SigmaRoc plc

Operator : Good afternoon and welcome to the SigmaRoc plc Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please simply type in your questions and press send. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would like to hand you over to the management team. Max, good afternoon, sir. Max Vermorken : Good afternoon. Hope everybody can hear us well. Thank you very much for joining SigmaRoc's first half 2026 results presentation. We have got slides for you on the screen. You can download those slides also on our website, as well as more materials. Short presentation of half an hour, with the four usual chapter headings on the next page. An overview of the group's performance, finance review by Jan to my right. Subsequently, strategic delivery, and then outlook at the end. We are happy to take any questions you might have. If we go to the first part then, group performance for the first half. Fantastic first half of 2026. Strong results, EBITDA up 11.3%, EPS up 12.2%. Margins, EBITDA margins at 25.1% and evolution of 200 basis points. All of that pointing to a great first half in terms of trading volumes, evolution of our business. It did not start smooth. There were some headwinds at the start with the weather, but that was recovered very nicely in Q2. Balance sheet strengthened further, 1.66 times leverage at the end of the first half. Very nicely at the bottom end of our target range. Return on invested capital on a LTM basis at nearly 12%, again, half percent up, from last time. Therefore, confidence in the full year outlook. Strategic delivery was also solid. Operational excellence, as you can see from the margins, continued to be driven through. Synergies program has delivered, and there is more self-help to come. We have done a phenomenal acquisition with the help of our teams, I will come back to that point in a minute, in dolomitic limestone dolomite. The Belgian aggregates production setup. The new aggregates plant is sitting there to be launched on time, on budget, for a fantastic 2 million ton of production capacity in Belgium. We have extended our quarries in Klinthagen on the island of Gotland in Sweden with high quality mineral. Then we keep focusing on the quality of our business through the rating, the MSCI rating at AAA at this point in time. We move on to the news of the day, which is the Dolomitas acquisition in Lithuania. To give you a bit of a background, there are further slides on this deal at the end of the slide deck, but some quick points. 3.5 million tons of dolomitic limestone dolomite per year. It is a high-quality limestone product that we will sell into the Lithuanian market. 45 years of reserve and resource. Plant permitted and further to come, and then beyond that, of course, as well. EUR 70 million turnover, 25.7% margin for an EBITDA of EUR 18 million. We paid EUR 110 million for this business, which equates to a 6x multiple. A very, very attractive multiple, therefore immediately earnings enhancing, and that is pre-synergies. Very interesting as well is that the sellers requested to be paid in part in shares, at a very attractive price when this deal was done. All those points I will come back to in the further sections of this presentation. If we move on to the performance of first half. First half was solid, as I said. On slide 6, an overview for the group, and then by geography for revenue, EBITDA, and EBITDA margin. Every single region performed very nicely. Two little points to note. The two red arrows, as you can see. 1% year-on-year revenue drop in the U.K. and Ireland. That's a mix question in terms of residential construction. Same point, in fact, in the region West, where we sold more aggregates, slightly lower margin, slightly less dimensional stone. But these are tiny changes versus the fantastic performance that the group put in on every other metric. You can see some attractive double-digit growth figures in EBITDA, and some very attractive increases in margin as well. All of that very positive regional performance. If we look at the same performance numbers but now split differently, split now by segment on page 7. Revenue up in industrial and environmental applications, and quite solid increases there. Industrial predominantly driven by the steel sector. As you may have read, the steel sector received some support from the European Union in the form of quotas and tariffs, and that has made indigenous steel in Europe quite a more attractive proposition for the local steel producers, and that translates for us into more volume and better sales. The other segments, bulk, paper, chemicals, mining, and so forth, were good. Stable, steady year-on-year. Looking at the environmental segment, second segment where we apply our products, again as a purifier to waterways, to flue gas, as an agent in agriculture. Again, very nice revenue increase, 7% year-on-year. That's driven again Water treatment is one, and then secondly, the performance in the flue gas treatment segments. The last sector, construction, 42% of group revenues. Softness obviously there. Residential construction in Europe has been weak for years. It has shown some tendencies of recovery, but those tendencies have not yet translated in a full recovery of volumes of pricing, and that's what you see in that last bracket. The signal there is clearly that when this will recover, there's quite a bit of upside to be had in the construction segment. Lastly, a third cut of the same results, but then now by product type and volumes. 1% core volume increase, and that is a first in many years. The volumes have decreased over the last years, predominantly because of weakness in European industrial and construction markets, but now we see a core volume increase. If you take all volumes combined, there's a discontinuation in certain businesses, and that translates into some reduction in high-grade volume. That's where we stopped certain contracts, certain production. The cell volume into higher end applications when those become more available, and that's what you see there. All in all, a very attractive performance also from a volume perspective. I hope that gives you a flavor for the business' performance in the first half. Now for some detail on the financials, I'll hand you to Jan on my right. Jan Van Beek : Thank you. Let's move to page 10, where you see the metrics, how we track them to assess the performance of the group financially. A couple of them are already mentioned in the intro. All green arrows here, except for free cash flow at the bottom end there. We'll get to that in a minute. Very nice progress over time. Very good growth year-on-year in the right direction. Debt down, business related metrics up, and very nice increase percentage as well year-on-year. We're doing very well on that with a range of leverage where we want it to be. We're at 1.66 times of leverage, which is nicely in the band that we like to be in. The only thing that is red here is on the free cash flow side, which is the pre-growth part, which we usually show. If you look at including growth, you'll see later on, we went actually up from 45% last year to 46%. It's still very nice cash generation for the group when we make operational results, which we use then partly to fund the acquisitions when we have an opportunity to do it. This is a status moment, though. What I like is the set of graphs on the next page, slide 11, where you see the same metrics portrayed over time, all developing very nicely in the right directions. The CAGR values are very solid. ROIC is very solid over time. You see there in the middle block at the bottom part, there's a slight dip in 2023, but that was because of a lot of acquisitions that we did in that year. The rest is performing really well over time, where you see from 26% to 25%, that 0.5% increase that was listed on the front page. EBITDA percent very well, and our leverage, you see how we operate within that band of 1.5x to 2x. All metrics in a good shape. If you look at the next page, I'm going fairly quick here as the metrics are showing good numbers. Revenue on the left side and EBITDA bridge on the right side by region. U.K. and Ireland somewhat down year-on-year in revenue side, which is the construction industry primarily, and all other regions very well upwards. Nice growth there. Then some help on foreign exchange rate as well as the EUR strengthened over time. You see the same thing on the right where EBITDA is listed, all regions up, including U.K. and Ireland. Part of that is because of a change in contract structure of our haulage fleet that we changed. That was one of the leases where the cost base is now ending up in the depreciation line. If you take it out, there was a 4.8 in that bar. There is still two left, which is nice, 7% growth in EBITDA year-on-year in that region. So well done with the team on the ground in a difficult market. Same applies for west, where construction is also difficult and in particular, residential is still fairly weak across the European landscape. So showing and delivering these numbers is a good performance on the team on the ground. Same for Nordics and in particular, on the central block where pricing was actively picked up and delivering. All in all, growth on the top line, even more growth relatively on the bottom line on EBITDA. So very good shape there by region. The next page has it by component, the driver from 178 to 132. As you can see, volume slightly negative. Overall volumes were down 3%. This is the effect of that on the bottom line. But all other items are positive, in particular pricing in a difficult market. So very well done by the team, very well managed commercially. Then we continue to work on our synergies and self-help projects. It is delivering as you can see. We are not fully done yet. There is more to come as we execute the whole list of project that we have listed. So it is favorably delivering, which is nice. Then we have a reclass on the whole H, which we have separated out here to be transparent what it triggers to EBITDA. So it is a help there, but not an EBIT, but here it is a help. Then we have a few others. That leads to an all P&L on the next page, slide 14, where there is a lot of detail. You see the top line growing from 510 to 523. Operating profit up from 814 to 817, and then we have done quite a bit of work on the items below operations. Finance costs have come down with the refinancing, so a significant help on the cost side there. Last year we had a few other gains, still positive at that time. They do not repeat typically, so we have a few left, which is the CO2 results. We still have an expert center that drives volumes there and benefits. But the others are missing. Then we have tax expense is going up because of improved profits, which is a good thing. On a percentage basis, it reflects roughly 20% of profit before tax, which is somewhat lower than what we typically guided, which is at 22%. So we had a few refunds from previous years, which were favorable for us. So, we will take it, and underlying profit in good shape. Now, EPS up as a consequence as well, 12% plus in a market that is still not helping. We are very proud of it. If you look at this chart on the right, it is an area where we get some question, in particular around the variable cost split. You see five buckets there, and in particular around energy, fuel and carbon, which represents around 26%-27% of total cost of sales. We have mentioned it a couple of times in communications. We deal with it in our way that is on the next slide. How do we do that? One, we do it in the first bucket there at the top. We do it quite successfully because during the times that these energy crisis manifest themselves, we were able to increase margins in both cases. This is a reflection of the Ukraine crisis at the bottom there, the 10 basis point, and then the second now, where we're in the middle of the Iranian, the Middle East crisis, and we were able to push prices up, push margins up, sorry, with over 200 basis points. The prices in the market of energy are clearly going up. They're visible, but not so much for us, though. Why not? That is because we've put hedges in place where we basically secure pricing from a certain point before it happened this year, and we're paying those, not the market prices. We've taken action on the cost side, that's one. Secondly, we've put them into the contract with customers, so we push the prices that we have to pay, pushing through, and basically securing us from negative margin impact. There are a few other things that we do to minimize the fuel expenses. We're trying to make our kilns much more efficient than what they already are. So working on programs there on efficiency itself, and then biomass conversion because they don't attract CO2 credits. Now, if you look at what we do versus what others have as a statistic, we've included two charts on the right. The left of the two is an indication of our company with an intensity of energy in gigawatts per million GBP of EBITDA. That is about 15, 16 points. Other peers in our building materials group are actually substantially higher. In this case, it's 40% almost, based on their intensity versus ours. So we're not overly exposed to energy, versus what others have. We're actually not in a bad place at all if you look at this intensity picture and then combine it with the actions we can take and we have taken on the left, we're in good shape. The same applies for carbon. We're dealing with it as we should. If you look at our carbon intensity relative to others, we're lower. Less lower than on energy, but still substantially lower in over 30%. Overall, if you talk about exposure to energy and other relevant costs, it's mitigated. It is actually less than others in our peer group, and we're managing it really well. You see it on the facts, which is the margins that we were able to deliver. Now, if you look at it over time, which is always a good position, these are two charts on the next slide that represent, first on the left side, margins over time from 2008 of the lime business. That is a portion of what we have today, but that is lime. As you can see, it hovers around 20% plus every year, and there were crises in those periods. So it's steady business. It has diversified end markets. It has a diversified customer profile. Regional split is helping, so it is very stable and delivering good results. After 2020, we were able to purchase lime and combine it with the rest of the group, which was more aggregate-based. If you combine it, the average margin has come down to 18% as a start, and that is where we were able to move it upwards up to 25.3% this year, up in 25%, and we were at that point more or less again, at mid-year. 720 basis point up, nowhere near easy years. Ukraine crisis was there, and the current position in Iran is this business. Very nice trajectory. We are able to do good deliveries on the margins and absolute amount. We are dealing with it as we should. Moving on to the last part of finance, which is helping Max in his third case. We are generating very healthy cash flows with our business. From even our perspective, around 50% to 46% if you take all cash flows that we have to pay. Of course, we have sometimes an investment in working capital. Next quarter can be a contribution, which is always going a little bit back and forth. We pay our taxes and CapEx. Maintenance is about 20%, and we have the cost of financial funding that we have to pay. Then we have a few cash outflows on leases that were previously in EBIT. EBITDA are now part of EBIT. Overall, free cash flow conversion, pre-growth CapEx over 50%. If you take growth CapEx into account, it is particular spent on a large project in Belgium for an aggregates crusher. If you take that into account, we are at 46%, and this metric was 45% at the mid-year last year. Good progress there. Very healthy CapEx, which then feeds our acquisition trajectory. The last part here is that we do that with de-gearing in the back of a hat, and we are carefully managing both. So far, we are in a very nice range, moving from 1.8x at the beginning of the year to 1.66x. You see the buildup of that. There are some cash outflows, but overall, very controlled and very manageable towards managing cash both from a funding perspective and a performance perspective. Max Vermorken : Thank you very much, Jan. That was a good summary. We are now moving on to section three, onto slide 20, the strategic delivery of the business. We would like to take you back to the Capital Markets Day we did in May 2025, when the team went on stage and set out a series of objectives. These objectives were, first and foremost, deliver the synergies program that we had launched, and to keep improving our business from there on. Results today show you that that program was successful, successfully implemented with a fantastic evolution of our margins. The second thing that we said is that we would invest in our assets and make sure that the assets stay in good shape. That is clearly successfully implemented to date, with 64 million tons of high-grade mineral added to the Gotland operations in Sweden, an additional crushing aggregates plant back in Belgium, which is on budget, being launched as we speak, pretty much. The third thing we said is that we would continue to develop our footprint through very attractive M&A. The attractive M&A clearly today is a first step into that direction again with the Dolomitas transaction, which I will come to in a minute. Further aspect we set out were keeping our balance sheet healthy, refinancing very attractive terms, keeping it go, the leverage going down to 1.66x, the overall quality of the group, emissions, safety, relations with our neighbors. There again, we invest time and resource to make sure our business is well set up for the future. 3A rating with MSCI gives you that confidence. If you look at the M&A piece, which is the news of this morning, we have a good track record of M&A. We have done a lot of work in the segment. Plenty of deals all the way between the start of the group and 2023. Then we did a very large transaction, the CRH deal, where we bought lime and limestone assets right across Europe. We implemented the synergies and integration program, streamlined the portfolio with some divestments at very attractive multiples in 2025, then now in 2026, have gone back on the M&A trail. That is with a deal of size, the Dolomitas Group. The details of that are on page 22. So we are talking here of Lithuania. We are talking Lithuania, which is the country you can see with all the dots in it on the map. It is one of the three Baltic states. We have a very attractive and well set up Baltic business already, and this business will fit right into that mix. The Baltic group is run and managed by our CEO, Baltics, who had an intimate knowledge of the business we have just bought. He ran that business for many years before joining us and kept a very good relationship with its prior owners, the two gentlemen who have sold us the Dolomitas Group. What is the Dolomitas Group? It is the largest quarry group in Lithuania. It is the largest limestone-based group in Lithuania. It is the largest dolime, dolomitic lime, dolomite group in Lithuania. It sells predominantly into various infrastructure, industrial, and environmental applications. One of those which it does not sell to yet would be green steel. Dolime, which is lime made from dolomitic limestone or dolomite, is an essential ingredient in electric arc furnace-based steel. It is essential because it protects a refractory brick, the lining in that electric arc furnace from degradation as you produce steel. This particular product is high quality limestone, subgroup of limestone, is an essential ingredient in exactly that production. If you look at the business in detail, the one that we have agreed to purchase this morning, it was set up in the 1960s, has 40 different types of limestone product and dolomitic limestone product, and grades that it sells in the various end markets. Sells for about EUR 70 million in terms of turnover generated in 2025, EUR 80 million in EBITDA. Reserve life is solid, 25 to 30 years existing reserve under permission and ownership, and a further 15 to 20 where permits are required, which we will obviously obtain over the years to come. 3.5 million tons of production per year with the capacity to do more at 25.7% EBITDA margins. We expect this to complete at the end of Q3 and into Q4 as the regulatory filings are going through. Obviously, the management team is very solid and we have intimate knowledge of the business through our staff member who ran the company for a long time. The two owners were very pleased with the fact that they requested to take shares and have taken those shares at a clear premium to the price at which this was agreed, 129 pence per share. In particular here, and I know that some are on the phone here as well with you, this transaction was entirely run and managed by the teams internal to SigmaRoc. A fantastic effort, a fantastic process, well run, well executed, and that shows the capabilities we are developing internally. Obviously on the side of the sellers, they did a fantastic job too. Now a few slides on what dolomitic limestone and dolomite all means. Dolime versus lime. Again, the critical difference is the magnesium oxide content in that particular product, and that helps with steel production, helps with feeding soils, pH control, and it also helps just as a hard stone limestone variant for construction. Dolime itself is, on the next page, a fantastic material to be part of. It is scarce when you look at the European footprint. There's not many pockets of this material available. We now start to be part of that club that produces this product. It's a subgroup, dolime that is, which is in demand and growth in the volumes are clear when you see the predictions on the slide, 4% per annum, which is quite nice, and it outpaces this usual 1%, 1.5% volume growth that we have flagged in the past. That is all because of the trend towards electric arc furnaces. We've given you a slide on 25 of where those electric arc furnaces are placed, where we have the various dots, dolomitic lime production, and where we obviously now have placed ourselves with the inclusion of Dolomitas. Plenty of electric arc furnaces already up and running and plenty more coming. The last point that is important is with the Dolomitas group, we also purchased a large section plot of land in the economic free zone of the ports in Lithuania, which will allow us as a group both import and export of product into the region. All in all, a phenomenal acquisition, a fantastic synergistic acquisition, which fits perfectly within the remit and the objectives that we set for our group. That leaves us the last few minutes of this presentation for questions. The outlook. Well, the outlook is a positive one. We have a fantastic business, great staff, great resources, scarce resources, inflation proof in some say, resources right across Europe. We have a fantastic customer base who we serve with both product and additional services. The business is predictable through a cycle. The reason for that is that we don't have just one sector we sell to. We sell to pretty much every sector of the economy, and those sectors evolve with their own cycles, and that makes this business so predictable and so smooth. We're very well placed, therefore, for Europe's re-industrialization and the tailwinds that come from additional infrastructure. As a result, second half, which is typically a stronger half than the first, has started well ahead of last year. We're obviously watchful. The Middle East crisis, which we hoped would end in the summer, is obviously still continuing, and we are keeping an eye on how that impacts end demand. The reason for this is if interest rates go up because of inflation fears, does that impact any housing demand? Those sorts of things we keep an eye on. So far, we're trending very nicely, as you can see from those results. The CMLeaper priorities for last year are nicely being executed. As a result, the board's view and our view here is that we're on track for another solid performance as a group. Now with the additional benefit of M&A, the synergies that will bring and the earnings enhancement, fantastic deals like the Dolomitas deal we have announced this morning. On the back of that, I'd be happy to hand it over all to you for any questions you might have. Operator : Perfect. Thank you for updating investors today. Could I please remind investors to submit your questions to please using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Max, as you said, we have received a number of questions during today's presentation. So if I could just hand back to you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Max Vermorken : Thank you very much. Elisa will take us through those questions on the screen. Elisa Frenay : First question is from Heinrich. Please explain the corporate cost in the chart on slide 21. Does it only relate to Dolomitas or cumulative M&A? Max Vermorken : The corporate costs are just Slide 21. That's a different slide. Generally speaking, corporate cost in the waterfalls that we have in Jan can expand, is just all the central functions that the group has. You have a buildup of the various EBITDA components, and then the corporate cost by division, by region, and then the corporate cost over the top. Speaker 4 : Great. Elisa Frenay : Stephen P.: "Could you expand on the courtship of Dolomitas, and were you in competition?" Max Vermorken : No. This was a very nice transaction. As the ideal scenario, two fantastic sellers who were happy to consider what the best next step would be for their business. A business they'd been running for decades, that their family had owned for decades. They obviously knew our CEO, Baltics, from his previous tenure with that business, and it was a direct relationship there. There, I would say that both the seller and our M&A teams have done a stellar job. We did all the diligence with some support, obviously, on legal and finance from outside counsel. All the other work streams were in-house, and it was a very good, well-executed deal. Elisa Frenay : Another question from Stephen P.: "You have not declared any synergy ambitions regarding Dolomitas. What areas are the most promising?" Max Vermorken : We have a sort of a blanket synergy ambition for any deal we do, and that is not new. It has been there for about 10 years. Which is to say that we always hope to achieve about 25% EBITDA increase on any deal that we do, and that we then hope to outpace that increase in the years following the transaction. So that is the guidance that you can take. You can look at the deals we have done in the past, and that is always where we have ended up, even much higher. What is the ambition, and what is the main source? Again, prior deals, it is always been a combination of operational market presence, integration into the wider structure. It is never a recipe that is exactly the same. So it depends every time on the local context. Again, here, that will be the same. But take those numbers as a guidance. Elisa Frenay : Question from Peter W. "You state that the synergy program has delivered EUR 45 million of EBITDA improvements to date. How much was incremental in H1 2026? How much remains, and when will the program be substantially complete?" Max Vermorken : Yeah. Jan Van Beek : Well, I can take the first one. The incremental part was on one of the slides on the bridge. It was EUR 5 million for the first half. We have said on the full program of synergies that we have delivered the minimum that we have said we would. We lifted the minimum twice, from EUR 30 million to EUR 40 million. So we have done that last year-end. This is another EUR 5 million on top. But we continue to work, because they are still not fully finalized yet. We have said we will do our best to get to the EUR 60 million, which means that there is EUR 15 million more to go after. Max Vermorken : To complete Jan's point, GBP 60 million in synergies on the CRH deal would be near enough 50% EBITDA uplift from the acquired EBITDA. We are well in our target range already, but obviously the target is to get to the full 60. Elisa Frenay : Question from Mason S., "Today's acquisition is very exciting. Can you comment on the strength of the pipeline for further acquisitions, and the likelihood of closing another deal in the next 12 months? Max Vermorken : All right. Next 12 months, no doubt. There's no debate. The pipeline is full. The pipeline is always full. What you want to do as a business of our type is you want to buy the best companies at the best value. Dolomitas this morning is an example. The valuation is attractive. The quality of the group is exceptional. The deal process was fantastic. The sellers took equity and fully subscribed to all of us, and what we are all trying to do here, and the confidence in the limestone and lime sector in Europe. You want to do those deals. You could obviously buy anything and everything that comes around the corner, but then you don't build a quality business, and that's not what we're after. Elisa Frenay : Question from Carl P., "Could you give us a bit more color on the GBP 8.2 million other and FX contribution in the H1 revenue bridge? How much of it is FX? How much is other, and what is included in the other component? Jan Van Beek : Other than FX is 8.2. The bulk is foreign exchange. Others is, for instance, if we charge some revenues to customers that is not related to volume, which is incidental and you put it there. But the majority is foreign exchange. Elisa Frenay : All right. Question from Vishal B., "You spent GBP 27 million of CapEx in H1. This includes growth. What is the annualized run rate of the group here over the medium term, please? Jan Van Beek : Annualized number based on the current size of the group, if you exclude leases, is around 65-ish, dependent on growth. With the new acquisition added, it will go up slightly, because they have CapEx needs as well, but that's I think 10% plus is realistic. So your pre-leases at 65, 70-ish is a good number. Elisa Frenay : Question from Connor M: Thank you for the excellent presentation. When do your energy hedges mature? Have you modeled what kind of an impact this will have on earnings when you need to put on new hedges, given current prices? Jan Van Beek : Yeah. We'll look at that actually right now. This is the period where we normally would look at it following the budget process for next year. The hedges that we have put in place vary in terms of expiration date. They vary also by country, because every country has a different energy profile, and thus you need to do that on a country basis. Today, what we don't want to do is lock ourselves in at prices that are at current levels. We'll have a different approach now towards hedging, more layer based than at a moment in time. We'll be acting cautiously on the hedging, just for the sake of being mindful of cost developments. That's one. But on the other hand, the prices will be going up with it because of the contract structure that we have. There's not an exposure per se for us, but we are still mindful managing the cost base, because if we can avoid pushing it through to customers, that is well received by them. So it's a bit of both. Elisa Frenay : Another question from Vishal B. You invested EUR 14 million in working capital in H1, and you will now also integrate Dolomitas Group. Should we expect you to continue to invest in working capital this year and over the medium term as well? Jan Van Beek : No, it's an investment now. Last year it was an investment of half the size. There will be a benefit at some point. Working capital is working capital. It's not always going negative. If you add, of course, a company, then you have just the balance sheet that comes along, and then you'll go up. But it's not an endless spot in that sense. So we're managing it from an operations standpoint, where we have an eye on the typical receivable days and the likes, and payment days. But overall, if you look at what it reflects, it's 5%-10% of revenue, and steady, which is very manageable, I would say. Max Vermorken : Just to add one point. We own our resource, and if you compare a business like ours to a business that doesn't own its resource, where it has to buy its own input, you have major working capital swings in absorption. This, the working capital, whether it's EUR 10 million or not, it's effectively a non-event in that context. It's a very manageable point. We also ramp up and ramp down stock. We ramp up things depending on what we see in terms of demand. Those sorts of where you position the business to take better advantage of certain fluctuations in certain end markets. Those things sometimes come along in that working capital figure. All in all, it remains a non-event, as Jan said, 5%-10% is of revenue. Elisa Frenay : Okay. Other question from Vishal B. On the 129p agreed for the share component of the acquisition, can you please give any transparency as to the process to arrive at this price? Max Vermorken : Yeah. Elisa Frenay : Dolomitas shareholders were willing to accept. Does this also become a blueprint for future bolt-ons? If there is a share component, it's a direct issue to target companies. Max Vermorken : The 129 is the VWAP, the volume weighted average price, set at the point when the deal was closed and completed, essentially, which was Thursday last week. At that point in time, the opening price that day was 120 or something like this. The VWAP was 129. The shareholders accepted immediately a price nine pence ahead of the price at the point where we fixed this. That's a fantastic statement of, or a testament of confidence in the group. Is it a blueprint? No. In this case, we have two private individuals who own the Dolomitas Group, who are obviously limestone fanatics because they've been in that business for their whole life pretty much, and who wanted to continue to hold exposure to our sector in Europe. It is more than anything a vote of confidence, both in the sector, in the group, in their own business, to put a substantial amount of the money you have got into the business now. Speaker 4 : It was the price the day before the deal completed. Max Vermorken : Yeah, Thursday. The deal was closed finally. You need to, at some point in time, fix these numbers to feed that all through all the SPAs and documentation. That is the day before we closed the transaction. Elisa Frenay : Two questions from David T. Could you update us on your dividend policy? Any further thoughts on the pros and cons of AIM versus full listing? Max Vermorken : The dividend policy, as we said this morning, if we can buy companies as we have just done this morning with Dolomitas, it is obviously the most attractive way to spend the free cash that we generate. Very attractive business, very attractive multiples. Adds directly to our footprint. Synergies to be extracted. If you pay 6 and you have a good run on synergies, you may be ending up at 4.5. That's where I think the ROIC growth potential comes from. If we run out of ideas, then the dividend becomes a logical second option. But for as long as the M&A piece generates this kind of value, that's where we should go. Elisa Frenay : Question from Richard E: If we look at page 8, high grade volume's up 8.5%, but revenue up only 2%, suggesting price is down. This seems surprising. Could you explain why? Aggregates and stone revenue up 11%, up on flat volumes. How have you pushed through such high pricing? Max Vermorken : Sorry, where is the revenue up and the volume down? On page eight? I'm not sure if that's correct. Speaker 4 : Plus 2% year-on-year revenue in the- Max Vermorken : Yeah. The high grade volumes that you see there include discontinued business that we have stopped to supply. Then there's a bit of a shift also between the columns, high grade and aggregate stone. Some contracts were stopped and other contracts were picked up. Why is it up? Because we obviously sell at a better price. Volume down, but the volume that we do sell at a better price. Then aggregates and stone is both construction stone and industrial stone. There, the industrial stone goes into some industries that have had a good run. Elisa Frenay : A question from Salem A. Could you remind us how exposed you are to steel overall? Within that, how much is flat steel sold into the automotive industry? Max Vermorken : 12% of turnover is steel, and that is steel in all the markets we operate. That's Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, and the Nordics, a little bit of the U.K. So it's right across. The amount of that going into automotive is not necessarily clear to us because the orders or the client portfolio that our steel customers have is not disclosed to us in detail. Obviously, the German steelmakers have a large component in automotive. The other ones have large components into other sectors as well. Elisa Frenay : Question from Richard E. U.K. revenue is flat, but EBITDA is up 24%. What were the key drivers here? Max Vermorken : EBITDA, if you take it net-net, it would be 7% or so up EBITDA, flat revenue. The remainder is the internalization of the haulage function. Elisa Frenay : Question from Richard F. Products, processes to reduce CO2, how are these developing? Max Vermorken : They are developing well. The predominant strategy is biomass, so conversion of fuel source. That is a big component of the CO2 input or output that we have, that we are in progress with, and there is a whole plan and program for the next years to convert all our operations to biomass. Well, multi-fuel, one of which being biomass. That is all going fine. Elisa Frenay : Question from Salem A. How do you explain the underperformance of the construction segment in what appears to be a relatively stable residential construction environment and a fairly supportive infrastructure market? Are you seeing any substitution towards alternative products, or have you lost market share? Max Vermorken : The residential market is not. Well, it depends. There are pockets in those countries where it is different. Holland is, for example, more stable, but there are other countries which are tough. Residential markets are tough. There is an increase in permitting and so forth, but it does not translate yet in actual house building. The U.K. is very bad. The Finnish market is not great. The Swedish market is a bit better. It is not a great market to evolve in. As a result of that, you have a mix effect and you sell other products. That is one. Infrastructure is stable. That is a correct statement. But it is stable year-on-year, and it does not actually do much addition at this point in time. As a result, the construction segment is weak. That is the negative. The positive is it has been here and at this level for four years now. Three years and a half, four years. We are still waiting for that recovery to come through, and once it does, then you will see a significant amount of additional volume through that segment. Elisa Frenay : Question from Lauren C. Can AIM continue to be a suitable place for the listing, or do you have ambitions to move to the main market? Max Vermorken : I forgot to answer that question in the previous question. We focused our attention and time on basically running the business synergies development M&A, rather than being very excited about where we should be listed. The AIM market has done a great job for us over the last 10 years, been a great home. There are some rules changes in the AIM market which hope that make slightly more attractive. It is a big job if you want to move, and so it is a question of resource allocation, and we find that at this point in time, the resource allocation to M&A and developing the group is a better one. David Barrett : The benefits of moving to the main market is not clear. Max Vermorken : Yeah. Elisa Frenay : Question from Vincent R: If the organic growth you have seen in Q2 continues in H2, is there any reason H2 margins would be down year-on-year as guidance currently suggests? Or are you just cautious regarding international situation? Max Vermorken : Cautious, that's it. Nothing else. There's a lot of uncertainty around that is not just around. There's all sorts of other things that are there, and we prefer to be cautious and keep guidance as it stands and then revise later in the year. Elisa Frenay : Question from Carl P: Could you detail the main drivers of corporate segment underlying profit? What would be behind the £10.4 million year-over-year swing in corporate segment underlying profit for H1 2026, £5.25 million versus £5.13 million in H1 2025? Jan Van Beek : Yeah. Corporate cost, like Max said, is just a cost at headquarters. What we do label in there are sometimes one-timers. You see it on the P&L slide where there was a £5 million favorable other gains that didn't repeat. That means that if you have a gain, a one-time gain, for instance, on insurance premium, you won't have it the year after, which happened this year. So we're not going up in corporate cost by the corporate team. It's just one-timers that do not repeat lifting the overall. Well, actually bringing the overall cost down, the consolidated cost level, but that is not because that is an increase in the cost of the headquarters. It's just the absence of favorable gains that don't repeat. So it's not that we're structurally spending more. Elisa Frenay : That is it. We have answered all the questions. Max Vermorken : Yeah. We have answered all the questions? Elisa Frenay : Yeah. Max Vermorken : Okay. That is excellent. Thank you so much for your time and for taking the time for us today. We have a fantastic business, fantastic asset footprint, fantastic reserve. Great position to take advantage of all the tailwinds that are coming down, in terms of European reindustrialization. And then obviously, an M&A transaction now, which is very welcome and will add to our already great setup. Thanks for your attention, thanks for listening, and thank you for your support. Operator : Perfect. Thank you. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team of SigmaRoc plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.