METS

Audits help drive Weir order surge

Mineral equipment manufacturer grows aftermarket with technology, testwork

Staff reporter

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The company this week reported 15% higher yoy revenue of £1,062 million, "reflecting excellent growth in both original equipment and aftermarket across both Minerals and Oil and Gas", and EBITDA before exceptional items of £187 million, compared with £148 million for the same period in 2017.

"Oil & Gas was higher driven by positive North American markets, with Minerals benefiting from strong underlying revenue growth," the company said.

Weir said the Minerals division also continued to grow market share through its successful trials programme that sees it go head to head with competitor products "to demonstrate the superior performance of Weir equipment".

The first half of 2018 saw the company open additional service centres in Zambia, Chile and Peru, while "technology programmes focused on continuous improvement in the division's core products while also developing the Group's Synertrex IoT solution, with full commercialisation in mining markets planned for the second half of 2018".

Weir orders increased by 12% in the latest quarter to £728 million (compared with £650 million in Q2 2017. Original equipment orders were up 9% year-on-year and grew by more than 20% from the second half of 2017. Aftermarket orders increased by 14%, including a record second quarter.

Aftermarket business represented 69% of Weir's total orders, and 75% of mining orders.

Weir CEO Jon Stanton said mining demand for brownfield solutions that helped debottleneck, increase throughput and reduce downtime at existing mines was strong. The pipeline of new projects continued to increase driven by good long term fundamentals for commodities such as copper, gold and lithium. Weir also saw good growth in the Mineral division's non-mining markets with oil sands production continuing to support aftermarket demand.

Division revenues were up 7% yoy in the June quarter to £651 million "after a £32 million foreign exchange headwind, with Africa, South America, Australasia, Middle East and Asia Pacific up strongly and Europe and North America more subdued.

"Aftermarket revenues grew strongly for pump and mill circuit spares particularly in our core slurry pumps and mill circuit hoses and spools," Weir said.

Weir's (LSE: WEIR) lost 1.47% Tuesday to finish at £19.48, giving it a market cap of £4.96 billion (US$6.5 billion).

 

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