Thank you Phil and welcome everyone, and thank you all for joining us at our Capital Markets Spotlight event. It's great to see so many of you here in person. I know we also have a number of people from around the world joining us virtually, so welcome to everyone online as well. Before we start, I just would like to draw your attention to the usual cautionary notice on forward-looking statements. Today, I'm joined by several members from the Group Executive and businesses, and for those attending in person, there'll be several opportunities to mingle and ask questions of the team informally in the breaks. For those joining virtually, please reach out to our IR team with any queries not covered in today's event. Weir is now on a clear trajectory to deliver long-term sustainable growth in shareholder returns, and we're delivering strongly on our promise.
Our focus for today is on the next phase of our journey and how we intend to deliver on our full growth potential and compound the benefits of our strong organic business. There are two key pillars to this. The first is in unlocking the huge potential for digital technology to drive productivity and sustainability in mining through both next-generation software and connected intelligent products. The second is in further enhancing the customer value proposition of our equipment businesses through continuous innovation, enhanced customer proximity through digital enablement, and leveraging the significant power inherent in the global Weir franchise. To bring that to life, today's event will be split into three sections, allowing time to supplement the presentation material with interactive displays during break periods.
After my introductory comments, Kristen Walsh, our new President of Software Solutions, will present an in-depth introduction to Micromine and how the acquisition of an acknowledged software leader has catalyzed our exciting strategic vision to build the leading next-generation software provider to the mining industry, and we'll then have a software-focused Q&A before our first break. For those attending in person already, you'll have seen the various displays we have in the entryway, and I encourage you to engage with the team in exploring them as they offer an excellent opportunity to intrinsically understand how our differentiated solutions create value for our customers, and for those joining virtually, an auto cue of the video content from the displays will be available during the breaks in your session browser, so please do take an opportunity to share in the experience.
After the break, we'll return for an update on our growth strategy for ESCO and Minerals, led by Sean and Andrew, including a deep dive on Minerals' digital strategy. Brian will then touch on performance excellence and how we intend to sustain the continuous improvement journey, followed by closing remarks from me. After a short second break, we'll conclude the event with a fireside Q&A, including the executive team of presenters. So, as I mentioned at the start, Weir is on a strong trajectory of growing shareholder returns, and we think there's lots of opportunity to accelerate and deliver more. A decade ago, Weir was an industrial pumps conglomerate with businesses of different qualities and characteristics, prone to industry cycles, and limited in its capacity to weather external events.
We began our journey with thoughtful portfolio transformation, focusing our resources on our best and most resilient business and orienting ourselves to the multi-decade market opportunity presented by the mining sector. After reinvesting the proceeds from oil and gas and flow control businesses into the purchase of ESCO, we then turned to our balance sheet with a focus to position Weir for consistently strong performance, predictability and resilience, and long-term sustainable growth. We experienced early benefits from our strategy as we navigated the COVID pandemic with minimal disruption to our customers. With a clear vision to generate resilient and predictable returns, we launched the Performance Excellence Initiative. Since that initiative's launch, we've raised Group operating margins from 17.4% in 2023 to our full-year guidance of circa 20% in 2025, which is a year earlier than originally expected.
And as Brian will discuss later in our presentation, the benefits from this initiative will last long beyond its completion in 2026. As we look to our next chapter, we're clearly positioned to benefit from the transformational technological change as our customers scale up and clean up their operations, and as the adoption of data and digitalization take mining productivity to a new level. As a focused mining technology leader, our secret sauce of leading mission-critical solutions, coupled with unmatched customer intimacy, simultaneously arms us with unique capabilities while protecting our market positions with high barriers to entry. We are poised to benefit from multi-decade favorable market demand tailwinds for critical metals, while the adoption of new technologies to enable sustainable mining and license to operate will only boost the potential opportunity available to Weir Group.
As we transition from Performance Excellence to Continuous Improvement, our attention in turn pivots steadfastly to growth. With organic growth underpinned by our resilient and predictable business model, we intend to maximize shareholder returns through prioritizing compounding M&A, applying our strict strategic and financial acquisition criteria to deliver on the opportunities we see ahead across both our hardware and now software platforms. Our matured Weir purpose and strategy likewise reflects this pivot to growth. It's fully embedded through the organization. We have top-to-bottom alignment on our priorities and strong engagement across our global teams.
While its familiar pillars of people, customer, technology, and performance remain a constant, we are acknowledging the opportunities and challenges which come as we evolve, specifically the adoption of AI throughout our business, our responsibility as a thought leader in the mining industry, our capability to deliver transformational solutions, and capacity to leverage lean operations and high-quality and efficient business services. As I mentioned earlier, our value creation opportunity is grounded in the multi-decade market tailwinds from global demand for critical metals and the adoption of new technologies to enable more sustainable mining. With demand underpinned by several significant and well-understood structural factors, our broad basket of commodity exposures are headed towards production deficits in the near future should any combination of these factors continue.
In response, amplified by national security and resilience considerations, governments and agencies across the world are turning their attention back to the mining industry and revisiting previously stalled applications for mine development and expansion. Our customers are starting to move with more pace, investing to meet growing production requirements even while average ore grades continue to decline. And as the demand on our customers increases, so does their willingness to consider and adopt innovative technology that is necessary to deliver both the productivity and sustainability objectives of their operations. So, after some difficult times for mining, it's a very exciting place to be again. So, what does that mean for Weir? Well, our combination of differentiated, mission-critical, highly engineered solutions coupled with unmatched customer intimacy positions us strongly to translate these drivers into growth for our business.
The outlook for OE continues to look positive, particularly for brownfield solutions, but increasingly greenfield projects. While difficult to call, it does feel like it's the beginning of the next CapEx cycle, and we see this day to day when we speak to the EPCMs about their current projects and workloads. Now, wherever OE growth comes from, either through large expansion products or regular debottlenecking, our razor-blade business model means as our installed base of equipment grows, so does our high recurring high-margin aftermarket revenue. Complementing this well-understood business model, our new software solutions business and further bolt-on acquisitions will bring even greater scale and profitability to Weir, predictably compounding at mid to high single digits through the cycle. We've already announced several acquisitions this year, making tangible steps towards enhancing our organic growth strategy.
While remaining focused within the bookends of where our hardware businesses currently play, we've sought to establish ourselves as a leading mining software provider across the broader mining value chain. Our recently closed acquisition of PlaTS furthers this ambition by complementing Micromine's existing underground mine management solution with a premium open-pit solution. Our acquisition of Townley seeks to accelerate our access to regions with high reserves of critical minerals, while our collaboration with CiDRA provides us access to what we think is going to be the next generation of separation technology. While the timing and pace of M&A is unpredictable, I think we have demonstrated in 2025 that there is plenty of opportunity. And so, as we deliver through 2026, we'll focus on maintaining an active pipeline to compound our organic growth.
We are therefore fully committed, both in vision and execution, to delivering excellent outcomes for all our stakeholders. We retain our commitment to grow faster than our markets, delivering compounding mid to high single-digit organic revenue through the cycle. We commit to delivering operating margins sustainably above 20% from 2026, enshrining the benefits of performance excellence in our ongoing continuous improvement mindset. On returns, we will continue to cleanly convert our earnings into cash with 90% to 100% free operating cash conversion and focus on delivering sustainable growth in return on capital employed. We will remain highly resilient, as we always have been, given the benefits of our aftermarket-focused hardware business and the addition of our new scalable high-margin software businesses. And we will achieve these outcomes while delivering both for our people and for the planet.
Now, as we deliver on these commitments, our ability to quickly deleverage our balance sheet will give us optionality, enabling us to take action to prioritize growth in TSR, balancing investment for growth with dividends and special returns as and if appropriate. Before concluding my introductory marks, I'd just like to take a moment to reflect on the current state of the wider mining industry and why we're so excited about our strategy going forward. So, challenged with processing millions of tons of earth per day, the mining industry's historic conservative approach has fostered preference for legacy equipment, analog control systems, and manual decision-making. It was just a scale play. But it's now obvious for all to see that this runs contrary to the clear need for better productivity and sustainability as the world demands ever more critical metals.
Doing what was done in the past is just not going to work, and our customers now recognize the need for new solutions, including adoption of innovative process technology, real-time data and digital enablement, and AI-enhanced process automation to mitigate risk at their current and future operations while driving higher production yields, and that really sets the scene for our technology agenda, our new digital vision, and bold move into the world of software. Our vision is now to unlock the massive potential for digital technology in its broad sense to drive productivity and sustainability in mining, and in doing so, create a global leader in engineered hardware and software solutions.
So, throughout today's event, you're going to learn how we're accelerating our journey to develop a globally recognized leader in next-generation mining software with Micromine as the cornerstone, as well as broadening the competitive moat of our equipment solutions with connected intelligent products alongside our ongoing innovation engines. Our actions today are creating a clear path toward mine-to-mill data integration, enhanced performance from already sector-leading equipment, a step change in mining productivity while incrementally delivering higher yields and lower downtime to the mining industry. It is indeed a very different Weir to the one of 10 years ago. And with that, I'm very excited to welcome Kristen Walsh to the stage, our President of Software Solutions, to talk you through our software vision and the tremendous opportunity Micromine offers the mining industry as it scales up and cleans up. Kristen.
Thank you, Jon. And good afternoon, everyone.
I'm Kristen Walsh, President of Software Solutions. First, to share a little bit about myself. So, I've worked for Weir for four years. And prior to the Micromine acquisition, I led the minerals business in APAC. I'm based in Perth, Australia. I'm an engineer, and I spent the first nine years of my career working in software. When Jon asked me to get involved with the Micromine due diligence, I jumped at the opportunity. Last week marked seven months post-completion, and I am pleased to share that Micromine has delivered on everything we thought we had bought and more. I'm really excited about our growth journey ahead. It's a privilege to join you today to share our vision for software solutions and how we're bringing next-generation technology to the mining industry.
Following our acquisition of Micromine in April, the acquisition of PlaTS just a few weeks ago, along with the Motion Metrics business, I'm thrilled to represent our combined software solutions business, an engine of growth and innovation within Weir Group. I'm proud to lead the uniting of these talented and committed teams, many in the room today, with fast-scaling, customer-focused software cultures, delivering exceptional sustainable value to our growing base of mining customers. Our geologists and mining engineers understand firsthand the productivity opportunities that exist in mining. We have a shared ambition to change the industry, empowering our customers to seamlessly share data and collaborate across the mining value chain. Our vision is to provide the best feature-rich technical solutions on the market, harnessing AI and the cloud to improve efficiency. Our aim is to be the number one technical solution available on the market in each of our point solutions.
We continually develop our products to stay ahead and maintain our competitive edge. Biannually, we launch new features across each of our products, guided by direct customer feedback with Micromine Momentum, the name of our flagship annual release held in October each year. Our vision is centered on growth, innovation, and leadership in mining software, enabled by a dedicated software sales force relentlessly focused on building and maintaining deep, lasting relationships with our customers. Micromine equips Weir with the broadest portfolio of equipment-agnostic, best-in-class software solutions across the mining value chain, supported by a dedicated team of mining experts. Like our extremely strong Warman and ESCO brands, our signature brand for software is Micromine. PlaTS and Motion Metrics will ultimately become product brands alongside the rest of our Micromine products.
The PlaTS acquisition has further enhanced our capabilities in open-pit mining, while the integration of the Motion Metrics business will continue to strengthen our customer value proposition, bringing eyes to our solutions with Motion Metrics leading ruggedized vision technology. With a team of over 50 geologists and nearly 120 mining engineers working predominantly in sales and customer-facing roles, we understand the challenges in mining and have credibility with our customers. Today, our software business has an impressive global presence, serving a diverse range of junior explorers, consultants, and mining customers. With our products traditionally sold to explorers or mine site professionals, our solutions are used across 125 countries at 305 mine sites and supporting over 3,300 projects. In total, we've sold nearly 26,000 licenses globally, reflecting our global presence and reputation.
Our solutions are active in tertiary institutions, helping educate the next generation of explorers and mining professionals, and ensuring our technology remains at the forefront of industry standards. With global scale, a strong customer base, and a continually expanding portfolio, we are well-positioned for accelerated growth and industry leadership. I would now like to introduce Ivan Zelina, our Chief Technology Officer at Micromine, who will share how we're redefining the software experience in mining.
Thank you, Kristen. My name is Ivan Zelina. I'm the CTO at Micromine. I started at Micromine in 1993. It was my first job out of university. The company then was only eight people. I now have a much bigger team, and with them, we have been building our great solutions, adding to the sophistication release after release. For seven months now, Micromine people have been part of Weir. The experience has been very positive.
We couldn't have hoped for a better home with a company that understands mining and shares our vision and desire to be at the forefront of the mining technology. This diagram illustrates the broad coverage of the mining value chain by the Micromine products, taking it from resource discovery all the way to delivering the mine or to a processing plant. No other solution provider has such broad coverage and understanding of the mining value chain. The pictures that will be accompanying the diagram come from the various Micromine software solutions I will talk about. The first of our products along the value chain, Micromine Geobank, is used by exploration teams to capture, store, validate, and adjust exploration data, especially data related to drilling. Micromine Origin is adjacent on the mining value chain downstream from Geobank. The captured exploration data flows out of Geobank into Origin.
Origin is used by a geologist to create the model of the ore body used to estimate the quantity and the quality of the resource in the ground. These pictures come from Micromine Origin and illustrate the evolution of the model from geology model on the right to the ore body model on the left. In both pictures, we can see the drill holes penetrating the geology model and the ore body model. This is the drilling data coming into Origin out of Geobank. The last model, the picture in the middle, is what we call a block model. Block models are at the center of all mining activities. What is a block model? So we split the space occupied by the ore body into tiny little cubes. Then, using various techniques, including a unique Micromine-developed AI technique, we estimate the content of the commodity in each cube.
Then we add up all the blocks together to determine how much of the commodity is in the ground, hence whether it is bought, built, and mined to get to it. The model is a Digital Twin of the ore body we have discovered. Exploration and mining companies use these models to convince banks or investors about the quality of the resource around which they want to build the mine. The investors or lenders, they hire third-party auditors to audit the process that was used to create the Block Model to validate, of course, the accuracy of the claim. Micromine Origin is again used in this process. Adjacent on the mining value chain to Micromine Origin is Micromine Beyond. Beyond is used by mining engineers to design the mine: the pit, the roads, the underground caves, the tunnels leading to the caves.
Life of mine strategic planning tools are part of Micromine Beyond too. This picture illustrates a set of nested pits that the mine will develop over, say, the next 20 years. The mining depth, the mining sequence, and even direction are generated by Micromine Beyond pit optimization algorithm. The algorithm's objective is to generate pit shapes and mining sequence that maximize the net present value of the mining project. Let's move further down the value chain into mine planning. Planning commodity extraction is extremely important. The difference between planning and not planning is the difference between making lots of money from the mine or having to close it down. Micromine is a mine planning powerhouse. We have three products to aid with mine planning: Micromine Alastri, Micromine Spry, and Micromine Alastri . Alastri is used for planning hard rock surface metal mines: iron ore, copper, gold.
Micromine Spry is used to plan soft commodity mining: coal, potash, phosphates. And Advance is used to plan operations in underground mines. The picture there illustrates how the user can compare multiple underground mining scenarios for the same ore deposit. The scenario with one decline will require less initial capital than the scenario with two declines. But which scenario is more profitable overall? Our software helps the mining enterprise to come up with these answers. With all the activities planned, we must monitor the execution of the plan, the ore extraction activities. How much did we actually produce? Are we on target to meet the plan? And if not, why not? This is where we have three solutions: Pitram, PlaTS, and Motion Metrics. Unlike any other competitor, we offer specialized solutions for underground and surface mining. Those are two very different mining environments.
Pitram and PlaTS are mine control systems for monitoring, recording, and optimizing mining activities. Pitram focuses on underground mining. PlaTS is a product we deploy to surface mines. The Motion Metrics solutions are deployed in mines using AI to monitor the status and performance of the mining shovels. The picture shows Motion Metrics shovel operator screen assisting the operator to ensure the truck is not leaving underloaded or overloaded. We are maximizing production while looking after the asset health. We also see PlaTS Mineverse app screens. With the PlaTS app, we take the live data out of the mine's control room and make it available to the mobile worker moving around the pit. This picture shows Pitram control room screens. Underground mining equipment and even underground locations are represented on the screen with colors indicating the current operational status.
Our mine control software solutions focus on helping the mines to maximize the availability and utilization of the mining assets. Lastly, our unique Nexsys platform. Nexsys is Micromine's cloud-based collaboration platform, facilitating data sharing between the Micromine point solutions. Nexsys provides data storage, versioning with full audit trail, and 3D visualization. Nexsys Cloud is where Micromine point solution users go to source the single version of the truth for a shared data set. To a 3D mining data user, this is a very exciting picture. Why? Nexsys user can visualize the cloud-based 3D mining data inside the browser, with each data set coming from a different point solution. We see a pit shell that comes from Micromine Beyond, the ore body model came from Micromine Origin, and the drilling data from the Geobank system.
And all these data sets have been uploaded to the Nexsys Cloud to be shared with the adjacent Micromine point solution as a part of the regular workflow. The Nexsys Cloud platform is more than a data store for us. It's Micromine's foot in the cloud. We expose neural network training service via Nexsys. The service is used by our customers to train their own neural network models, which are then used inside Micromine Origin. Nexsys is also where our customers come to interact with Micromine support, where they come to manage their licenses and monitor license use. And with that, I will hand back to Kristen.
Thanks, Ivan Zelina. Thank you, Ivan Zelina. Our target market is large and rapidly expanding due to increasing digitization and a recognition by mining companies that software is at the core of integrated mine management.
We estimate the total global addressable market for our current products to be GBP 3.8 billion. The total vended market, estimated at GBP 2 billion, is expected to grow by 10% per annum, weighted towards the Americas and Australian gold and copper mines, but applicable to all commodities and geographies. Our business has a steadily increasing global customer base, with Australia being our biggest revenue generator, roughly 30% of total revenue, and North and South America and Africa being our largest growth regions. Our revenue streams are well diversified, with gold, copper, and iron ore representing approximately 50% of our revenue contribution. By combining Micromine, Motion Metrics, and PlaTS, we offer the most comprehensive equipment-agnostic exploration to extraction solutions. Our products cover every segment of the value chain and are uniquely integrated through our Nexsys Cloud platform, delivering unmatched online collaboration and data sharing.
Competitors are generally classified into two main categories: original equipment manufacturers, who often bundle software with their equipment, and large software companies that focus on multiple end markets. Notable participants include Seequent, a market leader in geology modeling and owned by U.S.-listed Bentley Systems, and Sandvik, owner of Deswik, a market leader in mine design and mine planning software. No competitor can match our breadth and depth of products or our best-in-class technical support and customer success program. Our software business has a growing, loyal, and diversified blue-chip customer base. To share a few examples, Micromine helped First Quantum Minerals, Çayeli Mine, one of Turkey's largest underground copper and zinc mines, increase productivity by 18%. Facing depleted reserves, rising costs, and the complexity of managing two ore bodies, the mine needed a more agile, data-driven approach.
By implementing Pitram's real-time mine control and fleet management system, including a 24/7 control room, integration with SAP, and mobile access, the site transformed planning and execution. Shift coordinators gained live visibility, enabling faster data-backed decisions and automated reporting. The results are streamlined operations, optimized resource allocation, and an 18% improvement in productivity and production. At Barrick Gold Veladero Gold Mine in Argentina, Micromine helped cut mine planning generation time by 40%. The challenges were complex haulage networks, inconsistent workflows, and the need for a user-friendly system. Micromine's Alastri solution delivered an integrated platform with modular tools, enforced workflows, and 3D visualization for real-time data validation. The Veladero team built a digital twin of the haulage network, enabling accurate cycle modeling and scenario testing. Implementation was fast, just four months.
Alastri enabled streamlined planning, reduced errors, and more time for engineers to focus on field leadership, setting a new benchmark for efficiency. These case studies illustrate the typical short payback period that our customers experience. Each of our three businesses has unique growth strategies and each a strong right to win. Common growth themes include market penetration, geographic expansion, and product expansion opportunities. For Micromine, the Alastri Hard Rock Mining Planning product is used at all the major miners in Australia. We are using our track record with customers in Australia to secure new customers in the Americas and AMI, which is Africa, Middle East, and Europe. In Motion Metrics, we are creating the market-enabling customers to see parts of their operation that have traditionally been unsafe to access.
As enterprise customers realize the productivity benefits of Motion Metrics, there becomes a driver within those organizations to roll out Motion Metrics technology across their mobile fleet. Finally, PlaTS has been highly successful targeting tier two mining companies in Brazil with their mine control solution. As the technical feature set has gotten richer, they are now positioned to consolidate from a tier two provider to win with the tier ones. By leveraging Weir and Micromine's footprint, PlaTS has untapped growth potential globally and is initially targeting its international expansion to Chile and Africa. Pleasingly, this year, they've secured wins in both regions. Through our sales process engagement with customers, we aim to demonstrate measurable and compelling productivity gains and then follow this up with strong implementation support and customer success programs. This helps explain Micromine's customer retention rate of 93%.
When we talk about our strong minerals and ESCO aftermarket model having parallels with software, we are referring to our subscription model, which generates recurring revenue. The key growth metric in software businesses is annual recurring revenue, or ARR. As of September 2025, Micromine's recurring revenue as a percent of total revenue was 87%. Since 2022, Micromine's average ARR growth has been 25%, and we anticipate this rate being maintained or exceeded under Weir's ownership. Now, Motion Metrics is going to transition from one-off perpetual licensing model to a subscription-based licensing model in 2026 to allow it to generate stronger recurring revenue. As we transition, we expect a very high ARR growth rate in 2026, and then all of these metrics we expect to be similar to Micromine from 2027 onwards.
Weir's global customer base presents a compelling opportunity to access and grow our software business with existing minerals and ESCO customers. We've developed and implemented a regional program to maximize the opportunity over the coming years, and early signs have been very encouraging. This initiative identifies our largest opportunities for growth within our software businesses and leverages the local relationships of our minerals and ESCO team members to facilitate warm introductions to Micromine colleagues. In 2025 and for the next two years, we will invest additional headcount to scale the software business, adding to our sales customer-facing roles to ensure that we're ready for growth. While it's still early days, we believe this program will both improve the quality of leads and reduce lead-to-sale conversion times.
To share an example, within just two weeks of launching our pilot program in July, we arranged meetings with four different mine sites operated by a tier one iron ore miner. Since then, we've met with various customer stakeholders at both mine site and enterprise level and initiated three pilots featuring two different Micromine products. We're pleased to report that this has resulted in our first sale with this strategic customer. To share another example, this time a cross-selling opportunity within our software business, Motion Metrics was recently awarded a truck metric subscription by a tier one gold miner in Australia, successfully replacing a competitor through integration with Pitram to monitor fleet movement and measure material volumes. Additionally, the site team from the same company's African operations reached out to inquire about implementing a similar solution.
These examples are early wins, and they are indicative of the tremendous growth opportunity in leveraging our Weir Group footprint and our customer relationships. As a leading mining technology business, Weir Group is acutely aware of how organizational culture drives our success. To ensure Micromine and its unique tech culture endures, we have established our software solutions business as a standalone operating company within Weir Group, ensuring the agility, scalability, and growth expected in a SaaS and tech-driven environment. This structure aims to enable the best of both businesses, sharing Weir's significant resources, global footprint, deep customer relationships, and mining-focused expertise while maintaining a clear focus on nurturing a software-first culture, agile development practices, and software growth metrics. We've used the twice-yearly Micromine employee survey to measure employee engagement post-acquisition. The first survey was conducted in May, and the second survey closed last Friday at the seven-month mark.
With strong participation, the employee engagement score stands at 77%, on par with the highest score since May 2021 and in the top quartile of the new tech benchmark for companies creating digital technology and employing less than 500 people. We continue to lead the sector with an employee retention rate of 90%, with the attrition rate falling since acquisition. These figures reflect our ongoing commitment to fostering a collaborative, inclusive, and high-performing work environment. In summary, our vision is to lead the industry in next-generation technology for mining. With the broadest suite of market-leading equipment-agnostic software solutions, a team of capable geologists, mining engineers, and developers, feature-rich, best-in-class products, and a relentless focus on creating value for our customers, and finally, a global footprint backed by Weir, we are well-positioned to deliver growth and are very excited about our journey ahead.
Before we go into an opportunity for Q&A, I'd like to finish with a short video from our first Micromine Africa, Europe, and Middle East user conference held in Johannesburg two weeks ago. The conference was attended by 37 customers from around the region and was a great opportunity to share how our solutions drive customer value.
Well, I'm a geologist by profession. I spent a number of years in Australia. Micromine Origin allows us that confidence, the ease at which we're able to understand the workflow. It's the time saving that we will experience with not just the ease in the process, but obviously the introduction of AI-grade Copilot, grade estimator. This has massively improved the time it takes to process that data.
Advance enabled me, with the limited data that we had available at the time, to actually produce a defensible, auditable mine plan in record time to make a very quick decision in terms of how we foresee this mine being developed in the future. It is the quickest scheduling engine that I've seen when it comes to processing time. With Advance, with the support that I've been given in terms of functionality in the program, it's as easy as making a call to the guys on the development side.
My day-to-day focus is mainly improving Pitram a nd helping integrate it into our operations and supporting our operators and team leaders. Overall, better efficiency and increasing our productivity and producing more. Now we can actually see what's happening during the shift instead of after the shift.
It's something that you can't really get, which I've not yet seen in any application yet. I don't know whether those applications can do it, but that's what puts it ahead of the pack. I would highly recommend it. It is the best underground metals planning software that is available. It's tailored for you. For a mining engineer, it's tailored for you, so it's quicker, yes. It's easier, yes.
I hope this presentation and the video helps you understand why we are so excited about this opportunity, and I'd now like to invite Jon back to the stage for us to take questions.
Okay, software-related questions, please. We're going to have another Q&A session later on everything else, but this is all about software. Lushan? It's
Andy from Jefferies.
Oh, sorry, Andy.
Sorry, I'll pass to Lushan. Three questions, please, if I may. Thank you for presentations.
The 50% of revenue that's not gold, copper, and iron ore, I'm assuming that's coal, given your Australian heritage, or is that not correct?
It's very much a mix of all commodities on the bottom of the tail.
Fine. And in terms of the investment in people as you're scaling this globally, which comes first, the investment or the revenue? So do you have to put people in to grow this business at 25% for the next 10 years? And then the more you grow, the more people you put in? Or is it the other way around that you have to kind of wait and scale up so as your sales come through, you can then afford to put more people in? How do you think about that expansion and looking after the P&L in the near term?
We have a headcount that we're adding as we speak.
So we've been ramping up people. And as you know, the business has been scaling. So we're doing both at the same time.
But balancing it, Andy. So it's like the existing business has a model of adding heads in line with revenue growth. We're adding more because we want more growth. We need to add the cost a little bit earlier than we get the revenue, but we're obviously balancing that so we don't get ahead of ourselves one way or the other.
Perfect. And then last thing. Clearly, this has been a really good growth story as a kind of private business. You're joining Weir Group. You've got massive opportunity to take this everywhere globally. Do you change your kind of route to market, as it were, in terms of the people you're speaking to?
So for example, if you're previously selling to, I think you used the word explorers and mine pit specialists, do you now go further up the food chain to the Chief Executive of Anglo? Or do you have a different conversation with your customers, which basically will allow you to drive faster growth or maintain that higher growth at a higher level?
The businesses have been traditionally selling very product-focused. When I talked about being number one in point solutions and mentioned many times geologists and mining engineers, we have been traditionally selling to those individual personas. What we are finding immediately with the initiative that I talked about around accelerating growth is, as we're making the warm introductions, we need to be able to talk about the whole portfolio.
That's what the Weir Group customers traditionally are used to, like tell me everything that you're doing and what the opportunity is. So we see ourselves layering. We want to maintain that very credible depth of product knowledge and layer that with the enterprise ability to sell the whole portfolio. And we think we will need to continue to do both. And the way that we actually think the sales will happen, and someone in one of our team members in this room has come up with this, but really looking like we're going to be successful with one pain point and we will get in with a customer. And then from that point, it's very, very easy because of the great customer experience that our customers have with Micromine to go up or down the value chain.
Yeah.
But just to add to that, I think there's a couple of things to say. First of all, we think there is a massive opportunity to keep doing what Kristen just said in terms of point solutions to geologists and mine planners and so on. But one of the things that we see across the industry is that the big miners have software proliferation and headaches all over the place in terms of massive diversity of products across all of their sites, which drives problems in terms of licensing, procurement, so on and so forth. So they've got a headache about how do we make this simpler? How do we streamline? How do we consolidate our suppliers in software, as we have done in some of the equipment spaces as well?
So there's a driver there of that enterprise sale happening at our customers today. And we want to tap into that alongside maintaining that absolute credibility with the local level personas as well. So as Kristen said, it is going to be multi-layered.
That's very kind. Thank you.
Hi, it's Lushan Weththasinghe from J.P. Morgan. The first question is just on, you talked about the vendor market and the white space market. Just maybe a bit of color on what the difference is between the two. And it sounds like you're targeting more the vendor market. I guess just why that specifically?
Okay. So if we break that down again, so 3.8 billion of total addressable market. So think of that first, 3.8 billion. And then within that, two billion. So inside that circle, two billion of vendor market.
So what we mean by vendor in particular is that there is, so for the products that we presented, the space from exploration to extraction, there is a competitor product or a Micromine product being used to undertake that activity. So that is what we mean by vendor. It's competitive space. It's us or a competitor in that space for all the core capabilities that we offer through our software. Then when we think about what our strategy is, all three of the businesses are in slightly different spaces. So Micromine, being a very mature business with a tier one set of products, is operating predominantly in the vendor space. So it's well-known, it's very mature markets, and we're operating in a vendor space. And we've told you the reasons why we have a right to win in that space.
When we think about the Motion Metrics products, in most cases, Motion Metrics is operating in a white space. So there isn't an existing product. And in most times, we are presenting the technology as a new technology that customers have never seen or experienced. So that's white space. When we think about PlaTS, it's actually right on the borderline because what it's doing in that tier two space is it's all white space for it. And it will continue to win in the white space of tier two. But as it's now maturing, it's starting to be able to compete and contest in the vendor space. And we'll see it do both of those.
Okay. Thank you very much. And the second question is just on the growth rates. I think you talked about the vendor market growing 10% per annum.
Obviously, your businesses, you expect to outgrow, but what's the sort of underlying assumption that 10%? Are you assuming an OE supercycle within that? And I guess how would that change those assumptions?
No, we're not assuming an OE supercycle in that. That is what the market has historically grown at and what we expected to grow in the future in terms of addressable market, in terms of pricing, in terms of value creation through additional features, through the momentum program that we talked about. So that's a well-understood and expected sort of overarching growth figure for the market.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Jonathan.
Yes, good afternoon. It's Jonathan from Barclays. Thank you for the presentation. Just one question, please. I think in your slide, you talk about 20% to 30% growth for Micromine.
If we kind of look at the deal metrics or to make the deal work for Micromine, does that growth have to be fast? And if it does, how are you going to deliver that?
Yeah, well, I think that 20% to 30% we talked about is sort of the blended rate for all three of those software businesses that are coming together. And we'll see different rates within those businesses. For the core Micromine business, we said at the time of the deal, this has grown at 25%. Under Weir ownership, we will grow it at least 25%, probably higher than that. And that's what drives the deal metrics. Motion Metrics, given some of the market dynamics we talked about, will probably grow at a slightly lower rate once we've done the conversion from upfront perpetual licenses to subscription.
And then through the long-term cycle, that combined business should be capable of growing at 20%-30%. So hence that range. But that core Micromine is 25%+ . And I know Kristen is very focused on that.
Yeah, hi. It's Stefan Klepp from BNP Paribas. I'm very boring here. I'm just having a follow-up question on the 20% to 30%. Can we break that as well? There's a price component in there. It has to be, yeah? And if you look into 25% growth of the past, how much was the pricing component in the past? What are you modeling in the future? And what kind of duration of growth are you saying? So are you going to say you're going to grow the 20% to 30%? Are we talking three years? Are we talking five years? Are we talking two years?
What's basically the phasing what you see here with the growth?
Yeah, well, the core Micromine business, our acquisition criteria is to deliver our weighted average cost of capital in the third year. We got to deliver that level of growth to enable that. So that's the focus. We think beyond that, we should be able to keep the growth rates enduring at that kind of level. But for the deal model, it was critical in the first three years that we highlighted that. And given the historic growth track record of Micromine, plus all the benefits of now leveraging the Weir network, which we're early days, but we've got some great, encouraging signs of success, that's why we feel particularly good at that. In terms of pricing, historically, the business has probably done high single-digit pricing each year. And the rest is the software equivalent of volume share growth.
In the future, it's worthwhile thinking about high single-digit models.
Yeah. Back to Andy.
Back to me again. You talked in your presentation, Jon, about compounding M&A, which might surprise one or two people saying you just spent a lot of money on software. How do we think about future M&A? Are these things that you need to buy to have a full service proposition from the geologist down into the pit that you need, that you've got gaps now? Or are these kind of nice-to-haves, which means that your market position from a software perspective, which is already strong, kind of gets stronger, or maybe even acts as a defensive mechanism to stop your peers having it? I'm just thinking about M&A and that thought process.
If you have must-buys, are you prepared to push that net debt to EBITDA up beyond historical levels if two or three must-buys come in at the same time and then get Brian to generate some more cash going forward?
I'll let Kristen just comment, come back to the software sort of pipeline in terms of how we're thinking about that specifically for that business. Stepping above that, my comment was about all of Weir. Just as we see opportunities, which Kristen will talk about in terms of software and digital capability to enhance what we've got today and accelerate our strategy, we continue to see opportunities for other geographic infills, for product extensions, new technologies to supplement what we're doing in ESCO and minerals on the hardware and equipment side, including digital, which Ole will talk about a couple of examples of.
We've done really, really small deals there to bring some AI capability to minerals. So we're very, very focused on those three buckets. And as I said, in 2025, after a relatively quiet couple of years, where I would say we've been very, very disciplined in deciding particularly what we didn't want to buy, waiting for the right things to come along, of course, we had a very busy year in 2025 where the things that we'd been waiting for came to fruition. And we expect to continue in that vein of bolt-ons. We should generate, as we move forward, GBP 250 million to GBP 300 million of free cash a year. Priority A, we think there's a big enough pipeline of M&A that will meet our strategic and financial criteria to keep doing that each year. It might be a bit more lumpy, timing and so on and so forth.
But that is our intent. Software, Kristen.
Yeah, the very short answer to one of your questions was, no, there's nothing that we must do in the space that we are dominating and want to continue to dominate. I'll say it for the third time, I'm sure, but we're super excited about how the PlaTS product fits so well into the portfolio. So really, we see the ability now with bringing the businesses together to integrate a wonderful opportunity just to have domain expertise across exploration to extraction. The really kind of very cool part is we are having a lot of opportunities come to us. We have a lot of integration work that we're working on and just huge opportunities to respond to customers that we haven't spoken to before now that we're part of. We have access to every mine site in the world through the Weir footprint.
I think what we're planning to, what we are currently doing is we're really being disciplined around thinking through all the opportunities that are coming to us, putting together a very disciplined, prioritized playbook about what's going to make sense. But we're really thinking about that for 2027 and beyond because right now, we just want to get disciplined about the thinking, the quality of the thinking that will go into what bolt-ons are going to make sense with a great, great pipeline coming to us.
Thank you.
There was a question at the back, and then we're running behind a bit. We need to break after that one, if that's okay.
Hi, it's Rory from Ox Capital. I'm at the back because I was a little bit late. Apologies for that. My question's on software margins.
I think you mentioned Motion Metrics shifting from a perpetual license to a SaaS model. Just wondered if there were any sort of margin dynamics to think about there. Thanks.
Yeah, I think that what we've seen and learned through all of the efforts that we've put into the Micromine business is just what a great model it is. And we see a similar model in PlaTS. It's a full subscription business. And that really gives us confidence about what we can do with the Motion Metrics business. Motion Metrics has been on a journey to convert to subscription. And that journey has been going really well. And some regions within Weir have adopted subscription more quickly than others.
But now, with the capability and experience of the Micromine and PlaTS team, we feel very confident that we can put the right plan in place to move our customers and move our new business into subscription. And that certainly comes with the scaling factor of the recurring revenue.
Great. We now have a 20-minute break. Sorry. We need to let people experience the presentations, demos outside. And so back in 20 minutes, please.
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Do you see any more stragglers coming in?
Should I launch here?
We're good to go, Sean?
Great. Thanks. Well, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Sean Fitzgerald. I have the honor to lead Weir's ESCO division. ESCO is a 112-year-old division headquartered in the United States, and we've been a proud part of Weir since 2018.
We are the global leader in mining and infrastructure, ground engaging tools, attachments, and wear parts. With a team of over 2,500 people operating and serving our customers in more than 90 countries across six continents. Since joining Weir in 2018, ESCO has operationalized Weir's relentless focus on Performance Excellence, particularly in capacity optimization and continuous improvement of our lean processes to ensure we are always ready to serve our customers. In addition to allowing us to better serve our customers, Performance Excellence has enabled us to invest in what sets ESCO apart: the unbeatable combination of best-in-class technology coupled with the customer intimacy from our go direct strategy. All this improvement has been underpinned with Weir's march toward Zero Harm. In fact, ESCO's total incident rate is less than half what it was when we joined the Weir family.
As we look forward, our focus is on utilizing the operational leverage that performance excellence has provided to accelerate growth. We are launching multiple new products, which I'll speak about in more detail in a minute. We plan to further grow our go direct presence, which I'll also touch on. The formula remains constant: best-in-class technology coupled with customer intimacy. A mine is a complex operation, and each one is unique. Therefore, to operate safely and efficiently, the best mines have great supplier partners. By going direct to our customers, we understand our customers' challenges and can apply our technology to optimize their operation. Simply put, we offer our customers a commitment. We provide the best technology, and we are always ready to serve. Your operation will never stop because of ESCO.
That kind of commitment is one of the reasons why we invest in our global operations of foundries and customer service capabilities. I want to just briefly touch on this, as it is our operational network that forms a key component of our foundation for growth. ESCO is unique in our space in that we maintain tight control of our proprietary product designs. This not only ensures we have complete control of our service to our customers from design to delivery, but also ensures that our products are made to our high-quality standards and our intellectual property is protected throughout the process. Some of you were here two years ago at our last Capital Markets Day. At that time, I was committing ESCO to key operational milestones such as the opening of our newest foundry in Suzhou, China, and key performance improvements across our network.
In short, we met or exceeded all our commitments. We made significant improvements across our entire network in safety, quality, and cost. We did this while opening our newest foundry ahead of schedule, under budget, and exceeding our planned performance in both tons produced and cost. Our global foundry network and customer service operations ensure we produce quality product at a competitive cost for every market. As I mentioned earlier, our network enables us to always have product ready to serve our customers anywhere in the world, despite any macro shocks or trade disruptions, which I think we can all agree have been constant the past several years. Most importantly, our operations network provides a foundation for growth. By operating our own foundry network, we can develop and launch industry-leading technology and ensure our intellectual property is protected.
I think the best way to illustrate this is with an example of our latest product launch, Nexsys. Now, before I dive too deep into Nexsys, I think it's important to distinguish something. When Kristen was up here, she was talking about Nexus, N-E-X-U-S. That was Kristen's version of Nexus, if you will. For ESCO, Nexsys, N-E-X-S-Y-S, and we're not trying to confuse anybody, but obviously, great minds think alike. We are the undisputed leader in mining ground engaging tools, and Nexsys is our latest mining GET technology and a step function change for the industry. We have a long legacy of leading in GET. We introduced the Whistler Plus and Nemisys systems, which have become the industry standard in performance and reliability. Nexsys builds on this legacy by providing longer wear life, reduced maintenance, and improved safety for our customers.
Simply put, we set out to make the best even better. We worked with customers to understand their pain points, then apply technology to further reduce their total cost of ownership. We launched Nexsys for cable shovels in late 2024, after 3+ years and over 15,000 hours of field trials across multiple sites, continents, and applications. We know what it can do, and customers are responding. Dozens of customers have already switched to this system, including every single trial site customer. The market clearly sees the value. Nexsys has proven performance in increasing tooth and adapter life by 15% and 50%, respectively, and reducing lip maintenance by 40%. The photo on the screen is from a mine in northern Brazil I visited recently and heard firsthand from the customer the value Nexsys offers.
This is one of our trial sites, and the customer has already committed to multiple systems for their fleet. Nexsys will soon be expanded to our hydraulic shovel offering. We currently have components of Nexsys for hydraulic shovels being tested at customer sites, with a full launch scheduled for 2027. The step function value improvement of Nexsys over legacy systems ensures that we will maintain our industry-leading position as it becomes a key driver for our growth. Nexsys is just one of the many products that we have launched recently or are planning to launch in the next couple of years as we continue to invest in our entire portfolio. We serve a market of over GBP 2 billion per annum across both the mining and infrastructure segments.
We plan to launch multiple new products across these segments in the next several years, which allow us to maintain our industry-leading total cost of ownership across the portfolio. I already mentioned Nexsys, which is now deploying with cable shovels, but will soon be available across every major digging machine platform. ESCO GET is used on nearly half of these major diggers and growing as we track and pursue every single machine in the market. Capital buckets continue to be a strong growth segment for us as we use our technology leadership to further move along the customer's value chain and grow from our current 10% share position. We have grown rapidly in buckets for cable shovels with our Production Master system. In a minute, I'll highlight how we have now applied this technology to hydraulic shovels in order to further expand in new markets.
With respect to infrastructure, in early 2026, we will launch Vertisys. Like Nexsys, Vertisys builds on ESCO's already industry-leading construction GET platform. Again, the best is now better. Vertisys has been undergoing extensive field validation, which has proven its superior performance by further extending wear life and providing safer and easier maintenance to our customers. All these products have several things in common. They are designed by our world-class engineering and metallurgy teams. They undergo extensive field testing and validation to ensure performance. They are manufactured in-house to ensure quality and IP protection, and they are agnostic to the OEM of the major digger on which they're employed, which allows our products to maximize the addressable market, which comprises over 90% of our revenue. These products not only ensure we will maintain our industry-leading position, but allow us to further grow with technology and customer intimacy.
A great example of this is our recently launched Production Master for hydraulic shovel bucket. The Australian market offers a great example of the regional growth we are achieving through new products. Australia is the largest hydraulic shovel market globally and offers us a great opportunity for growth. While ESCO is the leader in the Australian mining GET market, we have the opportunity to further grow along our customer's value chain by growing in buckets, especially hydraulic buckets. We sat down with our customers to thoroughly understand their pain points. These challenges included inefficient bucket loads, also known as pass matching, with their trucker fleet and significant wear leading to additional maintenance. We then applied our technical knowledge and design capabilities to purpose design a new hydraulic shovel bucket that can be easily customized for our customers' unique applications and challenges. The results have been phenomenal.
Our design is lighter, allowing for greater loads with each dig, thus improving pass matching, and our design is more robust in the key areas of wear, which allow our customers to lengthen their maintenance cycles. And when matched with Weir's digital capabilities like Motion Metrics, our customers can see the improvement for themselves. All this has led to incredible growth in this key market. In the past two years, we have grown our Australian bucket business 7X, with a lot of opportunity in front of us. And remember, every one of our buckets comes with ESCO's proprietary GET system. We have plans to expand in every region, but one of the most exciting new opportunities for us is our plans to go direct in the Chilean market. Chile is the world's largest copper mining market and the fourth largest mining market overall.
Since 2007, ESCO has been in a joint venture with a local partner, which has acted as our commercial dealer in Chile. While it has been a successful JV, we know we can be even more successful in this critical market if we go direct to our customers. We know this because of the greater success we have throughout the rest of South America. Therefore, ESCO plans to go direct in Chile no later than the second half of 2027. This is a great opportunity for us to apply our best-in-class technology, like our new Nexsys system, directly to our Chilean customers. We have been planning this for quite some time and are ready to serve the Chilean market. In addition, our sister division, Minerals, has always been going direct in Chile and already has a strong commercial and operational presence that we can leverage to expand quickly in this market.
In fact, we are working closely with Minerals and Software Solutions on many growth opportunities. Together, the Weir divisions provide a compelling solution for our customers. In summary, ESCO is an industry leader that is aggressively accelerating growth with new products and geographically. We have a global network that can serve our customers despite macro disruptions while protecting our intellectual property by manufacturing in-house, safely, with quality, and at the right cost position. Our strategy remains constant. We provide the unbeatable combination of best-in-class technology with unmatched customer intimacy to apply that technology that can only come from our go direct presence. Now, I'd like to turn the presentation over to Andrew Neilson , President of Weir Minerals Division, who will provide more detail on that division's great growth opportunities. Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Sean, and good afternoon, everyone.
I'm pleased to walk you through how Minerals is evolving from a product-centric business into a digitally-enabled broader solutions provider, driving sustainable growth and giving me the confidence we can continue to grow after-market revenues at mid to upper single digits, as we have done consistently over the past decade. Over the past few years, we've streamlined our business, adopted lean practices, invested in best-in-class systems, and refined our operating model. This has enabled us to create a platform that retains our agile, customer-centric business model while benefiting from our global scale. For example, our continuous improvement program wins, and quality process is adopted from automotive industry, which has delivered an annual reduction of over GBP 3 million in cost of poor quality alone. We have closed or reconfigured over a dozen sites and service centers, ensuring we have the right capacity and capabilities where we need it.
And this will support over GBP 30 million in capacity optimization benefits in 2026. We've invested some of these benefits to support expanding our product and digital offering, increasing research and development, while still expecting to deliver around 400 bp s of margin improvement over the past three years, increasing our operating margins to market-leading levels. With that solid foundation, we're now shifting to growth, and this is what I want to talk to you about today. We're accelerating our evolution towards solution selling, combining products in our portfolio to offer unique solutions to our customers, using digital insights to provide further differentiation. We've adopted best practice strategic account management processes to engage with our customers earlier in the process and get a larger share of wallet.
We're expanding our expertise in minerals processing, not just discrete products, alongside investing in disruptive technologies to deliver step changes in mine productivity. None of this will detract from accelerating our Continuous Improvement journey, and we will leverage AI and investments in new technologies to ensure our manufacturing supply chain costs are optimized. This includes investing where we see the potential to accelerate our journey to Zero Harm. I'm a big believer that a lean plant is a safe plant, and Zero Harm is embedded in our philosophy across the business. I'd now like to share a video with you that takes you on our growth journey and illustrates the strength and breadth of our products and services today.
Pumps are the beating heart of a mine. Mission critical and operating 24/7.
Our Warman and Geho pump technologies put Weir at the center of our customers' processes at mining operations across the world, bringing them high productivity, lowest total cost of ownership, and a global service center network that is second to none. With this established installed base as our foundation, we have innovated and invested, extending Weir's signature engineering quality and service across the minerals processing operation, combining products and adding new technologies to create transformative end-to-end solutions, spanning the processing circuits across comminution, separation, and tailings. At today's mines and those for the future, we are amplifying the impact of our solutions with flow sheets that use less energy, use water wisely, and create less waste, combining productivity and sustainability to deliver mining technology for a sustainable future,
so as you can see, we've expanded our offering beyond pumps.
The focus when I joined Weir 16 years ago was to encompass the full minerals processing flow sheet, comminution, separation, and tailings. And this positions Weir to support both greenfield and brownfield projects, delivering efficiency, sustainability, and scalability. Our extensive service center footprint ensures proximity to customers and reinforces our commitment to long-term partnerships. And by expanding our flow sheet in this way, we've grown our addressable market around three times since 2010. While we remain focused on our core pump business, where we continue to be the clear market leader, our product line expansions mean we now have a much larger addressable market and products where we currently have a lower market share and a range of best-in-class technologies. Our unrivaled local relationships enable us to leverage this broader product portfolio, and we're always innovating to help mine operators increase capacity, improve productivity, and respond to changing conditions.
And this means sometimes we're creating our own capital market, proactively identifying ways to reduce customer costs and increase production. Examples range from pebble crushing with small HPGRs or crushers combined with screens, upgrading cyclones to our new CVD range, which offers a 2% increase in recoveries, or extending operating intervals between shutdowns with our latest pump upgrades and reducing tailings transport energy requirements with new pipeline lining technologies. And this is why I'm confident we can grow faster than the market over the coming years as a result. We strategically focus on equipment with strong after-market demand, as well as the most critical parts of the minerals processing circuit. Our core engineering skill sets around materials and hydraulics lend themselves well to these high wear-and-tear applications.
It also means our after-market support is critical to our customers, keeping mines running with service, spare, and wear parts, whatever the operating conditions. In a typical mid-sized 50 million ton per annum copper plant, original equipment may cost from GBP 60 million to GBP 125 million, with annual after-market potential of up to GBP 40 million each and every year. This underpins our resilience over those years, with minerals after-market growing almost 80% over the past decade. And in 2026, we will launch our first internally developed vertical stirred mill. This fills a gap in our prior offering, displacing the need for ball mills by offering materially lower energy costs, footprint, and recirculating load. Having recruited the top minds in the industry, we're confident our stirred mill will be the best in the market and will augment our industry-leading HPGR product.
We've also been evolving our downstream offering by partnering with innovative technology leaders in coarse particle separation, which further reduces the level of recirculation in a processing circuit and improves recovery levels. Our investment in P29 technology with CiDRA is an example of this. We were taking a stake in helping develop the potential next step change technology in minerals processing. The GBP 53 million win at Reko Diq is a great example of this broader mill circuit offering in action on a greenfield development. It shows that expanding our flow sheet and investing in new technology was a wise choice. A decade ago, without our comminution offering, we couldn't have competed for such a project. Our deep customer relationships at all levels ensured our early involvement, demonstrating our flow sheet was 25% more inefficient than the alternatives, leading to the customer selecting an HPGR-based circuit.
From this base, we've sold a range of screens, pumps, cyclones, and other products as part of an overall package solution from mill circuit through tailings, and this site will be a showcase for future customers, and we're already attracting interest. With an on-site service center being built, we will support after-market across this range of products, and our relationship also ensured ESCO GET will be first fit at the mine and supported from the same service center. Turning to our core slurry pump product line, we continue to develop our offering, pushing the boundaries of slurry pumping and using new technologies to extend our market leadership in a major brownfield expansion. The MCR 760 ordered HVC demonstrates the combination of our digital and core product strengths. This is the largest slurry pump in the world, with no competitor having a similar-sized installation.
We built our relationship on the existing concentrator ring around other installed products. The customer wanted higher output and less downtime, relying on Next Intelligent Solutions retrofitted to their cyclones for improved throughput, and support from our Kamloops service center was instrumental in facilitating this partnership, strengthening our operational capacity, and positioning us for continued growth, and as a result, we have dislodged a long-established competitor who had the original mill circuit pumps. Highland Valley Copper also proceeded with a Weir dewatering barge and high-efficiency tailings pumps, enhancing water recovery, reducing operating costs, and supporting sustainable mine life extension, and we're not just focused on the concentrator. Addressing tailings is an important opportunity driven by factors like extending mine life, freshwater usage, and increasing tailings management regulations. Our products offer unique solutions for customers. Regulatory pressure is intensifying worldwide.
Authorities are mandating safer tailings storage, stricter water usage limits, and higher environmental compliance following well-publicized incidents. In many jurisdictions, wet tailings dams are no longer acceptable. Operators must adopt thickened or dry stacking methods to maintain their license to operate. Our strategy to address this is clear: don't waste on waste. Traditional filter presses are expensive to buy, install, and run. They require large footprints and are energy and maintenance intensive. Instead, we focus on smarter approaches like hydraulic dewatering and near-dry stacking, which delivers faster, more efficient outcomes, and this matters because every mine faces one of two constraints: either tailings space is limited or water is a scarce resource. Our technologies include Geho for high-pressure hydro transport, Cavex cyclones for recovering coarse particles, and Enduron screens for dewatering, helping customers overcome these constraints.
At Codelco Talabre in Chile, we secured a GBP 40 million tailings transportation order for our Geho and Warman pumps, the largest single order for Geho pumps to date. These pumps will reliably transport tailings thickened up to around 70% solids over long distances, supporting the development of a new tailings pond that will extend the productive life of three major mines: Ministro Hales, Chuquicamata, and Radomiro Tomic. Without this expansion, these mines would have faced end-of-life constraints. Reducing water consumption and waste is critical for maintaining a license to operate globally, and Chile is no exception. Chilean regulations now mandate higher solids content and tailings with a minimum of 50% solids to improve stability and reduce water loss. The scale and efficiency of this project is unmatched, transporting over 10,000 dry tons per hour while using less energy than alternative technologies.
It delivers significant water recovery, improves tailings stability, and creates a reference site for large-scale sustainable tailings solutions in Latin America. At another major mine in Latin America and Mexico, a long-standing customer faced a critical challenge: a tailings facility needing capacity and escalating water consumption threatening the mine's license to operate. Our team partnered with the customer to deliver a breakthrough: our dynamic filtration process for near-dry stacking. The solution integrates advanced Weir technologies, Cavex hydrocyclones, Enduron dewatering screens, Warman p umps, and Next Intelligent Solutions to achieve solid contents of up to 75%. The result was a compact, efficient system that dramatically reduces water usage and tailings volumes, and the impact has been transformative: 35% freshwater savings, 67% reduction in tailings volumes, eliminating the need for a new tailings dam, and adding 15 years to the mine life, all while improving compliance and reducing environmental risk.
Financially, this process innovation delivered a GBP 7 million purchase order and was followed last month by an additional GBP 6 million order from another Mexican mine. We're leveraging this reference site-wide to create a pipeline of opportunities, again creating our own market and doing so. These projects deepen our customer relationships, drive recurring revenue, and reinforce our commitment to sustainability, all key pillars of Weir's equity case. Now, Ole Knudsen, our Senior Director of Digital, will provide further information about Next and how this will provide both a further competitive advantage around our products as well as generating revenue in its own right. Over to you, Ole.
Thank you, Andrew, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm Ole Knudsen, Senior Director of Digital in the Minerals Division. I've had almost 20 years in the mining industry.
Many of those have been in customer-facing roles, so I like to think I have a pretty good sense of what our customers need and where digital can really make a difference. I've had five fantastic years here at Weir, and before that, I spent a long stretch with another major mining OEM. More recently, I've had the privilege of being involved in the Micromine acquisition. That's a move I'm really excited about because I'm sure that we will together be unlocking a lot of new possibilities for our customers and for the industry, but back to the Minerals Division, where digital growth enablement is mainly about uplifting our core business, so enablement of our OE and our aftermarket. That said, we are also beginning to see that our digital solutions and the services can generate a new direct revenue stream on its own.
Within the Minerals Division, it is our Next Intelligent Solutions that drives the digital transformation, and we do that through tailored solutions for our core business products and services. For our customers, Next delivers lower total cost of ownership at the equipment level, and at production level, it delivers increased throughput as well as sustainable benefits from reduced energy and water use per ton. Next creates a distinct customer offering that builds customer lock-in, and at the same time, the predictive models will help improving our internal operational efficiency by us getting an understanding of what our customers need and when they need it. I guess more importantly, digital enablement is also about unlocking opportunities for innovative business models such as equipment as a service, leasing, and performance-based offerings, and that's a shift that will allow us to move from one-off equipment sales to sustainable recurring revenue streams.
Over the past three years, we've successfully onboarded more than 110 customer sites and 800 assets, and I think that's a clear proof point of the massive market opportunity ahead, both within our existing install base and through new equipment sales. So what is our Next Platform? In simple terms, it's a platform that gives our customers and our internal service teams clear visibility into equipment health and process health and performance. Furthermore, it enables optimized maintenance scheduling and process optimization through AI-powered solutions. When we built the foundation for the platform back in 2021, we had an equipment-focused approach, but we quickly expanded to a solution-focused that allows our intelligent equipment working efficiently in tandem. And that gives quite a few advantages in terms of process efficiency. For us, it's always been essential to move beyond point solutions that only address standalone challenges.
Instead, we have built an integrated platform that holistically benefits from our OEM advantage, and that's from design and engineering and years of operating data to our local service capabilities. Next stands out by offering actionable recommendations enhanced with AI and OEM expertise. Our customers, they can act on these recommendations themselves, or if they have service agreements, our boots on the ground will help handling the required actions. AI capabilities are a key priority, which is why we in 2023 acquired SentianAI , a Swedish company specialized in process optimization through AI. And this year, we partnered with Viking Analytics to leverage their AI-driven predictive maintenance solutions. Both these capabilities are now fully integrated into our Next Platform as two of the key differentiators. As we advance our offerings towards intelligent automation and autonomous operations, we're seeing a fundamental shift in how we engage with our customers.
Digital and data are creating a single source of truth, an aligned decision-making platform that transforms our relationship from a traditional supplier status into true partnerships. We are uniquely positioned to deliver capabilities and value that go far beyond the monitoring solutions available in the market today. An example here is the Warman pump, where I want to highlight just a couple of the features that are unique to us as the OEM. The first is performance monitoring. That's a feature that drives an energy and production-efficient agenda. So we provide real-time visibility into how well the pump is operating on its performance curve. And that's only possible because our platform has proprietary pump models embedded. The second is integrated wear sensing. Our wear sensors are built directly into the physical design of the equipment, and by that, enabling continuous accurate measurement of component health.
Both these capabilities enable preventive and AI-driven service options, where we support our customers in planning maintenance at exactly the right time. And of course, with the new spares delivered and installed in time. So what's in it for our customers? They avoid costly unplanned downtime, they reduce maintenance costs, and they improve throughput. As highlighted here, not having early fault detection and prevention of unplanned stoppages can be very expensive. For a large copper or gold operation, downtime of a pump like this can cost up to $150,000 per hour in lost production. We just looked at the Warman pump, but we are, of course, rapidly scaling these capabilities across our entire equipment portfolio. I'll now share two examples of how our digital solutions deliver real operational benefits for customers, and it's also two examples of how Next is fueling growth for us.
One is a new direct revenue stream coming from digital, and the other is about uplifting our traditional core business. Starting with how we see the uplifting of our core business, this case is for Latin America, where we in 2023 introduced a new solution for wear monitoring of slurry pipelines. The goal here is fairly simple: monitor the wear to prevent costly unplanned downtime. So we developed the Next-enabled hoses and spools, and this equipment is now streaming wear data directly to our service teams, and that allows for early intervention when wear becomes critical. And by that, we are driving proactive maintenance planning and ensuring timely stock availability. For our customers, the result is reduced critical downtime and improved maintenance planning. For us, this unique and fully integrated digital solution has delivered an annual uplift of GBP 10 million in sales across Latin America.
This case here clearly shows how digital empowerment drives sustained business growth by turning differentiation and actionable insights into top-line impact. Please note that this case is just for one digital solution and in one region only. Of course, we're scaling this globally. The second case where our solutions and services are generating direct revenue is from the Middle East, where our customer was battling with ongoing failures in their PD pumps. They had a standard monitoring system already, but what they didn't have was this expert-driven context to add to the data they got. Instead, they came to us to see whether we, with our OEM expertise combined with our AI-powered platform, could design a solution that added the needed features and expertise to address the main failure modes.
In this case, the existing pumps were not wear equipment, but we have still been able to turn data into important tools and services addressing these challenges. This project has led to a GBP 1.6 million order, direct digital order, with the potential to expand the OE install base through data-driven insights. So as you can see, Next is already delivering measurable value in the field for our customers and for us, and I'm confident we've built a solid foundation to scale even further. So thank you, and back to you again, Andrew.
Okay, thanks, Ole. With aftermarket growth projected at around 7% per annum driven by pricing, market share expansion, declining ore grades, and increased production, digital solutions can play a significant role in sustaining this upper single-digit growth. This is achieved by delivering added value to customers through reduced downtime and enhanced operational optimization.
While this growth has been consistent, as we've illustrated today, with our broader offering and Next Intelligent Solutions, we have the potential to accelerate the algorithm further and continue to grow ahead of our markets through the cycle. So in closing, our growth strategy is anchored in delivering mission-critical solutions that keep customers operating at peak performance. We've built a targeted portfolio of digital tools designed to minimize downtime and maximize throughput, strengthening our minerals core and accelerating aftermarket opportunities. At the same time, we've extended our product and solutions offering with future-facing technologies that apply to both brownfield and greenfield projects. I'll now hand you over to Brian, who'll take you through an update on performance excellence.
Thank you, Andrew, and good afternoon, everyone. As Jon mentioned at the start of today, we are committed to delivering operating profit margins sustainably above 20% from 2026.
This has been driven by many factors, but a key to this was the success of our Performance Excellence program. As we enter the final year of the program, we are well on track to deliver our commitment of GBP 80 million of cumulative savings. Although the formal program nears completion, we will continue to drive efficiencies across our business, transitioning from Performance Excellence to driving continuous improvement. As an organization, we have built the lean operations muscle, allowing us to drive and optimize customer fulfillment through clean and agile operations. Over the past three years, we have shuttered or reconfigured operations across our higher-cost locations and consolidated these into lower-cost geographies, which are also closer to our customers. This will provide us with an enduring operating margin benefit over time.
In addition to our lean journey, we are leveraging technology to deliver high-quality, efficient business processes through global business services. Combined, we expect these initiatives to contribute 75% of our total performance excellence run-rate savings in 2026. While performance excellence as a program is coming to a close, we will continue to develop this muscle, which puts more control in our hands to further grow margins and manage headwinds such as revenue mix or future OpEx investments, which will inevitably impact our business. Through these initiatives, we are committed to our goal of maintaining best-in-class operating margins and cash conversion in our industry. When fully embedded through our organization, the lean mindset is a very powerful tool for continuous improvement. Part of lean's power comes from the simplicity of its principles and the ability to be repeated over and over, compounding operational benefits over time.
Through Performance Excellence, we embedded the wins and CI frameworks across our operations in minerals and ESCO divisions. The benefit of these frameworks is clear. We have seen lead times between request and delivery of customer quotes reduced, with increased on-time delivery. The team has driven first-pass quality improvements while also reducing stranded inventory. These outcomes are both critical to our margin improvement and cash management strategies. Most of all, improvements in these key delivery metrics drive customer satisfaction, further differentiating Weir, our level of service and customer care from the competition. A guiding principle of our Performance Excellence program is to deliver improved margins while maintaining the high level of frontline interactions our customers expect and want from Weir. With this principle in mind, we have developed and deployed a bespoke shared service model we call Weir Business Services, or WBS.
As we further invest in our IT infrastructure, the power and capabilities of WBS will in kind expand. It will expand our offering to our businesses and provide the flexibility to react to customer and market demands without increasing our overheads. Over time, we expect to continue our drop-through trajectory by decoupling growth in the businesses from SG&A expense. While individually, our businesses are subject to distinctive profitability levers, as a whole, they benefit from the operating leverage inherent in the aftermarket-focused business models, combined with continuous improvement initiatives. So starting with minerals, where we expect to deliver low to mid-20% operating margins through the cycle, fluctuating predominantly due to annual changes in original equipment and aftermarket mix. We similarly expect ESCO to deliver low 20% operating margins, subject to annual changes between product lines.
Finally, over the midterm, we expect our software solution business to deliver mid-40% margins and beyond, as the business high growth rates drive scale from our initial investments in people and in infrastructure. In summary, through portfolio optimization and a clear vision to generate resilient and predictable returns, we have built three fantastic businesses, which over the long term, we expect to deliver industry-leading operating margins sustainably above that 20%. With that, I would like to hand back to Jon for his closing remarks.
Thank you very much, Brian, and thank you to the rest of the speaker team. I hope the audience has found those presentations insightful and as exciting as I find them. Now, as you can see, Weir is a very different business to the one of 10 years ago, focused on mining, with trusted brands, leading technologies, and truly differentiated customer service.
We are strongly positioned to benefit from the multi-decade market tailwinds brought by global demand for critical metals and the adoption of these new technologies that will enable sustainable mining. Our markets are strong, and as we grow our highly engineered, mission-critical end-to-end hardware and software solutions, so too will our market share. Finally, leveraging sector-leading margins and consistent free cash conversion, we have optionality to best deploy our capital to drive total shareholder returns, and I hope, like me, you feel there is a tremendous opportunity ahead for us to unlock the potential for digital technology to drive productivity and sustainability in mining. In adding Micromine to our portfolio, we now have the broadest suite of mining software solutions in the market. In addition, with Next, we are broadening the competitive moat of our engineered solutions with connected, intelligent products.
Our actions today put us on a clear path towards Mine-to-Mill data integration, a step change in mining productivity while incrementally delivering higher yields and lower downtime. Weir is a great business with a strong, scalable platform for growth. Wherever opportunities come, either through large expansion projects or regular de-bottlenecking, our razor-razor blade business model means as our install base of equipment grows, so does our recurring high-margin aftermarket revenue. Our highly complementary software solutions business adds even greater scale and profitability to this model and supports our capacity to generate strong cash flows. As we delever from acquisitions, we'll focus on maintaining an active M&A pipeline to further compound our strong organic growth. Together, the long-term opportunity for Weir is tremendously exciting. There is clear demand for critical metals, and our customers recognize the need for new solutions to drive growth.
Through our strategy, we're creating a global leader in both engineered hardware and software solutions for mining. And that combination will accelerate our resilient and predictable growth model through new solutions, geographic expansion, and M&A. And finally, over the longer term, contributions from software solutions will accelerate growth toward the higher end of our three-cycle guidance. And that's why I'm so confident we have a bright future ahead. So thank you for your time and attention. We're now going to have another short break with the opportunity to see some of the demos, and then the executive team will return for a further Q&A section on everything you've heard today, and I look forward to that. Thank you.
The future of our planet rests on the transition to renewable energy. A transition powered by the metals and the minerals provided by the global mining industry.
We support our mining customers in delivering these resources, bringing together our expertise, our world-class engineering, advanced materials science, and intelligent automation to deliver the innovative technologies and solutions that make it possible to move less rock, use less energy, use water wisely, and create less waste. Nobody works with more mines than Weir. Nobody works more closely with their customers than we do. We are the end-to-end innovators working together to shape a better future, a more productive future, a more sustainable future from the ground up. We are Weir, and we create mining technology for a sustainable future.
Introducing Next Intelligent Solutions, the most advanced digitally empowered connection between you and your mine. The mining industry is evolving rapidly. To meet sustainability goals and drive progress, innovation, workforce development, and collaboration are essential to tackle increased production targets.
At Weir, we're working shoulder to shoulder with miners all over the world, and we understand what is needed to maximize your mine's full potential. We know there's a very real need to gather valuable data and apply the learning in a simple, easy-to-use solution that will lead to better results, both in terms of reaching production targets and your own goals. Next Intelligent Solutions deliver actionable insights directly to you, surrounding you with knowledge from all four corners of the mine site so that you can customize, fine-tune, and optimize your operations to reach peak performance. Mines that are already benefiting from using Next Intelligent Solutions have been able to gain valuable insight, optimize equipment with actionable recommendations, and enable predictive monitoring and automation that leads to increased uptime and optimized production. Surround yourself with knowledge.
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I'm a geologist by profession. I spent a number of years in Australia. Micromine Origin allows us that confidence. The ease at which we're able to understand the workflow is the time saving that we will experience with not just the ease in the process, but obviously the introduction of AI-grade Copilot, a grade estimator. This has massively improved the time it takes to process that data. Micromine
Advance enabled me, with the limited data that we had available at the time, to actually produce a defensible, auditable mine plan in record time to make a very quick decision in terms of how we foresee this mine being developed in the future. It is the quickest scheduling engine that I've seen when it comes to processing time.
With Advance, with the support that I've been given in terms of functionality in the program, it's as easy as making a call to the guys on the development side.
My day-to-day focus is mainly improving Pitram and helping integrate it into our operations and supporting our operators and team leaders. Overall, better efficiency and increasing our productivity and producing more. Now we can actually see what's happening during the shift instead of after the shift. It's something that you can't really get, which I've not yet seen in any application yet. I don't know whether those applications can do it, but that's what puts it ahead of the pack. I would highly recommend it. It is the best underground metals planning software that is available. It's tailored for you. For a mining engineer, it's tailored for you. So it's quicker, yes. It's easier, yes.
The future of our planet rests on the transition to renewable energy. A transition powered by the metals and the minerals provided by the global mining industry. We support our mining customers in delivering these resources, bringing together our expertise, our world-class engineering, advanced materials science, and intelligent automation to deliver the innovative technologies and solutions that make it possible to move less rock, use less energy, use water wisely, and create less waste. Nobody works with more mines than we are. Nobody works more closely with their customers than we do. We are the end-to-end innovators working together to shape a better future, a more productive future, a more sustainable future from the ground up. We are Weir, and we create mining technology for a sustainable future.
Introducing Next Intelligent Solutions, the most advanced digitally empowered connection between you and your mine. The mining industry is evolving rapidly.
To meet sustainability goals and drive progress, innovation, workforce development, and collaboration are essential to tackle increased production targets. At Weir, we're working shoulder to shoulder with miners all over the world, and we understand what is needed to maximize your mine's full potential. We know there's a very real need to gather valuable data and apply the learning in a simple, easy-to-use solution that will lead to better results, both in terms of reaching production targets and your own goals. Next Intelligent Solutions deliver actionable insights directly to you, surrounding you with knowledge from all four corners of the mine site so that you can customize, fine-tune, and optimize your operations to reach peak performance.
Mines that are already benefiting from using Next Intelligent Solutions have been able to gain valuable insight, optimize equipment with actionable recommendations, and enable predictive monitoring and automation that leads to increased uptime and optimized production. Surround yourself with knowledge. Discover how Weir's Next Intelligent Solutions can help you reach next levels of performance.
Okay, we're good to go? Yeah. All right. Welcome back, everybody. Hope you enjoyed interacting with all of the digital capability and other presentations outside. And now it's open forum for Q&A, so please fire away. Jonathan, do you want to start?
Hi, it's Jonathan from Barclays. I just have three questions, please. First one is just on ESCO and just coming back to that sort of Chile opportunity and going direct in Chile. How is that going to operate?
Is that you actually setting up your own network there, or is that you buying the distributor? And in terms of the sort of profitability uplift from your strategy relative to what you do now, can you just give us a rough feel of how that can improve? That was the first one. The second question, or the second question was just in terms of margin and obviously the margin targets you put out there for the various businesses. I think if we take a sort of a rough mix of where we think those businesses or those product lines can be, it kind of gives you a margin of potentially sort of mid-25s for Weir if everything goes in the right direction. I mean, is that completely out of the question? So that was the second one.
And then the third one was just, again, just looking at ESCO versus minerals. Why can't those businesses both generate the same level of margin? Is there something structural? I know you mentioned product mix. So if that is the case, what are the product groups within ESCO that really sort of drag that potential margin down, please?
Thank you. Well, Sean, why don't you deal with the Chile question? I want to answer the margin question first, but then others can chip in.
First of all, I'm excited that ESCO got the first question. That was fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, it was $20 well paid. Thank you for that.
Now, as I mentioned, so I think the question was how we plan to go direct in Chile and how we plan to enter the Chilean market, but it's go direct.
So no, we're not going to go through a dealer. That's not our intent at all. We do best when we're on the ground with our customers solving their problems, as I mentioned. We know this well throughout the world, and we know it well in South America specifically. I mean, we do it in Peru, we do it in Brazil, we do it everywhere else. So that's the plan is to go direct to our customers in Chile. I mean, as I mentioned, the great news is that our sister division, Minerals, has been going direct for a long time now. So what that's going to help us is if you look at where the mining operations are, Minerals already has some infrastructure to support customers. We can leverage right off of that.
So we're going to be able to accelerate our ability to go direct because we already have a sister division that's got some of that infrastructure set up that we can just leverage. We've done that in different pockets around the world. As we enter new regions, we're always able to help each other kind of go faster. So go direct, and we'll go faster working with our sister division.
Yeah, so I think that on the margins, Jonathan, the way that we've tried to set this up is to say, look, we need to get to 20% margins+ because in our view, that's the hallmark of quality that we've always felt the business is capable of, and that's where we wanted to be and should be, and we're now there. We'll get there this year, and then for beyond that, it's sustainably above 20%.
Now, if you imagine a scenario where there's no CapEx cycle, we see no other opportunity to invest in innovation and R&D, and we have a perfect world with no need for cushions and contingencies, then the margins would probably keep crawling up 50 bps, 100 bp s a year, but we know that's not going to happen. So the whole setup is to say we believe that we can be sustainably above 20% operating margins as a company, whatever happens. So if we have a CapEx cycle and it dilutes Andrew's margins, we're above 20%. If we see we want to invest GBP 10 million or GBP 20 million in some potential breakthrough technology, which we want to have, we have the flexibility to do that.
If something goes wrong in the world, which is probably highly likely, we've got enough cushion within our commitment to the market to be able to ride through that and in any scenario still be above 20%. So that's the way we've set it up. And so in some years, if some of those factors are not that strong, you'll see potentially a bit higher margins, but particularly if that CapEx cycle comes through, then that's going to be a depressing effect, certainly for Minerals, but we will remain at least a 20% operating margin company. So we've worked so hard over the last few years to build the track record of consistent delivery, meeting the targets and so on, and we just want to keep doing that in the future, which is why we've sort of framed the whole thing in that way.
I don't know, Brian or Andrew, if you want to add to that.
I'm just smiling because I got asked that question out there, and I gave the same exact answer, so that wasn't pre-rehearsed, but no, I agree with everything that Jon said. We need that flexibility, but in the perfect world, you will see it slide up.
The structural difference between ESCO and Minerals, is there just any sort of views there? Just why they can't essentially be the same margin?
I mean, I think you're splitting the difference to say they're going to be massively different. We said low- to mid-20s%, low 20s% for ESCO. I think Minerals probably has the greater operating leverage potential if none of those other things happen, which might just nudge it up above ESCO, but I mean, I think they're going to be pretty close.
I accept the challenge.
I was going to say, you actually were margins of, I know where we were two years ago, we just need to keep up.
Right, okay. Lushanthan in here.
Hi, it's Lushan, Andrew. I'm taking a look. I think I've got three as well. The first is just on back to Micromine and Nexsys and the software platform. I mean, when you're selling to a customer that's potentially using one of your or parts of your competitor's software, I mean, can they just buy one or two of your platforms and be able to integrate and share data between, or is that a stumbling block in terms of getting them over? And I guess the follow-up to that is, if you can, are there still frictions there that you then upsell the rest of it and get the rest of the platform across?
I'm just trying to work out how it all fits in with the rest. So that's the first question. The second is just in terms of the cross-sell, clearly like a big differentiator being part of the Weir platform is the Minerals and the ESCO sales guys being able to cross-sell. I mean, have you had to change their incentive structures for them to push the Micromine platform? And then the third question is just on pumps. We've had a few of your competitors recently talking about that sector and pushing for different market positions. I mean, how are you seeing that competitive landscape evolving? Any sort of pricing pressure or market share gains, losses, etc.? It'd be interesting to hear your take there. Thank you.
Okay, very happy to answer that question. Kristen, why don't you start on software?
Yeah, okay.
So the first question, and I'll see why you have your paper. So the first question was around the multiple, and I think Jon talked about these companies are mining customers might have 15, 10 different softwares that they're using across the space that we've described. Traditionally, our customers are very good at finding ways to export and import, but that's becoming all of us in this digital transformation world, that is becoming more and more unacceptable to people. They don't want to have a lot of messiness of exports and imports and different formats that they have to maintain and think through. So in general, we would describe ourselves as we play nice with others.
We are not doing things to prevent people from having the ability to upload data into our software or download it so that they can use it in the way that's going to make the most sense for them. So our strategy around that is ultimately, as Ivan described, the Nexsys platform where version control is easy. All the folks that are working in each of these spaces, it's easy to see who has access to the license, what is the last model that they've been working on. So we just want to make it easy for our customers to use.
And we also, our longer-term goal is to have an open ecosystem that it is easy for them if they do choose to use a different software to be able to store data and pull down data so that over time, we're just making it so easy for them that they want to use all of our products. So that's the first one. The second question was specifically around the cross-selling process. Yes. So I think that I used the word, and I think we're using a very particular word that I think is important called warm introductions. So we are not asking our ESCO and Minerals colleagues who can open any door around the world together. We are not asking them to sell Micromine software or other software or PlaTS or Motion Metrics. We are not asking for them to sell or become experts in our software.
What we are asking them to do is offer and support warm introductions. So when Andrew was talking about Codelco or Sean was talking about a different customer site, we want to use the trust that's been built by the Minerals or ESCO colleague at that site to offer to introduce us to the mine planner or the mine manager. And yes, we have been very thoughtful about how to incentivize that behavior of the warm introduction.
Yeah, and I just want to add to that because I think it's important to understand the discipline, which I think is really important in that process. So we define, or Kristen's done a great job of defining with Micromine, a warm introduction as you have to have that's not just one person. You have to have multiple personas from the customer in that meeting for it to qualify as a warm introduction.
So that might be the geologist, the mine planner, the mine manager, a group, a collective stakeholder group who's going to make the decision together for that warm introduction because we don't want to just go to one person and then get it stalled. So we want all the key stakeholders in the room. So Minerals and ESCO are only they have a pipeline, if you like, to build those warm introductions, and they have to get all of their customers up to that level where they can get all of those people in the room.
That then qualifies as the warm introduction that Kristen's team then picks up, and then the software sales folks come in, and they take that forward in their sales pipeline with the Minerals and ESCO folks in the background to help with key account management and pick up the phone if things stall, but then it becomes a software sale, and so we're not asking pump people or GT people to try and sell software. It's the specialists who are making that sale and driving that through the conversion pipeline from that warm introduction to a license purchase. Andrew, your opportunity to respond.
Yeah, I think it's a competitive market. It has been and remains a competitive market. Key focus for us is always how do we provide the lowest cost of ownership for the customer? How do we provide that TCO as we talk about?
I think when you stand back, Minerals are in that core slurry pumping area. Our depth of knowledge and understanding is different levels. Simply, our market share in that core large slurry pump piece will be three times somebody else, and it has been for a long while. So the depth of knowledge and capability we have in our business to understand the application to tweak, and it's really therefore how do we continue to push the boundaries on technology, the core technologies, fundamentals, hydraulics, materials. Today, you heard about how we can, with new digital solutions, again, monitor the pump better and ensure it's performing better. And that service presence is so important to that TCO. So we're continually making sure the pump's operating optimal, and we're always just looking how can we drive to the next service interval.
The easiest thing for me is a kind of litmus testing. Ultimately, what you're asking me is are we gaining or losing market share? We've talked for a number of years in trials. We win 95% every year. Year to date, we're still 95% of trials we are winning. Nothing tells me that we are losing share in the market. I can point to a number of examples as we did today where we've gained a bit of share. Absolutely, I mean, we are focused on strengthening and deepening that position that we have, but we're not complacent. We have to demonstrate we're delivering customers value, and that's what we try to do day in, day out because through a mine life, the pump operating environment changes, and we're always bringing out incremental upgrades.
I mean, it's not an annual October event like Micromine, but I can talk to you about X2 throat brushes and Linatex throat brushes if you're really interested afterwards. We're continually bringing out little innovations that are again pushing the, and that's what gets us from going from 1500 to 2000 and allowing that miner to extend the shutdown. That is so valuable to them. It's free uptime. That's the business model we've got. We continue to invest in it. Indeed, we're increasing investment in it in many areas, and that's what's helping us to maintain and I believe strengthen our position in slurry pumping.
Okay, question over here.
Thank you. It's Rory from OxCap. My question's on the growth algorithm, but I just wanted to follow up with a quick clarification on slurry pumps if I can.
I think in the past you've talked about slurry pumps being about 90% to 100% recurring sort of aftermarket intensity metric for slurry pumps, about 90% to 100%. Just the clarification is on the slide, there was a sort of range of 30%-40%. I appreciate that's a sort of product mix, but is there anything to suggest that that aftermarket intensity in slurry pumps in particular has come down over time if you're doing more efficient, I guess just more efficient pumps, right, and less aftermarket intensity? That's the first part of the question. Yeah, sorry, just to clarify, is that the 90% to 100%, is that the aftermarket capture rate you're talking about?
Not the capture rate, but the intensity. So how much of the OE value is generated in aftermarket revenue every year beyond the OE sale? Because it was previously 90% you talked about.
Well, yeah, so it's 90% for the really big mill circuit pumps. It's not that high for the kind of smaller, lower wear application slurry pumps. So that's just what I wanted to just clarify that.
Yeah, yeah, 100%. A large mill circuit, the core pump and the heart of that mine in a hard rock environment will still be producing 80% to 100% per annum in spares. As we extend life, logically, you might need one less, ultimately one less part a year. Does that reduce it? But obviously, we are looking at our overall margins. How do we make sure we share that TCO benefit with customers? So back to my earlier answer, how do we sell commercially? We're selling the value we are creating for the customer.
So, for us, I would say the ratios haven't moved materially at all, but it's simply a tailings pump operating with hardly any solids in it. It might be down at 5% to 10% per annum, whereas that core slurry pump, we do a whole range. That's why the range you saw on the board that I was trying to just say, look, if you take all the range of pumps that we provide and you average it all out, you're at that kind of range. But yeah, the big mill circuit slurry pumps, as Jon said, that still sticks.
Okay, that's really helpful. Thank you. And tying that point into my question on the growth algorithm, let's say at the group level or the Minerals level, it is 30% every year from $1 of OE sales is $0.30.
If I run the math on that, sort of 500 million of OE expansion every year at 30%, and then adding that on to the sort of aftermarket, I can quite quickly get to some quite impressive numbers. That's almost an exponential growth. Now, you've delivered very good growth, but it's not exponential, right? Thinking about that breakdown of the growth algorithm, I could almost get to that mid to high single digit number on that piece alone, but you have talked about pricing, ore grades declining, other pieces in that mix. So why is the OE installed base expansion only in the 1%-2% range versus the sort of 7%-8% that I can get to in my head doing that math?
Please tell me how I'm wrong here, but is it because some of the non-pump parts have lower aftermarket intensity, or is it there's an element of replacement rather than pure expansion? Would that, and then this is the final part of the question, apologies, would that change in a new mining CapEx cycle? So would you be doing less replacement work and more greenfield, and therefore that growth algorithm potentially could kick on even further? That would be my question. Thank you.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you take the 500 million we talked about annual CapEx or OE input per year, that's a mixture of projects, brownfield upgrades, and replacements. You're absolutely right. The reason it's not flowing through that 500 is not all additional installed base. We are upgrading, replacing. It's hard to give a specific figure.
I would say of the 500, 100 is what I would call medium-larger projects specifically. That's the bit that can bounce around, move around. We typically do about GBP 100 million a quarter, GBP 400 million a year of smaller, and that can be both increasing install base, but also a lot of that will be replacement or upgrade or changing a solution within the mine. So yeah, that's why the whole 500, to be clear, doesn't flow through every year to install base growth.
Great, thank you. If I could squeeze just one more in on margins, you've previously talked to a sensitivity in group margins around a one percentage point move in OE versus AM. Is there anything, I think it was 30 bp s, maybe one or two or three years ago.
Is there anything to think that that changes in the future given the sort of structural expansion of margins versus the mix? Any kind of pointers on that if we wanted to model out a new cycle in the spreadsheets?
No, I think that's about right. I mean, obviously, as the digital solutions business continues to grow, that may change, but in the near term, as we look to grow that business, it hasn't been a significant change in that percentage. So I think that's still good for now, but in three years, I'm hoping to give you a different number.
That's great. Thank you.
Okay, there's a question in the middle here.
Thank you. Thank you. Kristen, I just had a question around the white space opportunity you talked about. So about 47% of the global opportunities in the white space.
I just wonder, how are you balancing sort of going after that space as well as the vendor space? Because you've provided a lot of inputs around the point solutions being very competitive, and so you are going in the vendor space and replacing competitors. What is the approach in that white space?
Yeah, thank you. I think I did talk before about we really see the Motion Metrics business is predominantly playing in the white space. So I really think we're thinking about, and when we talked about the lead piece around the warm introductions, we're thinking about the markets. And when you think about all of where and you think about the workforce that we have in sales, the market size is tremendous. So it really is around our regional managers thinking through, well, what are the hottest leads?
Where can I go and how should I be using our sales resource? So I think that it's a combination of what's coming to us that we're actively responding to. And we're actually in the kind of conversion point right now, seven months into, hey, we're spending quite a bit on getting trade shows and just generating brand new leads versus using our warm lead source that we now have through Minerals and ESCO. So I think the answer to the question is it's a mixture because we're focusing on what's coming in the door to us and then trying to sort through how do we choose with a finite set of sales resources where we go because of how big the size of the market is.
I guess maybe just to follow up on that. It's just in the 47% white space opportunity. Would you consider that as less competitive to go and win opportunities there? What are the characteristics of that space?
I think another reason why the vendor space is quite attractive to us, and I talked about this at the break with a few people, but the idea that the tier one mining companies are using hundreds of licenses. We have some customers in Central America, for example, that they may have 200 licenses, one mining customer. So our opportunity to scale to that level with big customers is not the same if we're targeting tier two, which is white space or even smaller organizations.
So we're very attracted to how we scale with tier ones because we think that for being resource limited on the sales front, that's the better place to put our efforts. But obviously, we're going for white space. But as I've described, we're very confident because we have modern technology that's being regularly reinvested in.
Yeah, just to add one thing. I mean, that white space is people who are not using software for those workflows at the moment. So they will literally be using Excel spreadsheets for their drill logging or manual stuff instead of any form of software at all. It's not people who are not using software.
To get them to convert from what they're doing today, and a lot of them, as Kristen said, maybe tier two, junior miners, getting them to convert to expensive software is possible, but it's harder than getting experienced software users in the vendor market to convert to a better product.
Yep. There's one here. Yeah.
Hi, Vivek Midha from Citi. A question just following up on return on capital employed. There was a mention early on in the slide pack about focus on growing ROCE. We've discussed margin improvements, but I'm just curious if there are any other drivers that you see that can further support the ROCE development and ultimately where you think that can go. Thank you.
Well, we continue to strengthen through our growth and the quality compounder that we are and bringing out the returns. And we're not a capital-intensive business, right?
I mean, our last big capital-intensive was Xuzhou Foundry , which, as Sean talked about, was ahead of time, under budget, and delivering more than we said. So we do invest a lot in R&D. That does have an impact. And we do 2% of our sales generally in terms of R&D, but we're not overly capital-intensive. So if we get that quarterly compounding, now you throw in the software business, which isn't very capital-intensive, that ROCE is going to continue to grow. It's not anything we're putting a target on because if we see the right opportunity, we're going to take that. And that's what we did with the acquisition of Micromine that had a slight impact on that, but that's quickly going to come back. And so we will continue to grow that ROCE over time as a quality compounder.
Yeah.
Andrew and Sean should comment, but I think with all the work that we've done through capacity optimization on the facilities around the world, we do feel that for the growth that's coming, we're going to need to spend a bit of CapEx, but it feels like we've got the right capacity in the right place now for the growth that's coming. As Andrew was saying, it shifted from high cost to low cost in some cases. So we're not going to need to go and make big investments in new capacity in the foreseeable future. Tell me if you've got a surprise CapEx coming, guys.
Yeah, I mean, I think, to Jon's point, we've got the broad roofline, if you like.
And so we're always actually looking for CapEx investment approval opportunities because often it's one of the best, most safest if you can have new machinery and you can get less than a two-year payback. Well, fantastic. So absolutely, that's an ongoing focus. I think we create our own capacity as well. We talked a little bit today about continuous improvement. Part of the benefits there is not just savings. Actually, you're increasing your internal capacity. So when I look forward to Minerals, I don't see the need for a big new shoe-type investment, but we are continuing to invest in the business, to be clear. But fundamentally, as Brian said, it's naturally quite a cash-generative business. And the level of CapEx that you need to upgrade machinery, etc., is never huge. So back to that living depreciation or thereabouts, I think that's something that we've done for a while.
Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, ESCO, as Brian mentioned, made a significant investment in the last few years, and it's turned out wonderfully. When it comes to our foundry and our other sites, we had the right footprint, the right rooftops, if you will. And we're always looking, is there a way to improve customer service in different pockets? I mean, you get the question about Chile. We're going to think about that. What do we want to have locally? But those are usually much smaller. We try to work together with Minerals to make sure that we're kind of leveraging as much as we can each other's capabilities and locations. But those we're always kind of looking for as well. It could be a small capability within a shop to serve customers in that region. That's what we're kind of looking for.
Thank you very much.
Hi, Stefan Klepp a gain from BNP Paribas. Just a very quick one. How are you going to update us in the future on the software business, right? You spent a lot of money. It's very well hidden in the ESCO division. We want to see those growth rates. We want to see the margins. So at the moment, we dig into the footnotes. What are you going to do in the future?
We want to share the full picture with you as soon as possible. We have a year, as Kristen described, we have at least a year of consolidation in 2026 where we need to, we're pulling Motion Metrics out of ESCO, moving it into the software business, driving the sort of synergies with the Micromine sales process and disciplines and so on.
PlaTS in its one-year earn-out at the moment, so we can't really touch that business until we get to the end of that period. And of course, Motion Metrics is going through the transition from perpetual to software as a service, subscription, annual subscription going forward. So there's a lot going on at the moment and complexity to that. But our aim is at the beginning of 2027 to have sorted all of that out. So we've then got the pure form software business in the final form and that platform for growth. And as soon as we got enough critical mass, the numbers are big enough, we will disclose it as a separate division so that you guys have visibility to the growth and margin profile and detail of the business. So I'm not giving you an exact date now.
We're going to see how we go, but that's the plan.
Yeah. According to IFRS, with 10% profits, you can have your own division. So 2027, if your growth comes along the right way, you should be there, right?
So we'll let Brian decide on that.
If you do the math, I don't think you quite get to 10% because don't forget, we're growing the ESCO and Minerals business quite substantially as well. But we'll get there. Not that far off is our hoping goal. And as Jon said, we are looking forward to disclosing it when we get to that critical mass.
Yeah. So one follow-up on your explanation, Jon. You said the word integration and a lot of moving parts. So I'm getting scared for extra cost. Is there anything that we should be aware of?
No, no. You shouldn't be scared.
Thank you. Yep. We're here. Thanks.
This is Will Hill from Highclere International Investors. How do you think about the trade-offs in incremental capital allocation between a potential software acquisition where the best assets are typically multiples of recurring revenue and an industrial acquisition in Minerals where you're paying a multiple on EBIT or EBITDA? Thank you.
I think that if we find ourselves in the happy position, which I haven't done in living memory, where we've got two really hot acquisitions in two different spaces that are going to either one or the other will take up the capacity that we have from a balance sheet point of view, of course, we've got to we will retain our strategic and financial discipline in terms of how we think about those acquisitions. And so in that regard, we will allocate capital to the best opportunity that we think is going to give the best payback and returns.
That being said, if you get to a point where they're both as good as each other and it sort of maximizes the debt capacity, then I think the option of equity remains open to us, recognizing that the bar is a bit higher for that. But if we think it's the right thing to do, then that's what we'll do. But in the context of opportunistic M&A, you don't often find yourself in that situation. But I think either way, we'll be able to do what we want to do and what is the right thing to do and in line with our strategic and financial criteria. Okay. A little one over here.
Last one from me, I promise. It's Rory Oxcap. I don't know if this question is for Jon or Brian, but clearly, the growth is coming through. The margins are coming through.
There's a very strong, sustainable sort of backdrop story here. If the market isn't rewarding that in a higher multiple in two or three years, would you look at relisting in the U.S.?
We are very happy with where we're headquartered and listed as a company today. I think, and we've seen our multiple expanding over the last couple of years based on what we've done. We have been, in the context of the U.K. market, where we've seen outflows from equities, we've been able to go to other jurisdictions, go to the U.S., go to North America, and attract new investors onto our balance sheet. So we don't think there's a need to do anything different than we're doing today. We can tap into global capital pools. We've proven that that's the case.
I think North America is now on par, if not higher, than the U.K. in terms of our total register. So we can do that. And I think we will continue to get rewarded for delivery on this fantastic strategy where we are.
So that's the plan. Thank you.
Okay. Any more questions? All right. Well, I think 5:00 P.M., that's probably the witching hour. So thank you very much to all of you in the room and online to have joined us today for our latest Capital Markets event and for the questions. For those here in person, there's going to be a further opportunity to mingle outside and see some of the demos if you've got more time to do that. But I hope you're taking away from today what the Weir has such a compelling story and so much opportunity ahead of it.
I hope you feel that the team is all very energized and excited about what we're doing and the opportunities that lie ahead, not only in our outstanding hardware business, but in our outstanding new software business as well. And yeah, so we're looking forward to delivering on that for all of our stakeholders. So thank you very much again, and I'll see you outside.