Sigmaroc (LSE:SRC) — Interim Results

0:03 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the SIGMAROC interim results presentation. Before we begin, we would like to submit the following poll, which you will see on your screens. Throughout this presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. However, questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screens or if anyone has dialed in via SIGMAROC at walbrookpr.com.

0:29 The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives today. However, the company will review all questions submitted and publish responses where appropriate. These will be available via your investment company dashboard. Finally, I would like to remind you that this presentation is being recorded. I would now like to hand you over to Chairman, David Barrett Chief Executive, Max Vamorkan Chief Financial Officer, Garth Palmer and Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Jan Van Beak. Max? Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our results half year results call this afternoon. We've got about 30 slides for you. It takes thirty minutes or so to run through. And after that, there will be plenty of time for questions. Start with section one highlights.

1:16 The first half of this calendar year was an extremely busy first half. What we've effectively done is build through three transactions Europe's leading lime and minerals business with a footprint right across North Europe. That footprint consists of 2,700,000,000 tons of high purity limestone reserves. They are located in fantastic locations right nearby big industrial hubs, big infrastructure hubs, ports, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea. The construction of this business came through three parts of the CRH Lime deal, which we announced at the end of last year, completed on the German, Czech, Irish acquisitions on the January 4. The UK came through at the end of March ahead of schedule.

2:02 And the Polish business completed only a week ago, again, totally ahead of schedule with antitrust clearances happened already in July. We launched into an aggressive synergies program, which is on track with the delivery the minimum delivery now increased up by 5,000,000 to €35,000,000 by 2027. More detail on that further into the presentation. We're also rolling out a Lyme centric ERP solution right across the group, and that will be rolled out over the next four eighteen to twenty four months as we integrate the various entities. There will be a net zero road map, which will be revised and published over the course of the next six months or so with updates that now reflect the wider group and the wider perimeter of our business.

2:50 And lastly, we announced our CFO succession, Garth Palmer, who has been with us since day one, has been an invaluable member of our team, has decided to step down at the end of this calendar year and focus on other things. And we're very pleased to welcome to our group Jan van Beek, who sits to my left. They will take you through the finance section of this presentation so that you get to know our future CFO a bit better as well. I'd like to take you now through four numbers in particular on Slide five, which highlights the first half of this calendar year, $469,000,000 in turnover for $100,000,000 EBITDA. That represents a 21.3% EBITDA margin, up 240 basis points. We're very pleased with those numbers.

3:36 They're ahead of our internal budgets. They're totally in line with consensus and represent the evolution of our group. You'll see that turnover has moved backwards by about 8% and EBITDA by three. These numbers are again expected. There's less pass throughs of energy and c o two costs versus the first half of twenty three, which was obviously right at the peak of the energy crisis, and that reflects most of that move as expected. There's two further numbers I'd like to draw your attention to on the right of the slide. EPS, 6% up at 4.3p. This is key number for us. This is taking into account all parts of the CRH deal. So on a pro form a basis, therefore, the group as it will look in the future.

4:23 The 6% move forward is key, and it shows the accretion of the CRH deal that we've done and how that impacts our group as a whole. The second number on the right is our leverage at 2.3 times at the half. Again, this follows very nicely the path of degearing that we announced at the CRH transaction at the end of last year. All in all, very strong performance, which underpins the confidence both in our half year and full year expectations as outlined. If I go through some of the end markets, first by segment and then by geography, a few points to make on the supply in the first half trading. The industrial segment first consists of four different subsegments, steel, paper pulp and board, chemical and mining, represents £217,000,000 worth of turnover, 42% of the group.

5:16 Steel had a good start in the first month with some restocking and some slowdown at the end of the first half with some automotive demand coming off a little bit. As a result, a first half in line. Paper pulp board packaging, good first half. Some strike action in Finland now over, so very specific disruptions here and there. And as a result of that, very steady volumes, very good volumes as expected. Chemical and mining, similar trends there, pockets of really good activity where our products were used as primarily as purifiers of their products or process or as fillers. There again, demand remained very good. The second segment is in the environmental segment. We sell into the food industry and to do agriculture. So food would be chicken feed, the production of feed for other animals, the production of sugar. Agriculture would be sliming of agricultural lands as a replacement for fertilizer. Again, both segments, very strong performance that's set to continue.

6:19 We saw some weakness in power generation. So when you burn coal to create energy, so power, you use lime and limestone to desulfurize the flue gas. If there's more wind energy in the system because of bad weather, there's less demand for flue gas treatment, obviously, and that we saw in the first half. Overall, a decent performance for the first six months with $63,000,000 turnover for that segment. Third segment, construction. The construction segment splits down into two parts, on the one hand and residential construction on the other. The infrastructure component is the largest one by far, so robust demand right across Europe with demand for primarily projects that were launched during either COVID times or the energy crisis later on, and we think that that will continue as is. The residential side of things was slow, has been slow for the last year, maybe even more than a year.

7:20 We see a recovery coming as soon as interest rates come down. Housing permits remain

7:27 low, but housing shortage remains the same pretty much everywhere. So as soon as that starts to turn, we see this segment recover. Taking a look at the same trading and the same six months of trading across the geographies, there are four main regions across our group, the Northwest, which comprises The UK and Ireland, Channel Islands. Very good performance across this segment. Market share pricing, cost control were very much maintained. Margins were very good. Even though there's quite a bit of residential exposure in this sec in this business, the business performed very well, so we're very pleased with the Northwest. The Western section, which is the Benelux, North Spain and in France, Again, good performance in spite of some weakness despite weakness in trading, residential construction.

8:24 We see that turn as the interest rates come off. We also had quite severe weather disruptions there in the month of January with snow covering some of our sites with no activity possible at all in the first few weeks, but that turned out turned around again afterwards. Fels and VitoSof consist of our central region, CRH businesses we bought there. Very good performance in line with budget. The residential construction here, again, also weakness. We make aerated blocks for residential construction primarily and power generation. These were the two weaker sections there in the first half. But all in all, when it comes to the other segments, food, agriculture, steel, and so on, good trading in the first six months. And then lastly, the Northeast, which is North North Calc footprint, very positive EBITDA performance over the course of the first six months.

9:18 Pricing and cost control were outstanding. Infrastructure demand was good, in particular in Poland and the Baltic States. Scandinavia had some weakness in residential demand, but pulp, paper, board, mining, chemicals were very good. So very pleased with the Northcount business in the first half of this year. We obviously need to look at our group when it comes to the future, how it looks post the CRH Lime acquisition. And there, the group is essentially formed of four regions I mentioned, which are displayed here on Slide 11. The UK, The Channel Islands, and Ireland's Northwest Region, a 193,000,000 ton of reserves. The West Region, the smallest of the three currently, big reserve position in Belgium, in particular, four forty seven million million tons. The Central Region, again, a fantastic reserve picture there with very big limestone reserves in the heart of Germany, 27% of our group, and the largest region currently nearly a billion ton of reserve. Again, the Northeast, which is the NORTHCOG business, including the lime assets in Poland, 39% of the group and thereby the largest group part of the group. On the left of this slide, we have the pro form a numbers for the business. That means all of the parts of the CRH group now integrated for the first half. To give you an idea of what the group looks like when all these parts come in, 32,000,000 in turnover and CHF 118,000,000

10:49 in EBITDA. Strong market positions in each of the countries we operate in and six core sectors. We also launched into a synergies program with the teams at group headquarters running this program under the leadership of Guy, and and several others, and then helped by the regional heads and their teams as well. And this has been a very collaborative effort right across the group and has been very successful so far. As a result, we were able to increase the base deliverable for this program from €30,000,000 to €35,000,000 by the end of twenty twenty seven. We also give you on slide 12 a breakdown of how that 35,000,000 will come through in the years '25, '26, and '27 as you can see on the right hand side of this slide. The potential to go all the way up to 60, very much available.

11:45 The 35,000,000 was achieved, not yet taking into account the Polish setup, which has only been part of our group since the September 2. When it comes to where these synergies come from, on slide 13, we give you a few ideas here both in pictures and in in the text on the left. The picture in the middle of the slide is actually quite a nice one. You will see in there our powder carrier, the MV Rone, the ship with the green hull on the left being being filled with lime out of Ireland, the truck on the right, to be shipped across our network. This is to give you an idea of what kind of synergy we're looking at. Very much bringing our business together as a leading European lime and minerals group with

12:30 a integrated kill network. You also see some other pictures on the right. We're very much looking at the optimization of our kill network. We're investing heavily in AI driven kill optimization. We're also looking at technology firms, some small startup firms that bring very interesting applications and ways of looking at production methods, logistics, and other things through our ventures are all of this to optimize the the network, do more r and d r and d and product development. There's also standards or more standard synergy work that's being done, bulk buying because of scale, SG and A optimization, insourcing of certain materials, cost cost reviews across across the group, all of this to make this business a leading European limestone group.

13:21 So that completes the first two sections of this presentation. I'll hand you over to Jan van Beek to present you the financials. Thank you, Max. This is an overview that was shown earlier on, but with a little bit different numbers for revenue and EBIT. This is now year over year comparison for the important metrics financially. We're very pleased to report strong results for the group that was delivered in a very busy half that is behind us, integrating the CRH asset to become the European lime and minerals producer. So very pleased to to show there a 60% year over year increase on revenue on revenue up to £469,000,000.

14:07 EBITDA grew even more, 82% year on year to £100,000,000, partially due to acquisitions as more group units in the group now, but also through effective pricing across the group and and cost control. So that was helped, and that also drove up the EBITDA margin with 200 basis two forty basis point to 21.3%. EPS down a little bit year over year, 20%, which is primarily to do with the timing and the structure of the CRH acquisition where debt came in earlier than the units would come in, especially Poland just in September. If you look at then EPS on a pro form a basis, which is next to it, which is then up 6%, showing the earnings accretion that the zero rates assets bring.

15:03 If you move down to return on invested capital, up 100 basis points to 6.2%. Free cash flow generation of 43,000,000, up EUR 44,000,000 of last year, which translates into a 43% conversion rate, which is helping us to take year, which we'll get to that later on. Covenant leverage is 2.6 times,

15:33 in line with expectations and guidance. And on a pro form a basis, it's down to 2.3 times. So all in all, very good results for the first half and providing confidence in full year expectation and the ability to deliver the consensus. If we move to the next slide, there are a lot of numbers in here. I'll focus on a few. This is all on pro form a basis with all businesses included in the numbers for 2024, Buxton as well as the Poland unit. Revenues up 83% to €532,000,000 EBITDA even up in triple digits, 115% to £180,000,000 which also brings EBITDA margins up substantially with three thirty business points to 22.2%.

16:32 We talked about underlying EPS already, nicely up 6%. Cash is firm at 153,000,000 for June 30, and the adjusted leverage ratio is up 33% better than at 2.3. If we move to Slide 17, we have the revenue bridge. As this is a year over year comparison, the majority is coming from m and a in terms of growth. 62% is the growth year on year from two ninety to 469 in '24. M and A comprised 65% primarily through the Lime acquisitions, of course, but also through the full year contributions of smaller acquisitions that were done in 2023.

17:24 Organic growth declined 1%, primarily driven by the residential industry in the Northwest. In the West, it had softer volumes. Northeast was a little better. Overall, it's down 1%. So ending the year at SEK $469,000,000.

17:48 If you go to Slide 18, similar bridge, but then for EBITDA. We see that earnings are is up 82% from 55% in the first half of 23% to 100% in 24%. M and A, again, contributes substantially for that as we may also saw with M and A, both also on the smaller acquisition side contributing. And you can see here where the central units are contributing the most 58% of that M and A component. Organically, the growth of two percent was driven by the Northeast Region that benefited both from operational improvements that were set in motion in the years before that is now paying out through improvement programs, but also pricing was strong and and cost management was also helping out there. And on top, infrastructure demand, especially in Poland and Baltics, was strong as well in the first half, so both contributing to a good EBITDA growth year over year, so ending the year at 100.

18:58 If we move to Slide 19, there's a lot of numbers on the slide again. This is the income statement year over year. A lot of numbers again. I'm not going to mention all of them. One thing to highlight here is that rather in the middle underlying profits from operations, it's up 31,000,000. It's about 80% plus, which is in line with the EBITDA increase that we showed earlier on.

19:22 Net finance income is is up 17,000,000 coming from the funding of the CRH deals earlier this year. So that'll comprise a little less than 7% of the cost of of debt. So that's that's on that. And then in the middle there, you'll see an increase in the tax expense of six, which is in line with higher earnings that we've we're able to to accomplish over the year, and it's also in line with what what we what we guided. Then it's represent roughly 22% of earnings before tax. The section to the right shows the composition of cost of sales relatively, where the increase in the inclusion of the CRH assets does provide a little different cost base than what the group had before with labor and energy coming in at higher percentages because of the

20:21 cost base structure that the line business has versus the stone business. The good thing there is that those units are also running at about 70% variable costs, which allows us for a good cost control also to secure good operating margins for the entire group.

20:43 We move on to Slide 20. We have an overview on the cash generation for the group. It starts with the underlying EBITDA of SEK €100,000,000 It was up 45,000,000 roughly versus last year, and it only came with an absorption for June of €3,000,000 overall, which was lower than was expected and especially due to change in policy for ETS returns, was originally scheduled for March, which will now happen in September. We paid about EUR 10,000,000 of income tax during the first half, which was in line with expectations.

21:30 And then we have two components of CapEx that we paid for, EUR 24,000,024,500,000 for for maintenance, which keeps the assets running, which represent about 84% of DNA, which is in line with what's being said, you know, structurally to be 85 to 90%. And then growth was 3%, which is primarily related to the commissioning of a national plant in South Wales early this year and minor amounts for the start of the synergy program.

22:04 That finance cost, 60,000,000. It was cash out. Like I said, it's about a little less than 7 percent of cost of debt that we paid for. And then ending the year at 43,000,000 of free cash generation that helps us to deleverage the the the finance structure of the group, which is shown on the next slide. Here, you see the position of the net debt.

22:33 The focus is on deleveraging, as the header says, post the CRA's line acquisitions. We started the year at 182,000,000, then the CRA's deals were done, deal one and two, where we raised about 200,000,000 minus some cost, 196,000,000 through equity. We got the funding for the units complete. At that moment, we had to pay also some some borrowing costs as well as a non underlying cash cost to make these deals happen. So since early this year, we're at at

23:05 at the that was the max level of of debt that the group incurred. And since then, we are generating cash to to lower down leverage through underlying free cash flow. And there were a couple of other components to pay out coming from the deals, minority interest and all that. So we're now at £533,000,000 by the end of June, 2.57 times EBITDA, and the intent is to delever that ASAP to the end of the year, which think will and get to 2.3, which would be in line with the consensus and expectations. That concludes the finance section. Mark, so back to you for the strategic delivery. Thank you very much. There's a few slides in the deck that I wanted to take you through.

23:54 To give you a few pointers on where this business is going, we've obviously transformed slightly. We were a focused construction materials group, and we have, since the acquisition of North Alger twenty one, systematically moved closer and closer to

24:09 a minerals and lime business. The reason for this is that the lime and minerals business and the lime and the minerals section segments are much less cyclical, much less p and l driven and much more driven by strategic reserve position, long term supply deals, long term customer relationships, and a fantastic industry to be in. As a result, we really want to put forward the location and quality of our industrial reserves, the diversified nature of our portfolio of clients and sectors we supply to, but also the operational excellence that we have pushed through this business for years now and the effective management of CO2 with a revised net zero strategy that we will bring out over the course of the next six to twelve months, where we really take into account the new setup and how we see c o two as an opportunity for us as a group. If you take all of those points in a few slides, slide 24, the group as it stands today

25:05 is the map in blue on the right side of the slide. Number one, number two position in each of the markets we supply in and a vast network of setups and plant locations, reserve locations right across our business. The two pie charts on the left show you the split of our group as it stands by region and by segment, very nicely diversified with many different end regions and different end markets. I mentioned already on slide 25 the the importance of our reserve base. The reserve is spread right across our footprint with millions of tons in each location,

25:44 close to end users, close to end markets, in the heart very often of main consumption hubs, be it residential, be it infrastructure, or industrial use. The the reserves are of high quality. There's purity, pure limestone that has multiple uses, multiple uses today and well into the future. That operational footprint, that location of reserves, 2,700,000,000 tons in total, is a a critical point in the delivery of our strategy. The second point I've mentioned to you is the benefit of being a diverse and diversified group. And we wanted to show you how this looks over many years. We've taken 75% pro form a EBITDA this group generates since 2008, the data we have available from the various companies that we purchased.

26:33 And you can see the the steadiness, the stability of the of the earnings and the margins of these earnings right across that that that period of time. Across that sort of daily fifteen years, many crises have happened across Europe, many periods of of growth stability have happened. And each time, our businesses have performed very well. This is a real testament to the nature of the industry we're part of. A different way of showing this is how our diversification has panned out since the first half of twenty three. At the top pie charts on slide 27 show you what our group's turnover was exposed to by region and by sector in '23 and how that has now diversified even more in '24.

27:22 The sector pie chart on the bottom left hand corner shows you a very nice split between the various end markets as well as the right hand side by the between the various geographic locations. This diversification is ideal. It helps you navigate the various economic cycles across the group. Further way of showing how this diversification happens it happens and helps is if you take out revenue stability through long term contracts. The pie chart shows you how the contractual relationships with the various end customers of is in terms of length across our group. You can see that only 25% of our business is exposed to contracts which are lower or shorter than three years, and that's actually easy to understand. These are mostly construction related contracts as these construction related contracts are more project based or more delivery on the day, quarry output contracts for specific housing projects or infrastructure projects.

28:24 All the rest are longer term relationships, and we're particularly proud of this. It means that we have been able to help our customers solve their their challenges, their issues, help them with their production processes through delivery of products, through R and D, through helping them solve their production challenges. Now we obviously have grown our business not just by acquisition as we have over the years. We've also done quite a lot of work to make sure that we grow organically. And we've decided to include a graph here in this slide on page 29 with two bar charts that give you a bit of a breakdown. On the left hand side, the organic revenue growth. On the right hand side, the m and a based revenue growth. We're particularly pleased here with the left hand side graph. 2020, 2021 had double digit revenue growth in them, and that's these are periods of time when there was hardly any pass throughs or inflation to speak of. Also 2018, the 10% up was particularly pleasing. That was our first full year of operations having set up the business and launched it in January 2017.

29:34 And as a result of this, our four I principle, invest, improve and integrate, clearly shows that we're able to not just buy businesses, but make them significantly better as we run them. And then lastly in this section, for one outlook slide, a reminder of our capital allocation strategy. We clearly have a mandate to gear and Jan has referred to this throughout the finance section. Our target is to get to one and a half times EBITDA as we have done over the past each time that we gear up to buy a business. That's that's being delivered as we speak. We will then consider cash returns to shareholders. Buybacks of shares are clearly on the agenda if our valuations remain subdued or modest dividends as the share price hopefully moves up. Organic growth is something that we continue to focus on. Maintenance CapEx is always guided at 85% to 90% of DNA as we are currently running. We'll invest in growth CapEx.

30:37 We have done over time. We'll also invest in innovation, r and d, partnerships with interesting businesses that can help our company move forward. And then selective M and A, all funded through internal cash flow will help our business compound grow as we go forward. So that sort of completes the section of strategic delivery and leaves us one slide to look at before some q and a, and that's the outlook for '24. The first half of twenty four was extremely busy, and the teams in the group in the center and at the various ops calls did a stellar job integrating new companies, welcoming nearly a thousand new colleagues, making sure that people got paid, their pension systems got let set up, that the IT system worked, and that everything went smoothly. We also thank CRH for helping us deliver these acquisitions on time.

31:30 If we look through the second half of the year, there's quite a few things that are have started well. The first months in the second half are well in terms of trading, and therefore, our outlook for the full year remains unchanged. If you look at the details, industrial demand in steel, we expect us all to slow down because of some weakness in auto demand. But on the other hand, paper pulp and board, chemistry, and mining will see steady growth steady demand or some modest growth in '24 and '25. Environmental section sees good and solid demand in agriculture and food volumes, and they will remain robust in h two. Power generation, depending on weather, will be more difficult to forecast. We'll see how the climate evolves over the next six months.

32:24 We see an increased amount for sugar and sugar stone, which is very, very good. Sugar is also used in nonfood related production. And there, we see further demand coming through. And then lastly, construction. Infrastructure demand remains strong, and that's the largest part of our construction exposure. The residential outlook remains fairly weak in most places. We hope that interest rate reductions will materialize, which we think will then reignite the construction and residential construction markets. Where structural demand remains very strong, it's just a question of funding and permits and launches of housing sites right across the footprint. Some green shoots here already in The UK a little bit, Belgium a little bit, Benelux a bit.

33:15 Still quite a bit of weakness in Scandinavia and Germany. So all in all, a positive start to h two. Outlook unchanged from our perspective, a great effort in the first half and plenty more to come as we grow, integrate and deliver synergies. This completes the slide deck. Thank you very much for your attention so far. Happy to take any questions. Thank you, Max. Thank you, Jan. Now if we could turn to the questions, we do have a number that have already been submitted, but please do continue to submit your questions using the button on your screen. We have a question from Ben. The CRH Lime acquisitions have been successfully integrated. How do you view SIGMAROC's long term growth prospects in the European lime market? And what role will ultra low carbon products play in driving future demand?

34:08 Yes. Very good question, Ben. Thank you. It's a great sector to be in. It's a great place to be in it. The business is now set up as a line producer, a minerals producer. That gives us multiple avenues to to grow to grow. First and foremost, we need to look at our own footprint. We need to look at what products are we making, what r and d efforts can we invest in, what new products can we develop to help solve our customers' production challenges? That's the first thing we look at. Secondly, you can look at the wider European geography. There's plenty of markets we're not active in currently, for the South, for the East, for example, where we could very well operate lime and minerals businesses. The further potential is that the group is not just necessarily just a lime business. We've got limestone, and there's additional minerals that look very similar to those products and that have the same customer base. And we could grow into these areas also.

35:02 All of those are avenues that we will explore, and all of those will, as we are driving through synergies and have the geared, allow us to compound growth grow going forward. Ultra low carbon is something that we pioneered from a concrete perspective here in The UK in 2020 when our Northwest division launched a little bit to the surprise of a lot of people, a first ultra low carbon concrete mix. In that mix, interestingly, was also lime as one of the components constituents. And so there there, again, we will continue to to be involved a lot. We are investing in small startups that do these things, for instance, VIVO, SendFree, various investments that we've made to a small scale to be part of the the the the front the the leading front in terms of decarbonization.

35:52 Now another point that people sometimes forget is that lime is a fun fascinating product when it comes to ultra low carb. Most of the products that we sell in terms of lime, yes, they produce c o two when you make the lime, but they reabsorb that c o two when you apply it. And this is something where we will come to the market with lots of detail on in the near future, and it's something to keep in mind. And that sets us well apart from, for instance, the cement industry or other industries which are carbon intensive. We reabsorb at short notice most of the c o two in most of our applications, And that is something unique that is perhaps unknown. So in short, plenty of growth ideas, plenty of growth potential from the base that we've now built.

36:43 Great. Thank you. And and just for Ben's purposes, there there was a second question that he submitted. I think you've covered much of his second question that too. So just for Ben's information, we probably won't cover that. Second question here, which has come from John. With positive momentum in the second half, especially in sectors like food, agriculture and mining, do you anticipate any significant headwinds that could impact your ability to meet full year EBITDA expectations? We sort of flagged most of the the head and tailwinds that we see currently. So there's clearly few tailwinds, and there's a few headwinds. The few headwinds are what's automotive demand going to do in Europe. We obviously sell into into the steel industry. Some of that steel gets used for autos and auto construction, and therefore, we that's a headwind we flagged up. Second headwind we flagged up is coal fired power generation.

37:39 If there's a lot of wind in Europe, the the wind turbines run at full steam, and therefore, there's less coal fired power generation required to meet the energy demands. So these are clearly two two points to consider and to look at. At the same time, mining, chemistry, infrastructure demand, all of those remain robust. Sugar, environmental applications remain very robust. So usually, what you see in the lime and the limestone business is that there's headwinds and tailwinds and that they balance each other out, Therefore, got nice visibility on revenues and EBITDAs for the year, but also years out. And that's the nice place to be in at this point in time. Great. Super. Thank you. David asks, ROIC has improved year on year due to the CRH acquisitions.

38:31 You've set a medium term target of 15%. What are your key drivers for achieving this, and how confident are you in hitting this target within the given timeline? Yeah. I'll take this. It's it's actually quite quite a straightforward one. It's delivery of the minimum synergy target gets us above 15%, ROIC, which we're targeting to have by sort of 27%. Above and beyond that, obviously, anything, you know, the upper end takes us higher than that. And also, once we've degeared sufficiently, as Max pointed out in the presentation, reinvesting that compounding growth will help that further as well. Great. Super. Thank you. Steven says, as SIGMAROC expands, how are you positioning the company against competitors?

39:17 And what differentiates SIGMAROC from the other players in terms of operational efficiency, pricing power and market share? Yep. So we're obviously a lime and limestone producer, we compete both with the pure play lime operators and with some of the some of the limestone producers. I think we're quite a dynamic business. We're focused on r and d. We're focused on integrating. We have quite a good product development unit in both in Scandinavia and in and in Germany. So these are are are actively looking for further ideas to help customers solve their their production and other issues. We're also quite somewhat different in that we are at hard quarrying.

40:03 And that means that when we look at a quarry, we look at every gram of stone that we extract from this quarry. We look for a way to to monetize and sell. Some live operators focus purely on lime and find and do less in the quarrying space. We find that quarries give us lots of ideas to make some money on, and therefore, we we'd like to be involved with all the products. That's a slight differentiator, which I think will will be very beneficial to us in the long term. Okay. Super. Parvin's got two questions, and I'll break them apart. Question one, organic growth seems to be lumpy. What is driving organic growth, and what kind of long term organic revenue growth do you anticipate? Yeah. So I suspect that the lumpy nature of the organic growth has to do with the graph that was on screen where there's some bar charts are bigger than the others. You should also look at how these bar charts relate to the m and a growth that was next to it on the other side.

41:04 So each time we make a large acquisition, a bit of time afterwards, the effects of that acquisition then come through in terms of revenue growth. You buy this business, you look at how it works, you integrate it, then you start to drive the performance. And then a year later, that org that organic growth comes through. And so you need to sort of time shift these bar charts, not year on year exactly, but to put the the right sort of delay in between. Then you see that it's that is quite that is quite straightforward. Organic growth, generally speaking, is trying to find new markets for the product, making sure that you utilize all of the core material that you produce, making sure that that from a pricing perspective, we do our job. So there's various avenues there. Okay. Second question, what kind of return profile does the limestone business have? What is the ROE target for the company post synergies?

41:59 Maybe the ROE target is the one that you think we've essentially covered that. But we we look at return on invested capital, and the the median target is obviously 15%, which as we touched on, will will be delivered just through delivery of the synergy program at the lower end. Yeah. And then when it comes to lime and limestone, you can't just go limestone and and lump that into one bucket. It's various sub businesses in there, and the the return on investment of lime and on limestone are fairly similar. You sort of need both in our view. The the raw material for a lime kiln is the cream of the crop when it comes to the quarry, but you then also have all the other product in that quarry, which is perfect material for all sorts of other applications that are not necessarily burned applications.

42:46 So fillers, obviously, stone, pigments in some cases for for example, paper and other things. So you really want to optimize all the volume out of the quarry, set some material to the lime kilns, and then find applications for all the rest. And if you do that well, you get ROIs on on both sides, which are really compelling and in sort of the same levels. Okay. Super. I've got a question here from Rob, and I I I think it just needs interpreting. But he says, do you feel the future of limestone the the future of SIGMAROC as a line company with a view to offload the construction elements down the line? I suspect what he means is as a line business, would you consider offloading the construction elements down the line? So it's a good question, and there's a nuance to it.

43:35 You will we will always remain exposed to construction because lime is a binder, so you can, like, make lime mortars, for instance, at between in brickwork. We will also continue to sell limestone as an input fragment for for asphalt, for concrete, and so on. Where we were very much also focused on end products, for instance, concrete concrete products, asphalts, precast, all the rest of it, as a construction materials operator, that will be less of a focus because that is, in our view, now probably better handled by the pure play construction operators than by us. And so over time, that's becoming less central, less focused, and we'll probably find better ownership elsewhere. All in all, we will be exposed to basically the three segments, construction industry and environment from here on as a line business.

44:29 Yeah. Understood. John asks, you mentioned introducer fees as part of the non underlying items relating to the CRH acquisition. Can you explain why this is required given how well you know CRH? Well, it's introducer fees that so essentially what they are advisory. Right? Yeah. It's it's maybe the the text, the subtext is not exactly right. These are the the various banks and other advisers that you need in large scale transactions. Therefore, they form part of any type of transactional deal like this. So maybe the the the text could have been a bit clearer on this. Yeah. Understood. Great. Okay. Couple of other questions. When can we expect news on noncore disposals? We will you you'll get it as soon as the noncore disposals have have happened. As I get I want to make this point very clear.

45:19 We started to build various concrete asphalt concrete products and other businesses across our history over the last eight years. These companies are stellar businesses. They're high quality assets. They've got some industry leading margins. They have they punch well above their weight when it comes to when it comes to their market position. The right owner for these businesses will be found at some point in time as and when we decide decide to sell them. So at some point, we'll sell them. We'll see when and to the right owner. Yep. Super. Great. And final question. Where could margins get to once the synergies have been achieved? We always say that mid twenties is the range that we'd like to get to, 24, 25%.

46:10 That seems doable when the synergy the total synergy program has been has been implemented. So that's the target for now. Great. Super. Nice way to finish. And thank you, Max, Garth, Jan. Could I ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to the opportunity to provide your feedback. If anyone has further questions or would like additional information on SIGMAROC, please do get in contact via SIGMAROC at Warbrook PR dot com. Many thanks for attending today's presentation.