Ibstock H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 6, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: We achieved 9% revenue growth to £193 m in H1 2025 with significant volume gains driven by new build residential demand.
  • Negative Sentiment: Reactivating network capacity incurred higher incremental costs, contributing to a 6% drop in adjusted EBITDA to £36 m and a 280 bp margin decline.
  • Positive Sentiment: Our outlook remains strong with H2 EBITDA expected to exceed last year and full-year EBITDA guided to £77 m–£82 m amid improving market conditions.
  • Positive Sentiment: Diversified growth gained traction as Ipstock futures revenue rose by 25%, targeting breakeven in H2 and future EBITDA contributions from the Nostal investment from 2026.
  • Positive Sentiment: Strategic sustainability advances include the new Atlas factory cutting carbon emissions by 50%, pursuing green hydrogen funding, and progressing calcined clay commercialization by year end.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Ibstock H1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 3 speakers on the call.

Speaker 1

Good morning and welcome to the 2025 half-year results presentation for Ibstock PLC. With me, as usual, is our CFO, Chris McLeish. Turning to the agenda, after my initial overview, Chris will walk us through the financials and cover divisional performance. I'll then give an update on the market and talk about the strategic progress we've made over the last six months. Having covered the summary and outlook, Chris and I would be happy to answer your questions. Turning first to the overview, I'm pleased to say that we achieved significant volume growth in the first half of 2025, with that growth coming mainly from new build residential demand. We took steps during the first half to activate network capacity to meet recovering demand, although, as previously communicated, we recognized higher-than-expected incremental costs in doing so.

Speaker 1

We also saw a more competitive market backdrop in some parts of the market, which meant that we achieved only modest price progression and a negative mix impact, primarily as a result of the relatively stronger growth in new build residential markets. With both our core and diversified platforms now substantially in place, and with a clear focus on driving margin improvement, the group is well placed to capitalize on the market recovery. Accordingly, we expect to achieve H2 EBITDA ahead of the comparative period and continue to expect the full-year EBITDA to be in the range of between £77 million to £82 million. We've continued to make good progress in our diversified growth strategy, with capital deployment on target and an increasing financial contribution from Ibstock Futures, our business centered on growing modern methods of construction.

Speaker 1

With that, let me hand over to Chris to take us through the financials.

Operator

Thanks, Joe, and good morning, everyone. Turning to cover the financial summary, revenues of £193 million represented growth of 9% on the comparative period, driven by strong volume growth, particularly in the Clay division. Adjusted EBITDA of around £36 million was 6% below the prior year. Whilst performance benefited from the stronger volumes, we were impacted by higher-than-expected incremental costs related to the reactivation of network capacity, as well as a more competitive backdrop in markets. EBITDA margin reduced by 280 basis points because of these two factors. Adjusted EBITDA excludes £2.8 million of exceptional items in the current period, which relate to the previously announced restructuring programs. Amounts have been classified as exceptional in order to present a consistent view of underlying performance across financial periods. Leverage increased marginally from a year ago and was above the level at the beginning of the year.

Operator

As we guided in March, this principally reflects the seasonal increase in working capital, which is expected to reverse in the second half. Return on capital employed at 7% remains well below our targeted level and reflects capital invested in both core and diversified platforms, combined with earnings that continue to be impacted by markets well below normalized levels. With recovery in market demand, combined with expected returns from our growth investments, we expect return on capital employed to revert to our targeted level of at least 20% over the medium term. Finally, the board has approved an interim dividend of 1.5 pence, maintained in line with the prior year. Moving to revenue, we set out on this slide group revenues compared to the comparative figures in 2024. Clay revenues increased by 12% to £133.5 million, driven by strong volume growth.

Operator

In the five months to May 2025, overall UK brick market deliveries, including imports, increased by 13%, with the group's performance ahead of this level. Volume growth was most significant in the wire-cut product range into new build residential markets. As well as a shift in the mix of products, we also saw regional market disparities, with volume growth in most regions compared to a reduction in London and the Southeast. In the current period, Futures delivered revenues of £5 million compared to around £4 million in the prior period. Concrete revenues of £60 million were 2% ahead of the comparative period, reflecting volume growth in the majority of residential product categories, offset by weaker infrastructure volumes. Turning now to cover divisional performance, starting with Clay. We have seen strong growth in new build residential market demand, which has delivered significant top-line growth.

Operator

Pricing levels in the period reflected a more competitive market environment, particularly in the distribution channel, with modest pricing progress overall compared with the prior year period. The top line reflected the impact of adverse mix from the product and regional factors I referenced earlier. It was also impacted by the proportion of non-best sales volumes, which was above the historic average, reflecting lower operational yields at factories ramped up during the period. We expect this impact to reduce as the operational performance stabilizes over the remainder of the year. Adjusted EBITDA of around £33 million was 4% below the comparative period.

Operator

We took a decision to reactivate parts of the Clay factory network during the first half of 2025, and whilst this has led to higher-than-expected incremental costs in the period, we expect these costs to taper during the second half and do not expect them to recur next year. We expect adjusted EBITDA and the associated percentage margin to move forwards in the second half as productivity and operational efficiency ramp up. The Ibstock Futures business made both top and bottom-line progress, with broad-based growth across the portfolio. We expect Futures to move towards break-even in the second half and for EBITDA to build from 2026 as our major investment in Nostell starts to deliver positive returns. Turning to cover concrete, revenues increased by 2% to £60 million, with stronger volume growth in many of the residential product categories, partly offset by lower infrastructure volumes.

Operator

Roof tiles, flooring, and walling stone all achieved meaningful volume growth, with fencing volumes also ahead of the prior year period. Spending on the UK rail network reduced to historically low levels, despite now being in year two of control period seven. We are taking steps to mitigate this impact, but this constitutes a high margin part of the concrete division, adversely impacting mix. Sales pricing in the residential categories was stable, mirroring the market dynamics seen in the Clay brick division. Whilst EBITDA margins remain well below the historic levels achieved within our concrete business, as markets recover, we believe the division is well positioned to benefit with strong growth in both volumes and margins over the medium term. I would like to spend a few moments discussing the actions taken in the period to reactivate Clay network capacity.

Operator

You can see on this slide, we break out the total network into three components: volumes manufactured in the period, further active capacity available, that is, incremental volumes available through higher kiln car push rates or increased shifts, and finally, inactive capacity, that is, capacity mothballed or idled. We present this split for the full year 2022, half 1 2024, and half 1 2025. As you can see, the 2022 year reflected a year of good utilization, with capacity operating in the low 90%, which represents the sweet spot for unit cost efficiencies. In the first half of 2024, having commissioned a net 5% capacity increase, we had around 35% of the network inactive. Actual production volumes represented just over 50% of total network capacity.

Operator

Moving forward to half 1 this year, you can see that we have added around 20% of our overall capacity back into the active fleet, providing us with the ability to support further market growth without the need to structurally increase fixed costs. We produced volumes equivalent to around two-thirds of total network capacity in this period. With productivity and efficiency expected to improve through the second half, and with capacity available to respond quickly to further market growth, we would therefore expect an attractive drop through on volume progression as we move forwards. Moving now to cover cash flow. Overall, cash conversion improved by 8 percentage points to 32%, principally reflecting a lower seasonal working capital build compared to the same period in 2024. Capital expenditure was in line with our expectations, with £12 million on growth projects and around £9 million of sustaining spend.

Operator

The working capital outflow of £12 million reflects the typical seasonal receivables increase from year-end, as well as the build of base inventory levels at Atlas to ensure we can deliver effective service to our customers over the months ahead. Moving to the balance sheet, net debt increased by around £23 million in the six months to June. Reported leverage increased slightly to 2.2 times. As a reminder, the group has £225 million of committed borrowing, comprising a £100 million private placement and a £125 million revolving credit facility. These borrowings contain leverage covenants of no greater than three times tested semi-annually. Based on the covenant definition, leverage at the 30th of June totaled 1.9 times, and the group had £80 million of available liquidity.

Operator

As the seasonal working capital investment reverses and with earnings expected to move forwards, we expect positive cash flows overall in the second half, with net debt at December 2025 reducing from the level reported in June. Before I hand back to Joe, let me very briefly cover technical guidance. Overall, we anticipate year-on-year growth in sales volumes in the second half of the year, although we remain mindful of broader macroeconomic risks. On energy, we have requirements well covered for the remainder of this year and over half of next year's requirements locked in. I will let you read the remainder of this slide at your leisure, and with that, let me pass back to Joe.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Chris. Firstly, let me provide a bit of an update on our core markets. Overall, I'd say that our core markets are directionally positive, but that progress continues to be characterized by a sense of caution. The platform for recovery and housebuilding has taken shape with clear government support, improved approaches to planning, and housebuilder supply chains starting to gear up. We applaud the government's commitment to invest £39 billion into social housing, with new towns expected to deliver a substantial proportion of affordable and rental homes. Demand for private housing remains subdued, with home buyer confidence remaining relatively fragile. Affordability at current levels of interest rates remains a challenge, particularly for the first-time buyer. We have seen some recent increases in mortgage market competition and loan availability, which gives us some cause for optimism. The RMI market continues to be subdued, with merchants reporting ongoing volume weakness.

Speaker 1

Recovery in this part of the market will only accelerate when we see an uptick in consumer confidence, which remains at lower levels given the macroeconomic backdrop. As you can see on this slide, the CPA anticipates progress in both housing starts and completions on a two-year view. Activity levels in the early weeks of the second half continue to reflect improving demand conditions, and we anticipate year-on-year growth in our sales volumes in the second half of the 2025 year. Although, as Chris said, we remain mindful of those broader macroeconomic risks and the potential they can have on our markets. Turning to focus more specifically on the UK brick market, we often reference 2022 as a year of normalized demand when overall brick deliveries totaled 2.5 billion.

Speaker 1

You can see on the left-hand side of this chart, excluding the COVID year, the UK brick market has operated at an average demand level of over 2.4 billion for the five years running up to 2022. With the structural undersupply of housing in this country and with the government's focus and commitments to accelerate housebuilding, we retain a conviction that the market will return to this level over the medium term. As you can see in the middle section of this slide, the total UK brick deliveries were up strongly by 13% in the first five months of 2025, although they remain around 30% below the comparator in 2022. Imports continue to reduce as a proportion of total market, falling back to just over 18% in the current period from 19% last year and down from over 23% in 2022.

Speaker 1

As Chris referenced earlier, we've seen some shifts in sales mix by product, channel, and region. The actions we've taken to reactivate network capacity have responded to these mix shifts, but we expect alignment to historical demand patterns as the markets rebalance over the medium term. Brick inventories held by manufacturers have remained broadly in line with the position we entered the year in, demonstrating disciplined management of network capacities. Outside of our traditional markets, we see growing opportunities in diversified construction markets over the medium term. The government's 10-year infrastructure strategy promises a wave of investment across education, health, and prisons, which all present potential for Ibstock's wide breadth of building products and systems. The mid-to-high-rise facade sector has been held back by delays with the building safety regulator and progressing projects through Gateway 2.

Speaker 1

Notwithstanding this, we know there is a significant volume of remediation work required on existing buildings, as well as new build, particularly in the build-to-rent section of the market. We know that the public sector will become a much more significant driver of growth over the medium term, with the announced £39 billion investment, including a commitment to build 300,000 social and affordable homes. The historical lack of funding has meant that local authorities have had to prioritize maintenance over existing stock rather than building new homes, and we've simply not built enough social housing for rent for over a generation. In summary, while we are focused very much on supporting the recovery in our traditional markets, we also expect to access opportunities in a much broader set of construction markets over the years ahead and see this as an increasingly significant source of value over the longer term.

Speaker 1

Moving to update you on our strategic progress, I'll remind you first of our strategy. Our operational strategy remains anchored around the pillars of sustain, innovate, and grow. As I set out back in March, in order to sharpen our focus on execution and align everyone across the Ibstock House with our strategic goals, we've defined a set of five focus areas under the banner of a unifying North Star, and I'll provide an update on some of these in the coming slides. Firstly, on sector innovation, we're committed to driving innovation on our products and systems and continue to deliver new solutions to meet the UK's critical building needs. In the Clay business, we introduced six new brick products targeting the specification market, building on our proposition focused on higher-end customer requirements.

Speaker 1

We also continue to innovate in our concrete division, taking further steps to increase the use of recycled content, mixed designs, and carbon reduction. We've developed some very exciting new modular facade products in Futures, which are now in commercial trials with a number of customers. Overall, the innovation pipeline continues to grow, with revenues from new and more sustainable products continuing to run above the 20% average in the period. Our newly commissioned Atlas factory is a pathfinder investment, driving more efficient and sustainable practices, which can be rolled out across the business. The factory is making great strides operationally, with production now scaling up and the range of products available expanding to serve an ever-broadening market. I'm also pleased to say that the Atlas factory, in conjunction with our strategic partners, has been shortlisted for the government's second round of hydrogen funding, known as HAR2.

Speaker 1

The new factory has already reduced the level of carbon emissions by 50%. This project, which would involve the construction of a green hydrogen facility adjacent to our factory, presents the potential to reduce further to 75% of the actual carbon footprint compared to the original Atlas factory. I'm pleased to say that you will have the opportunity to visit the factory in the fourth quarter of this year, and we'll give you more information on that at the appropriate time. The diversified growth we continue to invest in. Our flagship investment in Ibstock Futures, or at Nostell, in Yorkshire is progressing well. The first phase in automated state-of-the-art cutting line is fully commissioned, and production continues to ramp up as orders grow. We expect to continue to build more momentum here in the months ahead.

Speaker 1

A second investment, a larger-scale cutting-edge ceramic facades factory, will bring unrivaled flexibility and choice to the modern facades market in the UK when it commissions from the end of this year. The market response to the first investment has been positive and reinforces our belief that the facades market will be a highly attractive source of diversified growth for Ibstock over the years ahead. Moving to provide an update on calcined clay, I've spoken to you in the past about the potential we see to realize a new stream of value from our substantial clay reserves, and I'm pleased to say that we've made further strides over the last six months as we move towards commercialization of this opportunity. The logic for our investment in this area is compelling. With cement and concrete contributing to 7% or 8% of global CO2 emissions, there's a huge pressure to decarbonize.

Speaker 1

Calcined clay is a scalable solution that can cut emissions by 40% and have real economic benefits over OPC cement, ordinary portland cement, once the full carbon price is in place. With the demand for low carbon materials surging and the supply of our traditional products such as slag and fly ash becoming more limited, we believe this is excellent timing for growth in calcined clay. While the technology to produce calcined clay is now firmly established elsewhere in the world, our clay footprint presents Ibstock with the potential to be the first industrial-scale producer in the UK. Extensive testing over recent years has confirmed that one of our owned fully consented quarries in the Midlands has an abundant source of high-quality raw material required to produce low carbon calcined clay cement.

Speaker 1

Our financial modeling indicates that this is an attractive opportunity with strong partner synergies, and we're now actively engaged in discussions with potential partners to establish the optimal implementation roadmap, with a commercial plan expected to be concluded at the end of that process. I expect to be in a position to present the outcome of the discussions by the time of our full-year results, but we're increasingly confident that this is something that can really move the dial in the years ahead. Turning to the summary and outlook, I'll cover our medium-term view, capital allocation, and finally our concluding comments. Firstly, the medium-term view. We set out several years ago the building blocks of revenue and earnings growth for the group.

Speaker 1

With both core and diversified asset platforms now substantially in place, and with the market recovery progressing, we have increased confidence in delivering our committed revenue target of at least £600 million, and we've taken a solid step towards that in the last six months. Our margin performance has been impacted by two factors this year, which are being addressed, but we retain a strong conviction in the attractive fundamentals of our business and believe that margins will recover over time through high levels of volume leverage, as well as the return to historical levels of operational performance. We also expect an improvement in pricing and mix as our markets return to the normalized levels in the years ahead. Accordingly, we continue to target an EBITDA margin in the core clay business of more than 35% in line with historical levels and group margins of at least 28%.

Speaker 1

We also target a return on capital employed of at least 20%. In the service of this goal, we will continue to be disciplined in the way that we allocate capital in the business. As we set out at the beginning of the year, whilst our focus over the last five or six years has been on organic capital investment, looking forwards with our major investment program now nearing completion, I anticipate that capital expenditure will fall back to long-run sustaining levels, which is expected to support an acceleration in free cash flow generation in the years ahead. We're actively realizing capital from our land estate and disposed of the first parcel of land up in the northwest at Ravenhead in the period, generating proceeds of £3 million. To remind you, Conservatory Art expects us to generate over £30 million from land sales in the next three to five years.

Speaker 1

In terms of allocating capital, after the sustaining investment and payment of an ordinary dividend, I see a much more even weighting of capital allocated across growth and incremental shareholder returns over the medium term. Okay, turning finally to the summary and the outlook. We've had an encouraging start to the second half, and we anticipate continued growth in sales volumes over the balance of year, although we do remain mindful of broader macroeconomic risks. We're keenly focused on driving operational efficiency alongside the tight management of indirect costs and expect profitability to improve in the second half.

Speaker 1

As Chris set out, we now have capacity to support significant further market growth without structurally increasing fixed costs, and with our asset platforms now built out, we've increased confidence that revenues will grow to deliver on our medium-term ambition, with margins expected to recover through operational gearing, improved levels of network performance, and a recovery in our markets. Having concluded this program of investment, we expect free cash flow to build from 2026, providing a solid platform for growth and capital returns in the years ahead. Chris and I are going to be happy to take your questions. As normal for the record, I'd be grateful if you could state your name and institution when asking your questions, and please remember there are microphones at the front of your seat.

Operator

Thanks. Amy Sleigh Lamb from InvestDay. Just two from me, please. On the startup cost, if you could just maybe provide a bit more detail going back, what kind of caught you by surprise there? What did that exactly relate to? Where the kind of confidence is, or where we can gain confidence that they're one-off and we won't see anything like that going forward? Secondly, just on the new build, obviously volumes are very strong. What gives you confidence that continues, the momentum continues in H2? Is it inquiry as you see in the house builders begin to open new sites? What the drivers are there? I guess related to that, as we go forward, rebalancing the soft mud versus wire-cut, would you not still expect wire-cut to be a bigger proportion given the kind of push from government policy on new build?

Speaker 1

Good. Yeah, look, startup costs, we did have some breakdowns. We have some old kit when you start up factories that have been shut down for a large period of time. You sometimes get some catastrophic failures. We had a few things like gearboxes going and we had to send equipment from other factories and so on. These things are not always anticipated. When you've had an exceptional period like we've had and having to close factories down very quickly, you do get some of these things. They're moving in a much better direction now. Two factories are performing quite smoothly and the other two are continuing on with really good progress. I think in terms of the confidence in volume going forward into H2, we've got order books, we talk to our customers, we've seen really strong growth, albeit against a very weak comp in the first half.

Speaker 1

I don't think the level of growth will be the same quantum of that. Our sort of market was up 13%. I think you'd probably be looking at something more like mid-single digits. We're not talking about heroic sort of stats. We're still at very historically low levels. When we talk to our customers and look at the build programs for the second half at this stage, there's reasonable optimism. I think that gives us, that's why we can forecast that volume growth. I think the mix thing is very temporary. I think the market is dominated at the moment by new build residential growth. We know that the RMI market is very weak and that takes a lot of soft mud products. We also know that London and the Southeast are weak. London, largely by building safety and planning, and Southeast by affordability.

Speaker 1

I think over time that mix will definitely come back.

Speaker 1

Hi, John from Herrenbose, thanks for the presentation. Just three questions. Firstly, the part that I've been looking at for 2026 and the capitalization policy, I just want to do some foreground potential. Secondly, I've been seeing concrete and just helping to bridge the gap before you're given the weak H1Y. I think that should be meant to get given the roots and rails, those are being put into stroke. Then down in terms of the between three and seven, again in the concrete division, what's your view, I mean, on an organization of that kind of rail investment? Do you see the margin that's going to go?

Speaker 1

Sure. I'll take the M&A. You take the concrete ones. Yeah, look, the balance sheet is going to strengthen. We've got an active pipeline of opportunities that we're looking at in M&A, and that pipeline's been developed over time. We'll always be very disciplined on whatever we do with M&A. We're not just going to grow for growth's sake. We want to make sure we've got a very valuable, high-margin business. Whatever we do would be strategic, and it would be, you know, synergistic to the business. We'll look at that. At the moment, the balance sheet is probably not in the right place to do large things, but we will continue to look at smaller built-on investments. Of course, that's got to compete with other shareholder returns as well, and we'll evaluate both at the same time. We've got a very active pipeline.

Operator

Rob, just in terms of concrete, you're right. If you look at the sort of mix in the first half, the rail and infrastructure segment within that is, in normal steady state, heading for sort of £20 million revenue contribution, but the margin on that is materially above the average within concrete as a whole. The fact that that's now running at materially lower levels has impacted. We expect some of that to start to come back as things normalize. We're not banking on a huge level of recovery in the second half, but actually as that starts to come back, it has a very, very accretive impact on EBITDA margins within concrete. I think the other cause for optimism in concrete is, when you look at some of the sort of lead indicators of broader market recovery, our floor beams business was up in the north of 20%.

Operator

The factory in the south was greater than 20% up in the first half. Good order forward visibility and expect that to continue to pull through strongly. Other categories within the concrete business, walling stone is looking very, very strong. Fencing continues to be a source of strength. I think, as market comes back, we expect to be able to achieve pricing progress. We also expect to see some mixed benefit. I think, realistically, when you look at what concrete did last year, we're not going to get to those sorts of levels of absolute profitability this year. We're on a run rate that's going to be a little bit behind that.

Operator

Actually, I think just delivering a little bit of progress into the second half with the view that then things will firm up further in 2026 is very much the view of our sort of near-term perspective in concrete. I think, in terms of rail as a category, as we said in our pre-prepared comments, we're doing a lot of work to try and mitigate that, looking into other areas of infrastructure that are certainly giving us other volume opportunities. The reality is that they're going to be at lower levels of margin compared to where rail is. We're doing what we need to to make sure that we've got good capacity utilization in concrete network as a whole. I think we are to some extent at the mercy of the broader market around the pace of recovery within rail.

Operator

I think that's something that you see in the commentary that others have been giving over the last few months.

Speaker 1

Ben.

Speaker 1

Obviously, just coming back to the operational issues that you saw, can you give us maybe a bit more color on why it's resolved at two and perhaps why it's still ongoing at the other two? Next is on your soft mud mix. Can you remind us where that typically stands and where it was as of H1? The last question is on drop-throughs. How should we think about volume drop-throughs in the clay brick business from here?

Speaker 1

Yeah, look, when you're starting a kiln and it's been shut down for a period of time, you have thermal shock issues when you close things down and you've got expansions when you start them up. You've got all sorts of mechanical issues associated with those factories. Three factories were really, you know, we had a lot of work to do on them. There were some unforeseen things. You've got big pieces of equipment, clay prep areas, large motors, large gearboxes and so on. Some of those, like, went wrong, but we fixed them. It's moving forward. Two are actually moving very smoothly now in terms of that. We've had a shutdown in two others, and we've done some further work, and they'll be ramping up soon. We're pretty convinced that we've identified what the issues are.

Speaker 1

Operationally, I don't see any the same sort of costs at all in the second half. I think those costs will be gone by the time we get into next year. Operational performance should be fairly sustainable. I think soft mud, you know, we've got, I think the stats around, I think, 53% wire-cut and the balance in soft mud. I think that's a very healthy range that we've got in a normalized market. Actually, I don't think there's any structural shifts. I think in a normalized market, that's the sort of range that you want to have. Actually, some of our competitors have been looking to have more, more of a broader range, not just a wire-cut range. We're blessed with great clay assets and great range of products in Ibstock and the UK market. I think this is a temporary thing.

Speaker 1

I don't think soft mud's going to go away anytime soon.

Operator

I did the drop-through. Ben, in terms of, if I just focus on the kind of core clay business really as the main frame of reference for that. If you look at what we did in the first half, stripping out Futures from within clay essentially generated sort of EBITDA of £34 million on a top line of about £128 million. You're talking about a 27% core clay margin. If you move forwards from there, the expectation that those one-off costs that we've talked about go away, you sort of move you to a sort of normalized number of £37 million on top of £128 million. The next, call it 10% of growth as you build back from that, if you assume that, you know, that's worth something like £15 million on the revenue line, we expect the incremental EBITDA to be somewhere in the region of 50% on that.

Operator

If you're taking sort of £7 million or so on top of that, it moves the underlying margin from in the high 20s to somewhere in the region of 31, 32%. That's the sort of gravity of the impact that you get on that next 10%. As you then move up, that will put the clay business back up to somewhere in the region of 75 to 80% utilization. That last 10 to 15% is really then what we believe will move us from that sort of 31, 32% margin all the way back up to 35%, which is what that business has been historically capable of doing when it's operating in normalized market conditions with levels of operational efficiency and productivity that we expect. That's the path forwards in terms of drop-through in clay.

Speaker 1

Okay.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Christian New York from Deutsche Bank. Just a couple from me too. First of all, could you just break down the revenue performance in the first half roughly between volume, price, and mix, just so we've got a bit of a sense on that? The 2026 is a bit of a while away, but we've seen some of the house builders come out and, you know, outlets aren't opening as much as quickly as they had hoped. Just sort of any initial thoughts around, you know, how the brick market trends as we move into 2026.

Speaker 1

I'll make a note of that first.

Operator

Yeah, just if you look at, again, referencing the clay performance in the first half. We talk about overall market, including imports being up around 13% in UK brick. We were a little bit ahead of that. Think of that as sort of mid-double digits, 15% or so on volume. Revenue in clay, you can see, was plus 12. Therefore, you've got a bit of a delta there. Price essentially flat, flat to very modestly up, 0 to 1%, which means you've got about 3 to 4% of drag that comes from mix. That was, we've talked about it, but three things. The first one is move from soft mud to wire-cut, and that's a couple of percentage points as Joe talked about, the broad sort of split of those two in and out of business.

Operator

Regional split, there were pricing differentials across markets, and we saw London and the Southeast go backwards. Other regions move forwards, which has a little bit of a mixed impact. The third thing we talked about was having experienced slightly lower operational yields, which is a function of how much best are you getting out of factories. With those numbers being slightly lower, moving that into the market, that brings average selling prices down on a mixed basis as well. We expect the last one of those three to reverse very quickly as yields come back through the course of the second half. I think the other two factors, we're not banking on any significant change in those mixed drivers in the second half, but clearly as we look into 2026, we start to see benefit in our business as things normalize back to historic levels.

Speaker 1

Yeah. I think 2026, there's still a lot of caution around it, but you know, we're at historically low levels of house building in the UK. There's been some real improvements with things like planning, and there's a lot of focus from the government on social housing, and we all need to build houses in this country. I think the RMI market as well is very, very subdued. Consumer confidence, if that ticks up a little bit, if you get some interest rate cuts, I think we could be moving forward. I do think we'll see some growth in 2026. How quickly we're going to be able to get the allocation of funds into local authorities on that social housing will be critical. I'm hoping it's going to be sooner rather than later.

Speaker 1

This year, you've had an awful time with building safety, and a lot of projects just held up. I'm hoping that's going to provide some momentum as well. There is this underlying, I mean, you've seen all the people reporting in the last couple of weeks, there's an underlying air of caution about it, but that's where I think the market is at the moment. If we get a few interest rate cuts this year, it could be really interesting. Marcus was next and then Clyde.

Speaker 1

Hi, Marcus Cole from UBS. I've got two questions as well. Firstly, on pricing power, you're talking then if you get some incremental volumes back, the utilization rates can get back to 75 to 80%. How should we think about pricing power in that market dynamic? The second one is just on calcined clay. I know it's early days and you're still, you're going to give us an update at the full year, but how should we think about the potential economics, what this could be worth, how we think about a potential JV structure and any sort of financial structuring around that? Thanks.

Speaker 1

Pricing power, I think as the market starts to tighten and you start to get more volume growth, you'll naturally be able to move headline price forward, in my opinion, and that hopefully to cover the costs of your inflation. I think also for us, you'll start to see a rebalancing of mix, and that should help average prices. We've also shipped a lot of non-best product this year as some of these factories have ramped up, which has also been part of the cost drag. I think ASP and headline pricing, you know, I would, but that is contingent on the market moving forward, you know, and there has to be volume growth. Remember, we're still at a market at the moment, the brick market's sort of £1.8 to £1.9 billion, you know, it's way below, and you've still got some imports in there as well.

Speaker 1

We needed to move, as you start to get to sort of £2 billion plus, I think you start to see that tightening in that tension. On calcined clay, look, I can't really give you specifics on the economics because I'm not sure of what the structure is going to be. We're talking to partners. Some partners have got existing assets that they could utilize to produce a product. It might be an SCM, it might be a cement. If you think about, we've got enough calcined clay to have a 300,000, 400,000 ton a year line, and you've got, you know what the sort of margins are in cement. You can think of that sort of size of scale. The specific structure, we're in conversations with overseas people, domestic partners, and some others.

Speaker 1

Until we conclude that, I don't know what CapEx investment, whether we're going to be able to use existing assets, and even if we're going to go alone, because if we don't get the right deal, we have that option. It's quite exciting. We've had about 20 people involved in these discussions, 20 different organizations. Then it was Clyde.

Speaker 1

Clyde Lewis at Peel Hunt. Apologies, I think I've still got four. On the clay reserves, you did talk about other products beyond calcined clay. Have you now parked those other ideas because you see the best opportunity in the calcined clay product lines? That was the first one. The second one, I think Chris, you sort of put up the synergies, Joe, maybe it was Joe, sort of out of the Atlas and Nostell. I'm just wondering if those synergy expectations have changed and maybe if you can update us in terms of sort of timing for those synergies to come through. The third one was around, I suppose, your decision on stock levels. As we go through the balance of this year and into next year, what really would be the moving parts on your decision to sort of up stock levels?

Speaker 1

The third one was probably coming back to a point around cost pressures. What are you sort of seeing generally across the business in terms of sort of current levels of cost inflation?

Speaker 1

Okay, I'll do one and three and you do two and four. I mean, I definitely think, you know, we've got different types of clay. We've got a huge amount of clay in the UK. We've got probably the best reserves. We've got clay that you can, you know, we've got some clay that we'll probably never use. The Redhurst clay is really exciting, and that is really appropriate for calcined clay, but it can also be used for brick making. There are synergies with that because when you take the layer of clay that you're going to use for brick making, you then expose the layer that you need for calcined clay. We've got other R&D projects that we are thinking about. In terms of clay, really the broad things that we're looking at are brick making and calcined clay. Those are the two focus areas.

Speaker 1

Some of the other R&D projects that you might be thinking about are more around recycling, you know, the whole recycling of different materials and energy. That's not really to do with clay. I'll talk about stock levels. We've got a production plan for the rest of this year. We've obviously moved ahead of the market a little bit, but as Chris showed on that capacity, we've got some flex. We can flex up further if we need to. We haven't got all of our assets. Some of them are still mothballed. I think we've got the right balance now between, you know, being able to play into the market if it gets a bit bigger and also being, you know, managing it to where it is now. I think stock levels are healthy. We want to see the market moving ahead.

Speaker 1

Part of the problem when you're managing a downturn like we've experienced is having the right stock in the right place for the right customers. That was part of the reason to move forward with some of our factory capacities back this year because you have to support the customers and they need some of those products as well.

Operator

Clyde, two and four. Synergy expectations, Atlas and Nostell. The Atlas investment was predicated on bringing an extra net 5% into the fleet. That 5% clearly is not required in the environment that we're operating in at the moment. It's important to remember that a lot of the value case in commissioning Atlas was that it was an absolute gross level of investment of 15% within the fleet and retiring some of the oldest and most capital hungry and least efficient from a cost perspective capacity elsewhere in the wire-cut fleet. Having done that, it's got very significant cost arbitrage benefits, which is a significant component of the business case in Atlas. We'll only access the full value once we get that sort of volume being drawn into the network.

Operator

We are very confident that as that market comes back and as that sort of additional 5% is required, the £18 million of incremental EBITDA that we've always talked about in Atlas will be achievable. At the moment, we've got the cost arbitrage and we'll achieve that this year, but the volume will come as market recovers. In terms of Nostell, different investment. Ultimately, the capital cost of that is still expected to be around £45 million, and we expect an increment of £12 million of EBITDA. It's making really good progress. The first investment, less expensive from a capital perspective, is already commissioned, and the order book is building there. We're generating good revenues, and the prospects for continued growth in that first line are very positive. The big step up comes from the second wave of investment, which will be a state-of-the-art ceramic facades facility.

Operator

Across those two together, we expect that to generate that incremental £12 million. Those are a couple of really important building blocks of medium-term expectation for us that build on what we delivered in 2022, which is essentially a proxy for what the business should be capable of achieving before those two investments. In terms of cost pressures, when we stood up in March, we said fixed costs, given the sort of increment of National Insurance and the wage award, was likely to be somewhere in the sort of 5% inflation territory, variable costs a little bit less than that. We did come into the year with a little bit of our energy cover for 2025 still open. I think we've done a decent job of taking that cover at sort of near-term prices that has probably improved that position slightly.

Operator

Again, you know, it's a sort of 2 to 3% level of cost inflation within the variable stack. When you put those two together, we're still seeing cost inflation in 2025 relative to 2024, somewhere in the region of 3 to 4%. That was, you know, when we talk about the under-recovery of that cost inflation with the pricing that we've been able to achieve this year, that's an element of the updated guidance that we gave in June, which talked about on a cost base of £200 million, roughly within clay, that sort of gives you a sense of the level of absolute cost inflation that the P&L will be bearing this year relative to 2024.

Speaker 1

Good. Alistair.

Speaker 1

Yeah, Alistair Stewart from Progressive Equities Research. One and a half questions for me. Clyde managed to get half of my question and stocks. First of all, I looked at the, just before you started the meeting, the new brick statistics came out. There was accelerating growth, year-on-year growth in brick deliveries, and stocks were continuing to fall despite the new industry capacity. How quickly do you, your capacity utilization is pretty high already. How quickly could you effectively end up struggling to deliver on your demand? Maybe a bit more, the second question was on stocks. How much are you putting into broadening your range rather than just dealing with immediate sort of short-term demand?

Speaker 1

I think the first one. Yeah, you can.

Operator

Yeah, so I think in terms of updated stats, you're absolutely right. June was a pretty strong month for industry shipments. We've seen the domestic data. We haven't seen imports. On an absolute basis, June was sort of plus 17%, which is, you know, it's fantastic to see that. It's reflective of our performance, and it does speak to the level of momentum that I think is generally present in the industry. I think the point that we made in the pre-prepared comments is important. What we've done this year is actually brought back about 20% of capacity. In a way, actually, if you think about the volume progression that we've achieved, we've actually brought back capacity ahead of that. We've carried the fixed cost, and indeed, we've had some incremental fixed costs, which are disappointing.

Operator

I think that sets us now in a position where we're going to be able to readily serve that next 10 to 15% of growth. As it comes, we'll see a very attractive drop through. That's the way we think about it. I think we're primed and ready to serve that recovered market, and we've got capacity in the right place. The actions that Joe talked about, clearly we've taken actions to reactivate network capacity, to put capacity in the right places in terms of wire-cut, soft mud, but also geographically. I think we feel very well set to serve the recovery as it comes.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I mean, I think your second question you've almost answered, haven't you? I think the ramp-up of Atlas is going to be key, and we've ramped that up really well now. When you're ramping a factory up in a year like this year, you have to do lots of commissioning, you have to do performance testing, and you have to develop all the different products and test them all. You have to build enough stock because you don't want to start a job site with a customer and then there's a problem. That's kind of the pain of the first year of ramp-up. I'm really excited that that's nearly over now and we're moving into a much different phase of Atlas. We've brought some other wire-cut on, but we've also brought some soft mud on. I think we're in great shape, and I think we can flex out.

Speaker 1

I've seen this market move very fast, and it doesn't move fast just with activity, it's also the builders' merchants start stocking up. We don't want to be stocking out customers, we want to be looking after our customers, but I'm looking forward to the days when we can get a bit more, you know, tension in the system, which has not been there.

Speaker 1

Yeah, thank you. Harry Dow from Ross Jowenko Redburn. I think we've got a few, but we still left actually, but just firstly on the first half, I think there was maybe some property profits maybe in the bridge. Should we expect that to repeat in the second half? I suppose maybe guidance as we kind of go forward for the kind of profit gain, because I think the number maybe you gave is maybe more cash realized, but maybe a definitional difference there. I suppose generally on the color of sort of the bridge in the first half, the impact of volumes, price mix, just and the versus cost, maybe a bit more there.

Speaker 1

Maybe if you could put a number on, I suppose the fixed cost, the kind of absorption that you took in the first half that I suppose won't repeat maybe in the kind of the second half. I think also in some of the import data from a market volume perspective has started to creep back up again in terms of I suppose the domestic deliveries is also going up. I suppose I'm intrigued on your view on that around why maybe given there's quite a lot of capacity in the system that imports are maybe starting to edge up just a little bit.

Speaker 1

Finally, again, on market volumes, I wonder if you had a view on how much you think is house builder inventory rebuilding maybe relative to actual activity, because I think there's probably not a lot of house builders that would say they're building double digit more homes in the first half. Maybe how much is, you know, kind of inventory rebuild and therefore how we should think that phase is, I suppose, in the second half as well. Thanks.

Operator

I'd made that five. I'm happy to go one, two, and three, and maybe you do four and five if that's okay. Thanks for this, Harry. In terms of property profits, you're right. We referenced in the statement this morning that we disposed of the sort of first parcel of land at one of the sites that was closed in the back end of 2023, up in the northwest of England. Proceeds around £3 million, profit about £1.5 million or so. That's in there. That is something we talked in March about, the shape of the realization of those proceeds. What we said was actually, look, what you don't want to do is go and sort of sell under value quickly. You've got to let those things come through. We expect a pipeline, Joe talked about, £30 million conservatively on a three to five-year view.

Operator

That's still maintained, we maintain that as our sort of expectation. Not necessarily in the second half, but again, it's something that you would expect to see a stream of continuing proceeds as we go forwards over time. In terms of the sort of volume price mix and drop through there, if you look at the sort of bridge within half one, I'll sort of talk to clay first of all and then come to concrete. That sort of top line, if you assume that there was a sort of 15% volume growth dropping through, that would give you somewhere in the region of sort of high 30s to 40% drop through. You can do the work on a sort of an £18 million volume impact in that regard. Over and above that, we took a planned decision to put a little bit of fixed cost in.

Operator

That would dampen the drop through on that piece of growth, such that the drop through would probably move back down towards the low 30s. The incremental piece, this is the unplanned or unforeseen incremental costs, in aggregate accounted for about £4 million. Most of that was really just the remediation effort that had to go into the factories to resolve the issues, but some of that was also the drag-on mix that came from higher levels of non-best sales into the market. That was the sort of quantum of that. When you look at sort of under-recovered costs, we talked about that, Clyde's question, talked about level of inflation. If you think 3% to 4% under-recovered in that regard, gives you a drag on a top line annually of some in the region of £8 million. We had about half of that in the first half as well.

Operator

Those really are the moving parts on the drop through.

Speaker 1

Yeah, imports, I mean, they ticked up a little bit one month, but they've actually been declining a little bit. I think part of the reason why they've been still a bit more sticky is some of our competitors are big importers and they've turned off some other capacity and they're continuing to flow those through. Some imported bricks will probably be going on a job that is ongoing and you have that continuity. I think economically over the time, it's better to have a certainty of local supply because if the market picks up in Europe, you're still going to get product. I think that there'll be a continuing alignment with local products. I think house builder inventories, we don't see a lot of stock up on the sites. I don't think there's a massive imbalance between activity levels and housing starts.

Speaker 1

I think they've ticked up by about 10% in the first half on average. I think bricks are a little bit higher than that, but I think there's probably a little bit of merchant stock and that sort of stuff. I don't think it's a major concern. Priya, you're on. We can hear you.

Speaker 1

Yeah, mine's not working. Oh no, you can't hear me.

Speaker 1

It's working.

Speaker 1

I think it's working anyway now. Sorry, the red light's not working. It's Priya Wolf here from Jefferies. I've just got two questions on futures. The first one is just on the medium-term target. You've obviously previously talked about revenues from futures contributing over 40% of group sales. I just wondered in the context of saying that M&A is likely to be focused on smaller acquisitions, we've obviously got a weaker market. What's the latest thinking in terms of timeline of getting there? The second question, I guess just read across from what we saw with regards to some of the pricing competition in H1. It seems like that was particularly acute through the sort of brick factories.

Speaker 1

Can you just give us a little bit more clarity on the channels which brick slips will be sold through and if we could potentially see similar issues going forward there as well?

Operator

Sure, the first one. Yeah. Thanks, Priya, for those two. In terms of Futures, the expectation in the medium-term targets was actually sort of 40% outside of core clay, so including concrete. I think the focus was on really getting diversification away from the traditional mainstay of the business, which was clay. In terms of the contribution of Futures towards that, the capital that we've now got in the ground or we will have by the end of the year will essentially support full delivery of the brick slips business case. There is quite a bit of other systems activity now that's essentially within the base business. We believe based on the capital that we'll have in the ground, we will be able to achieve revenues within Futures of £50 million. Ultimately, it's going to require capital to be put in over and above that to move that up further.

Operator

I think we feel really that the business is heading in a very positive direction. Not just in terms of strategic progress, but the team that we've now got in Futures is keenly focused on operational execution alongside that. We're starting to therefore see levels of profitability come through, which are going to be important. As some of that activity, remember, there's still about £2 million of research and development that sits within Futures pre-revenue. As that starts to move into activities that actually generate top line, we're going to start to see EBITDA margin % move forward as a function of that shift as well. I think we feel very good about it. It's coming off a low base. We acknowledge that. We need to be able to demonstrate security of supply into those markets in order to give customers the confidence to actually start to grow volumes.

Operator

As some of those bottlenecks that Joe talked about start to alleviate, and as this comes through as a reliable source of domestic supply, we really see that market moving forwards.

Speaker 1

Yeah. I think that, you know, these ceramic facade products that you're getting on rain screens and wall systems, they're design and build. You will have distribution partners on the front end. You will have installers, and you'll have relationships with developers. It's a whole supply chain approach. I'm not saying it's price agnostic because price is sensitive as you think about build costs. What's really important there is things like the labor saving, the time saving, and where you're going to find enough additionality to go to from where we are as a sort of a 220,000 market with a labor supply chain that can do things. Above that, you're going to need these sort of products. That's where we've got the focus. We're developing systems for that.

Speaker 1

We're sensitive around pricing, but we expect to be able to get the margins that Chris has just described there, you know, at least 20% margins. If there's no other questions online, thanks for coming. We've invested ahead. We've got some good volume growth this year, and it's encouraging. We've invested ahead to make sure we've got the right capacity. Ibstock's in great shape in terms of, you know, the assets that we've got and when this market recovers. I think with the market getting back to normal, the mix impact, the margin expansion, the volume return, we're going to be in great shape. Thanks very much for coming. We'll have a little chat now afterwards with a cup of coffee.

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