Weir PLC: 82% Aftermarket Revenue Meets 2.2x Leverage and a 15.2% ROCE, and £27.24 Already Prices the H2 Recovery

Management's “short-term product mix and strong comparative” explanation is substantially supported, but it is incomplete. The disclosed margin bridge begins at 19.8% in H1 2025. Minerals mix within OE and AM cost 130bp; Performance Excellence savings added 100bp; production-transfer delays and other effects cost another 70bp, leaving 18.8%. Pricing versus raw-material cost is not the obvious culprit: ESCO says US tariffs and tungsten inflation were mitigated, while its own margin rose 120bp to 21.5%. FX was also secondary: H1 revenue received a £16m translation tailwind, while adjusted operating profit was flat at constant currency and up only 1% as reported.

Of that bridge, the 70bp production-transfer effect is genuinely the most reversible part because inventories were deliberately raised and production moved between facilities; management expects the transfers and savings to benefit H2. Some of the 130bp Minerals mix effect should also reverse as the H2 order book carries more higher-margin aftermarket. But calling all 130bp “phasing” would be aggressive: rising OE project activity is a normal feature of a mining upcycle and can structurally lower the AM percentage for a period. The +100bp Performance Excellence contribution is a structural positive if savings remain in the cost base. The 250bp decline in ROCE is the most clearly structural near-term negative because recent acquisitions put substantially more goodwill, intangibles and debt onto the balance sheet; that denominator does not disappear in H2.

The gap between adjusted and statutory profit is also straightforward once the adjusting items are reproduced. H1 2026 contained £21m of pre-tax adjusting charges versus £49m a year earlier. The current period included £19m acquired-intangible amortisation, £12m unwind of Townley/ESEL inventory fair-value uplifts and £3m acquisition/integration costs, partly offset by a £14m gain from remeasuring Weir's previous 50% ESEL interest. H1 2025 included much larger Performance Excellence and acquisition-related charges. Thus statutory PBT rose because the exceptional/adjusting burden shrank. Adjusted PBT fell because net finance costs increased sharply following debt-funded Micromine, Townley and ESEL acquisitions.

This is also why H2 matters so much. The last company-compiled consensus before H1 called for FY2026 revenue of £2.759bn, adjusted operating profit of £570m, 20.7% margin, adjusted PBT of £481m and EPS of 132.4p (£1.324). Using actual H1 figures, that requires approximately £1.490bn H2 revenue and £331m adjusted operating profit, a 22.2% H2 margin. Merely getting full-year margin a little above the company's 20% commitment requires roughly a 21.2% H2 margin at that revenue level. The operating target is demanding but credible: H2 begins with book-to-bill of 1.12, versus 1.09 a year earlier, and management explicitly expects better AM mix and production-transfer savings.

The cash target is tougher. H1 produced £99m of free operating cash flow before interest and tax, a 41% conversion rate. At a full-year operating-profit range around £555–570m and 90–100% conversion guidance, the group needs roughly £400–471m of H2 free operating cash flow, equivalent to about 125–144% of implied H2 operating profit. That is mathematically possible because H1 absorbed £147m into working capital, inventory turns fell to 2.0x, debtor days increased to 62 and working capital rose to 26.7% of sales. The investment case therefore depends on a very visible working-capital reversal rather than merely on accounting profit.

M&A has changed the balance between quality and financial risk. Micromine cost £624m enterprise value in April 2025. Townley followed at about £111m, Fast2Mine at about £25m and the remaining half of ESEL at £53.1m in March 2026. ESEL itself contributed only £6.3m of revenue and £3.2m adjusted operating profit between completion and June, so it is financially small despite an unusually high early contribution margin. Micromine is much larger and strategically more consequential. Weir reports recurring revenue at 88% of Micromine's total, customer retention rising to 94% and annual recurring revenue growth that reached 24% on an annualised basis in 2025; for 2026 it targets more than 25% ARR growth. It also disclosed eight months of standalone 2025 contribution — £44m of orders, £41m of revenue and £17m of adjusted operating profit, all reported inside ESCO. What it does not publish is an absolute ARR figure or any continuing standalone series, so the current run rate cannot be read off directly. Fast2Mine is even less separately disclosed. The digital narrative is real, but the data do not support valuing Weir as a software company.

The commodity backdrop is supportive rather than sufficient by itself. Barrick entered 2026 guiding to 2.90–3.25m ounces of gold and 190–220kt of copper; Q2 gold production then exceeded its quarterly guidance. Zijin reported substantial H1 production across copper and gold operations, including Julong, Kamoa and multiple gold mines. Endeavour remained on track with FY2026 production guidance after 564koz in H1. Weir's own order data tell a similar story: copper, gold, iron ore and oil sands demand was strong, the active project pipeline exceeded 2,000 projects, and Minerals Q2 organic AM orders rose 8%. These customer and supplier signals are consistent rather than contradictory.

The price chart, however, says expectations already moved well ahead of reported earnings once. The shares reached a 52-week high around £35.80 in February 2026 before falling sharply after the FY2025 results and 2026 outlook; contemporaneous reporting described a double-digit one-day decline despite otherwise solid results. On 2026-07-17, shortly before H1, the LSE factsheet showed £24.82. By 2026-09-07 the shares had recovered to £27.24, but they remained about 24% below the February high.

That path identifies the market's current argument. Investors are willing to pay a premium for recurring mining consumables, >20% prospective margins, copper/gold exposure and the software option. They have also shown that the premium is fragile when the earnings bridge shifts from operating profit to interest cost, ROCE deteriorates or the company needs a heavily H2-weighted cash outcome. The rename on 12 August provides a useful control experiment: the shares rose about 1.2% that day and dropped roughly 3.6% the next, with no economic announcement attached to the new name. There is no reasonable evidence that the rename created or destroyed value.

My qualitative portrait is high-quality compounding growth, with an important qualification: the compounding engine is a cyclical industrial aftermarket rather than a non-cyclical subscription business. The quality comes from installed equipment, repeated wear demand, field service, materials know-how and an AM mix around 80%. The cyclicality comes from tonnes processed, customer mine economics, expansion projects and eventual replacement of whole assets. The next twelve months test H2 margin and cash recovery. The three-to-five-year question is whether Weir can convert the current copper/gold investment cycle, software purchases and Performance Excellence savings into sustained ROCE above the cost of capital without repeatedly adding leverage.

Vertical history, financial review and capital-market narrative

Weir's origin explains more of today's business than its age might suggest. George and James Weir established the engineering business in Glasgow in 1871, initially solving pumping problems for the Clyde's steamship and marine industries. The company developed pumps and related equipment that had to function reliably in harsh, continuous-duty environments. Reliability, metallurgy and service around an installed mechanical asset were therefore embedded in the business long before mining became its centre of gravity. Weir was admitted to the London Stock Exchange in 1946. The company's public history confirms the listing year, but readily accessible corporate archives do not provide a defensible contemporaneous IPO offer price or capital raised; I do not invent those figures.

The first long stage, from 1871 through the post-war decades, was one of industrial pump engineering and international expansion. The second stage turned Weir into a diversified engineering conglomerate, with exposure spanning minerals processing, oil and gas and industrial flow control. That structure had a strategic logic when energy investment was strong: pumps, pressure-control equipment and severe-service engineering could share manufacturing and engineering capabilities. The weakness became evident when the oil cycle collapsed. Earnings quality depended on several unrelated capital cycles and the market could not value one clean economic engine.

The third stage crystallised the mining franchise. Warman slurry pumps became the anchor around which Minerals built a broader mill-circuit offering, while the acquisition of ESCO in 2018 added ground-engaging tools and wear parts. ESCO was economically important because it increased the group's exposure to consumables at the digging face: bucket teeth, lips and other components are worn away by exactly the same abrasive economics that drive replacement parts in the processing plant. Weir completed the ESCO acquisition in July 2018, creating the two divisional structure that is still recognizable today.

The fourth stage was deliberate simplification. Flow Control was sold in 2019; the Oil & Gas division was sold to Caterpillar in 2021. From then on Weir was effectively a mining technology pure play. This was a genuine change in economic identity, unlike the 2026 legal-name update. A diversified engineer tied partly to shale pressure pumping became a company in which mine throughput and consumable replacement dominate demand.

The fifth stage began after the pure-play transition. Management first attacked the cost base through Performance Excellence, then expanded the profit pool horizontally. Hardware acquisitions such as Townley add slurry-handling products and manufacturing capacity; ESEL moves ESCO from a Chilean joint venture/distributor relationship to full ownership and direct selling. Software acquisitions move in a different direction: Micromine provides mine-planning and operations software, while Fast2Mine adds fleet and mine-operations systems. The strategic logic is access to the same customer, but the financial logic is still unproven because the largest acquisition, Micromine, arrived at a high price and was financed during a period when Weir had previously reduced leverage materially.

The financial record illustrates both the improvement in the underlying business and the recent balance-sheet trade-off. The table uses reported annual revenue and adjusted operating profit where available; growth rates are deliberately omitted from the table because Weir's constant-currency comparison bases change by year.

† FY2025 ROCE of 17.9% is Weir's own reported figure, down 140bp from 19.3%. The 15.2% shown for H1 2026 is the company's interim measure and is not directly comparable to a year-end row, so the 19.3% → 17.9% → 15.2% sequence should be read as two annual figures followed by an interim one. The free-operating-cash-conversion row is on the same footing: the first five cells are full years and the last is a first half. Sources are Weir's annual and interim disclosures.

From 2021 through 2025 the operating achievement was considerable. Adjusted margin rose almost five percentage points, from 15.3% to 20.2%, while leverage fell through 2024. The 2024 year is particularly instructive: reported revenue declined to £2.506bn, but adjusted operating profit rose and margin reached 18.8%, helped by aftermarket mix and efficiency. That is evidence of operating leverage coming from quality of revenue and cost work rather than simply from a commodity-price-driven volume boom.

The reversal in leverage after 2024 is equally clear. Net debt/EBITDA went from 0.7x at the 2024 year-end to 1.9x at end-2025 and 2.2x in June 2026. At H1, net debt was £1.449bn, including £154m of lease liabilities. The increase reflects acquisition spending, H1 working-capital seasonality and currency effects on dollar and Australian-dollar debt. The lender covenant was 3.5x, so this is not a liquidity crisis; it is a capital-allocation question. The company has exchanged some financial resilience and near-term ROCE for software, product breadth and direct distribution.

The 2025–26 acquisitions deserve different judgments. Townley, bought for an enterprise value around £111m, extends the slurry/wear portfolio and was expected at acquisition to carry a low-double-digit operating margin, below current group margins and therefore initially dilutive. Fast2Mine cost roughly £25m and is financially small. ESEL cost £53.1m for the remaining 50%; its £3.2m operating profit on £6.3m revenue from acquisition to June is strong but too short a period to annualise confidently. Micromine at £624m is the transaction that can change group returns. In H1 2025 its first two months contributed about £11m revenue, and subsequent disclosures show high recurring revenue and strong ARR growth. Yet the purchase price was several times larger than every other recent deal.

The balance-sheet and P&L effects already show up. H1 2026 net financing costs increased materially because of acquisition funding, and management expects roughly £90m for the full year. That is why operating profit can recover while adjusted PBT growth remains much less impressive, and why ROCE deserves at least as much weight as EPS over the next three years: buying a high-growth asset can raise EPS while destroying value if the acquired return never covers its purchase price and funding cost.

Cash quality over a full cycle has generally been respectable. Weir's own free-operating-cash-conversion metric was approximately 63%, 87%, 85%, 102% and 92% across 2021–25, averaging about 86%. Those five are full-year figures, however, and the right comparison for H1 2026 is the prior first half rather than that average: Weir reported 41% against 62% in H1 2025, a 21 percentage-point deterioration on a base that is structurally weaker than the full year because working capital builds into June. The deterioration is real and large; the full-year average is simply the wrong benchmark for it. This company metric is preferable to constructing a spurious five-year IFRS operating-cash-flow/net-income ratio from differently adjusted headline data: Weir's annual cash disclosures exclude certain pension, exceptional and tax items from adjusted operating cash flow, while statutory net income includes acquisition amortisation and other adjusting items. A strict ratio mixing those bases would look precise while measuring different things. The current H1 comparison is still informative: adjusted operating cash flow of £156m was 1.21x statutory profit after tax of £129m, but after capex, leases and employee-share purchases free operating cash was only £99m.

The capital-market narrative has changed with the business. The old Weir traded as a diversified cyclical engineer and oil-services proxy. The post-2021 Weir increasingly traded as a high-quality mining consumables company. The five-year LSE factsheet through July 2026 showed the shares up roughly 44%, broadly similar to the FTSE 350 over that full period but with a much more dramatic recent path: a large 2025 rally, a February 2026 peak, then sharp compression.

The late-2025 to early-2026 re-rating was tied to three reinforcing expectations: sustained mining activity, achievement of >20% margin and a higher quality multiple for recurring aftermarket plus software. The shares reached roughly £35.8 at the 52-week peak. The FY2025 print then triggered a double-digit fall despite strong historical results because investors focused on the 2026 earnings bridge and the burden of higher financing costs after acquisitions. This is a useful reminder that the stock was being priced on forward quality, not simply trailing profit.

The Q1 update on 2026-04-30 reported group orders up 4% and reiterated the annual outlook. It did not fully repair the de-rating because the market still needed proof that order growth, margins, cash and leverage could all move in the same direction. H1 did provide better demand evidence: H1 orders were +8% constant currency and Q2 was the stronger quarter. But margin and ROCE remained below the comparison, so the “orders have reaccelerated” thesis was confirmed before the “quality of growth has fully recovered” thesis.

A clean event study is possible around the rename and much less clean around ESEL. ESEL completed on 3 March, essentially overlapping with the annual-results window, when the market was digesting earnings and guidance; assigning that share-price move to a £53m bolt-on would be implausible. On 12 August, the name change coincided with only an ordinary daily move, followed by a larger reversal the next session. The economically correct attribution is zero unless evidence emerges to the contrary.

The two-year price attribution is therefore best read in causal layers rather than with false one-day precision. The 2024–25 ascent reflected improving margins, lower leverage and rising mining optimism; the early-2026 overshoot added expectations around software and continued copper/gold investment. The March correction was company-specific and valuation-driven. The summer recovery from the £24.82 LSE reference on 17 July to £27.24 by 7 September followed stronger Q2 order evidence and reiterated guidance, but the period also contained strong precious/base-metal mine economics and cannot all be credited to H1 results. Sterling affected reported revenue mechanically, with a £16m H1 translation tailwind, but the flat constant-currency operating profit tells us currency was not the fundamental earnings driver.

Business model, moat, management and cycle

The aftermarket reconstruction is the correct place to begin the business model because it changes how every subsequent number should be interpreted.

† 2025 OE/AM figures are the H1+H2 amounts restated by Weir at 2026 average exchange rates, so £2.613bn is not the reported FY2025 revenue of £2.565bn. It is used only to establish the mix on a consistent 2026 FX basis and must not be used as a reported-growth comparator. ‡ Research estimate, not company disclosure. It assumes AM operating margins 12–15 percentage points above OE; the range is anchored directionally to Weir's disclosed mix sensitivities.

The model works because mining creates wear. A slurry pump moving abrasive ore and water through a processing plant loses material through use. A shovel tooth digging blasted rock does the same. Replacing the component is usually cheap relative to the lost mine output from running an inefficient or failed circuit. That gives the supplier of a proven component pricing latitude that is rarely available to a generic heavy-machinery vendor. Weir says its installed equipment can operate through a mine life of roughly 30 years, creating repeated aftermarket purchases long after the initial OE sale.

The installed base is economically large but poorly quantified in investor disclosure. Weir does not publish a consolidated count of installed Warman pumps, Cavex cyclones, ESCO systems or other units that can be reconciled annually. That means “installed-base growth” cannot be audited as a unit KPI the way aircraft engines or elevators can. The evidence is instead indirect: an OE share around 20%, an aftermarket share around 80%, multi-decade equipment lives, and persistent AM revenue through mining downturns. The lack of a unit count is one of this report's important disclosure blind spots.

AM growth itself has three sources: price, tonnes processed and share/installed-base expansion. Weir does not disclose a clean annual price-volume-share bridge for aftermarket, so an authoritative five-year decomposition cannot be produced. The pattern does, however, change over time. The inflation-heavy 2022 period included substantial pricing recovery. By H1 2026 the evidence is more operational: AM orders were +8% constant currency, Minerals Q2 organic AM orders were +8%, and management cited competitive trial wins and market-share gains. Current growth therefore appears more volume/share-led than the 2022 inflation episode, while the exact percentages remain undisclosed.

Minerals is the larger segment. H1 2026 orders were £1.037bn, up 7% constant currency; revenue was £900m, up 3%; adjusted operating profit was £181m, down 5%; and margin fell from 21.8% to 20.1%. OE and AM revenue were £199m and £701m respectively. The division was therefore still roughly 78% AM even during an OE project upswing. Its problem was profit mix and production execution, not lack of demand.

ESCO had the opposite half. Orders rose 10% constant currency to £389m, revenue rose 11% to £369m, adjusted operating profit rose 17% to £79m and margin expanded 120bp to 21.5%. OE revenue rose 47% on the constant-currency comparison, driven by North American buckets, while aftermarket revenue rose 9%. Software Solutions and lower-cost sourcing in China and Chile helped margin.

The cost structure has more operating leverage than the 80% AM label alone implies. Foundries, machining, engineering, distribution centres, sales and technical-service networks create fixed cost. Material and direct labour move more with volume. Performance Excellence is removing structural cost through manufacturing transfers and simplification: cumulative savings reached £72m by June and management expects £90m for the full year. That partly explains how group margins rose from 15.3% in 2021 to 20.2% in 2025 despite only moderate revenue growth after 2022.

The first real moat is wear-performance credibility. Mine operators care about component life, uptime and process recovery. A cheaper part can be expensive if it lowers throughput or requires an unscheduled shutdown. Warman and ESCO have decades of installed experience in precisely these abrasive applications. This moat is strongest where the component is mission-critical and its failure cost dwarfs its purchase price. It is weaker for components that can be reverse-engineered and substituted without meaningful process risk.

The second moat is installed geometry plus service. Pumps, liners, hydrocyclones, teeth and lips are integrated into surrounding equipment, and mine maintenance teams build procedures, inventories and knowledge around them. Switching can therefore involve trials, engineering approval and inventory change, rather than a simple procurement decision. The fact that Weir refers explicitly to competitive trials is itself evidence that switching is possible; the moat raises the burden of proof for a challenger rather than creating a monopoly. H1 management said wins from competitive trials contributed to order momentum.

The third moat is the product continuum through the mining circuit. Minerals can address comminution, classification, slurry transport and related wear; ESCO addresses loading and ground engagement. This gives salespeople more opportunities to enter a site and gives Weir data on wear and process conditions across multiple steps. Yet it remains an equipment ecosystem, not a network-effect platform. Metso can bundle a broader processing plant; Sandvik and Epiroc own deeper underground drilling and mobile-equipment relationships. Weir's advantage is focus, not universal mine coverage.

Software is a potential fourth moat, but it has not yet earned that status. Micromine's 88% recurring-revenue mix, 94% customer retention and strong ARR growth are attractive. Integration with Weir's roughly 12,000-employee global organisation creates a distribution opportunity that Micromine did not previously possess. Weir's December 2025 software presentation gave concrete examples of “warm introductions” creating pilots at existing industrial relationships. That is evidence of cross-selling, not yet evidence of a durable data moat.

Micromine's ARR target of more than 25% growth in 2026 is therefore a useful KPI. Absolute ARR is not. The company has chosen not to disclose an absolute current ARR figure, standalone revenue or standalone operating profit. Fast2Mine is similarly folded into Software Solutions. Any valuation model that assigns hundreds of millions of pounds to a precisely estimated software ARR not disclosed by the company would be inventing a denominator.

Capital allocation is currently the hardest management question. The 2018 ESCO acquisition looks much better in hindsight than it did as a large transaction because ESCO now generates >20% margins and a highly recurring wear-parts stream. Disposing of Flow Control and Oil & Gas also sharpened the portfolio at the right strategic moment. The concern is pace: Weir moved from 0.7x net debt/EBITDA at end-2024 to four acquisitions and 2.2x by H1 2026. The business can fund that leverage if H2 cash conversion arrives; management has much less room for another large transaction before deleveraging.

The CEO transition adds execution risk at a busy point. Jon Stanton was still presenting H1 results on 29 July but explicitly referred to Andrew as his successor, meaning the incoming leadership inherits production transfers, software integration and a leverage reduction commitment simultaneously. This is not a broken-governance signal; it raises the importance of continuity in capital-allocation discipline.

The cycle data also put the current order surge in context.

§ Approximate ratio from FY2025 orders of £2.598bn and reported revenue of £2.565bn; the order growth percentage itself is a constant-currency measure, so the ratio is used only as a same-period demand indicator.

The recent sequence does not look like the first quarter of a fresh cycle. It looks more like a second acceleration within a mining expansion that has already run for several years. That distinction matters. During the previous deep mining downturn, Weir's own historical analysis says Minerals aftermarket remained resilient even as mine capex and commodity prices fell markedly. The current 1.12x book-to-bill therefore says the next several quarters have stronger revenue cover; it does not prove that copper and gold capex will keep accelerating for another five years.

The older 2012–16 mining downturn and the 2020 disruption reveal different sensitivities. Large OE is the first thing exposed when miners defer projects. AM is more closely linked to operating mines and tonnes processed, so it falls later and usually less. In an upcycle the reverse happens: OE can grow faster than AM, temporarily diluting margins even while the installed base that will later generate AM expands. H1 2026's OE orders +10% versus AM +8% is exactly the kind of pattern one should expect in that phase.

Weir does not disclose a standardized group lead-time series. H1 2026 “extended lead times” were specifically associated with production-transfer delays, so it would be a mistake to interpret them automatically as industry-wide pricing power or a capacity shortage. Working capital, book-to-bill and order conversion are better disclosed proxies.

Regulation is not the dominant risk that it is for a bank, utility or pharmaceutical company. The external variables are trade barriers, mine permitting, local-content rules, geopolitics and environmental constraints on customers. ESCO explicitly mitigated US tariff and tungsten effects in H1. Ghana has meanwhile been pushing foreign miners toward locally owned mining contractors, illustrating how mine-site procurement structures can change by jurisdiction. These risks usually reach Weir indirectly through customer activity or supply cost rather than through the loss of a corporate licence to operate.

Horizontal analysis: peers, customers and ecological niche

There are enough competitors for a Scenario C peer set, but no listed company is a perfect mirror. Metso is the closest processing-equipment peer. Epiroc and Sandvik are stronger references for underground equipment, drilling tools, service and recurring mining revenue. FLSmidth has become a more relevant mining pure play after agreeing to divest cement. Caterpillar is useful for large mining machinery and ground-engaging equipment but is too diversified to anchor Weir's valuation cleanly.

The quantitative comparison below is intentionally narrow because companies define “service,” “aftermarket,” “recurring” and operating profit differently. Forcing those definitions into a falsely like-for-like decimal comparison would undermine the analysis.

† Approximate portfolio characterization from company presentations; Metso, Epiroc and Sandvik do not use Weir's precise AM definition, so the shares should be treated as directional rather than accounting-equivalent. Epiroc reported Q2 organic orders +13%, organic revenue +11% and adjusted margin 20.1%; Sandvik reported Q2 organic orders +17% and group adjusted EBITA margin 22.6%. Metso's 2026 investor materials continued to show aftermarket order growth and high-teens profitability in Minerals/Group presentations.

Weir's distinguishing feature is the first line that cannot be captured perfectly in the table: it has pushed the revenue mix further toward consumables than these broader peers. Metso can sell a much larger portion of a processing flowsheet and has formidable crushing, grinding, flotation and service capabilities. That breadth helps Metso on large projects and can strengthen bundled bids. It also leaves more OE exposure than Weir. The customer chooses Metso when integrated process technology and large project scope matter; it chooses Weir disproportionately where wear life, slurry transport and installed replacement economics dominate.

Epiroc became a high-margin underground and surface-mining productivity company built around drills, loaders, automation, service and tools. Its Q2 2026 organic equipment orders rose 30%, organic service orders 6% and group adjusted margin reached 20.1%. That combination shows the same cyclical pattern visible at Weir: equipment is currently accelerating faster than recurring service. Epiroc is stronger in underground mobile machinery and automation. Weir is stronger in slurry processing and has a cleaner consumables proportion.

Sandvik has become a portfolio of high-productivity industrial niches, with mining one of its central profit engines. Q2 2026 group organic orders and revenue rose 17% and 23% respectively, while adjusted EBITA margin reached 22.6%. Sandvik also booked sizeable 2026 underground and processing orders. Its scale, R&D and underground franchise are stronger than Weir's; the drawback for a Weir investor using it as a comparable is that Sandvik includes businesses well outside mining and therefore deserves a different conglomerate/quality mix.

FLSmidth is moving toward the opposite direction from old Weir: divest the non-mining operation and become a mining technology and service company. Its mining margin remained below Weir's >20% aspiration around the transition, so it is particularly useful as evidence that pure-play status alone does not create a premium. The quality of service revenue and returns on capital do.

Caterpillar competes more directly with ESCO's economic ecosystem than with the full Weir group. It owns giant loading and hauling platforms and bought Weir's former Oil & Gas business, but its construction, energy and transportation exposure makes group margins and multiples poor direct anchors. Customers can encounter Caterpillar as the equipment platform and ESCO as the wear component attached to that platform, so competition and complementarity coexist.

The horizontal conclusion is therefore specific: Weir's moat is strongest where abrasive wear turns an installed mechanical component into a recurring consumable; Metso, Epiroc and Sandvik generally have broader equipment or process franchises but lower concentration in that exact profit pool. That is the cleanest reason for a valuation premium if Weir can maintain ROCE and cash conversion. It is also why the current H1 decline in ROCE matters so much: a premium business model loses part of its justification when acquisitions make capital productivity look ordinary.

On the customer side, Weir's +8% H1 constant-currency order growth is broadly consistent with the mining evidence I could independently verify. Barrick maintained significant copper and gold production guidance and reported Q2 gold output above its quarterly range. Its longer-term pipeline includes major copper growth projects, so the signal is supportive for both current AM activity and future OE.

Zijin's H1 data are even more expansionary. It reported 534kt of mined copper across major operations and 1.50m ounces of mined gold across named gold assets, with Julong, Serbia, Kamoa and other mines contributing to a large active processing base. Those tonnes are economically more relevant to Weir's installed aftermarket than the daily copper quote itself: tonnes pushed through pumps, cyclones and mills cause wear.

Endeavour reported H1 production of 564koz and remained on track for FY2026 guidance, with operating performance weighted toward Q4. Gold Fields likewise described a solid start to 2026 before its H1 update. These data do not show a customer industry cutting production or freezing sustaining activity.

Barrick is particularly useful for distinguishing price from activity. Its 2026 planning assumptions used gold around $4,500/oz and copper around $5.50/lb, extraordinarily healthy economics relative to the previous decade, but Weir's realised AM demand still depends on whether mines run and expand. High metal prices increase customers' capacity to spend; they do not mechanically become Weir orders. The supplier's own book-to-bill and organic AM orders are therefore the better six-to-twelve-month leading indicators. Customer capex plans are more useful over a two-to-five-year horizon.

The available public-web pass did not produce sufficiently current, directly comparable 2026 capex tables for Southern Copper, AngloGold Ashanti and Kinross, nor a same-definition capex series for every named customer. Their presence in a coverage list cannot substitute for opening the actual reports. I therefore do not manufacture a seven-company capex total. This is a material research limitation rather than evidence that the missing miners disagree with Weir.

The useful conclusion from the verified cross-section is nonetheless strong: rising Weir orders are not occurring against a collapsing customer production backdrop. Barrick, Zijin, Endeavour and the broader copper/gold activity evidence all point to robust mine operations. What remains uncertain is how long the next wave of discretionary expansion capex lasts.

Ecologically, Weir occupies a niche between full-plant process supplier and component specialist. It takes profit primarily from maintenance budgets, replacement wear spend and selective processing-capex projects. A new entrant would have to prove wear life, field reliability, site service and engineering compatibility rather than merely copy the component shape. Metso is the most credible threat in processing; Epiroc and Sandvik are credible where mine automation and broader equipment relationships pull purchasing toward an integrated supplier. Low-cost independent wear-parts makers are a persistent price threat at the commodity end.

Technological substitution is more opportunity than existential threat today. More grinding, finer ore grades and harder deposits can increase wear and energy requirements, while HPGR and process optimisation offer Weir product opportunities. Digitalisation could weaken Weir if customers standardise around a competitor's integrated mine-control ecosystem, but it could strengthen Weir if Micromine and Fast2Mine become an effective entry point into the installed hardware footprint. The evidence today supports the opportunity; it does not yet prove the outcome.

Current fundamentals, valuation, risks and tracking

Across the last four quarters the story is one of improving operating quality followed by a deliberately awkward H1 comparison. FY2025 ended with £2.565bn reported revenue, £518m adjusted operating profit, a 20.2% margin and 92% free operating cash conversion. Orders grew 7% on the company's constant-currency basis. Those results completed a multi-year margin expansion.

Q1 2026 then produced group orders +4%, supported by a growing project pipeline, but with uneven phasing across divisions. By Q2 the order picture had accelerated enough for H1 growth to reach 8% constant currency. OE orders rose 10%, AM orders 8%, and Minerals Q2 organic AM orders 8%. This progression is more important than the H1 average because it establishes that the weaker early-quarter AM pattern was not continuing into June.

The H1 P&L reads less well than the order book. Revenue was £1.269bn, +6% as reported and +5% constant currency. Adjusted operating profit was £239m, +1% reported and flat constant currency. Margin was 18.8%, down 100bp on both bases. Adjusted PBT was £196m, -8%, and adjusted EPS was 54.6p, -7%. Statutory PBT was £175m, +7%. Those bases cannot be mixed: orders are disclosed as constant-currency growth; reported revenue growth is 6%, not the roughly 10% figure that has circulated in some secondary summaries.

The margin bridge is unusually valuable because it lets us test management's explanation directly.

Company disclosure, H1 2026, with 2025 operating-profit comparatives restated at 2026 average exchange rates and for Micromine opening-balance-sheet adjustments.

The bridge says input cost is not the hidden problem. ESCO explicitly says tariffs and tungsten were mitigated and produced higher margins. The real weakness sits in Minerals product mix and execution around manufacturing transfers. I would classify the 70bp transfer effect as temporary unless it persists into 2027. Of the 130bp mix effect I would classify perhaps part, but not all, as phasing. Performance Excellence is structural upside. The lower ROCE and higher interest expense are structural consequences of acquisitions until deleveraging and acquired earnings catch up.

The adjusted/statutory reconciliation confirms why statutory earnings should not be used to claim the business accelerated. H1 2026 pre-tax adjusting items were £21m versus £49m in H1 2025. The £14m ESEL remeasurement gain has no recurring operating meaning; the £12m fair-value inventory unwind and £19m intangible amortisation arise from acquisitions. Lower adjusting charges explain the statutory PBT improvement, while higher financing costs explain the adjusted PBT decline.

The FY2026 hurdle can be quantified against the May company-compiled consensus. That consensus preceded H1, but the company subsequently said full-year guidance remained in line with market expectations.

Calculated from H1 actuals, company guidance and the May 2026 compiled consensus; H2 margin and cash numbers are research calculations, not company forecasts.

That is neither comfortable nor heroic. A 21–22% H2 margin is consistent with the 22.0% Minerals margin already achieved in H2 2025 on the 2026 FX restatement, and the mix should improve. The 125–144% implied H2 cash conversion is more demanding. It requires the £147m H1 working-capital outflow to reverse substantially. A company can hit the P&L guidance while missing the balance-sheet promise; investors should treat those as two separate tests.

The stock at £27.24 carries a market value of about £7.07bn. Against FY2026 consensus adjusted EPS of £1.324, that is approximately 20.6x forward adjusted earnings. Adding H1 net debt gives a rough enterprise value of £8.52bn. The H1 lender leverage ratio of 2.2x implies covenant EBITDA around £659m, putting the current EV at roughly 12.9x that EBITDA proxy. These are research calculations from disclosed figures, not quoted market multiples.

Before assigning a multiple, the cash-flow passthrough deserves a separate check. Weir does not disclose maintenance and growth capex separately. H1 capex was around 1.0x depreciation; FY guidance is capex and lease payments around 1.2x depreciation. A reasonable interpretation is that depreciation is the closest public proxy for maintenance consumption and the excess roughly 0.2x represents growth/transfer spending, but that is an analytical assumption rather than management disclosure.

Using FY2026 consensus operating profit of £570m and the midpoint of 90–100% free-operating-cash conversion gives about £542m FOCF before finance and tax. Subtracting approximately £90m guided net finance costs and roughly £135m tax implied by the 28% effective rate on £481m consensus PBT produces normalized equity owner earnings around £317m, or about £1.22 per share. At £27.24 the owner-earnings yield is roughly 4.5%, equivalent to 22.3x. The forward adjusted P/E is 20.6x, so the cash-versus-accounting gap is only about 8–9%, far below the 30% threshold that would force valuation onto owner earnings alone. I therefore use adjusted EPS as the main shorthand, with owner earnings as the discipline check.

The current multiple already pays for more than a no-growth industrial outcome. That premium can be justified by the roughly 80% aftermarket stream and >20% potential margins, but the 4.5% normalized owner-earnings yield leaves limited protection if growth disappears. The stock's February peak showed the other side: applying a premium multiple to peak enthusiasm for copper, gold, software and margin expansion can produce a price that falls sharply even while orders remain healthy.

The historical percentile is necessarily approximate because Weir itself does not publish a standardized long-history forward-multiple series. The current 20.6x FY2026 adjusted P/E is clearly below the multiple implied near the £35.8 February high on similar earnings expectations, but remains a premium industrial valuation rather than a trough-cycle one. I treat 16–18x as a cycle-normal conservative anchor, 20–21x as appropriate for sustained >20% margins and strong AM growth, and 22–23x as requiring both software execution and continuing mining strength. Those are valuation assumptions, not claims about an exact historical percentile.

The scenario analysis uses both P/E and owner-earnings yield. It is valuation analysis within a research framework, not investment advice.

The valuation bands are deliberately wider than a single-point target because the greatest uncertainty is the normalized multiple, not whether next year's EPS is one or two pence different. A business with 80% aftermarket can support a premium to generic machinery, but 15.2% H1 ROCE and 2.2x leverage argue against paying any multiple one might reserve for an asset-light compounder.

The expectation gap in the next print is consequently narrow and measurable. Orders need to stay above revenue or at least around 1.0x book-to-bill. Minerals margin needs to recover toward 21–22%. Working capital must fall. Micromine needs to remain on track for >25% ARR growth. A revenue beat accompanied by another cash miss would probably not settle the debate because the current stock price already assumes the H1 working-capital problem is temporary.

The margin-of-safety test is less favourable. Current £27.24 is 9–18% above the £23–25 conservative fair-value range, so the margin of safety versus the conservative case is zero. The most fragile base assumption is the valuation premium: if the assumed premium above a 16x cycle-normal anchor is only 70% realized, a 20.5x base multiple becomes roughly 19.2x. On £1.48 base EPS, fair value falls to about £28.4. That remains near the current quote rather than creating a bargain.

If earnings stay flat for three years at approximately £1.324 per share and the multiple stays unchanged, the main shareholder return is the dividend. Using the FY2026 consensus dividend of 44.2p gives only about a 1.6% current yield and roughly 1.6% annualized total return before reinvestment or multiple change. If the multiple normalizes to 18x, the terminal price would be about £23.83 and three years of similar dividends would still leave a mildly negative annualized return.

I did not obtain a same-cut, primary-market 10-year gilt yield within the source set used here, so I do not manufacture the requested bond comparison. The valuation conclusion does not depend on it: a 1.6% flat-earnings equity return is inadequate compensation for mining-cycle, integration and leverage risk.

Margin-of-safety sufficiency verdict: none.

The main permanent-loss risks are concrete rather than abstract. First is mining-cycle compression. I assign medium probability and high impact. If copper/gold mine expansion slows, OE orders would react first; if lower prices eventually reduce tonnes processed or close high-cost mines, AM follows. The observable indicators are group book-to-bill below 0.95x, negative organic AM orders and miners cutting production guidance. The transmission path is orders → revenue mix/volume → factory absorption and margins → lower EPS plus a lower multiple.

Second is acquisition-return failure, medium probability and high impact. H1 ROCE at 15.2% after £800m-plus of recent deal activity is already the warning variable. If Micromine grows ARR quickly but the acquired capital base still cannot push group ROCE back toward the high teens, investors will conclude that EPS growth was purchased too expensively. Watch ROCE, net debt/EBITDA, software growth and acquisition-related intangible/goodwill balances.

Third is H2 execution and cash, medium-to-high probability and medium-to-high impact. The company needs more than £400m of H2 free operating cash flow to land within guidance under reasonable profit assumptions. Another increase in debtor days or inventories would keep leverage above management's “towards 1.5x” goal and raise questions about whether production transfers are truly temporary. Working capital at 26.7% of sales is the observable warning.

Fourth is aftermarket share erosion, low-to-medium probability but high long-run impact. Metso, Sandvik, Epiroc and independent wear suppliers can challenge the installed base. One weak quarter would not prove moat erosion. The real signal would be several periods of negative organic AM orders while miners' tonnes processed remain healthy, accompanied by pricing concessions or competitive-trial losses.

Fifth is software narrative disappointment, medium probability but initially lower financial impact. Micromine is too small to break group earnings by itself today, but the £624m purchase price means slower ARR growth can damage ROCE and the quality multiple. ARR growth below the >25% FY2026 target, weak retention or no evidence of hardware-customer cross-selling would matter more than a single quarter of software accounting revenue.

Positive catalysts are equally measurable. H2 group margin above 22%, FY cash conversion near 100%, year-end leverage around 1.5x, continued >1x book-to-bill and >25% Micromine ARR would resolve most of the H1 concerns simultaneously. Sustained Minerals organic AM order growth above mid-single digits would be particularly valuable because it would prove the revenue annuity is growing independently of acquired businesses.

The negative catalyst set is the mirror image: a guidance reduction, Minerals margin still below 20% in H2, cash conversion below 85%, leverage materially above 1.5x at year-end, negative AM orders despite healthy miner production, or Micromine ARR growth decelerating sharply. Any two occurring together would challenge the current premium multiple.

† Weir's investor site confirms H1 was reported on 29 July, and its financial calendar dates the Q3 2026 Interim Management Statement to 4 November 2026. The 20.0p interim dividend goes ex on 1 October, with a record date of 2 October and payment on 3 November 2026.

The dashboard should be read as a chain. Book-to-bill and organic AM orders reveal demand first. Margin says whether that demand is profitable. Working capital and cash conversion show whether earnings are real. Leverage and ROCE then say whether management's acquisitions have enhanced value. Software ARR deserves a place because it can raise the quality of the group, but it should not outrank Minerals AM orders or cash conversion until Software Solutions is materially larger.

Cross-synthesis, final research conclusion, uncertainties and sources

Vertically, Weir has proved one capability for more than a century in changing forms: building mission-critical equipment for harsh fluid and material environments, then servicing the installed asset. The marine steam pump of the nineteenth century and a Warman slurry pump in a modern copper concentrator are very different products, but the economics rhyme. Reliability under abrasive continuous duty creates a technical relationship; repeated maintenance makes that relationship more valuable with time. The lasting success factor was never simply owning a factory. It was getting equipment into a site where failure is costly and wear is inevitable.

The second proven capability is portfolio adaptation. Weir spent decades becoming a diversified engineer, then reversed that diversification when Oil & Gas and Flow Control diluted the economic identity of the mining franchise. The 2018 ESCO acquisition and 2019–21 disposals were decisive. They concentrated the group into exactly the kind of revenue that had proved most resilient across mining cycles. The increase from a 15.3% operating margin in 2021 to 20.2% in 2025 shows that simplification was followed by operational improvement rather than merely a change in investor presentation.

Past success nevertheless contains cycle assistance. Copper and gold mine economics are currently strong, miners are running large processing bases, and Weir has more than 2,000 projects in its active pipeline. That backdrop helps OE bids and AM consumption. An 80%-plus aftermarket mix reduces the amplitude of the cycle; it does not repeal the cycle. The 2020–26 book-to-bill pattern already contains one recovery and one reacceleration. Investors buying today should not extrapolate the 1.12x H1 2026 ratio indefinitely.

Horizontally, Weir's advantage is unusually clean. Metso is broader in processing. Epiroc and Sandvik are broader in drilling, underground machinery and automation. Caterpillar owns the heavy-equipment platform. Weir concentrates more revenue in consumable wear and replacement. That focus explains why its margin can exceed what one might expect from a mid-sized British engineering company and why the market increasingly treats it as a quality mining compounder.

The weakness is equally clear. Weir has decided to spend part of that quality premium on M&A. Micromine, Townley, Fast2Mine and ESEL have pushed leverage from 0.7x at end-2024 to 2.2x at June 2026, while H1 ROCE fell to 15.2%. The H1 order book says the operating franchise is healthy. The ROCE line asks whether management has paid too much to broaden it. That question will take years rather than quarters to settle.

The software strategy could eventually answer it positively. Micromine already has a recurring subscription model with high retention, and Weir can open doors at mines where the software business previously lacked relationships. If >25% ARR growth persists and the installed hardware network becomes an efficient distribution channel, the acquisition can raise the group's organic growth, recurring revenue and valuation durability. Current disclosure does not support assigning a separate SaaS multiple because Weir does not disclose absolute ARR or standalone profitability. The correct treatment today is option value inside ESCO, not a separate software sum-of-the-parts with invented revenue.

The market is most likely misjudging one thing on each side. The bearish misjudgment would be to read H1's 100bp margin fall as the start of an industrial downturn. Orders accelerated to +8% constant currency, book-to-bill reached 1.12x, Q2 Minerals AM organic orders rose 8%, ESCO margin expanded and company guidance remained intact. The evidence does not fit a demand rollover.

The bullish misjudgment would be to call every H1 weakness temporary. The production-transfer effect can reverse. Higher acquisition debt, financing cost and capital employed cannot reverse through a manufacturing transfer. ROCE will recover only if earnings generated by the acquired businesses rise enough to justify what was paid or if cash generation meaningfully reduces the capital employed. That is a structural hurdle.

Over twelve months, the critical variables are H2 margin, free cash conversion and leverage. The company needs an approximately 21–22% H2 margin and a very strong cash reversal. If those occur alongside >1x book-to-bill, the H1 dip will look like execution phasing. If profit arrives without cash, the market will keep questioning the quality of earnings.

Over three years, ROCE and AM organic growth matter more. A sustained high-teens ROCE after the acquisition wave would validate the capital allocation. Mid-single-digit AM growth would show that Weir can compound through tonnes processed, price and share rather than depending on another OE boom.

Over five years, the decisive variable is whether the installed base expands faster than competitors can commoditise it. A larger installed base of Warman, Cavex, Enduron and ESCO equipment, supplemented by useful software, could produce a larger recurring aftermarket annuity even after mining capex normalises. If independent wear suppliers and integrated competitors instead erode pricing and site share, the 80% AM number will remain high while its economics deteriorate. Revenue mix alone is therefore not enough; margins and ROCE must confirm the moat.

Bull reasons:

• About 82% of H1 2026 revenue is aftermarket, and my evidence-based reconstruction puts AM at roughly 90–94% of operating profit, providing much greater resilience than an OE-heavy machinery model.
• H1 orders rose 8% constant currency, book-to-bill reached 1.12x and Minerals Q2 organic AM orders rose 8%, so the current margin weakness is occurring during demand acceleration rather than contraction.
• Performance Excellence contributed 100bp to the H1 margin bridge and cumulative savings reached £72m against a £90m FY target, giving a tangible structural offset to mix volatility.
• ESCO already operates above a 21% margin and Software Solutions adds high recurring revenue and >25% targeted Micromine ARR growth, providing a credible second source of mix improvement.

Bear reasons:

• H1 adjusted margin fell 100bp, ROCE fell 250bp to 15.2%, adjusted PBT fell 8% and adjusted EPS fell 7% despite +8% orders, so growth is currently consuming more capital without producing commensurate below-the-line earnings.
• Net debt/EBITDA increased from 0.7x at end-2024 to 2.2x at H1 2026 after the acquisition wave, making the premium valuation more sensitive to a mining-cycle disappointment.
• Full-year cash guidance requires roughly 125–144% H2 free-operating-cash conversion under reasonable profit assumptions, so the 90–100% FY target depends on a substantial working-capital unwind.
• At £27.24, FY2026 adjusted P/E is about 20.6x and normalized owner-earnings yield about 4.5%; the valuation already assumes that >20% margins and medium-term growth are sustainable.
• Micromine cost £624m while standalone current revenue, ARR and profitability remain undisclosed; the group has therefore committed substantial capital to an asset whose return on invested capital cannot yet be independently measured.

Pre-mortem, script one: copper and gold expansion plans cool during 2027 after commodity prices retreat. Weir's OE orders fall 20%, then mine throughput at marginal operations weakens enough for AM organic growth to turn negative. Minerals margin falls from the expected 21–22% area toward 18%, EPS falls toward £1.00–£1.10 and leverage remains near 2x because the expected cash release does not fully occur. The market ceases treating Weir as a premium compounder and applies 14x earnings. A £1.00 EPS at 14x produces a share price around £14, close to a 50% loss from the present level.

Pre-mortem, script two: the mining cycle stays healthy, but Micromine and the manufacturing transfers disappoint through 2027–28. Software ARR growth slows below 15%, group ROCE remains below 15%, working capital stays structurally elevated and Minerals margin struggles to remain above 20%. EPS can still hold around £1.20, but the narrative changes from “recurring compounder” to “leveraged machinery consolidator.” A 15x multiple on £1.20 gives £18. That is a roughly one-third loss without needing a recession. A concurrent commodity downturn could push the outcome toward the first script.

The first script is the more dangerous one because it combines operating deleverage and multiple compression. The second is the more useful research warning because it can occur even if copper and gold remain strong.

The company becomes materially more attractive if three things coincide: group leverage returns to roughly 1.5x or below, ROCE recovers toward the high teens, and the valuation falls far enough that the investor is not paying upfront for successful M&A integration. A lower share price without those operational conditions would simply be a cheaper claim on a deteriorating thesis. Conversely, sustained >22% margins, >25% Micromine ARR and AM organic growth above mid-single digits could justify raising the long-run earnings and multiple assumptions even without a large price decline.

【Company-profile scores】

• Fundamental quality: high
• Growth: medium
• Moat: strong
• Financial soundness: medium
• Management credibility: high
• Valuation attractiveness: medium
• Risk level: medium
• Suitable investor type: long-term growth / cyclical

【Investment rating】

• Rating: Hold
• One-line thesis: An unusually strong mining-aftermarket franchise is already priced for H2 margin recovery while acquisitions have reduced ROCE and raised leverage.
• Current-price classification: acceptable hold
• Whether to wait for a better price: yes. A new purchase becomes compelling around £18.50–£20.00 if organic AM orders remain positive, FY margin stays above 20% and leverage is moving toward 1.5x. The opportunity cost is missing continued compounding, dividends and a possible re-rating if the H2 cash release arrives before the share-price entry point.
• Target holding horizon: 3–5 years
• Expected annualized return, conservative: about -3% over three years including roughly current dividend income, assuming value converges around £24
• Expected annualized return, base: about 6% over three years including dividends, assuming value converges around £31
• Expected annualized return, optimistic: about 14% over three years including dividends, assuming value converges around £39
• Max-loss risk: about 45–50%; trigger is a mining downturn that takes EPS toward £1.00 while leverage remains elevated and the earnings multiple compresses to roughly 14x.
• Reassessment triggers: FY margin below 20%; year-end net debt/EBITDA remaining above 2.0x; two consecutive reporting periods of negative organic AM orders while miners maintain production; ROCE remaining below 15% after the acquisition integration period; Micromine ARR growth falling below 15%.

The current £27.24 quote is close to the lower end of my £29–£32 base fair-value range and comfortably above the £23–£25 conservative value. That makes it a reasonable price to continue owning a proven high-quality franchise, but not a price with a conservative margin of safety. The February £35-plus peak showed how quickly a high-quality industrial can become an expectations trade; the March correction removed the most obvious excess but did not turn the shares into a trough valuation.

My final judgment is Hold. The operating franchise deserves respect: four-fifths aftermarket revenue, strong Q2 orders and a credible path back above 20% margin. The price requires that path to work. I would upgrade the research judgment if deleveraging and ROCE recovery occur faster than modeled or if the shares enter the buy range without deterioration in organic AM demand. I would downgrade it if H2 reveals that the working-capital and production-transfer problems were structural rather than phasing.

【Ideal Buy Price】18.50–20.00 GBP

Basis: at least a 20% discount to the £23–£25 conservative scenario, while requiring the operating thesis to remain intact.

【Valuation Range】

• current: 27.24 GBP (close as of 2026-09-07)
• bear (conservative · ideal buy zone): [18.50, 20.00]
• base (fair · acceptable hold zone): [26.00, 34.00]
• bull (optimistic · above the clearly-overvalued line): [39.50, 43.00]

The bear band is set at least 20% beneath conservative fair value. The base holding band sits around the £29–£32 base valuation with allowance for normal forecast uncertainty. The clearly-overvalued threshold begins roughly 10% above the £36–£39 optimistic valuation range. Current £27.24 therefore lands inside the acceptable-hold band, consistent with the Hold rating.

Research uncertainties are concentrated in five areas. First, Weir does not disclose OE and AM profit separately; the 89–95% historical AM profit contribution is explicitly my reconstruction. Second, beyond Micromine's eight-month 2025 contribution, neither Micromine nor Fast2Mine has a continuing separately disclosed absolute ARR, revenue and profit series. Third, the company does not publish a consolidated installed-unit count or standardized lead-time KPI. Fourth, a fully consistent current ROCE and aftermarket-definition comparison across Metso, Sandvik and Epiroc is impossible because peer definitions differ. Fifth, the public-source pass did not provide the full current 2026 capex detail for every customer in the research scope; I have left that item unforced rather than fill the gap with estimates.

Principal sources used include Weir's 2026 H1 press release and presentation, which are the controlling sources for current financials and guidance. The May 2026 company-compiled analyst consensus is used only as an expectation reference, not management guidance. FY2025 and earlier annual disclosures provide the vertical financial series. Weir's business-model and historical materials underpin the installed-base and founding analysis. Acquisition accounting and ESEL contribution come from the H1 financial statements. Micromine's disclosed SaaS metrics come from Weir's Capital Markets materials. Peer operating evidence comes from Metso, Epiroc and Sandvik's own 2026 investor disclosures. Customer-cycle checks use primary Barrick, Zijin and Endeavour disclosures. The current price and market capitalisation are cross-checked against London-market data.

Other tickers mentioned

• METSO.HE: closest listed processing-equipment and mining-aftermarket comparison
• SAND.ST: mining equipment, rock processing and recurring-service peer
• EPIA.ST: underground equipment, tools, automation and aftermarket peer
• FLS.CO: increasingly relevant mining pure-play processing and service competitor
• CAT.US: broader heavy-machinery competitor and buyer of Weir's former Oil & Gas division
• B.US: Barrick used as a gold-and-copper customer-cycle indicator
• SCCO.US: Southern Copper identified as a major copper-capex reference in the research scope
• 601899.SHG: Zijin used to test copper-and-gold production activity against Weir order momentum
• AU.US: AngloGold Ashanti identified in the customer-side comparison set
• GFI.US: Gold Fields used as a gold-production and mine-activity reference
• KGC.US: Kinross identified in the customer-side mining-capex comparison set
• EDV.LSE: Endeavour Mining used as a current West African gold-production indicator

This report is based on public information and does not constitute investment advice. Markets carry risk; invest with caution.