Ladies, and gentlemen, welcome to The Weir Group PLC Q3 IMS Conference Call. I am George, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by Q&A sessions. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Jon Stanton, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, Jon.
Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our third quarter trading update. Joined this morning, as usual, by our CFO, John Heasley, and after a short overview from me, we'll be delighted to take your questions. This will be the last update call for John at Weir, and he'll be leaving us to join Anglo American at the beginning of December. So I'd like to take the opportunity to thank him for his 15 years of outstanding contributions to Weir, and in particular, his support for me as we have transformed the group. You will have seen that we also announced this morning the appointment of Brian Puffer as our new CFO.
Brian joins us from BP, where he's currently the Chief Financial and Risk Officer of their trading and supply division, having previously served as SVP of Global Business Services and Group Financial Controller. I'm delighted that we'll have a new CFO of Brian's caliber with tremendously relevant experience as we execute on our Performance Excellence ambitions. Brian will join us in March next year. Turning to Q3, let me start with a few words on what we're seeing in our markets and current trading. In mining markets, activity levels are high, commodity prices are well above marginal cost, and our customers continue to be focused on maximizing ore production and improving the efficiency of existing mines. As a result, we're seeing strong demand for our spares and expendables and also our brownfield OE solutions. In parallel, our business has good operating momentum, and we are executing well.
With the additional underpin of a strong order book, we have high levels of confidence in reiterating our 2023 guidance. Turning specifically to Q3, where orders reflect the positive mining production trends I just described, but this is somewhat masked, as expected, by lower demand from our oil sands and infrastructure customers. Specifically, we saw growth in demand for our mining spares and expendables. Orders are up year-on-year, driven by a contribution from both price and volume. And we saw continued good momentum in demand for our OE brownfield solutions, with orders stable sequentially versus the second quarter. Operationally, the business also performed well. Our Q3 revenues were ahead, both year-on-year and sequentially, and we saw strong flow-through with operating leverage and process efficiency driving operating margin expansion.
We also took significant strides in our Performance Excellence transformation program, and I'm delighted with how the business is engaging. We're building really good momentum. The actions we've taken so far are already driving hard cost savings, with GBP 6 million of benefit expected this year, and of course, much more to come in future years. Encouragingly, as we get into the program, we're also seeing a snowball effect, with our teams increasingly identifying new opportunities. So we've got growing enthusiasm about its potential and the margin expansion it can deliver, and I'm looking forward to telling you more about our progress and expectations in December at our Capital Markets Event. Turning back to Q3, now, let me give you a little bit more detail on the performance of our two divisions, starting with minerals. In the aftermarket, year-on-year orders were up 1%.
This reflects growth in volumes in hard rock mining and a contribution from pricing action taken in previous periods. This was partially offset, as we expected, by lower demand from customers in the Canadian oil sands, where orders were elevated in the prior year as customers built safety stocks to capitalize on strong energy prices and mitigate supply chain challenges. Demand for our mining spares was particularly strong in South America, given our strong installed base in copper mines in the region, and also in Australia, as production ramped up at a number of recently commissioned lithium mines. Turning to original equipment, where in the quarter we continued to see good momentum, with customers ordering Weir solutions to debottleneck and improve the efficiency of existing mines.
This trend is reflected in the Q3 orders, which were stable sequentially and within the range which we've consistently seen over each of the last six quarters. As those orders convert to revenue and the equipment is commissioned, these orders will expand our Install Base and support future Aftermarket growth. Operationally, Minerals is performing well. Strong execution, price realization, and underlying operational efficiencies drove revenue growth and margin expansion in the quarter. We expect this strong operating momentum to continue for the balance of the year and into 2024. Why do we expect to see that continued momentum? Well, let me just briefly highlight Iron Bridge, the new magnetite mine in Western Australia. At the mine, we have pretty much the full suite of Weir integrated solutions, including our energy-saving, high-pressure grinding rolls, currently ramping up after being commissioned in the second quarter.
The HPGRs are the largest in the world, and the GBP 15 million per annum multi-year service contract is scheduled to start later this year... We'll also start receiving orders for spares for the Warman, GEHO, ESCO, and Motion Metrics equipment, which is installed at the mine, all of which will be incremental to our aftermarket. And when added to the spares demand from all of the OE we've shipped this year, it provides a strong underpin for 2024. Now, back to the Q3 performance and onto ESCO, where we saw good momentum in the mining-focused part of the business, though, as expected, this was masked by trends in infrastructure. And looking at the trends in each market in more detail, in mining, which accounts for around 70% of ESCO's revenue, year-on-year orders were stable.
High levels of ore production meant we saw good demand for our mining expendables across most regions. In mining attachments, our differentiated technology meant we continued to gain market share. And as I talked about in our half year results presentation, attachments have been an area of strategic focus, so it's pleasing to see progress come through in the financials, with year-to-date orders already exceeding our total order intake for 2022. This is encouraging as the market share in the segment is still small, so there's plenty of room for growth. Turning to infrastructure, where we continue to see dealer destocking in North America and a lower demand environment in both North America and Europe. This mirrors trends we've seen in our orders for much of the year, which year-to-date are down almost 20%.
That said, with the visibility we have, we believe we're getting close to the end of the destocking cycle. Therefore, with an easier Q4 comp and end market activity stabilizing, we expect infrastructure headwinds to lessen for the remainder of the year and into 2024, and for the underlying strength of the mining franchise to become more visible. Turning to operations, where ESCO also performed well, operational efficiencies and price realization drove year-on-year margin expansion, and similar to minerals, we expect our strong operating momentum to continue for the balance of the year and beyond. Stepping back up to the group level and looking at cash flow and balance sheets, free operating cash flow for the quarter was positive. Net debt was marginally higher than that reported at the 30th of June, predominantly reflecting the impact of translational foreign exchange on our US dollar-denominated debt.
Our leverage ratio was in line, and we expect this to reduce over the balance of the year as we achieve our full-year target of 80%-90% free operating cash conversion. I'll shortly comment on the outlook, but before I do, I'd like to take a moment to remind you of our strategy and strong positioning. Earlier in the call, I mentioned Iron Bridge, and of course, the upside from the incremental spares is a nice underpin as we go into next year. However, more fundamentally, it's a reference site for the whole mining industry, proving that new energy and water-efficient technologies deliver both operational and sustainability benefits.
Indeed, even in the few months the mine has been running, we've had a number of other customers visit to see the technology in action, and it's driving increased interest, not just in our HPGRs, but across our whole technology portfolio. Today, Weir is challenging the industry to undertake a technology shift from our Motion Metrics vision technology in the mine, through to our energy and water-efficient crushing and grinding solutions, including HPGRs and STM Stirred Mill technology, but also our TerraFlow solutions, which enable more sustainable and cost-effective tailings management. And as we look at the combined benefit across the whole flow sheet, we estimate our package of sustainable solutions can reduce carbon emissions by 50% relative to traditional technologies. So if all the world's mines converted, this would be equivalent to eliminating the global CO2 emissions of Argentina.
This won't happen overnight, but the evidence of performance at Iron Bridge and the growing number of conversations we're having with customers are proof points of traction, so we're increasingly excited about the future. And this feeds into my excitement about our overall long-term positioning, which I believe is compelling, driven by three key factors. Firstly, we have structural tailwinds in our markets, underpinned by growth in demand for critical metals, which are essential to enable the transition to net zero. Secondly, to unlock the supply needed, the mining industry must adopt more sustainable extraction and processing techniques, and our technology strategy will help customers achieve this. And thirdly, we're taking action through Performance Excellence to optimize our business, which will deliver margin expansion and further improve our cash conversion.
The benefits from these levers, together with the embedded resilience of our aftermarket-focused business, positions us to outperform our markets and deliver compounding financial benefits over time. Now, focusing back on the near term and the outlook for the rest of the year. We go into the fourth quarter with a strong order book, which, together with the operating momentum we have in the business, means our 2023 guidance is well underpinned. We therefore have high levels of confidence in reiterating that we expect to deliver strong growth in constant currency revenue and operating profit, an operating margin of 17%, and between 80% and 90% free operating cash conversion. And as I touched on earlier, with Performance Excellence progressing well, we remain on track to expand our margins above 17% in 2024 and beyond.
Sticking with 2024, we recognize that everyone is looking to get an early read on our expectations, and the current macroeconomic and geopolitical environment does bring complexity. However, based on what we see today, all production trends in our mining markets continue to be strong, and as you know, our aftermarket-focused business means we have embedded resilience, evidenced by the 7% CAGR we've seen in the minerals aftermarket over the last 11 years. Therefore, in our base case scenario for our mining-focused businesses, we're assuming that production trends, together with the effects of declining grades and install base expansion, will support aftermarket growth rates that are consistent with our through cycle targets, and will also support continued momentum in small and medium-sized OE projects. In infrastructure, which is a much smaller part of the portfolio, with the comparatives easing, our base case assumes demand is broadly stable.
So to close, let me summarize the key takeaways. Our third quarter performance was in line with our expectations. We capitalized on high levels of activity in mining markets and executed strongly, carrying a strong order book and good operating momentum into the fourth quarter, and our 2023 guidance is underpinned. All production activities continue to be strong, and therefore, in our base case scenario for beyond 2023, we're assuming mining markets continue to be supportive. And finally, we continue to have a compelling long-term value creation opportunity, supported by structural tailwinds in our markets, and our technology-focused growth strategy, and Performance Excellence. Thank you for listening, and John and I will now be happy to take any questions you have. So back to you, Operator.
We will now begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only headsets when asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from Christian Hinderaker from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, everyone, and thank you for the presentation. My first question relates to the comments around inventories and the dealer destocking that you've signaled at ESCO's North America infrastructure customers. I guess the first part of it is whether you can contextualize that against what we've heard from peers, in terms of what is effectively high levels of ongoing equipment utilization in those markets, but a destock in the channel, and perhaps, therefore, a reasonably robust level of demand for consumables. And then the second part is whether you can remind us of the structure of your various distribution chains across both mining and infrastructure, inclusive of where you see the greatest and least risks, in terms of customer inventory adjustments.
Yeah, good morning, Christian. Thanks for the questions. Yeah, look, with the infrastructure inventory and destocking question, I think, you know, first of all, let's just point out, be clear, you know, it's 30% of ESCO, so a relatively small part of the business. As I said on the call, you know, we're down approximately 20% year-on-year in orders in the third quarter, across North America and Europe. We have, you know, really good visibility into what our dealers are holding, which is why we're sort of confident we're coming to the end of the destocking cycle. And remember, you know, what we do is a bit of a niche in infrastructure relative to some of our other and larger peers.
So, you know, through our dealer distribution network, we have very clear visibility. You know, the destocking is ongoing, but we feel it's coming to the end. You know, demand has been weak, but we see that stabilizing, and, you know, in the long run, particularly in North America, which is the largest part of our infrastructure exposure, you know, we think demand is gonna be underpinned by spend through the Inflation Reduction Act, and infrastructure build and so on. So, I think, you know, we're just, for me, we're just going through a little bit of turbulence with the comps at the moment, and that will clear as we go through the end of the year and into next year.
And your question on distribution channels, we use third party in infrastructure because it's obviously quite a fragmented market, and it would be prohibitively expensive for us to have our own distribution. But in hard rock mining, our strategy has always been to go direct, and as you know, that is seen as a clear competitive advantage to be direct, boots on the ground, you know, intimate with customers, embedded in the mines or the mining towns around the world, so that we're close to the action, and available 24/7 to support our customers. It's a critical part of our business model that we are direct in hard rock mining. So that's absolutely the case in all of minerals.
In ESCO, we still have one or two markets where we have legacy third-party channels in mining, but we will be moving out of those as we go through the next two or three years.
Thanks, Jon. Maybe we can just turn to the demand drivers, in terms of, I guess, commodity mix. You've touched on oil sands weakness and strength in South American copper. But curious what you're seeing in some of the other minerals like iron ore and gold and others.
Yeah, look, I think, you know, my overarching comment was that activity is strong in hard rock mining, and that is the case, you know, around the world. Copper is very strong. Our customers are trying hard to improve the production of copper. They're all forecasting increase in copper production next year. Gold, very strong. You know, you would expect, well, given where we are in the cycle, that the gold price might be weaker, but given the geopolitical situation, you can understand why it's not. And so, you know, $2,000 an ounce is highly incentivizing for our customers. Iron ore, generally strong. As you know, we're mostly exposed to the low-cost iron ore producers in Brazil and Australia.
I think what we're poised to benefit from in iron ore is the increasing move to higher grade, particularly as you know, the steel industry tries to move towards green steel, electric arc, hydrogen steel, then higher and higher grades of raw material are going to be needed for that, such as are being produced at the Iron Bridge Mine, which I mentioned on the call. Those are gonna be... That's gonna be a theme which supports our exposure and growth in iron ore. So, I you know, appreciate that some of the other battery metals we're going through you know, kind of a bit of a teething stage, if you like, in terms of commodity price volatility, but we know that the long-term structural trends for lithium and nickel are good.
So, yeah, as I look around the world, I look around the regions then, you know, I'm very happy with our commodity exposure, and the growth drivers for it as we move forward.
Thank you. I guess my final one's around interest rate sensitivity. We've heard comments across the sector really around slowness of customer decision-making as a result of higher cost of capital. Is that something that you're seeing in your business today? And can you just remind us what exposure you have to, to the sort of smaller junior miner cohorts? Thank you.
I'll try and be quick, given others want to ask questions, Christian. You know, I think we're not seeing an effect. Is the short answer. You know, we do have exposure to junior miners, but you know, it's relatively small compared to the whole rest of the complex. I think the current interest rate environment is just another unhelpful variable in the big greenfield project sort of conundrum. But as I've always said, you know, we're in a win-win situation. If the big greenfields come through, fantastic, that's a big step up in install base.
If they don't, you know, we're very, very happy in the brownfields, picking up the small debottlenecking and small expansion projects, sustainability projects, which is evident in our OE orders, where you can see the continued momentum. I can tell you, in, you know, the Q3 orders for OE in minerals, we didn't get an order over GBP 5 million, so it's lots and lots of small momentum projects, which our customers are very, very focused on at the moment.
Thanks, Jon, and best wishes to the other John for his new role.
Thanks, Christian.
The next question comes from George Featherstone from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, morning, everyone. Appreciate the comments you just made there, Jon, on exposure to junior miners, but I just wondered if you could maybe put some numbers around it for us, just so we can kind of understand what the split is versus juniors and majors. That would be super helpful, 'cause that's where a lot of the focus on the market weaknesses is at the moment.
Yeah. Hi, George. I mean, it's just, you know, we've got. We serve the, we serve all of the major mines around the world, so that includes all of the, all of the majors, you know, all of, all of the, the Asian players, and we've got a tail of small customers, you know, that, that are on the more junior scale. So, you know, the, the reality is that our business is driven by production and the aftermarket, and they're all producing. They're, they, they, they're benefiting from commodity prices and demand in the same way the majors are. So, you know, they may be slow, they may be finding, you know, financing a little bit more challenging at the moment, but that's not gonna impact us, in any meaningful way.
I mean, we look at, you know, when we look at CapEx forecasts for the industry for next year, it's going up. Actually, some more of the majors are thinking about how they can accelerate exploration and development, given that, you know, some of the juniors may be a bit more challenged. So it's not a theme that we're worried about in the business. The aftermarket growth algorithm will work, continue to work next year, and we'll continue to see momentum in original equipment, as I set out in our base case in the speech.
Okay. Thanks very much. Just on that OE point, look, we heard from a few of your peers that there's a bit of a delay in investment decisions, and I guess that's kind of where the former question is coming from as well. So what's your level of visibility on this OE run rate that you're at at the minute, and the sustainability of that?
Well, as I said in the speech, you know, we feel that the OE run rate that we're seeing at the moment will continue. We're not assuming a big step up in big greenfield, big expansion projects. There is a great pipeline, and the pipeline is continuing to build, particularly as we take to market our sustainability solutions around Redefine Mill Circuit and Production Optimization. So, you know, the pipeline's there. I just think we're in an uncertain world, so for the bigger projects, people are gonna be a bit more cautious. But our pipeline of the smaller, brownfield, debottlenecking, sustainability tailings remediation, you know, the hopper is full, so we feel very good about, you know, continuing with the current momentum that we have on OE and minerals.
And as I said on the speech, the capital and OE side of ESCO is also growing strongly. So, to my mind, there's nothing that we see on the horizon at the moment is going to, you know, is going to undermine that, particularly with commodity prices, you know, broadly in a really, really strong place.
Thank you. Then very last one from me. Looks like you're expecting to give us a little bit of a higher Performance Excellence savings target at the CMD, and 2024 looks like there'll be about more of a mix shift towards aftermarket. So do you think you're gonna be able to raise the margin outlook at the CMD?
Well, we have said that, you know, our first priority was to hit 17%, and I hope you take confidence from my comments today, that we will squarely be doing that. And we've always said that with the benefits of Performance Excellence, we see potential to go beyond 17% over the next few years. That is very much our intent. And we will be talking about how we're feeling about that and what the next phase of our equity story, including margin expansion, will look like on the sixth of December at our Capital Markets Event, and hope to see you there.
Looking forward to it. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Max Yates, from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Morning, everyone. Could I just ask a quick question on cash? Obviously at the sort of top end and bottom end of the cash range is now, well, it's around a sort of GBP 50 million gap on free cash flow. And it looks like free cash flow will be less skewed into the fourth quarter than last year. So just wondering, could you provide, given it obviously is a pretty big range of outcomes for the fourth quarter, would you be able to indicate whether you think it'll be towards the upper or lower end of that free cash flow range?
Morning, Max. Thanks for the question. Yeah, I mean, listen, we're executing strongly across the board, as John said in his prepared remarks, so you know, revenues, margins, cash as well. You'll remember at the half year, our free operating cash conversion was 22 percentage points higher than at the same point in the prior year, and that momentum has continued through the third quarter. So, you know, we're sitting here with positive free cash conversion through the third quarter. As we go into the fourth quarter, of course, there's always, you know, some big shipments to go, so it's about getting those out the door. It's about getting the cash in the door before the end of the year.
So at this point in time, we're not going to be more precise in terms of where in the 80%-90% range we will be. But certainly, we feel in a really good position that that is well within our control to deliver that over the next three months. And given that strength at the half year and at the end of Q3, you know, there's a little bit less to do in the fourth quarter this year than we had in the last year, given all the supply chain complexity, post-COVID, et cetera. So no further specificity, but high confidence in being in that range, Max.
Okay. And maybe just secondly, John, for you, just I wanted to ask about pricing, and I mean, I appreciate kind of minerals looks like it's had kind of another, in aftermarket, another sort of strong pricing quarter, but we have had kind of one of your peers talk about very specific product lines, which are quite sort of steel heavy. They've started to see price downs or quite significant price downs on those due to indexing. We obviously saw minerals perform very well in 2012-2016, helped pricing, helped gross margins, but I guess we have less history with ESCO's. Are there any parts of ESCO where you would be worried about price downs because of indexing, because it is a sort of more steel-heavy business?
Or are you, you're quite confident that pricing holds in aftermarket across both businesses? Thank you.
Yeah. No, we're very confident. Thank you, Max. We, you know, we sell on total cost of ownership. That is the proposition for our customers in both businesses. As you know, we have been successful with our price increases over the course of the last two years. You know, in the third quarter, actually, price has not really been a question. We got most of our pricing for this year locked in the first half of the year, and we're now seeing the benefit of that in terms of the, you know, the gross margins coming through as we execute against that. So we are, we're not seeing any pressure.
Okay, thanks. And maybe just one final quick housekeeping question. So on your, on your, aftermarket contract coming through for Iron Bridge, I remember it was sort of GBP 95 million. It was over around seven years. So is, is that very simply how we should think about the uplift to growth? It's, it's sort of 95 divided by seven years, and that's kind of the incremental revenues, kind of GBP 13 million-GBP 14 million, and therefore maybe a percentage point uplift to aftermarket?
Yeah, that's just for the HPGRs though, so there will be, you know, we have. As I said in the speech, there is a number of other pieces of equipment. We have GEHOs on the pipeline. We have Warmans on the tailings duty. We have Esco, GET, and Motion Metrics on the machines in the mine. So it's not just the 15, there'll be a bit more of that as well. But the mine is kind of ramping up through the year, so you can't count on all of that on day one in January, but it will ramp up to that level over the balance of the year.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Max.
Ladies, and gentlemen, in the interest of time, we will take one more question from Jonathan Hurn from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Just a few questions from me, please. Firstly, the question is just on minerals aftermarket. I just wonder if you could sort of comment on the inventory levels of parts at your customers, if any one sort of or do you see any sort of areas where you see elevated levels? And just sort of following on from that, just in terms of the oil sands, I think in your sort of opening comments, you said there was a bit of an inventory build going there. When that starts to run down, do you think there's potential for oil sands aftermarket to pick up? That was the first question.
Yeah. Thanks, Jonathan. Good morning. On the minerals aftermarket, yeah, I mean, we obviously, with our boots on the ground business model, we have a great degree of visibility into the inventory levels that our customers in the minerals division are holding. And, you know, it, it's not elevated. I think, you know, our customers kind of thought through the safety stocks that they wanted to hold, and they wanted us to hold post-COVID, and that, at the moment, feels balanced.
You know, of course, you know, we're serving thousands of mines around the world, so there may be one or two here and there who've not got it quite right, but, you know, when you look at it in the round, I would say there are not sort of excess levels of inventory in the system in our mining customers. And yeah, on the oil sands, the reality was, you know, we had, you know, an amazing year last year, post-COVID, very strong oil price recovery. Our Canadian oil sands customers were very profitable and, you know, they probably overdid it a little bit in terms of buying parts and inventory, and we're just kind of in the wind down phase of that through this year. So the orders have dipped.
Revenues remain strong, but I think that will just normalize as we go through next year, you know, particularly with the oil price as it is, and also the Trans Mountain Pipeline out to the West Coast coming online as well, I think is a nice underpin for West Canada Select. So, I think, yeah, next year it will just... You know, we'll get through the kind of upstocking and destocking that we've just kind of seen through the last two years, and it will normalize.
Very helpful. Thank you. And the second question was just essentially on sort of Q4 performance. Obviously, to hit consensus revenue out there, you need a really sort of strong Q4 in terms of sales. I think probably your strongest quarter is a pure play mining business. I mean, as we look at or as we look to Q4, are there any sort of potential headwinds to delivering sort of that uptick? Are there any sort of bottlenecks? Do you have enough capacity to deliver that surging Q4 revenue?
Yeah, no, the order book is good. The factories are full. We were in the Netherlands last week, and all of the nickel orders that, you know, we took last year are in the final stages of being assembled, so they'll all ship in the fourth quarter. You know, we have to continue to execute well, obviously, to get it all out of the door and recognize revenues, but, you know, we've been doing that consistently now for many, many quarters. The operating momentum in the business is good. You know, we're going through a process, as you know, with Performance Excellence of eliminating you know, getting more and more lean and, you know, eliminating complexity.
So, I think I feel really good about, you know, the way the business is executing and the cadence that we have in the manufacturing facilities and supply chain. So, you know, I'm very, very confident about delivering the Q4 numbers.
Okay, great. And then, and just the last question was just on the aftermarket orders for the 2024. Obviously, you've had that increase in the installed base in, in 2023. As we look to 2024, what kind of sort of magnitude of, of orders do you think comes through, from that sort of increase in installed base in, in, in 2023 for aftermarket? Is, is round about a sort of a GBP 200 million number, kind of the right sort of ballpark?
Well, I'm not, you know, I'm not prepared to sort of give detailed guidance at this point, Jonathan. We're in the middle of doing our budgeting process at the moment, so as you know, that will come later. But, you know, what we're trying to give you confidence in today is that the underlying hard rock mining aftermarket, you know, the algorithm that drives that is robust because we see continued production growth, we see continued decline in grades, we see increase in install base with Iron Bridge ramping up and all, you know, the OE that we sold this year, sort of factoring in as that equipment gets commissioned. At this stage, our planning assumption is that we don't get a huge amount of price next year, but obviously, that will depend on what happens with inflation.
So that's the, you know, that's the way that we're thinking about it, and that means that, you know, as I said in the speech, you know, we're looking at, you know, the kind of through cycle growth expectations for aftermarket. All of the drivers of that are in place as we sit here today.
That's very helpful. Thank you, guys.
Great. Thanks, Jonathan.
Ladies, and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to Jon Stanton for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Operator, and thanks again everybody for participating, and I will close by reminding you of our Capital Markets Event to be held on the sixth of December at the London Stock Exchange. There will be the option to attend virtually or in person, and we're excited to be sharing details of our future growth prospects and our expectations for Performance Excellence as we continue on our journey as a focused mining technology leader. So I'll hopefully see many of you there. Thanks again for calling in today.
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