management, that's how we benchmark whether we're getting a sensible set of forecasts or not, or too optimistic, too pessimistic.
So it's not a case of there is one IP number that you can sort of look at and say, "That's, that's right." But what we, what we have done through the conversations with the businesses, and those businesses' conversations with their regions, and those regions' conversations with their countries, is to say that we don't, don't focus too heavily on what these IP numbers are in the second half. We are not sure that those are going to be realized. Listen more to what your customers are telling you. Listen more to what you're hearing from your sales force on the ground, and be appropriately balanced. And of course, in some cases, we bring the forecasts up, in some case we, we push them down. That's just, t hat's the human nature of forecasting, and it's our role to get the calibration right.
So there isn't a single number I could give you, other than to say it's not the full scale. It is an improvement in second half IP. It's not the full scale of the improvement.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you all, for joining us today. I appreciate it, and I know we've kept you a little bit longer than usual. Thank you, and have a lovely summer holiday. Thank you.