Welcome to the Zotefoams PLC 2025 Interim Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses when it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to CEO Ronan Cox. Good afternoon to you.
Thank you, Alex, and a good afternoon to everyone joining the call this afternoon for the Zotefoams Interim Results Update. If we go to the first slide, please, Alex. Here we go. Quickly touching on some of the highlights for H1. Very strong revenue growth, up 9% across the group. That's driven in the main by EMEA, up 11% coming from our Consumer & Lifestyle sector. North America had very strong performance coming from Transport & Smart Technology . We are very much along the course of our transition from a product to vertical-focused business. As we look at vertical revenues, Consumer & Lifestyle sales are up 16%. As I said, that's really coming from EMEA. We can see that in the regional performance. Transport & Smart Technology are strong across the group, and particularly strong in North America, as I mentioned.
Construction & Other Industrial , which is our third vertical, had more challenging demand in H1, not entirely unexpected, principally coming from lower projects in Asia. In our T-FIP business, H1 is typically quite soft and very project-dependent. In the U.S., our primary customer in this sector was facing some headwinds from market demand, but also from an ERP installation that they're working on within their business. Overall, we still look at good prospects within that Construction & Other Industrial sector. All of that is leading to record earnings. Strong gross margin performance, strong operating margin performance, all flowing through to really good profits with operating profit up 26% to £12.2 million, and PBT up 37% to £11.4 million. That all flows through to really solid earnings per share of 55%. A really, really strong balance sheet. Very cash generative. This business has always been cash generative.
This H1 has been particularly strong thanks to ongoing really good operational management, particularly around areas of working capital. We've seen the working capital to sales ratio reduce significantly from the 40s down to the low 30s. It's a really good control there. That is flowing pleasingly through to an increase in dividends. We're very pleased to announce a 5% increase in interim dividend to £0.025 per share. Moving on, just to recap, and I think many of you on the call today will have been on previous calls and had the update following our capital markets day on the strategy refresh at Zotefoams. Today, even on top of these very strong results, what I'd really like to get across is the tremendous performance that we're making in that strategy refresh and that journey that we're on.
First of all, that pivot from product to industry focus, really, really great progress there as we continue to make investments in talent in particular, also in our product ranges for those three verticals, and then the key industries within those verticals where we see the longest runway for growth. Tremendous performance there. Closer to customer, expanding our capabilities. We talked earlier in the year about the investment in Vietnam, and that was specifically addressing the opportunities that we see in the footwear industry. Today with Nike, this morning we announced that we're entering a joint venture agreement with Seo-Heung Co. Ltd. Seo-Heung are a large player in the footwear field. They've got revenues of about $260 million, and they service components and supply chain solutions across the footwear industry. They're South Korean-based, but they've got a large presence in China, in Vietnam, and in Indonesia.
They are also a sister company of Changshin Corporation. Changshin are a very big player in the footwear world, one of the largest suppliers of athletic footwear, employing some 80,000 people. They've got 48,000 employees in Vietnam, and they're manufacturing over 140 million pairs of athletic footwear shoes per year. I see this as a tremendous step forward for us as we come into this high-growth market. It's a real sign of the success of our products in that market that we're able to attract such a strong, high-quality joint venture partner in that region. I was really pleased as well to announce this morning the appointment of Brandon Thomas, who is coming from Nike across to Zotefoams, and he's going to help us lead that joint venture business in Vietnam.
Super progress in this area, bringing expertise into the business and bringing know-how and specific know-how of both industry and region to help us really drive that expansion forward. We continue to invest in innovation in H1. We've mapped out the blueprint for the innovation center that we have in that we're building in the U.K. and also in Korea. We've just appointed the head of our Korean Innovation Hub, who's come on board in the last few weeks. We've ordered some of the biggest ticket items for those facilities. Actually, they're the longest lead time pieces that we have in the whole investment around innovation. We're still narrowing down on where we're actually going to look at those in the U.K. and also in South Korea, but the longest lead time is on the equipment itself.
We've been very purposeful and clear in terms of the investment in kit and capability that we're bringing in to bring that next generation of innovation and supercritical foams to the market. Moving up the value chain, M&A is and will be an important part of our refresh strategy. In H1, we've continued to build relationships across the market. We've continued to really look at the potentials that are out there, and we're specifically looking at North America and Europe for really exciting acquisition opportunities. This is an area that absolutely excites me for the future of the business in executing this beyond the core, expanding beyond the core strategy. In terms of execution of the strategy, we have been investing in talent. That's seen some new people come into the business. We've seen people exiting the business.
We've been really focusing on driving operational performance, so be they manufacturing performance KPIs, to deliver better customer service, to deliver better productivity in our factories, but also to deliver better cash. I think I touched on earlier, one real example for shareholders is what we're doing around working capital and that release of cash from really homing in on disciplines around procurement terms, around credit terms with customers, and also around inventory management across the business, which has released a tremendous amount of cash. Quickly touching on some of the performances in the regions, I touched on it in the first slide. I'm going to really move through this quite quickly. The sort of key messages here are the growth in EMEA is coming from that really strong consumer and lifestyle performance.
As we continue to develop this really big business for us in footwear, we've been diverting a lot of our attention to making sure that we keep our customer demand completely satisfied here. That's taken up a lot of capacity in Europe. We see that then flowing through to more modest demand in transport and smart technologies and construction and other industrial. We see that as momentary. We are continuing to really work on developing the pipeline of opportunities in transport, smart tech, and also in construction and other industrial, particularly as we prepare ourselves as we start to shift volumes from Europe across Vietnam for that Consumer & Lifestyle sector. The investments that we're making around people and talent are coming in and really bolstering the pipeline of opportunities that we have in these areas. As I said, revenue in EMEA is really, really strong.
Segment profit is up 2%. Segment margin is down. We have had some headwinds to say as we've had movement around the business. We've taken all of our reorganization costs above the line. We're not planning any exceptionals as we go through our transformation in the business. We've been reinvesting and bringing and hiring new talent into the business. Forex has certainly in Q2 been a bit of a headwind for us. We have got a pretty comprehensive hedging strategy, but the weaker dollar in Q2 certainly was, we've seen some headwinds there. We see that moderating a bit in recent weeks, actually. Payroll inflation, we can't get away from the impact of national insurance increases in the UK, which flowed straight to the bottom line. Not without impact on us.
That said, we remain very confident in the way that we're controlling all of our costs as we transform ourselves within our new strategy of expanding from the core. North America, revenue is very strongly up. I mentioned the headwind around construction and other industrial, really concentrated on one customer. A real highlight from here is Transport & Smart Technologies. Demand is very strongly up, really driven by the demand in aerospace and aviation sectors. Our traditional customers, the likes of Boeing, but also new emerging demand from the space sector, which has been super buoyant in H1 and really positive as we see the margins from that growth flow well through into segment profit within the region with a profit of 1.2 million where we were at break even this time last year.
I would also mention in North America, one of the biggest investments we've been making over the last 18 months is in new capacity, what we call an LP2. It's a large autoclave that is just being installed in the facility and we're starting commissioning trials and we anticipate that that will be really operating towards the end of Q3 this year. I'm very bullish and have always been bullish about the opportunities for our products within those really, really attractive markets in the North American region. Asia is a really small segment for us today, but it's going to be a really big segment for us in the future as we progress with the investment in Vietnam. Today, revenues are largely generated by the T-FIT business. As I said, the first half of the year is usually quite soft.
We expect to have a better H2 here, but the real area in Asia is about the growth. It's about the growth in Asia that's going to come from the investment that we're making in Vietnam and that investment that we've made with Seo-Heung, which I would say is a real endorsement of the strategy that we have there, that we can attract such an incredibly strong partner to come and partner up with us in Vietnam. I'm excited for the future growth in Asia, excited for what that does in terms of allowing capacity to be freed up, particularly in EMEA as we then address the other really interesting markets that we operate in. I touched on that joint venture with Seo-Heung. Why is it important? It de-risks our investment in Vietnam.
We are partnering with a business that has got a long track record in not only the industry, so in footwear, in athletic footwear, it closely knows our big customer Nike, but also has got a long history in Vietnam as well. Significantly de-risking, they're also bringing a lot of skills in the area of 3D preforms. As we move from sheet manufacture to 3D preforms, they bring tremendous knowledge in this area, which is really going to help us as we ramp up our production there. They're taking on a 17.5% stake in the business. That is in the business, I should clarify, in the joint venture, so in the Vietnamese entity. Their investment is in the Vietnam manufacturing entity, to be really clear. The joint venture is in the Vietnamese manufacturing business. Innovation happens outside of this area.
Innovation is wholly 100% owned and will continue to be owned by Zotefoams. Those innovations that we apply for all of the industries that we operate in, including footwear. I'm genuinely excited by this JV. I think that the fact that we, Zotefoams, have been able to secure this with one of the biggest players in the market is absolutely tremendous and it speaks volumes to the opportunities that we have in this particular area. I'm going to hand over to Gary, who's going to take us through some of the results highlights. Gary?
Thanks, Ronan. As Ronan said, group revenue is up 9% to £77.4 million. That excludes £1 million of headwinds from currency. On a constant currency basis, the revenue was up to £78.4 million. Gross margins are up 140 bps to 34.6%. That includes a mucil, if you remember, we had the mucil last year. Included within revenue was £600,000, included within costs in total, total operating cost £2.2 million. Some of that cost was in gross margin. If you take the mucil cost out, we were kind of roughly around the same percentage margin. What's happened within gross margin? We've got some benefits. We've got the improved sales mix. We've got improvements in efficiency at the U.S. plant. Offsetting that, we've got labor costs, inflation, as Ronan mentioned, NI costs and the like. EMEA, which is our largest facility there, we saw energy costs pretty stable, raw materials pretty stable.
That gross margin then translates into a gross profit up £3.2 million- £26.8 million for the first half. Operating profit is up 26% to £12.2 million. That's after £14.5 million of SG&A costs. You can see the boxes down the bottom for some of the lower profile KPIs. That £14.5 million is 5% up on the equivalent period last year. There are two big movements in there, actually, before you get to the underlying SG&A. First of all, this year we've got an FX headwind of about £800,000. Offsetting that is the removal of the mucil costs for last year's period, which were about £1 million and related to the technical team, over 20 people in mucil. If you strip that out, we're up about £1 million, £1.2 million.
That very much is driven by our strategy, by the investment in our new leadership team, in senior leaders in EMEA, who are all there to help drive the refresh strategy forward. Operating profit of £12.2 million translates into PBT of £11.4 million, which is up 37% on the previous period. Within there, you can see there's a reduced interest charge down to £800,000 versus £1.4 million in the previous period. That's 40% down. That really reflects two simple factors. Firstly, a lower average debt level through the period, as well as lower interest rates this year. PBT then translates into a basic EPS of £0. 1999 , which is 55% up on last year's £0. 1289 pence. That additional benefit is driven by tax, where our tax charge is £1.6 million. That's down 18% from the £2 million last year.
That's on an expected tax rate for the year of 14.5% versus 24% last year. That's driven by a couple of factors. Firstly, we expect to be making more profits in our U.S. and Polish businesses, both of which benefit from favorable tax positions. In addition, we also are benefiting from the credits coming from R&D taxation and the patent box programs. All that reduced, leading us to a 14.5% expected tax rate for the year. We move on to the balance sheet cash flow. I said this every time, it feels like, but I'll say it again: cash from operations, we are cash generative. Indeed, if you look this year versus last year, we're up 86%. That's driven by a very, as Ronan mentioned, strong focus on working capital. Last year, we had a net outflow of £5.9 million, very much driven by inventory build.
This year, we have a net cash inflow of £0.5 million, which has resulted in that £15.8 million of cash from operations. Net capital expenditure is £7.8 million, kind of similar to last year, obviously different factors within that. It's very much driven in the first half by our focus on completing the low-pressure vessel in the U.S., which, as Ronan mentioned, is commissioning in Q3. There is also some of the investments in down payments in Vietnam. Guidance from our brokers is indicating that that £8 million will double in the second half, but that will be a swing away from the low-pressure vessel and more towards Vietnam in the second half. The consequences of our cash generated is a net debt reduction to £21.1 million. This is net debt on our banking definition.
Importantly, it ignores finance leases, and more importantly, it's what drives our leverage and covenant calculations. That's down 39.9%. I've got a brief slide coming up on net debt. Leverage therefore down at 0.7x, down from 0.9x at the year end, and from 1.4x this time last year. An interim dividend up 5% to £0.250. In the small boxes there, I've just got a couple of the balance sheet items that maybe represent the larger movers from the period to last year. Intangible assets, that was £11 million last year, very much driven by MuCell. The decision to pause that investment led to a reduction in that at the end of last year down to £0.4 million. Now it's moving down as we amortize further. Intangible assets currently are very immaterial to the group's balance sheet.
I also mentioned working capital, the great work there and the net working capital inflow in the six-month period. That translates into a £48.5 million working capital balance, which is £11 million down on, or £10 million down, sorry, on this time last year. In terms of a percentage of working capital against sales, that's a reduction from around the 40% mark down to 31%. We're very proud of that. A lot of work going on by a lot of the people in the organization, and there's still a pathway for further reductions in our views. Finally, pension deficit. It is not a significant concern or risk to the organization. It's gradually reducing. It was £1.6 million last equivalent period last year. It is now down to £0.6 million. Strong cash generation, summary, strong working capital focus, and the interim dividend up 5%.
Moving to just a final slide on the debt, as you can see, we started, if you look at the IFRS debt, we started the period at £33 million. That's down to £29.1 million. Our net debt after leases or excluding leases is down £3 million from £24 million to £21 million. A lot of cash generated, reinvested in CapEx, mostly completing our low-pressure vessel in the U.S. and starting our investment in Vietnam. Dividends, tax, and lease payments takes us to that £21 million. Fundamentally, and maybe the last comment, this is a strong balance sheet, and this balance sheet provides us with flexibility for inorganic growth opportunities, which are part of our strategy. With that, I'll pass back to Ronan.
Brilliant. Thank you, Gary. Okay, summary for the half, record performance, very strong revenue flowing through to really strong profits. Across the verticals, the real drivers coming from consumer and lifestyle and also transport and smart technologies. Within that, we're talking footwear, aviation, aerospace have been really where we've seen the strongest growth. Construction, some more headwinds in here, but we expect part of that is to do with the U.S. wider environment, also to do with operational challenges at a customer, and also is the weighting in terms of demand H1 versus H2. Overall, I would say that the realignment of the business continues to really take pace, and that focus from product to market verticals is starting to yield dividends for us. Progress on the strategies is really good. I talk about the sort of five pillars. We are making progress in all five areas, which is tremendous.
That can be seen with things like the strategic investment in Asia. That investment in Vietnam that we announced and the fact that we've now been able to secure an incredible partner to come along with us to invest in this journey. The partner doesn't just bring capital, but brings tremendous credibility and expertise in the market and in the region. North America, as I say, I remain ever bullish about the North American business. Bringing that new capacity on stream in Q3 will propel us again for further growth opportunities in some of those really exciting markets that we have in the U.S. As we look to the full year, I think we can say we're looking at really solid progress on the commercial transformation. We've started. It's a journey. We'll continue to move along on our journey in H2. Operational excellence is super important for us.
It's not all the shiny things that we're looking at. Stuff like working capital is really important to us. I think we've demonstrated an ability to bring some basic best practice in these areas and unlock real significant chunks of cash for the business. Our strategy of expanding beyond the core is really gathering pace, whether that's the investment we're making in Asia, in our innovation centers, or in our investment in commercial talent that are coming into the business to develop the pipeline of opportunities in those verticals. Also the other stuff that we haven't seen yet, but where the hopper is really filling in things like inorganic growth strategy. All of this good momentum gives us the confidence that our full-year profit will be ahead of expectations as we confirmed this morning in our interim statement.
With that, I'm going to come out of presentation mode and we're going to switch over to Q&A.
Fantastic. Yes, Ronan, Gary, thank you very much indeed for your presentation. If I may, I will now turn your cameras back on. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab situated on the top right corner of your screen. While the company takes a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Ronan, Gary, as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. If I may now hand back to you and kindly ask you to read out the questions where appropriate, I'll pick up from you both at the end. Thank you.
Okay. All right, we'll start with a tremendous one. If you could fast forward 20 years, what seemingly unrelated or unconventional industries do you believe will be using Zotefoams materials in a way that no one's currently imagining? It's probably going to be used in industries that don't even exist today. I think it's a really, really tricky one to answer. We will continue to innovate. We will continue to make performance materials. What we do is our focus is on using the very best polymers that are available in the market and then applying our technology and our techniques to make them lightweight, to give them physical attributes that one may not imagine, whether that's strength, whether it's heat resistance, whether it is conductivity. There's a multitude of applications for engineered polymers and all sorts of polymers.
I guess we don't know what those industries will be that will be super exciting in 20 years' time. All of the trends are going to be about sustainability, about lightweighting, about durability, about just added performance and that true value creation. I think that the products that we create do that and will continue to do that for many years. We will keep innovating and we'll keep staying ahead of trends. Okay, let's go to the next one. Sorry, I'm just struggling with navigation. Bear with me. How do you plan to measure the long-term non-financial value of the new strategic partnership, particularly related to gaining access to operational best practice and deeper market relationships? I think it's got to be measured. This has got to be measured really by our ability to increase the addressable market within the footwear business that we operate.
What I mean by that, today we operate very much at the pinnacle, at the very highest end. What we want to do is to bring supercritical fluid foams and that technology that has helped set world records to set more and more personal bests for people doing park runs. It's about democratizing the technology that we've created for elite runners. Bottom line, get on many more pairs of shoes. That's really what we plan to do. Today, supercritical foams is the preserve of largely the highest end, the most expensive, not terribly very often used shoes, so as to get onto many more of those. How is the partnership with Shincell progressing through May 2024? Are there any notable products due to be released? We continue to really work closely with Shincell. Remember that this is a one-way partnership. We bought access to their knowledge and know-how.
We're using, and we're able to use, data from the way that they operate to help form the way that we set ourselves up in our Asia expansion. That's super, super useful. We're not necessarily using their technology. Actually, we're not. We're able to eliminate some ways of doing things and refine what we do and improve what we do ourselves. That's super helpful for us. In terms of are there any notable products to be released, we're working on some really interesting products to bring to market. I think it's early days. Whether or not we actually choose to co-release them or whether we want to bring those through our facilities, we'll fine-tune that. It depends on the markets that we're addressing. Is there any update on how the partnership with Nike is going? Could you give more detail on your head of expectations? What now is your guide?
What wedding revenue do you expect? The partnership with Nike continues to go from strength to strength, I would say. We are focused on innovating and bringing next-generation solutions to Nike. We collaborate with them closely. They're very interested and obviously very keen for us to deploy our investment in Asia. We work really, really close with them. We've got a saying about winning with the winners and winning where it matters. Nike are back to winning ways, particularly in athletic footwear. We plan on helping them to win even more. Could you give more detail on head of expectations? Gary, that's one for you.
I'll say those two, can't I? Yeah. New consensus was our calculated consensus prior to today was £149 million revenue and £19.5 million profit. Remember, adjusted profit, reported profit now the same, given that we don't have any amortization of acquired intangibles, which is very much a very minor, but very much a mucil matter. Consensus has now moved up from both brokers up to £155 million revenue and £20.5 million profit. It's £1 million up on profit, £5 million up on sales, various things happening in between there. There's another one, but it's gone.
That's just that. Okay, next one's an interesting one. How's the search for the new CEO progressing?
It's news to you.
That's news to me, but I'm hoping that the search for a new CEO isn't going well because it is news. I'm suspecting that that meant CFO. We announced that Nick Wright will be joining the business as Gary's successor in October. We've got a very orderly handover as Gary moves off to retirement and enjoys retirement. The search is complete. Nick has signed up. He's coming into this in October. We're really excited about that. Gary is here as ever to support in his integration and indeed handover.
I think we released the RNS on that back in April. It should be on our April or May. I can't remember which date it was. It's on our website.
Yeah, indeed. Okay. Can you explain the revenue and cost model of the announced JV? Also, whether the JV and the appointment of Brandon Thomas, driven by conversations with Nike, are coincidental? I'll come to the second part of that. No, the appointment of Brandon and the JV, these were independent choices that we as Zotefoams have made. We've been incredibly lucky that we've been able to attract such talent and Brandon coming from Nike to join Zotefoams. I think that his joining us endorses in many respects the vision that he sees for supercritical foams in the future. That was, that's absolutely tremendous. In terms of the JV, this is something that we have determined.
I and we as a leadership team recognize the opportunity that we have ahead of us and the importance for execution and really, really, you know, really executing fast because the opportunity is really, really significant here. Partnering with someone in a region that knows not only Vietnam, but is inside in the industry, has got 40 years of experience in that industry, can only help drive our success in this area. Can you explain the revenue and cost model of the announced JV? I'm not quite sure what that means, but revenues, the business that we have in Vietnam will be a joint venture partnership. It will create its own revenues from products that it manufactures in Vietnam and sells to our customers, to all of our tier one customers in Vietnam. All of our tier one group of customers will be serviced.
We will continue to have some revenues out of the U.K. for our sheet foams that will go direct to those facilities. They will not be part of, will not be part of the joint venture.
I think one of the points we made there previously was that we've done extremely well to go from effectively zero to $65+ million. From the U.K., and the U.K. going forward, if we want to grow further, the U.K. is not the place to be manufacturing footwear. The entire industry is in Asia. The supply chain is long, the ability to react quickly is slow, and the costs are high. The rationale, part of the rationale to move to Asia is that's where everybody else is. That allows us to provide, to offer a lower cost solution, which will then, you know, I mean, we have certain agreements with Nike, which would bring the price down. The idea is we're in the right place, and consequently, the volumes will more than replace the revenues and the profits that we make at the moment.
Not a huge amount of change in terms of the model, just a positioning to a region where we can accelerate vastly more, maintain what we've achieved, and take that forward in the coming years.
Perfect. Okay, next I'm seeing is, are you still going ahead with your Vietnam Technical Center? The Technical Center in Asia is always planned to be in South Korea. Yes, we are still going ahead with it. I think I mentioned in the presentation, we've actually, the longest lead time for our technical centers or innovation hubs, it's autoclave equipment. We're close to the orders for it. Yes, 100%. Innovation is a core component of our future strategy. It is vital for ongoing growth. Yes, we are still going ahead with an innovation hub. It's in Korea, as it has always intended to be in Korea. Yes, we are continuing to do that. Has there been any further progress on your arrangement with Shincell? I think we mentioned or touched on that. Oh, things are moving around. Sorry. Can you update on the M&A activity around foam fabricators?
We can't go into any detail on M&A. All I would just highlight is that there are, we can see quite a few interesting opportunities, whether they are along the value chain, so it's up the value chain, or whether they are in technologies or geographies that can complement the business. We're not limiting ourselves to any one technology, any one place in the value chain. All I can say is that we're very active in the market in terms of building relationships and looking at the opportunities and developing those relationships so that we can proceed with M&A because it is a really core component of our strategy. Roughly, how much extra revenue does the second low-pressure vessel support? I don't know the number specifically, but we've got one low-pressure vessel and now we're going to have two. Quite a lot.
It's not the only bottleneck in the capacity that we have there, but we've got, there are three big stages in our manufacturing process in the U.S. There's extrusion, there's low-pressure vessel, sorry, there's extrusion, there's high-pressure vessel, and then there's the low-pressure expansion. We've got oodles of capacity. That's a real technical term in our high-pressure vessels. The LP will then sort of allow a lot of capacity at the other end of that. The next stage is around extrusion. We've got plenty of capacity, but needless to say, without putting a number on it, it gives us a real opportunity for growth.
It balances capacity. The primary cost elements are the low-pressure and the high-pressure. It balances capacity. It's also a new machine. The existing one's 20 + years old. There is inefficiency there. There are cost opportunities through the efficient running of it, through the certainty of running of it, that putting the two together, using both, but really driving the new one harder gives us efficiency opportunities and upside on volumes.
Okay. What flexibility do you have in dealing with Trump tariffs? You know, we've got a U.S. facility that can satisfy the demand in the U.S. and will increasingly make the U.S. for the U.S. That's tremendous. When it comes to the impact or the sort of secondary impact, impact on consumer confidence in the U.S. on things like footwear demand, which will always come from Asia, by the way, just to be really clear. I think I've said this in every presentation. Any tariffs are not going to shift the manufacture of athletic footwear away from Asia. If anything, what we're going to see is an acceleration of manufacture out of China towards Vietnam and Indonesia. Within our direct operations, America for America, which is great, and the investment there helps us lean further into that. The U.S. market has got such tremendous growth opportunities with or without tariffs.
It doesn't really matter. We've made that decision a long time ago. The tariffs just seem to help that decision around that. The consequence on maybe consumer demand or the wider economic impact of Trump's tariffs, there's nothing we can do about that. Zotefoams, we've been around for 104 years. We've seen crazier moments than this. Probably we've been able to navigate our way through them and will navigate our way through this. Our supply chain leads us pretty well, pretty well established. We've got that American footprint. We've got the European footprint. We're moving footwear into Vietnam, which is probably the area that's attracting the most investment in footwear manufacturing in the world at the moment. I think that we feel pretty good about that. Is there any movement with regards to supplying Airbus? We supply Airbus contractors already at the moment.
We continue to see that as an opportunity to get on more of their aircraft. It's always an opportunity. Our teams are focused on building the pipeline with what is a super important customer. Can you give details of cash flow of the JV setup, timescale, and implementation? I'm not going to the cash flow bit, but in terms of the setup, we signed the agreement officially yesterday evening. We are in the process of securing a property, which we've been to. That is the property from which the JV will operate. We're going to start receiving equipment in Q1, Q2 next year. We're going to start trialing that equipment and having manufacturing products coming out of that towards the end of 2026. The JV will be established from day one. We're going through the legalities of setting up the entity in the country, etc. We're all systems go here.
At least that's from the sort of operational execution base. There's nothing, we're cracking on and we're already starting to deliver on this. Anything that you wanted to add on the cash flow?
Just in terms of cash flow, we've obviously got money going, we've got capital going out this year. The bulk of the capital going out this year, but we're receiving a $10 million, £7 million injection into the JV to support that from Seo-Heung, as we've said. Next year is where the bulk of the capital gets spent. By the end of next year, we're expecting to start to end of next year, beginning of 2027, start to manufacture. The remaining capital will be spent in 2027, which is generally assets are in final payments. That would lead therefore to a total build cost of £24 million, of which £7 million has been co-funded. This is not about starting and looking for custom and building up a footprint. We have the business. We'll be transferring that business over from the U.K. slowly to fairly quickly.
Through 2027, that business becomes cash generative. Yeah, that's pretty much it, what I've thought.
Yeah. Okay. What will the annualized cost savings from having a second LP in the U.S., a lower shipping cost, avoidance of tariffs, lower inventory holding costs, etc.? I think it's less about tariffs. That was never a motivation for this, just to be clear. It's not really shipping costs. It's just significantly more efficient. It's a more efficient, it's a modern vessel. It will allow us to reduce cycle times, reduce consumption of inputs in the form of nitrogen and also energy. It's just an overall significantly more versatile and much more flexible. Therefore, we believe, not we believe, we know we'll be much more efficient and lead us to be more, to have better costs.
In line with our capital markets day, our strategy over the next five years is the U.S. that we expect to grow faster than anywhere else. It's absorbing that capacity.
Indeed. Okay, just trying to keep up with the stuff that's coming in. Is Nike already pressing for the next new thing to better ZoomX performance? Absolutely. 100%. They are. They should, and we should. We're excited about creating the next generation of super shoe and also about taking supercritical foaming to many more shoes than just high performance running shoes. Yes, they are pressing. I think that's a great thing. That's why we're investing so much in innovation. Innovation is the name of the game in this particular vertical. I would say innovation is the name of the game in all of the industries in which we're operating. We have got a sophisticated, highly engineered product, and we need to keep innovating to keep it relevant. Approximately how many people will be relocated, hired for the Seo-Heung Co. Ltd joint venture?
We would envisage that the facility will employ in the region of 400 people. How many people will relocate? Indeed, very, very few. As I mentioned earlier, I think a really stellar hire in Brandon Thomas, securing Brandon to come and lead that business with his experience is tremendous. He scaled up the Nike Air NI business from nothing in 2019, so he's got a lot of experience in this. There are many talented people in Vietnam. We will be able to hire those into the business. There will be opportunities from our existing business who will be able to go over and help with the establishment of this JV, but there's not wholesale transfers of business, not from Zotefoams other facilities, or indeed significant transfer of people from Seo-Heung Co. Ltd's facilities. Okay. I think that's it.
That's great, Ronan. Gary, if I may just jump back in there and thank you for addressing those questions for investors today. Of course, the company can review all questions submitted today and will publish those responses on the Invest in Me company platform. Ronan, before I redirect investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, could I please ask you for a few closing comments?
Yeah, thank you, Alex. We're sitting here with a really strong H1 looking to continue that momentum into H2. It's a record sales performance. The business is really starting to execute on its new strategy. If we think of those five pillars, that product to industry, expanding our capabilities with a JV in Vietnam, investing in innovation, the work we're doing in M&A, and then all the operational excellence that we're leaning in on, we feel we're in a really good place. It's been a really solid H1. We see that continuing in H2. Very much delighted with progress and very much delighted that you're all able to join today and look forward to keeping you all appraised of future progress and events.
Fantastic, Ronan. Gary, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Zotefoams PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation and good afternoon to you all.