Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Victrex third quarter interim management statement. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session through the phone lines, and instructions will follow at that time. I would like to remind all participants this call is being recorded. I will now hand over to the CEO of Victrex, Jakob Sigurdsson, to open the presentation. Please go ahead.
Thank you. So, good morning, everyone, and welcome to Victrex's third quarter interim management statement call. This covers the period from the first of April through the 30th of June 2024. Joined on the call by Ian Melling, our CFO, and Andrew Hanson, our Director of IR. I will start with a summary of the key messages and the key outcomes, and Ian will then cover the financial detail, and towards the end, we'll open up the call towards questions and answers. So turning to the headlines, I'm pleased to say that despite the missed sentiment within chemicals and some end markets right now, we delivered growth in both volume and revenue during the third quarter versus the third quarter of 2023, with 20% volume growth over this comparable periods.
This marks the first period since the fourth quarter of 2022, when we've seen quarterly volume and revenue growth compared to the prior year period. What this shows is that we're seeing continuing momentum from the early signs of recovery we saw in the second quarter, although the picture remains a bit mixed by end sector. On a sequential basis, compared to the second quarter of 2024, volumes are flat. The puts and takes for Q3 versus Q2 mainly relate to growth in VAR and electronics, quarter on quarter, being offset by automotive, where the restocking benefit we saw in the first half did not continue into the third quarter. But we're still expecting to see growth on a full year basis in auto, but not the double-digit levels seen in the first half.
You know, for the first nine months in auto, we're up mid to high-single digits, and we're expecting to finish the year in auto around the mid-single digits or so. Medical remains a headwind for us, with the industry destocking and inventory unwinds amongst major medical device customers continuing to be a headwind. This means medical is tracking lower than our expectations for the second half so far, even if we see some more encouraging signs on the sustainable solution side. I should point out, though, that we are not losing markets here in medical to our other PEEK players. Our business is much more diversified than it was a few years ago, and the underlying number of procedures in the various applications are growing.
So what you're looking at here is purely an effect of destocking that is prevalent with a number of medical device companies right now. It's worth reminding everyone about the context of Q3, both this year and last year, and how these periods have flipped in terms of the sales mix. Q3 last year was the lowest quarter for value-added resellers, you know, since the COVID period. On the flip side, medical was very strong in Q3 last year, with medical revenue and contribution being north of 20% for the group in its entirety. That picture has reversed this year, with Q3 this year seeing medical revenue below 20% of the overall group revenues, and VAR much stronger year-over-year, and also compared to Q2.
Ian will explain in a bit more detail and give more context to this, and how it relates to the average selling price. I'll go back to these points in our outlook once Ian has given us the financial details. The outlook is largely unchanged, except for the continuing headwinds in medical. For now, I'll hand it over to Ian, who will cover the financial details.
Thank you, Jakob, and good morning, everyone. As Jakob noted, it was pleasing to see year-on-year volume and revenue growth in what we all know has been a tough period for Victrex and the wider chemicals. Covering the financial detail, Q3 group volume was up 20% to 979 tons, versus Q3 last year of 818 tons. Q3 group revenue was up 2% at GBP 74 million, compared to Q3 2023 of GBP 72.2 million. The delta between volume and revenue growth is reflective of medical remaining soft, but also the sales mix that has been more influenced by the proportion of business from value-added resellers. On pricing, Q3 average selling prices were GBP 76 per kilogram.
The change year-on-year is primarily driven by sales mix and the year-on-year movements in medical and VARs, as Jacob has noted. Remember, medical had a strong performance last year, including a record full year, and VAR in Q3 last year was its lowest quarter since 2020. Currency is a small adverse impact on ASP, and it's worth noting that underlying pricing remains robust across end markets. If we look sequentially at volume and revenue, Q3 group volume of 979 tons was flat compared to Q2 2024. This reflects that auto was down on a sequential basis as some of the restock effect for auto in the first half starts to unwind. We did, however, see some sequential progress in VAR and electronics....
Q3 group revenue was down 5% compared to Q2 2024, and this reflects a similar theme, i.e., sales mix, as medical remains softer and the proportion of B2B business from the likes of VAR increased. Quick word on end markets in Q3. Aerospace continues to show a solid performance on a year-to-date basis. Also, I have already covered the sequential impact, but we saw a solid year-on-year performance here, too, which was the same with electronics. Energy and industrial saw single-digit growth on a year-on-year basis, although industrial has been soft, offset by some good growth in energy. Medical, as Jakob noted, this has been and remains a challenge for us. Remember, medical's high margins have a notable drop through in the P&L.
We've seen several peers and those who supply the medical device industry commenting on the destocking effect in this industry, and performance is tracking lower than our expectations so far in the second half, with no improvement on the first half at this stage. We are well placed for when this destocking cycle ends, though, and remain focused on delivering the broader range of opportunities across medical in the years ahead. Finally, year-to-date group revenue of GBP 213.3 million is 9% lower than the prior year, reflecting the softer first half and lower medical revenues. Year-to-date, group volume is down 2% to 2,716 tons, but with favorable comparative to come in our fourth quarter, we continue to see the opportunity of low to mid single digit volume growth for the year as a whole.
I'd like to finish with a word on cash and then currency. Victrex continues to have a robust balance sheet, with cash generation set to improve, driven by trading conditions, lower capital expenditure, and progress on inventory unwind. Remember that we have continued to invest through some of the toughest times seen in the chemical industry, and that investment cycle is now coming to an end. That gives us well-invested assets to underpin our future growth. Net debt on the 30th of June 2024 was GBP 39.6 million, including cash of GBP 22.7 million. This means net debt was some GBP 10 million lower than at the end of Q3, than the end of the first half, and this was after payment of our interim dividend on the 28th of June.
This means free cash flow improved in Q3 to over GBP 20 million in the quarter. We're focused on continually improving our cash flow position, which can support returns to shareholders over the coming periods. Our forward guidance on full year capital expenditure and inventory is unchanged. We anticipate capital expenditure will be lower in the second half compared to the first, meaning full year capital expenditure of around GBP 35 million. Inventory is tracking to reduce in line with our guidance. One other final point worth flagging quickly is on currency. As we note in our outlook statement, currency has become slightly adverse for us in the second half as sterling has strengthened, primarily against some unhedged currencies, including the Japanese yen. Thank you, and I'll now hand back to Jakob.
Thank you, Ian. So moving towards the outlook and the guidance, we are seeing continuing momentum in some end markets. Ian flagged that, value-added resellers was an area we are seeing an improvement in, and, this is usually a very good barometer for recovery. Even if the, the shape of the recovery, you know, this time around, compared to previous recessions, is a little bit different in shape. VAR and electronics are end markets we do feel more encouraged by as we look towards, the rest of the year, but, we will need to see continuing signs of, of, improvement first. Aerospace, we remain encouraged by the, the evolution there, and we seem to be on a good track record to get to pre-COVID levels as it relates to our sales into this sector.
In automotive, we've covered that we're on track for growth on a full year basis. You know, as I said before, we are, you know, growing mid to high-single digits for the first nine months, and we would expect to end the year, you know, in the mid-single digits as it relates to growth. Energy and industrial, we indicated in our announcement that industrial is seeing a slower recovery, and this is probably the sector that is most sensitive to the high cost of capital these days. But we are seeing better signs of recovery on the energy side, and that's sort of starting to show improvement month by month.
Overall, we do remain focused on our goal of delivering a better second half here, but medical performance is tracking lower than our expectations for the second half year at this stage, and run rates have not improved on those in the first half. On volumes, our guidance is unchanged, and we continue to expect low to mid-single-digit volume growth for the full year. But headroom remains, they do remain, as I said, destocking in medical primarily, and also remember that we have signaled previously about low asset utilization and the recovery of fixed costs in our P&L, and there's no change to that specific guidance here. In summary, we still have the opportunity of a slightly better PBT performance in the second half of 2024 versus the second half of 2023.
But unless medical run rates improve for the remainder of the year, it'll be challenging to deliver this now. A brief word on FY 2025 at this early stage. Overall, some of the recent signs in several end markets make growth prospects much more encouraging as we move towards FY 2025. We are focused on good profit growth in FY 2025, but clearly we will guide on that in greater detail in December at our FY 2024 full year earnings call. For the medium to long term, there's strong confidence in our medium to long-term prospects. We have a diversified core business, increasing commercialization in our mega programs, well-invested assets, and we're coming off a big CapEx cycle in the past two years to more normalized levels, as indicated in Ian's comments.
We've got enhanced capability in our global team and the opportunity for substantial cash flow improvement as we unwind inventories, on top of the reduction in capital expenditures. We continue to invest through some of the toughest time in the chemical industry, and with a recovery in the core business and some increasing milestone delivery and commercialization in the mega programs, the opportunity for improvement is clear over the coming years. That essentially concludes the formal session today, and we'll now hand it over to Q&A.
Thank you, Jakob, and if you are dialed into the call and would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your phone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you are listening to the call on your device loudspeaker and are called upon to ask a question, please pick up your handset and ensure your device is unmuted. Again, that is star one to ask your question, and your first question comes from the line of Riya Kotecha from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. This is Riya Kotecha from Bank of America. I've got two questions, please. My first one is on your internal expectations for profit growth. So at the first half result in mid-May, if I read the release, it was mentioned that the PBT for the second half could be slightly better year-on-year if the run rates continued and medical improved. Today, mid-July, you mentioned that it will be challenging to grow second half PBT at the run rates. So what has the third quarter PBT done on a year-on-year basis? And is it fair to say that your internal expectation for profit growth is worse compared to May? And that leads to my second question, which is on the budgeting and the forecasting process.
Can you speak about the level of visibility that you have with the medical customers, which strikes like it would be longer than a month and a half, given you directly supply to the medical OEMs? So has the level of destocking worsened sequentially into the third quarter in medical, or were you maybe just overoptimistic in May with the second half profit outlook?
Thank you, Riya. I'll make a start maybe on the profit, and then Jakob can add thoughts on our visibility with the medical customers, which is limited, as it is across all our business. You know, we have relatively short lead times for our products. But I will let Jakob comment on that after I speak a little bit about the profit. In terms of our expectations for profit, I think we were pretty clear that we could see a growth H2 on H2 if medical improved. The thing that's different from the end of this first half is that medical hasn't picked up.
We had reasons to think we might see a pickup in medical, given the strength of the end markets, but that destocking has persisted. And we don't see, you know, sitting here now, we don't see the order book that we would need to see going into Q4 to support that, hence the change in position. I think consistency is there. What's changed is the recovery on medical and it not coming through as early as we thought at the time. Jakob, do you wanna comment?
Yeah, I think on the lead time side, you know, we offer a relatively high service level here, and so the lead times are pretty short, and therefore, the visibility towards orders is actually not that long. I think the general sentiment in the industry is that this has been a very sharp inventory correction. I think what's unusual this time around is that whilst, you know, inventory corrections and adjustments and working capital adjustments, you know, have taken place in the medical device industry, you know, many times in the past, it's been highly unusual to see it so universally happening across the industry, and that clearly magnifies the impact on anyone that is serving them.
You know, the sentiment at the OMTEC, you know, just early in June with the larger CDMOs, you know, whether it's Tecomet or Paragon, Miles, Spitz, Arts, and others, it was fairly subdued, and I think they've seen a significant reduction in their revenues. And also be mindful of the fact that we don't, in most of these cases, supply directly to medical device companies. We do supply to what could be considered Tier 1s, sort of, mainly. So I think the consensus there is we've seen from an anticipated revenue recovery, sorry, you know, anywhere in the timeframe from the beginning of the fourth calendar quarter into the first calendar quarter of 2025. And that should then lead to upstream demand, you know, a little bit ahead of that.
But that's, you know, as good as it gets in terms of visibility, in the industry. But it will also be quite interesting to see, you know, what level of working capital is going to be portrayed in the accounts of some of the large medical device companies as they come out with their half-year results, towards the end of July. So I think that hopefully gives you enough color on the situation as it is right now, Riya.
Yeah, that's helpful. I've got one more question based on that and some of your comments that PEEK hasn't lost market share in medical. What gives you the confidence and clarity that customers who are arguably under a lot more pressure because of the higher rates environment in the U.S., for example, aren't trading down to cheaper materials? Because if I look at the medical division volumes for Victrex, the average level has been about 190 tons, compared to your peak volumes in 2022, that was 6% ahead of the average. And then if I look at VAR, where we clearly saw the huge restock and the destock, your average volumes were 1.6, compared to peak volumes that were 30% ahead of this.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is, from looking at your numbers in a spreadsheet, the peak medical volumes don't seem like they went through that level of restock, of destock and restock as VAR did. So what gives you, yeah, the confidence that it's not just a destock, and maybe a market share story or consumers trading down to cheaper materials, if that makes sense?
Yeah. So there's a couple of points here. The first one, you know, relates specifically to the volume question. And our medical business is split into implantable and non-implantable. And non-implantable is much larger in volume, but lower in value than the implantable piece. So that skews the volume picture to the effect that you've identified. And then the second part of your question was related to what gives us the confidence in the fact that we're not losing market share. And there, you know, it's clearly the conversations with our customers. You know, all of them are ordering, but they're ordering at a much reduced rate to what they were doing last year, as an example. And they're ascribing it to the well, sort of detailed inventory reductions with the medical device companies.
I do also, and I would like to refer to the sentiment in the industry as well, and the fact that actually a number of our peers have also commented on medical destocking being a source of reduction in their medical volumes in recent times as well. But I do think this is a well-documented phenomenon, number one. We see it in the accounts of the medical device companies through our conversations with customers. We know that we're not losing share, that they are simply receiving orders at a much reduced rate to what they were experiencing last year. And I think that's a pretty and a rather solid underpinning for us to state that we're not losing markets here to other PEEK players.
It wouldn't be a straightforward process to shift to a lower cost material in medical. You know, there are significant regulatory hurdles to changing materials in any medical device, and that's a multi-year process and not something you can do, you know, quickly in response to, in response to, you know, a margin issue, for example. So PEEK would be a very small portion of any of these big medical device companies' cost, and would offer them a pretty limited opportunity, I would suggest, relative to the challenge of changing materials for any given device. Whether that be changing from one PEEK supplier to another, or even harder, changing from PEEK to an entirely different material.
Okay. That's really helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Riya.
Your next question comes from the line of Alex Stewart from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Morning. Thanks for taking my question. You're running at a, an annualized volume of 3,900-4,000 tons or so. A lot of your strategy and your medium-term expectations are predicated on a recovery in those volumes and, and improved mix away from VAR towards some of the other industrial businesses, and of course, improvement in medical, including the rundown of inventory. But what's your contingency plan if we don't see a recovery in volumes, if we get sub-1,000 ton quarters now for two years or so? What can you do on cost? What can you do on cash flow, to hedge yourself or to mitigate the impact of that? Because it's actually looking like an increasingly plausible scenario, that the industry doesn't, doesn't recover in the way that it was expected.
Very interested to hear what your internal plans are for that. Thanks.
Yeah, thanks for the question, Alex. It's a pretty pessimistic picture you paint, but happy to have a go at talking about it. I think on cash flow, you know, our cash flow is robust. You know, we've just seen a GBP 20 million cash flow quarter, so cash flow is robust. And how is it robust? Well, we're bringing CapEx down, as we've said, versus history, versus the last couple of years, and that's starting to take effect now. We're also, you know, reducing our inventory levels with a target of getting down to GBP 100 million, by the end of next year, FY 2025, and we're on track to do that. So inventory reduction is there.
We are hamstrung a little bit this year by asset utilization as we bring that inventory down. That situation should improve a bit next year, and even at lower volumes, should be an improvement in the following years as well, as we get to a more steady state on manufacturing. There are choices we can make around the plants, but at the moment, having the capacity we have is important for our customers. It's important for the customers you know that we have you know tied up in the mega programs in terms of security of supply and being able to provide the volumes that they will require in the future. So that capacity is important to us, but we do have you know there are always choices we can make.
We have a factory coming on stream in China now, which will start to improve as that business grows, and we hope to get the first, you know, commercial sales out of that plant and get it up and running fully by the end of this year, such that, you know, that is starting to contribute more significantly next year and become less of a headwind from a profit point of view. So with inventory coming down, CapEx coming down, you know, bear in mind, we've still been a cash generative company through all of this. I'm pretty confident that cash flows can bounce back, and, you know, we've got the flexibility to do what we need to do to respond to increasing demand.
But if we need to, we can take, we can take further actions in response to reduced demand as well. And I think.
Thank you for that. So, I suppose that's a great answer on cash flow, but your P&L is optimized for, well, was optimized for production rate of about 4.2. That's probably moved higher with the fixed cost loading from China. So I'm actually talking more about the asset utilization penalty, which you're paying now, and you paid during the pandemic, where you've got demand rates below optimized production rates. Is there something you can do to your fixed cost base, in other words, on the P&L side, if you find that we're.
Yeah.
G oing into a long period of low volumes?
It's a really good question, Alex, and clearly, you know, we think through these in our regular strategic planning reviews. So if there is an armageddon scenario, which, by the way, we're not anticipating, based on where things are heading, I think we've seen sort of certain sectors that have been quite perturbed, if you wish, from the equilibrium by the various reasons, you know, whether it's the atrocities in Ukraine or COVID in recent times, inventory correction in medical and things like that. I think most of these markets are stabilizing, and the underlying macroeconomic drivers that are sort of a tailwind in everything we do are still there.
Now, if there were to be an armageddon scenario, then there is an optionality for looking at our different manufacturing trains in a modular fashion, whether that be on the polymer side, where we effectively got four trains that could be considered independent of one another, or whether it's on the monomer side, where we've got three trains, if you wish, that could be considered somewhat independent of another. Plus that, you know, we have built a bit more flexibility, you know, into our supporting infrastructure, particularly in the aftermath of COVID, to be better able to deal with the swings that one could see in the external environment.
But also being mindful of the fact that given the role that we play with many of our customers, quite often being the single source, you know, having assurance of security of supply is a big part of our value proposition. So we always have to balance the approach to situations like that and make sure that we don't take capacity out, you know, at a too early stage, and in any way jeopardize our ability to be the reliable supplier that we've earned the reputation of being. But in armageddon scenarios, I think the modularity of both our monomer presence and our polymer presence, associated with the flexibility in the infrastructure, gives us opportunities to adjust, if you wish, the fixed cost base of the business, you know, were we in the need of doing that.
That's interesting. Thank you.
Thanks, Alex.
Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Fogarty from Deutsche Numis. Please go ahead.
Hi, morning all, and, thanks for taking my questions. If I could, have two, please. One, just in terms of the inventory unwind, I just obviously saw a good performance during the quarter. I just wondered sort of how exposed that inventory unwind is for the remainder of the year, how much of that is dependent on a medical recovery here, i.e., you know, could that be kind of slower than you anticipate, as those medical volumes sort of, if they don't come through in Q4? And just secondly, I just wondered if you could help us on, on exit rates in terms of volumes, for the quarter, particularly on medical, that'd be useful.
If there was any further visibility on those exit rates, that'd be great.
Yeah. Maybe I'll take the first, the first part of that, Kevin. Thank you for, for the question. So in terms of inventory unwind, we're making good progress on that. As you saw, overall volumes were, were pretty robust in the quarter, driven by VARs. Our inventory is much more related to volumes than it is to, you know, medical specifically. Medical tends to be relatively low volume, so you know, an important but a smaller part of our inventory. So I would say our inventory unwind for this year is broadly on track, irrespective of, of the medical outcome.
I think as it relates to the exit rate... Sorry, did that answer the first question, Kevin, before-
Yeah, yeah, that was good. That's helpful. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of as expected, but that's useful. Thanks.
Right. So, more or less, you know, we're expecting a similar run rate, you know, as we head into the fourth quarter, as we saw in the third quarter.
There will be slight sort of puts and takes on that. I think, you know, we signaled that auto will be a bit weaker in the fourth quarter than it has been nine months to date. But still ending up mid single digits, you know, for the year. I think, you know, we'll be seeing stronger contributions from electronics than we've seen in the first nine months. We'll see stronger contributions from E&I, and particularly from the energy side of E&I. We're expecting VARs to be showing continued strength in the fourth quarter as well, even if they will not be quite as strong as they were in the third quarter.
Overall, you know, from a volume perspective, you know, we're targeting just around 1,000 tons again in the fourth quarter, as it relates to volumes.
Great. And any kind of thoughts on where medical's sort of exit rates are at the moment, just going into the quarter?
I think, Kevin, as we look at medical, I think what we said right now is based on what we currently see, we don't see an improvement over the trend in the first half. So that's, you know, that's where we are on medical at the moment.
Great. Okay, that's helpful. Thanks a lot. Thank you.
Thank you, Kevin.
Before we move on to the next questions, just a quick reminder, if you would like to join the queue, please press star one on your phone keypad now. Your next question comes from the line of Chetan Udeshi from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, thanks. Morning. Maybe I'll start with the first question on pricing. Is there a way you can reassure us that the underlying pricing is actually resilient? Because, you know, when we look at the reported pricing, that's down 14% year-on-year, it's down 5% sequentially. I mean, how do we get that reassurance that the underlying pricing is actually not deteriorating within that number? Is there something you can add to give us that confidence? The second question, Jakob, you mentioned you expect the same sort of volumes in Q4 like in Q3. But, you know, if I look at your history, I mean, typically your volumes are down 5%-10% versus Q3 in a normal seasonality point of view.
So, what is driving that optimism that, you know, we don't see that this time? Is that the order book you have at the moment? Or is that just an expectation that that recovery that you saw maybe in the last two quarters sort of continues, or is that actually something that you see in your books for the current quarter? And the last question, I mean, given Ian, you talked about, you know, the medical not improving yet, what should this, o r what is the PBT we should have in mind if that doesn't improve at all in the current quarter? Thank you.
So I can start with the second question, first, Chetan. I think, yeah, historically, in going back many years, you, you are right, that Q4 is usually stronger than Q3. Should point out, though, that Q4 last year as an example, was 3% up in volumes versus, versus Q3. So it's, it's not a, not a, a law of nature that, the fourth quarter is, is, lower than, than the third quarter. I think what is, fueling this outlook or underpinning this outlook, though, to be specific on this situation, is the fact that we are seeing signs of, recovery in electronics, and we expect it to be second half weighted, and, and these are starting to come through, point number one.
Point number two is that we would be expecting increased run rates as well in E&I, particularly on the energy side. And I think, you know, we're seeing, you know, the correlation between a recovery in VARs, as we've seen in the first nine months, if you wish, translating into what has historically been correlated with a recovery in E&I, and that's starting to show up in the run rates. And in fact, you know, there is also a correlation between recovery and VARs and then a recovery in electronics, particularly in the semiconductor aspects of electronics. So I think these would be the key sort of underpinning factors in our outlook and guidance for the fourth quarter.
And on questions one and three, I think those were sort of specifically for me, and I'll chime Ian in here on those.
Yeah. Thank you, Jakob. So on pricing, Chetan, let me try and give you a little bit more color, and see if that helps. So it is a, if you're looking at the year-over-year impact, Q3 over Q3, and I would encourage people not to read too much into quarter-on-quarter pricing in our business. Most of our customers have annual pricing contracts, so it's not like we're changing price with individual customers on a month-to-month basis. And what you really see quarter- to- quarter is impacts of shifts in the mix. It is a bit of a perfect storm in terms of year-over-year Q3, with last year a strong medical Q3 and the weakest quarter in VARs since 2020 and COVID.
Whereas this year we had a pretty strong quarter in VARs and a pretty weak quarter in medical, to be honest. So, it is a bit of a perfect storm in terms of the year-over-year effect. Just to give you a bit of an idea of the quantum, in terms of the, you know, roughly GBP 12 shift in ASP year- over- year in Q3, I'm putting three quarters of that down to mix. So, GBP 9 of the GBP 12 down to mix between the SBUs, so that's the lower medical and higher VARs, but also higher VARs and lower other industrial SBUs as a proportion of the total. And of the remainder, FX is a bigger impact than like-for-like price.
So FX is adverse year-over-year, probably of the order of GBP 2 on the ASP, with the remainder due to the net movements in price. And there are some ups and some downs in there, but overall, like-for-like price is robust year-over-year. And I would point out that even, even despite the pretty horrible mix this quarter, we are well ahead of our average ASP for FY 2023, FY 2022. So, so that I think, you know, the price that we took, you know, primarily last year is, is to a large extent, sticking. In, in terms of profits, Chetan, it won't surprise you to hear me say that we're not gonna give a specific profit forecast.
We did say that getting to a better H2 on H2 would require a medical recovery in the second half, and we've said that we don't see that recovery coming at the moment, so you can, you can read into that. What I would say is, the second half definitely looks stronger than the first half. So you know where our first half PBT was as well. So I think, you know, it's, it's, it's between those, those two numbers.
That's clear. Thank you.
Thank you, Chetan.
Your next question comes from the line of Aron Ceccarelli from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hello. Hi, good morning. My first question is on volumes. I would like to understand a little bit the cadence of the different months, if possible, and to understand how June was, in particular, compared to May. My second question would be on medicals. Besides the destocking, I understand that titanium is making a little bit of a comeback as a cheaper alternative, but I would like to know your view here and, you know, in terms of market share trends and try to understand, besides titanium and PEEK, what other materials you see in the market at the moment. My final questions would be on China. I would like to understand how much of your China capacity would be directed to medical.
When we look at 2025, in terms of exceptional items, is there anything that we should be aware at the moment? Thank you.
So, if I start with the first one, sort of on June versus May. June volumes were slightly below May volumes. You know, a few percentage points, really. So there was a slight softness in June versus May. So not a big difference. July is starting reasonably well. But I think, you know, the July is usually a month that we don't read much into. You know, it can be good, it can be bad. It depends a little bit on what our largest customers are doing in terms of summer shutdowns and the like. And if they go for extended summer shutdowns, then clearly that can have an impact, and that impact can fall either in July or August.
So we don't read much into the demand in the early stages of July, but it is looking like a comfortable order book for the moment, I should say. Titanium versus PEEK, I'll probably leave that to Ian, sort of broadly to address. You asked also about the share of the asset utilization or the capacity of the Chinese plant that's directed towards medical, and the answer to that is simple. We're not gonna be making medical-grade products in the Chinese plant. The Chinese plant is sort of destined to three main markets, the base load targeted towards value-added resellers. Then we are seeing a significant amount of opportunities associated with our partners in e-mobility and wire coatings. And the third sort of target market is electronics.
So these are the sectors that sort of form the underpinnings of the business case for the Chinese plant. Ian, if you wanna add color on PEEK and titanium.
Yeah, yeah. I'll try. Thank you, Aron. So in terms of titanium replacing PEEK, I think, you know, historically, we have seen over the last several years, some resurgence of titanium and spinal indications. I'm not sure it's as much a cost driver, as you said, as newer technologies in titanium with porous and expandable cages in particular becoming more popular, particularly in the U.S. We have seen that trend in our spine business over the last several years. If anything, that trend was , you know, has been starting to plateau a little bit. In terms of.
We have such broad indications now for PEEK across other uses in medical, that it's hard to say it's one thing or another. I mean, I don't think there's any push towards titanium in some of the applications such as, you know, such as some of the applications we have in cardio. I don't think metals would ever be a suitable replacement for PEEK in some of those indications. So the breadth of our portfolio now means we are more diversified and more protected in a way, against any one given competitor material, if you like. I think we're also pretty confident in the travel of direction in a lot of other areas, where you're going from metals towards PEEK.
Whether that's titanium, whether that's stainless steel, potentially in some of the trauma applications, and as we move forward and look towards knees in the future, then that'll be cobalt chrome. Yeah, I think the direction of travel in most of those areas is still broadly away from metal, not towards it. So I think, you know, I don't see a big push in terms of PEEK replacement and not really for cost at all. I think your other question, Aron, was exceptional items in FY 2025. So, you know, we'll say more on this in December, but what I would say looking forward at this early stage is, you know, we plan to go live with our new ERP system in the early part of the next financial year.
So there could be a small tail of that in the first part of next year, but significantly less than this year. And beyond that, nothing else at this point.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Aron.
There are no further questions on the conference line. I will now hand back over to management for closing remarks.
Thank you, all for joining the call today. We now look forward to seeing you at the full year results in December. Take care and enjoy the Euros.