Melrose Industries PLC (MLSPF) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Hello, everyone and welcome to Melrose Half Year Results for 2026. The last 6 months have been a busy and an important period for the group as we've continued to execute our growth strategy as a leading global aerospace technology business. We've maintained our positive momentum against the backdrop of strong civil and defense demand. Now before we get started, I'd like to welcome Ross McCluskey to his first set of results as Melrose's CFO. We're delighted to have Ross on board and leading strongly right from the start. We delivered a good first half performance with continued growth in revenue and profit. We also maintained our increasing cash trajectory with a strong year-on-year improvement in free cash flow. The markets we serve continue to evolve and the underlying demand story remains compelling. On the civil side, order backlogs are at record levels with production ramping up and the aftermarket continues to perform strongly. In defense, ongoing conflicts and geopolitical uncertainty is driving up spending commitments and stimulating the rapid development of emerging technologies. In May, we had an incident at our Garden Grove facility in California. This site is a global market leader in the production of