Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Vesuvius Spring Training Update. 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 that this call is being recorded. I will now hand over to the CEO of Vesuvius, Patrick André, to open the presentation. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Patrick André. I am the Chief Executive Officer of Vesuvius, and with me this morning is Mark Collis, our Chief Financial Officer. We will update you about our trading performance in Q1 this year. The key message is that we have performed well with both revenue and trading profit in line with our expectations. This was in the context of challenging end markets. On the steel side, global steel production remained at a fairly low level, declining by 0.8% as compared with last year in the world, excluding China, Iran, Russia, and Ukraine. In foundry and markets, even more difficult markets, as you know, because foundry and markets, we assess that they were down on our own 8% as compared with last year.
This being said, as compared with Q1 last year, but remaining more or less flat as compared with the level of Q4 2024. The overall revenue top line was consistent with the one of the same period last year, thanks to market share gains, positive market share gains in all three business units, and this thanks to our technological differentiation. We had a very slight price decline of 0.5%, so decline, but a very moderate one. Our trading profit, however, was lower than last year. This was expected, but it was lower than last year due to an increase in our cost of labor and cost of raw materials, which in the third quarter beginning of the year, we could not offset with price increases. However, we are now planning to pass price increases for the rest of the year to compensate at least part of these cost increases.
We continue to make very good progress in our structural cost reduction program, and we are now very confident that we are on track to deliver at least GBP 45 million cost savings by 2028. We continue to maintain, on top of this, a very tight control on all discretionary spend. The acquisition of Pyromet, which was completed earlier this year, is giving satisfaction, and we are making good progress with the integration of Pyromet. Regarding the remaining of the year, we now anticipate our full-year results to be slightly lower than our previous guidance on a constant currency basis, with a level of uncertainty which remains high, of course, in the current context. This revision slightly down of our forecast is linked to a more cautious approach of the second half of the year and as compared with what we were forecasting a couple of months ago.
Looking ahead, we remain confident in the strength of our technologically differentiated business model, and we remain positive for the future year. Thank you very much for your attention, and I now propose to open the floor for questions.
If you have dialed into the call and would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. We'll pause for a moment to assemble the queue. We will take our first question from the line of Leshanthan Marangela from JP Morgan. Your line is open.
Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. The first is on pricing, please, just in terms of the, I guess, a bit more color on sort of pricing power and sort of why you could not offset costs. I guess I appreciate Mark is the task, but just to get some color by the three main businesses. I guess as a follow-up in terms of putting those price increases through now, I mean, how confident are you that you can do that, I guess, without losing market share going forward, given the backdrop of tough, but also, I guess, speaking about tariffs, etc., as well? It is just like, how confident are you that you will be able to offset all that, given the sort of commentary at the start of the year? That would be my first question, please. The second is just on the cost savings.
At least GBP 45 million, sounds like you're a bit more confident than you were two months ago. I guess, how does that translate to sort of this year and the sort of GBP 12-14 million that you sort of got in for it at the start of the year? I guess is there outside risk to that? Thank you.
Thank you very much. On your first question, clearly, we see a more difficult pricing environment in all our three business units, both in steel and in foundry. This is linked to the fact that, first, many of our customers, and we understand that, are in a difficult situation in most places in the world, especially in Europe. They are requesting for price decrease in the current environment. At the same time, we have very aggressive competition everywhere, which creates an environment where passing price increases has been, over the past few months, more difficult than usual. This being said, even if we support our customers, we have to pass price increases. I believe that there is a global realization that those price increases are absolutely necessary to cover our cost increases. This is the right decision long-term, including for our customers.
We are now passing price increases in most parts of the world. Yes, I am confident, even if the environment is sometimes a psychologically difficult one for understandable reasons, I am confident that we will be able to pass those price increases to compensate. This year, probably only partially, the cost increase, but we believe that our business model to fully compensate cost increases with price increases remains absolutely and completely valid. The speed at which we will pass those price increases will probably be a little bit lower this year than usual, but the price increases will be passed. By the way, are in the process of being passed as we speak because we are increasing prices as we speak. On the second point, cost savings, we are, I would say, a bit ahead of our expectations.
We are doing well, even very well in terms of cost decrease, with a very good job being done by our teams all over the world to show courage and determination in cutting costs. It is not only short-term discretionary spend; it is really long-term structural cost improvement. I am very happy with the job that our teams are doing worldwide. This is why we are now expecting to deliver at least GBP 45 million recurring cash cost savings by 2028. We will update the market regarding the year 2025, the in-year 2025 savings at mid-year, but we are working hard to do a bit better than what we previously guided on.
I'm sorry, can I just have a follow-up on that? Just on the second point of pricing, are all your competitors now increasing pricing as well? Just to clarify on that point.
We see globally a realization that prices have to increase. Is it all of our competitors? We'll see in the coming months, but I would say we see, at least in the way they talk about it, including in open communication, a gradual realization that when your cost increases, you have to increase your prices. I believe that, generally speaking, the industry is realizing that price increases are absolutely necessary, yes.
Okay. Brilliant. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Stephen Collett from HSBC. Your line is open.
Yeah. Hi. Good morning, guys. I'm still a bit confused. The last time we sat together was on the 6th of March when you updated on the full year. Q1 was nearly done, and we didn't talk about any price inflation and cost pressure at that point in time, and that prices are down. We didn't mention as well. What has changed? I mean, at that point in time, in March, the quarter was nearly over, and now you're telling us everything is in line with regard to your expectations. You're flagging that topic for the first time. Why is, when everything is in line with expectations, that you're taking down your guidance for the full year? Can you just tally all these things up, please, for me?
Okay. It is quite simple. Regarding prices, the difficulty, the more important difficulty to pass price increases was completely integrated in our guidance. This is nothing new. It is a fact to explain the fact that our Q1 trading profit is lower than last year, but this, as we mentioned in our communication, is in line with our expectations. There is nothing new there as compared with what we are expecting. What is different from our discussions of two months ago is our vision of the level of economic activity in HSBC. Nothing to do with pricing. There is nothing different in pricing today than what we were forecasting two months ago. What is different is that we see we are more cautious on the magnitude of improvement of markets in HSBC today than what we were two months ago.
I hope I'm clear, Stephan, but it's really what has changed is market is absolutely not the situation in pricing. As you are very right to say, already on the 6th of March and already at the end of last year, we could see that the pricing environment was more difficult than usual. This was integrated in our guidance, including, by the way, the fact that we will increase prices at some point and recover and compensate, but slower than usual. This has not changed. What has changed is our vision of the level of economic activity worldwide in the manufacturing sector in particular, which is our customer sector in HSBC, where we are more cautious, clearly more cautious today because we see uncertainty remaining for longer than planned.
The only information that people have about the economic environment where they operate is for the next 90 days. As long as people do not have a longer horizon to plan in, they will remain in a wait-and-see attitude with a negative impact on the level of consumption and the level of demand. This is exactly what we are seeing today. As we are already mid-May and we still do not have a clear vision of which economic environment we will operate in, our customers will operate in in the coming months, but they are being even more cautious than what we were planning, forecasting in the coming months. This is the only difference between today and the previous guidance.
Cautiousness of customers, I get that. And Lenovo's ability, I totally get that as well. Can you talk about your different segments in steel and as well about foundry, what client behavior is looking like at the moment?
Sorry? What kind of?
Customer behavior.
Client behavior is looking like. Yeah, customer behavior is looking like.
First, everywhere, our customers are adapting their level of production to what they see of their own end demand. You can see that even in the U.S., Cleveland-Cliffs announced a few days ago that they will idle three steel plants in the U.S. despite the fact that the U.S. is protected by important barriers for steel. The demand for steel is slowing down because the economy is slowing down. Steel prices are good in the U.S., but steel production is not extremely good because the end demand is weakening. We see everywhere, and I think it's a good thing, our customers adapting their level of production to the level of real demand to avoid inventories going up, which I think is a very sound behavior. You have some regions where our customers are in more difficulties than others.
Clearly, the region which remains the most difficult in terms of situation of our customers is EU plus U.K., where our customers not only are confronted with a relatively weak level of demand, but the situation of the energy sector is not favorable to them and is not helping our customers improve their cost base. Europe remains today, by far, the most difficult region for our customers. We see more, I would say, more nervous customers in Europe than in the rest of the world.
Down foundry, still, sorry, if we can touch about foundry. Same story with foundry?
Foundry is a bit the same story, but we do not see our customers in foundry. We do not see a degradation of the mood of our customers in foundry. It is more of a stabilization at a relatively low level. We see a degradation of the mood of our customers in steel in Europe. We do not see a degradation of the mood of our customers in foundry. We do not see a recovery yet in foundry, but there is no degradation in foundry. In steel, the level of production remains stable at a low level in Europe, but we can see that some of our customers are becoming probably more pessimistic about their future.
Okay. Thank you so much.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from the line of Harry Philips from Peel Hunt. Your line is open.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. Three questions, please. The first is just thinking on the China remittance and what have you and the tax incurred on that. I was just wondering, in my very moderate accounting, I would have whacked that tax through as an exceptional rather than put it through as you're doing. Just wondering about the rationale around that. The second is thinking about the tariff sort of commentary of two months ago in the context of your guidance and then how that fits into the current guidance. Does that sort of the tariff analysis of two months ago still apply now? That is sort of factored into what the slightly below comment.
Lastly, just thinking of the first half, second half split with these variables in there, if you had a sort of idea of how everything might work through in that context, would be a great help, please.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Harry. I will let Mark answer your first question. I will take the second and the third before handing over to Mark. Regarding the tariff, the direct impact of tariff will probably be lower than planned because we have a few million of impacts, but we will compensate. We are compensating this with price increases in the U.S. At the end of the day, the net impact on tariff will probably be relatively low, close to zero. What has changed as compared with two months ago is the indirect impact of uncertainty on the tariff environment. We really see the level of activity, and in particular, the level of activity that we are forecasting in the second half, lower than what we thought two months ago because the uncertainty is remaining longer than planned. This brings me to your third question.
In terms of balance, HSC1, HSC2, we are more 45-65, if not 47-63. So some improvement. We are still weighted with an improvement in HSC2, but our improvement in HSC2 as compared with HSC1 is more moderate than what we thought a couple of months ago. We believe there is a good reason to remain cautious on the magnitude of improvement in HSC2. We see the improvement coming more in 2026 than the magnitude of improvement being more in 2026 than in 2025. Mark, maybe you can take the first question.
Yeah. Thanks, Harry. It's a good question. A one-off tax cost of $3.4 million is right on the borderline of whether it would be treated as a separate reported item or not. I suspect I will kind of reconsider that at the first half when we formally produce our results and discuss them with our auditors. I think you're right, though. It's a withholding tax charge. Obviously, every time you do a dividend, you pay withholding tax. What we're doing here, obviously, is repatriating first a significant amount of cash that was surplus in China and then drawing down on a non-recourse loan in China. The reason we're doing that is basically to benefit from the differential interest rates between China and the U.K. and Europe.
There is clearly a cost incurred to achieve, and there is clearly a recurring benefit on the lower interest charge. I think I'll take that into consideration, and if I can push it through the Audit Commission auditors, I'll probably end up putting it in separate reported items.
Fabulous. Thanks very much, indeed.
Your next question, Jonathan Hearn from Barclays. The line is open.
Hey, guys. Good morning. I just have a few questions, please. Firstly, I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about the level of profitability that you're seeing in the two divisions thus far this year. Also, just maybe focusing on foundry. Obviously, you talk about foundry working being flat sequentially, Q1 versus Q4. Can we expect profitability in the foundry to be flat H1 versus H2 of last year? That was the first question. The second one's just on India. I just want to give a little bit more detail. Also, we're hearing about pricing pressures, sort of price downs coming through in that market. Could you just sort of spell out what you're seeing between the sort of Flow Control business there and also your foundry business? The third and final question was just actually on capital allocation and share buyback.
It looks like we're pretty much through the $50 million in terms of returning that back to shareholders. Obviously, you're a lot more cautious now on the outlook for HSC2. In terms of sort of future capital returns to shareholders, is that going to get pushed further out? When's the next possible chance of that? Probably 2026. Those are the questions. Thanks.
Thank you very much, Jonathan. In terms of profitability by division, the Steel Division clearly remains, as we speak, more profitable than the Foundry Division. The Foundry Division, we are making good progress to redress profitability, but the Steel Division remains more profitable than the Foundry Division as we speak. Inside the Steel Division, Flow Control is more profitable than Advanced Refractories. The usual pattern remains true today. This being said, I think that even in a difficult market environment, we are taking strong action, which I believe will improve the profitability of the Foundry Division progressively over the next two, three years. We are taking structural actions, which I am very positive will improve the profitability of the Foundry Division from the low level where they were in H2 2023 last year. Where will we be in Foundry in H1 2024 this year?
It's a bit too early to tell because some of the deep restructuring actions that we are taking will take time to produce an impact. At this stage, I would not give a guidance on the HSC1 profitability of foundry because actions take time to produce an impact. I'm quite positive about the fact that progressively over the coming months, the profitability of foundry will increase. Regarding India, we are doing quite well. India is and remains and will be a very, very bright spot for Vesuvius. We are growing fast in India in a very profitable way in both steel and foundry. In the steel division, both Flow Control and Advanced Refractories are growing fast and profitably. We are taking advantage of the new capacity increases that we have invested in India over the past three years.
These capacities are filling fast, especially in Flow Control, especially in Flow Control where our sales are growing and will grow even more in the coming months and years because we have new contracts that are being signed and negotiated. We are already starting the engineering studies for a further expansion in Flow Control in India. We are very happy with the way things are moving in the country. Advanced Refractories also is doing extremely well in India, growing fast, faster than the market in a very profitable way. It is not only volume, it is also profitability, which is good in India. India is a difficult market because basically that is the most important, the fastest growing market in our sector worldwide. Everybody wants to be there. We have a very strong team.
We have made the right choices in terms of industrial investment with this top-of-the-art investment in top-of-the-art new capacity, the best technology, the best production cost, both in our historical Kolkata plant and in our new Visakhapatnam plant. This gives us a huge momentum on the market. Customers are happy to see us developing. We are developing fast, profitably. I insist on that, profitably. We clearly will continue to do so in the coming years. Regarding the share buyback, our last program just completed.
Yes, that's right.
3rd of April. Yeah, there will be regular discussion at the board about what do we do next. I do not know if it will be this year or next year, but what I can tell you is that it is a regular topic of discussion at the board level. That share buyback at some point, I am sure, will be rediscussed at the board level. The last program which has been completed, even if nothing is decided today, should not be seen as the last one going forward.
Just to give you a bit of color, Jonathan, I mean, we are seeing our CapEx coming down now in terms of the full-year guidance we gave. It is logical we would just look at where we stand as we head towards the end of next year, where we are in leverage, where we are with potential acquisitions, etc., etc.
Great. Great, clear, guys. Thank you very much.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone. Your next question comes in line of Andrew Douglas from Jefferies. Your line is open.
Good morning, guys. Most of my questions have been covered. I've got two more, please. Can you give us an update on how you see the Chinese export market for steel? I think when we discussed this in March, you were pretty confident that this was going to be a good thing for you and that the Chinese government and the Chinese steel market would not change their view. Is that still the case? Secondly, on Advanced Refractories, we've been hoping for some regain of market share in both America and Europe. You talked about market share gains in all business units. Whereabouts are we seeing the Advanced Refractories market share gains, please?
Thank you, Andy. On the first point, we keep exactly the same position as the one we had a few months ago. We believe that it is very positive that the Chinese government is now openly taking a stand in favor of reducing overcapacity of steel in China. The Chinese government has even now given a goal, an objective of reducing capacity by at least 50 million tons. We remain positive about the impact of that going forward. However, we also keep the same opinion that we expressed, I think, already at the time of our full-year results beginning of March, that it takes time for the Chinese government to get its will implemented on the ground, at least 12 or 18 months.
We are positive about the fact that going forward, steel export from China will decline, which will be a very positive impact for steel production outside of China. We do not see that happening much in 2025. Maybe we will have a good surprise, but we are not betting on it. We see that more for 2026 or 2027 based on past experiences in China. We do not expect a release in 2025. By the way, if you look at the Chinese next steel export since the beginning of the year, they are more or less flat at an elevated level of 10 million-ish per month. We do not really see that declining rapidly, relatively rapidly in the next few months, so in 2025.
As from 2026, yeah, this would be a boost to the steel market and so to our own sales outside of China where we realize 90% of our sales. Regarding Advanced Refractories, things are progressing well. We are now clearly regaining market share in Europe. We are past the inflection point regarding Advanced Refractories in Europe, as we said, and it is progressing nicely in a moderate way because we are not trying to disturb prices too much. That is not the right period to do these kind of things, obviously. We are naturally regaining a little bit of market share in Europe. We have very good signs about the evolution of our situation in North America with very positive signals.
I do not believe that we will regain market share there in the first half, but we have ongoing discussions, negotiations, and some of them already concluded, which makes me very confident that the inflection point in terms of market share in North America will be this year, sometime in the second half. Quite positive news about not only stabilization, but regain of market share, the start of a regain of market share of Advanced Refractories in both Europe and North America, which were the two regions where our market share had been eroding over the past year.
Very kind. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes on the line of Stephen Collett from HSBC. Your line is open.
Yeah. Hi, Amigo. Sorry for that. It's a question for Mark. Unfortunately, Patrick mentioned too many times that India is growing very profitably. Can you tell us about your forecast about the minority position in Europe now for 2025? How should that develop?
I think Patrick will preach a bit because it's true. What I can tell you is that there will be a ticking up of the minority interest charge based on the results that I'm seeing. I think it's not we've got other things in our minority interest charge. If I had to give you a ballpark number, I would at least think it's $500,000 of additional minority interest charge today.
Okay. Super. Thank you so much.
There are no further questions on the conference line. I want to hand it over to the management for closing remarks.
Thank you very much to all of you for your attention this morning. We remain, as usual, at your disposal for any questions together with Rachel and Mark. I wish you all a very good day. Goodbye.