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William Lee: All right. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our interim results presentation. It's great to be back here in-person seeing you all. After -- I think, it's been informed -- quite a long gap. It's also very happy to be doing it on the back of a good set of H1 results, which always helps. So let's crack on and have a little look through these. In terms of structure -- actually, I'm going to go through in terms of some of the highlights. Marc is going to talk through the financials in more detail, and then I'm going to give some highlights before we do the Q&A on our progress against some of our strategic priorities. So first of all, positive news in terms of revenue with this real pickup that we saw in Q2. Still underlying quite mixed market conditions, two standby areas probably for us has been the demand from our customers who make the equipment, the semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and that's for our encoder product line and also significant interest from the defense industry, which is a more broader cross sector of products. Real significance, I think, for us, though, is not just the responding to the market conditions and the great job we do there, but it's actually on our emerging businesses and the progress that we are making. So these are the bets that we are placing, the investments that we're making for the future for the long term of Renishaw. And I'm going to go through with you later on some of the progress that we have made there. And thirdly, I just wanted to stress -- clearly, we are an organization. We pride ourselves in our investment in engineering, in R&D for our long-term growth. The output of that is what is key, and we have had some really significant new product launches recently, genuine excitement, particularly from our sales team on the opportunities that they now see for making the most of these. In terms of operating margin, improvements there despite currency headwinds, and we'll look through there. And actually, we're really looking forward to a strong revenue and profit growth for the year ahead, and we released our guidance for that. We have a little look through some of the key performance indicators and some of the themes coming through here. First of all, than the -- very much that strong growth coming through in Q2. As I said, some areas strong. Other areas such as our sales of machine tool sensors, CMM sensors, the machine tool builders, the CMM builders, they're still quite sluggish overall actually. But the -- the one we always talk about is the extreme is the German machine tool market, which is still quite challenging. In terms of operating margin and flow through on to the bottom line, then we have taken actions there to improve to support this. We had a GBP 20 million cost reduction exercise and also the closure of our drug delivery business, which has supported that margin development. Also as a business, we very much are focusing on cash and cash flow conversion of making sure we are making the most of the assets that we've invested in over the last few years. We have seen some pressure on that though. We have had the impact of restructuring costs on that number. And also, we are investing at the moment in working capital as we respond to the production demands of our customers. Okay, that's some of the highlights. I'm going to hand over to Marc now to go through the financial numbers.
Marc Saunders: Great. Thank you, Will. So I'm going to start by looking at some of the highlights from our income statement. As well as I said, we've had a record first half with reported revenue growth at 7.1%, rising to 11.5% at constant currency. We've seen growth in all 3 segments, and we've also seen an improving order book in all 3 segments and also all 3 regions. When we look at regional revenue performance, however, the picture is a bit more mixed. So if we look at the Americas first, really strong growth here, 15% at reported rates -- more than 15%, more than 20% at constant currency. And that was driven by strong demand coming through for high-value capital equipment, so things like our additive manufacturing machines or 5-axis co-ordinate measuring machines. So that's been a real success there. This region has also benefited from around GBP 5 million of higher pricing and surcharging to offset tariff duties that were introduced during 2025. When we look at APAC, also a really strong performance here. So growth of more than 10% at reported rates, more than 15% at constant currency. And here, the key positives were rising demand from the semiconductor and electronics manufacturing equipment sector for our position encoders and also really good growth, really good demand for our Equator flexible gauge from the consumer electronics subcontract manufacturers. So that's the story in APAC. EMEA was a bit of a different picture. Here, turnover down around 5% at both reported and constant currency basis. We've been reporting some subdued demand here in the EMEA region for a little while and that continued throughout the first part of the half, but we did see a pickup in demand later in the period, and we ended the period with the order book stronger. We also implemented a new sales ERP system in September in some territories, and that did have an impact during the half. But hopefully, you can see from the Q2 versus Q1 performance, we've seen a real step up here in the region, it's actually the biggest step up of all of our regions from Q1 to Q2. So we're moving in the right direction there. On an operating profit level, an increase of 11.4% to GBP 57.5 million and an improved operating margin by 0.6 percentage points. The moving parts there, as Will has touched on currency in one direction, organic margin improvement and another more of that in just a moment. But when we look at the income statement, perhaps the most notable thing you'll see is an 8.5% reduction in our gross engineering costs, which reflects some of the cost reduction actions that we've taken in the last 6 months. Operating -- sorry, profit before tax grew by a similar amount, 11.5% to GBP 64.1. Effective tax rate in the period was 21.1% at reported rates rising to 21.8% on an adjusted basis, and that's perhaps more representative of what we expect to see coming through in H2. And then finally, our dividend payment remains unchanged at 16.8p. Right, let's take a look at the operating margin evolution, and I'm comparing now the first half of the prior year with the first half of this year. So we're starting with 15.1% that we reported last year. And on the left-hand side of this bridge, you can see the external headwinds that we face largely from currency, but then being offset by the organic margin improvement we've generated through cost reduction and operating leverage. Starting with currency, that's been a headwind for us for some years now. We've seen progressive weakening of the U.S. dollar and the Japanese yen against sterling over several years. And we are exposed, of course, to this currency fluctuations because many of our costs are in sterling. Most of our revenues are in other currencies. And so we seek to manage that through the use of hedging contracts, forward currency contracts over 24 months. And over the last few years, our contracts have done a good job in helping to offset some of the movements we've seen on a year-to-year basis. And indeed, last year, when we looked at the prior year, we saw a particularly strong performance from our contracts and that was as a result of us taking them out at the time when sterling was much weaker than it is today. So they paid out handsomely last year. That has not been repeated to the same extent, but when we look at this year, our contracts have still done a good job, raising about GBP 5 million of revenue to offset roughly GBP 5.2 million of operating margin change as a result of moving exchange rates. But overall, when we wrap that up, we've got GBP 8 million less in currency income, in contract income, GBP 5.2 million of movement in currency, so GBP 13.2 million, 3.6 percentage points of margin. So a significant headwind. With tariffs, that's impacted our revenues by around 1.4%, but had no impact on operating profit, and as a result, has had a small degradating -- degrading effect on operating margin. Moving to the positive side of the equation. Cost reduction. Will mentioned, we ran two cost reduction programs over the last year, a company-wide operating cost reduction initiative aiming to remove GBP 20 million of cost from our run rate on an annualized basis. And we also closed down the loss-making drug delivery aspect of our neurological business, aiming to save around GBP 3 million on an annualized basis. Pleased to say those savings have started to come through. The combined impact of those programs has been roughly a 7% headcount reduction for us at a group level to just below 5,000 employees at the end of December. And we've seen GBP 9 million of savings coming through, so 2.4 percentage points in the first half, and we expect to achieve that GBP 23 million of annualized savings on an ongoing basis here forward. So that's coming through as planned. The other side of it has been operating leverage. So we've generated an 11.5% constant currency growth in the period. That has resulted, obviously, in more gross profit, which is more than offset inflationary pressures that we've seen in our cost base around things like pay benefits, health insurance. All right. So that's the margin story. I'm going to now just walk through each of the 3 segment performances for you, starting with Industrial Metrology, our biggest segment. So here, the story is solid revenue performance growth of 4.3%, rising to 8.8% on a constant currency basis. The growth drivers here were our emerging systems and software businesses. So these are our 5-axis co-ordinate measuring machines, our flexible gauges and metrology software that supports both of those products and helped use us to make the most of them. It's really pleasing to see growth in this area. These are emerging businesses, and we're really targeting top line growth. And here is a key part of our growth strategy. So it's really pleasing to see that coming through. Another success story here is our calibration products. This is an established product line, and we've seen growing demand here, particularly coming from the semiconductor and electronics manufacturing sector. So those machine builders actually use our calibration products in their factories to help them to make and pass off their machines. So we've seen rising demand coming from there as activity levels have risen. By contrast, we've seen flat sales for the sensor part of this segment. So that's our co-ordinate measuring machines, machine tool probes and also the styli and accessories that go with them. So that's been flat overall, some high points in Asia, in consumer electronics, but weaker general demand in -- particularly in Europe and particularly in the automotive sector. So when we look at the operating performance of this business, it's roughly flat in margin terms. We saw essentially currency headwinds being pretty much offset by the combination of cost saving and operating leverage, but we ended up at pretty much the same operating margin. Let's move on to Position Measurements or our other large segment. This did strong growth in the period. So we saw 7.4% rising to more than -- yes nearly 12% sorry, at a constant currency basis. And this was something of a game of two halves. We definitely saw a really notable pickup in this business in the second quarter. And we've got great momentum going into second half. The drivers of growth here were strong performances from our established open optical and magnetic encoder businesses. We've mentioned semiconductor and electronics manufacturing equipment. That's been a key driver. But actually, we've also seen strong demand from general factory automation and robotics, particularly for the magnetic encoded line. By contrast laser encoders have seen a reduction compared to a really abnormally strong period in the prior year. These are used in front-end semi and wafer inspection. And yes, we had an abnormally strong comparator to go against. But we're actually really confident in the long-term future of this business. We think this is volatility rather than a trend. We've seen rising order book, and we've launched new products in this area. So we're really confident about the long-term prospects. When we look at operating performance, we've seen similar effects that we saw in the Metrology business. So currency headwinds offset by cost savings to an extent, but here, the product mix change has been quite significant in this period comparator. So we've reduced by about 4 percentage points up to 23.4%. So still a strong for operating performance here. And I think the more meaningful comparison to take is if you look at the comparison against the whole of last year, which was 22.5%. So the first half really was a bit of an abnormal period. So we've got good momentum here, good top line growth and improving underlying margins. Finally, Specialized Tech. So the smaller segment, but the one that's grown the fastest in this period. So growth of more than 25% at a constant currency basis. So really strong growth. And that has been almost largely coming from our Additive Manufacturing business within here. So we have a strategy here of selling to key accounts, and we've seen many of those adding to their fleet of machines as they ramp up production. But we're also targeting new customers, and we've seen quite a lot of those coming in, in this period, and we've seen particularly strong demand from both new and existing customers in the aerospace and defense sector. That's been the notable change in demand in the period. Spectroscopy down slightly, slightly stronger in America, slightly weaker elsewhere, but we've seen good order momentum on that recently, normally has a stronger H2. So looking forward to that this year. And in neurological, that's the smallest part of this product group, and the key sort of thing here is that we completed the closure of the loss-making drug delivery aspect in the period. So when we wrap all of that up and look at the moving parts on margin, we can see a real step change in performance here, 22 percentage points of margin improvement. We're now just short of breakeven on this segment. The moving parts there, yes, currency, again, slightly less proportionately than the others because of slightly different regional sales patterns. We've seen cost reduction, obviously, coming through with both the company-wide program and the focused drug delivery activity. But the large majority of the margin improvement coming through here is from operating leverage with the growing AM business. So that's been the key driver of margin improvement. Right, lastly from me, just a quick look at return on capital and cash generation. So we focus on return on invested capital to make sure that we're allocating resources to profitable investments. We saw an improvement here to 13.2%, so 0.6 percentage points. We have a target of 15%. So clearly, we have some way to go. And the way we're going to get there is by driving our operating margins, but up to our target range and also keeping a lid on investment in capital. We have had a period of higher investment in recent years in property. That's now behind us, and we're operating at a lower level of CapEx. So in the first half, CapEx was GBP 17 million, and we're expecting to run at a rate of about GBP 40 million for the year as a whole, and that's focused mainly on plant and equipment to support capacity and productivity growth. And that's part of the cash generation story. The other side is working capital. We have ramped up working capital in the period. Obviously, we've seen a bit of an inflection in demand in Q2 and that's triggered us, obviously, to increase our production rate, drawing in more piece balls, more work in progress, et cetera. So that has -- we've seen that during the period. So our cash conversion overall is just below our target at 68%, but we think we're doing all the right things here in terms of keeping a lid on CapEx and making sure we're supporting growth with our balance sheet. Finally, our cash balances, currently just over GBP 240 million at the end of the period, so down compared to the summer, and this reflects the outflows that we've seen on the cost reduction activities, on working capital and on the dividend payment in respect of H2 last year. All right. I think that's enough for me. I'll hand back to Will.
William Lee: Lovely. Thank you very much, Marc. So, as I said, I'd like to now talk through some of our strategic priorities and a little bit of a look more into the future. And I'm going to focus on the first 3 of these because I think the cash generation and ROIC, we have already touched on. So the first area here is the key strategy for us, which we've always talked about of long-term growth through product innovation. It's our key overriding strategy. To set the scene for this. I just want to reflect back firstly, on our long-term value creation model, something we've shared and many of you will be familiar with. Just to go through, if we look on the left here, then we can see that the markets that we operate in, that GBP 6 billion addressable market, and really most importantly, the fact that they are favorable markets that we think on average, are growing by more than 5% a year. You can see the drivers in the 4 boxes around the addressable market. What we've seen recently probably is acceleration here, all the news on AI and the data centers there really feels like it's accelerating the growth from the electrification area there. We are certainly seeing, I think, continued acceleration of our customers also looking at the adoption of the automation and so had to automate processes right across from machining to metrology, but for a range of things there. And we're also seeing probably a broader one, which maybe cuts across slightly differently with all these of the expenditure on defense. And it's really how do we help customers there with manufacturing agility, ramp-ups, new technologies to go in there. So positives, some changes going on there from our market. The key bit for us then is how do we outperform. And on the top right, you can see those 3 key themes. So the first is growing in existing markets. This is how do we sell more sensor technology normally to the machine tool -- the machine builders around the world, whether that is semiconductor or machine tool. And we'll also talk -- we'll often talk about this in terms of the number of dollars we get per machine tool spend or sold for the machine tool industry, for example. Next, increasing technology value is about us selling the increasingly complicated systems. So capital goods together with the software to enable them. And then thirdly is looking in terms of moving into new markets. And to be clear, this is very close adjacent to new markets to where we are already operating. With all of these, the innovation side being disruptive, having the USPs is absolutely key for us to succeed and give our sales teams around the world, the strongest advantage that we can. I'm really pleased that actually, despite reducing engineering expenditure, what we are seeing is a really strong pipeline of products that we have recently launched. And also, we've got a really healthy pipeline of products to come through for the future. I just want to highlight a few that are kind of really key for our strategy and for our success. So if we first will look at Industrial Metrology, we've had a really strong reception for the Equator-X and MODUS IM Equator software that goes with it. Equator-X brings very high-speed measurement to the shop floor, and it does it without the need for a master part to compare with. So our customers immediately get the benefit that it brings. The real enabler with it is the software, which dramatically deskills the level of knowledge needed to be able to program the device. So what we have with the combination of these two is, amazing performance on the shop floor, Metrology where you need it at the point of manufacture and also far simpler for our customers to deploy and far more flexible in terms of the range of different parts that they can measure. This is really key for us. You can see there's excitement from our existing sales team all around the world and what they can do with the customers that liked our existing products but need this. But there's also excitement in terms of the new routes to market that we can open up. So people who are selling already a machining and manufacturing solution where this can be a part of it, they can own it and they can sell it. So a lot going on there and a lot to do. From position measurement, Marc talked earlier about -- with our laser encoder product line being sold into the wafer inspection, the great thing here is this is always a market where the challenges of the next generation of wafer technology is getting smaller, these customers always have really tough metrology challenges. And we've really stepped forward with our next generation of laser encoder in terms of the performance that we are now giving to those customers. Again, had a chance to meet some of them recently, really positive on the relationship that we have with them. ASTRiA, we have talked about. So this is actually a new area for us using inductive. Again, it's been really well received by the market in terms of the metrology performance that it delivers. And then finally, from a specialized technology point of view, Strada is our new Raman instrument. And Raman traditionally is an instrument used for the Raman expert in the Raman map who will do things. Strada is designed to simplify. It automates the Raman process from a hardware, dramatically simplifies the software. So it's Raman for the non-Raman person. So if you want to solve a problem, you can do it with this, you don't need to know anything about the technology that is inside. So this has opened up different opportunities, different markets for us with Raman. And finally, LIBERTAS is new software that we have launched to go with our Additive Manufacturing business. So what this does is, when you are making a part additively, you have to put in supports to hold it in place? And what LIBERTAS does is by doing very clever novel scanning strategies dramatically reduces the number of supports that you need. So what this does is it speeds up the cycle time. You don't have to build these supports, you save time. You save waste because you're not processing the material. And you also save post processing time because there's a lot less than the support material to remove after the build. So it's pushing forward the productivity of our machine for our customers. What it also does actually is really improve. The tricky service on additive part is the bottom and the surface finish of that with our new software is really noticeably moved and a step change in performance there. This was really well received by a number of our customers. So a strong healthy product launches there, much more to come in the future. So while we absolutely see that our future is the growth, what we've been clear on and talked to you about is making sure that the business is as focused and as lean as it can be to support that growth. If we look at the initiatives that we have going forward, then in terms of this graph, you can see that, I guess, Marc earlier brought this up in terms of the 15.7% that we ended up with this half year now that we've just announced them. For the rest of this year, we still see continuing to have some currency headwinds, some benefit from the cost reduction program and then actually the flow-through of the margin from the revenue development taking us up to our end of year results. The interesting bit really is going forward, we set ourselves targets on this. Some of that will be achieved by the revenue flow in the future of looking at the growth strategy -- that innovation that growth strategy, but the other bit is on the development on productivity across the group. We're in early stages on this. I guess we've already done some activities, which we talked about, we are very much now in the planning stage of what are the best opportunities that we have as a business going through that and then working on the program to deploy that. So when we're back up here for Capital Markets Day in June, it's going to be a great chance to update you in more detail on those plans and what we intend to do. And thirdly, I want to spend a little bit of time on the emerging businesses. As I highlighted at the start, I think, overall, this is the bit that is the most encouraging for me with the developments that we have seen here. So right across the board on our different reporting segments, we have emerging businesses. What we have looked at here over the last several years, there's quite a bit of work and focus on these areas. And you all have seen, if you've been monitoring for a while that some of these businesses are ones that we have divested or closed. Some of them are ones that we've had for a while, but we've made quite significant strategic changes on them. And those ones, I would classify as the Metrology, CMM and gauging systems and Additive Manufacturing that both had and in some respects, quite a similar of really focusing down, understanding what our differentiators are targeting key customers and making sure we are very clear what we are about. And it's been great to see both of them really starting to do well. Additive, in particular, this time that strategy of focusing on customers with volume opportunity focusing on a highly productive single-sized machine is really starting to pay dividends. And what we're now seeing is a repeat orders coming through, both from actually the customers that we talked about in the past, whether that's of the medical that we talk about, but it's really also being accelerated now with interest and customers in defense, understanding the opportunities that Additive gives for them. Now what we also did when we exited from some of the businesses that we didn't feel were going to meet the criteria for what we wanted for the long term of the business was we did pick out some of the best areas of innovation that we felt we had across the group and tried to accelerate those. And as Marc talked about when he was talking about the position measurement both in closed optical encoders, really starting to go well. But I think that for me, the star here is definitely on the inductive encoders, FORTiS, I talked about it in the innovation. We went -- we've launched this as our MVP of saying we're just going to do one size. We're going to get it out. We're going to really hit the deadlines. The team did a fantastic job of doing it. The feedback from customers, the metrology is superb, the ease of use is superb. And now we have customers saying that they really want to switch over to our technology, design us on the existing platforms and designs us on new platforms. Now this is designed for a broad range of industries. The one at the moment where it feels like it's hitting the sweet spot is on the defense industry. We have actually recently decision that we need to invest more from an engineering and a manufacturing point of view to make the most of the immediate opportunities that we have here. These businesses all take time to come through, but this is one that feels like it is working at a different pace to what we are used to. Really important for us. I mean we're talking through with the team internally, moving these emerging businesses through into established is key. We have a lot of exciting R&D going on for the future, some of which is going to power existing businesses, but some of it is the new emerging businesses of the future. So we need to make space for it to come through so we can invest in it by migrating some at the moment. So lots of positivity going forward. But with us, there's always the uncertainty in the markets that we operate in, but we certainly feel like we have momentum going into H2. And I'm really pleased to give a positive revenue and profit trading guidance for the year ahead. Thank you very much. We now have time for Q&A, which is great to be doing in person.
Lacie Midgley: Will and Marc, it's Lacie Midgley here from Bloomberg Intelligence. Just a couple for me. First, I guess, on the China strategy. At the full year, we talked a little bit about the entry-level market there, perhaps kind of looking at lower-priced alternatives to some of your core products. I know we're not quite -- we're not far on from the full year in that description, but is there any update on the strategy there and how that's evolved and any progress you can update us on?
William Lee: Yes, certainly. So I think -- I'm just trying to think back to exactly what we said at full year, but certainly, what we are looking at now is, we have certain products which are established, but we can tweak and adjust so that they are limited in performance for an entry-level China market, so where we can target and go after business at a lower price to the customer. We're doing that in a quite a limited way in testing things out. So that's very specific. We're also getting the innovation engine and it's interesting here, particularly probably on some of the more sensor technology side of the business. The innovation engine has come up with some really good ideas on stripping manufacturing costs and simple designs, particularly encoders there is some really quite exciting stuff for the future coming through that allows us to target the entry-level market at a different price point. Now people always worry about this in terms of what does that mean in terms of threat of the different areas. But actually, this is stuff which is designed such that it's only suitable for entry level. What we always see in things like the encoder market is things gradually moving on. So some areas will become more commoditized and as that happens, we'll have new opportunities elsewhere, so...
Lacie Midgley: That's really helpful. And on Additive Manufacturing, I mean it's clearly moving in the right direction, which is great to see. I think these are obviously much bigger ticket items for you. So not many are going to be needed to kind of move that specialized technologies aisle. I mean you talked to the defense customers. But in terms of size, are these smaller end users? I'm just trying to think about how significant the move is there? How quickly we get to that becoming an established business? And Is this about kind of expanding AM usage and really embedding the technology with your existing customers? Or is it growing the base and new customers, I think you've talked to both of those, but a bit of extra color on that would be helpful.
William Lee: Yes, I think both of those are key. And often, we'll try and say, look, we're focusing on existing customers and repeat business and not doing too much and then new customers will come along. So absolutely, we're targeting existing and new. Size of the customers can range from really large to far more dedicated specialists supplying into industries. I think the most important bit across the board on this is people embracing and understanding the benefits designing for AM and showing them to their customers that this is the advantage you can get and what we can do for you now with this. So it feels like for a long time, and we've had this on machine tool pros, we had it on Equators, we had it on the ballbar product in calibration of us doing the marketing. Once the customer starts saying, this is what it can do, things start to really accelerate. There will, for sure, be ups and downs on that journey. As you say, with big ticket items, it doesn't take that much to change. It's also different for us from a manufacturing point of view, ramping up with encoders is somewhat different to ramping up with the scale and complexity of an AM machine.
Mark Jones: Mark Davies Jones at Stifel. A couple of things, please. Firstly, slightly longer-term question, but obviously, it's frustrating in some ways to see all the good organic progress and profitability eaten up by FX and I'm not going to ask you about hedging strategy, but more about the cost space. I mean you are unusual in having so much of your R&D and manufacturing located in the home market rather than pushing that out into the regions. Is there any change in the thinking about that? Or do you think that's caught your ability to sort of control the technology go-to-market?
William Lee: Yes. That's a very good question and one that we are considering at the moment. My honest though, is probably the reason that we would be moving any manufacturing would be for geopolitical access reasons. Because honestly, as we have things in terms of single point of manufacture, areas, we feel is extremely efficient. So we are -- this is one of our strategy decision topics of what we should be doing and are there certain products? It could be some of the stuff that was tied in with the question on low cost, which are ones that we decide we make further afield. I don't think we'd be doing this to try and -- the primary reason for doing this would not be to give ourselves more stability from a currency point of view. It would be a nice benefit from it.
Mark Jones: Okay. And just a little one. I won't ask you about share buybacks because you can't say anything. And given the strength of the numbers and the strength of the balance sheet, is a flat dividend a bit mean? Is there some sort of reweighting to your thinking around that?
William Lee: So we target a dividend cover of 2. And if you look at the midpoint on the profit for the end of the year, then this would give us that with a flat divi. Clearly, I guess we have an optimism around the business, but it is 1 quarter that things have happened, we don't want everyone to get carried away. So just, I guess, that the -- probably the fuller answer to that is on a capital allocation point of view, this is more of a strategic question for us to go through as a Board of thinking of how we want to run the business and use that cash or return that cash. So that's the bigger question for the future, not addressed by a divi really.
Richard Paige: It's Richard Paige from Deutsche Numis. Two from me as well, please. On the defense, it sounds as though -- I may have been getting this wrong, but your growth is going to be ahead of the market. There's new applications that -- or new customers you're winning within that. Can you just elaborate on sort of end use within the defense market?
William Lee: Yes, really broad. So we will have -- so ASTRiA, we talked about, which will be something that defense customers could integrate. Additive Manufacturing can be something that parts can be made with versus a lot of indirect stuff probably through machine tool, CMM builders and et cetera, which will allow the metrology and the precision of both machine parts needed for going into defense. So direct and indirect, a real mixture there. In terms of where we are on investment curves, I'm not sure that we really know, to be honest.
Richard Paige: And the other word that normally goes with defense, aerospace, we haven't spoken about it much here, but obviously, with the industry ramp and so forth, expect that to be a reasonably strong area of demand for you as well?
William Lee: Yes, I'm not sure exactly what our aerospace numbers are at the moment, but it's not...
Marc Saunders: I would say that's probably we're seeing that coming through with our AGILITY sales, particularly in the Americas. That's -- we've got a lot of key customers that are in the aero engine sector in particular, but also airframe to a lesser extent. So that's been a driver of performance more recently in the nondefense element of A&D, although obviously, there's some overlap there in the engine business, they tend to serve both sectors.
William Lee: I think one key when you're thinking about Additive Manufacturing, and I think this is a good thing for all of us. But if you're working with an aerospace, there is an awful lot of checking balances, review. So it's a very long development time that you're working with a customer before you get sales. Defense is far quicker on things that maybe don't have as long a lifetime.
Marc Saunders: And perhaps if I could just add as well, I think there's quite a lot of new business formation going on at the moment in some of the later -- the more recent platforms that are being developed for modern warfare. There's new players entering the business, and we're seeing some of that within our customer base as well as repeat business coming from established customers.
Bruno Gjani: It's Bruno Gjani from UBS. Just because we were on that defense topic, I just have a small follow-up. When you mentioned on the inductive encoder side that you were winning some customers and you were now being spec-ed in on some new accounts, does that specifically relate to defense? Because if that's the case, I was wondering whether if now you're being spec-ed in, you could actually see a material rise within that product line? Or how are you sort of thinking about that component?
William Lee: Yes, this is still small. We have one size of ASTRiA at the moment. And it's great with the customers. They love it. But suddenly, it's okay, I need this size and I need this size and I need this size, which does create some engineering and manufacturing work. So, yes, that's going to be a positive. It's quick in our terms that we think for encoder business development, but it's still not going to have a material impact in the next year or so.
Bruno Gjani: Understood. And it reads as if the emerging product line businesses were really strong within the half and the quarter. I was just wondering if there was any way you could maybe roughly quantify the contribution to growth from those emerging products or might not be?
William Lee: I think probably at the moment, I think, take the positivity, but probably we're better off keeping it just the reporting segments that we have.
Bruno Gjani: Understood. Were there any subtle differences in terms -- the order trends that were really encouraging or sort of read to be really encouraging ahead of revenue growing really well, the order book was growing. Were there any subtle differences within what you observed in order intake, particularly as it relates maybe to Q2? So for example, I'm thinking of you called out machine sensor as being actually quite flat in the half. Did you see any sort of pickup on the order intake side there that's worthy of calling out or not really? It's sort of similar drivers to revenue?
Marc Saunders: Not worth calling out, I would say, on the machine tool sensors. Yes, the places that we saw the stronger growth were also the places that the revenue picked up. There's a strong correlation there. So additive and position measurement into semi, those were probably the highlights. But generally, automation demand for the wider position encoder business as well.
Bruno Gjani: And just a final one that I was sort of wondering on is on laser encoders in terms of the mix headwind in the first half, what I wanted to get a sense of is whether the mix in the first half is abnormally low within laser encoders and therefore, there's a potential for that to grow in the coming, say, 12 to 24 months? Or was it that the mix in the first half of last year was abnormally high and actually we're at a normal level today?
Marc Saunders: No, the latter is more the case. So it was an exceptional period in the prior year. I'd say the laser encoder product line has been a real success story for us over the last sort of 10 years or so. And we have a strong niche position in wafer inspection. And that is obviously tied to front-end semi and the trends in that market look decent at the moment. So -- and we've seen rising order book. So we're optimistic that if you look through the perturbation of the prior year, there's a nice growth story here.
Mark Jones: Sorry, can I do a couple more? Defense, I don't remember being in your sort of breakdown of end markets being a big chunk in prior years. So could you give some sort of sense of the scale of that for you? I know it's tricky with your routes to market.
William Lee: Yes. I think we normally talk about 5%. It feels like that's creeping up at the moment. And it's probably being quite impactful in certain areas that we've talked about.
Marc Saunders: So it normally sits within what we call -- I mean, aerospace normally is where defense sits. We just -- we haven't called it A&D and perhaps we should. But the bulk of that historically has been civil. But yes, the defense proportion of that is rising. And as a share of the total, it feels like it's increasing overall as well as other segments so, yes less buoyant.
Mark Jones: Okay. And the other one is you talked about geopolitical considerations in where you put your manufacturing. How about where your customers do? There's been all this talk about kind of reshoring and much less evidence of it actually driving investment. Are you seeing any of that coming through?
William Lee: I think it's really hard to say. What we are certainly seeing is some of our customers where we would have shipped product to a certain country now saying, okay, actually, over the next 6 months, we are migrating manufacturing to a different area. Some of that's going the other way. So that's countries moving out actually. So -- and then there's a broadening in other areas. So it's actually quite complicated. We met with some of the electronics equipment manufacturers recently. And I think we probably need to understand a little bit more about why they are going to certain areas and what those trends are going to be. And for us, that doesn't matter much because we'll do the work with the design teams and then it tends to be just where we deliver the products to.
Mark Jones: No, I guess I was also looking at the strength in the U.S. And is that -- do you think more product specific than market?
William Lee: I think that is -- there's a good capital investment going on there at the moment. Again, probably some of the underlying manufacturing with the component side of it is maybe less. And we see some things going in, some things going out. So clearly, if you're a manufacturer that's going to be exporting, making stuff in the U.S., you may decide you're better off not making it there, which we have seen. Much of the complaints of our U.S. team. They're doing all the work and then moving the business to a...
Harry Philips: It's Harry Philips from Peel Hunt. Just one question, please, on the order book. You talk a lot about the order book in the statement, but obviously didn't give us a number. So I'm assuming it's reasonably short cycle. I mean, in terms of the book-to-bill, given the revenue growth you've had in the period, can you at least give us an idea of where the book-to-bill might be against that? And then is it -- would it be right to assume that the order book is reasonably short cycle, maybe Additive Manufacturing apart or is that not?
William Lee: It's not and it is. I think the one thing we would always put in as a caveat. So you're right with the Additive. On encoder, what we will see is when our customers start to get more stressed because they really think they've got orders coming through and they often don't find out until the last minute, they will start to put on call off orders and they'll give us a 12-month, 18-month order with predicted volumes, which will go on to our order book. Then they will cancel that extremely quickly if they change their mind, but they will also show it when they want to double that. So it's -- we look at the order book and it gives us a feeling, but you can't rely on it either.
Marc Saunders: We know that some of it will be -- will melt away.
Harry Philips: I mean just precisely on that point, I suppose twofold is does that heat, if you like, give you a window around pricing? I mean, if you get extreme demands in terms of potential demand -- I suspect you don't want to sort of mess up online, but -- and then the second is how you plan your manufacturing around that? Because clearly, if you sort of responded directly to those order flows, you could load your cost base. And then as you say, if you then get a cancellation, you're left with sort of stranded cost type stuff. So how do you sort of -- what's the very sure way of interpreting that sort of front end into manufacturing curve?
William Lee: You say smooth as though it's anything but -- and normally when these things happen. So clearly, we're trying to work on very uncertain data, and we talk about many things, even if there's investment going in, the end customer may not decide on which supplier they want to use. Those suppliers may all be using our encoders somewhere, but they may be using different encoders from us. So you can't even say, okay, we know it's going to come. Let's make this because then this customer gets it and they want something different. With us, it is just trying to make sure as much as possible long-term strategy is migrate customers to our latest technology. That's far more designed for automated assembly, so we can ramp up and then it's supply chain holding up for us to be able to respond. Safety stocks and when we look at it in terms of our invested capital, we are high there because we know this happens in the markets that we operate in, we have to deal with that. So -- and then there's just a lot of panic that goes on to try and make everything happen as quickly as it can. It is on the more commoditized stuff and quite complicated of understanding because often we'll be -- we may even be dual sourced. So it's us and a competitor are both designed into a product and then it may be then who can supply better, quicker and whatever else.
Marc Saunders: I'll just add, we are also increasing our use of temporary labor in some parts of the supply chain for things like cables for encoders, which are -- there's a lot of them to be made, and we use more temporary labor in our plants in India.
William Lee: Do you want to go first and then you've got...
Unknown Analyst: Just have a quick follow-up -- not a follow-up, but a question on ERP. Could you perhaps provide an update in regards to how that's planning out in terms of phasing, strategy, sort of key milestones to come?
William Lee: Yes, we can. So it's certainly been a challenge. We have -- having done a small -- our Canadian office, which went relatively smoothly. We've now done our most complicated U.K. center. We experienced an awful lot of challenges. I think it's fair to say we are through the worst of that now, but we still have a number of challenges that we want to make sure it are resolved and working smoothly before we roll this out further with Germany being our next company that will transfer over to D365. So yes, it has not been a pleasant experience and a lot of lessons have been learned.
Unknown Analyst: On the tool builder market. It sounds as if Europe has been soft for a while. I was just wondering whether you're seeing any signs of green shoots as it relates to German stimulus spending in '26 and beyond? Or are those not apparent yet?
William Lee: The last conversation I had was back at the end of last year with the head of a German machine tool company, and they were talking about this being a 5-year recession like they saw back in the '90s of a really tough time. I didn't think it was going to get any worse. it's really tough over there, domestic market, export market. It's -- and I think as we talked about, we've seen some of them being taken over. So yes, it's tough.
Unknown Analyst: Lastly, could we touch maybe upon humanoids? There are some companies in the market, sort of traditional industrial companies with, let's say, less expertise in automation and robotics that have been talking about this quite a lot, and the financial market has rewarded them for it. Do you have a suitable product today that could serve that market? Do you have any existing relationships with humanoid OEMs? And do you view it as a potential opportunity, say, over the next 5 to 10 years?
William Lee: Okay. So I thought the first thing is are we going to do a humanoid robot, which would be easy? No, no. We are definitely not going to do that. So the bit we are talking with some people around here is on the encoder, the retro encoder technology. In our view, probably this is going to end up being a quite commoditized low-end market and the price point they'll be looking at is not going to be attractive, and we've got better opportunities to go after. So it's something we look at, we'll monitor, but I don't see it being significant for us.
Unknown Analyst: Rich Hill from Jefferies. I just a couple of questions just looking at margins. Looking at Position Measurement, obviously, you had one of the largest margin movements kind of out in the division. Just wanted to ask, you kind of talked about FX and the mix. Just whether there's anything else in there, perhaps more costs falling in there comparatively. And I guess to Bruno's question earlier with it perhaps normalizing, just how you kind of see that in the second half, whether kind of that bit of growth in the order book for the laser encoders will kind of offset it a little bit for the second half?
Marc Saunders: I'll take that. Yes. So I mean, I don't think we see anything sort of particularly different in terms of sort of cost base escalation going on in there. We did reduce costs slightly less in the position measurement sort of side of the organization and some of the other areas in the cost reduction process, but that was because we had some areas that we were really seeking to invest in and some of the emerging elements of the product line that we felt we wanted to allocate resource to. So it had a slightly lower proportionate, but we're talking 1% or so. It's not a huge factor in this. So no, the primary driver in the short term was mix, but we're seeing it's well into the 20s in operating margin and I think long term going in the right direction.
Unknown Analyst: Okay. And then if I may, just chance to question looking at your kind of emerging products, and we've heard the kind of importance to your strategy going forward. Just in terms of margins, and I appreciate not specifics, but the assumption being that they're lower kind of margin to as they come in, as you gain that market share. But just looking at that kind of profile as they become more developed, I guess, what kind of time frame or any other details you could give us there would be great.
William Lee: So do you mean in terms of gross margin, sorry, or bottom line?
Unknown Analyst: Bottom line.
William Lee: Okay. Yes. So if they're emerging, they are definitely ones that are not hitting our profitability targets. So at the moment, they're at different stages. So we have targets on when different ones should be getting into better stages of profitability. And ones like CMM engaging are far more established than some of the ones that we have just launched.
Marc Saunders: Chris, have we got anything online?
Chris Pockett: Nothing yet.
Marc Saunders: Okay. All right, then closing remarks.
William Lee: Yes. So if there are no more questions, I guess in terms of overall, great to be back here in person. As I said at the start, it feels like a really good H1 set of results, still lots of uncertainty as there always is with us going forward in the short term. For me, I think the leading message would be on the medium to long term. If you look at the opportunities we have from the innovation engine and also the progress we're making on those emerging businesses and the focus areas that we have there, that's the excitement that is within the business and the excitement that should be around Renishaw. So thank you all very much.