Weir Group’s share price is back at levels not seen for more than a decade and while uncertainty is a hallmark of its major market, CEO Jon Stanton says Weir is in a “such a sweet spot” he’s not shy about making further acquisitions or investments to broaden the company’s exposure to miners with big capital loads in front of them.
London-listed Weir, which has a current market value around US$9 billion, has spent more than $2.4 billion adding capital equipment and attachments, and sensing and software businesses to its legacy mineral processing equipment and parts lines, creating what Stanton sees as a more resilient platform mix that can generate 20%-plus operating, or EBIT, margins consistently from next year.
On the revenue side those margins are expected to be sustained by continuing strong brownfield expenditure by mining companies and contractors, and growth in Weir’s aftermarket business. Stanton also sees technology as an increasingly important part of the mix, while a significant uptick in greenfield spending by miners is the proverbial ace in the hole.
Stanton repeated the words of some of his peers when he said geopolitics was finally putting some downward pressure on ridiculously long project permitting times in countries such as the US and Chile, which miners were responding to.
“If projects come through more quickly, and we can see them in the pipeline – we’ve got a record pipeline today in terms of those projects – we hopefully get into a scenario where we’ve got both [strong greenfield and brownfield mine investment], which will be fantastic,” he said this week when Weir announced its 2025 second-quarter and half-year financial results.
“But in the meantime we’re continuing to win really strongly on the brownfield momentum piece where customers are seeking to bridge to future expansion supply through driving harder and harder to increase production and productivity from existing mine sites.”
Weir reported 1% lower 2025 H1 revenues of £1207 million, versus last year, and 10% higher underlying EBIT of £237 million, equating to 19.8% EBIT margins compared with 17.8% a year earlier.
Weir bumped up orders to £1304 million in the first half of this year, versus £1208 million in the same period last year.
Stanton expects more of the same in the second half.
“Generally speaking commodity prices have been strong,” he said.
“Gold is in a tremendous place. Gold mining customers are pushing really hard on production.
“Copper is not far off its all-time high as well. Iron ore has been a little bit more mixed but for us iron ore is all about the high-grade mines and production there is frankly fine as far as we’re concerned. And the newer high-grade mines in iron ore that we’re exposed to continue to ramp up, supporting growth for us.
“The battery metals and diamonds and phosphate and everything else … Clearly there are some puts and takes but overall the environment is quite positive I would say. If I take nickel as an example, clearly what happened to the nickel price last year has significantly impacted nickel production and therefore our aftermarket in Australia. But the beauty of our global, resilient business model, the diversification, means we’re picking up orders in Indonesia from the nickel mines and refining plants that are being built there which offset the negatives that we’ve seen in Australia.
“So net-net there aren’t many negatives around the patch and most of the exposures we have are in a pretty positive place and you can literally see that coming through in the aftermarket as customers seek to drive production growth, drive efficiencies and drive sustainability benefits.”
Shifting supply landscape
Weir is a standout in a global mining supply landscape that is seeing consolidation-spurred growth being achieved by leading players despite little or no exposure to mining in Russia and China, no material contribution yet from sleeping giant India and with US president Trump firing off tariff broadsides that are giving them logistics headaches.
Under-investment in mining capital equipment – fixed and mobile – has boosted OEM parts and service revenues but has left a lot of aged stock needing replacement. Deeper, generally lower grade ores mean miners are moving and grinding more material even as they try to improve energy and water efficiency and cut excessive (and expensive) waste generation overall.
They need to “scale up and clean up”, Stanton likes to say.
“All the signs we look for are getting more positive in terms of miners’ plans to try and increase capex from here,” he said.
The signs include stronger political will to move forward long-delayed projects in North and South America as governments, particularly copper and battery metals, take more seriously their longer-term electrification needs and the raw material demands of domestic industrial complexes.
“The US government’s Fast41 project list includes several sites under accelerated project schedules, including the long-delayed Resolution copper project, which is forecast to produce 25% of the US domestic copper demand if constructed,” Stanton said.
“The Chilean government has likewise announced accelerated permitting reviews for a list of projects totalling £45 billion, required to maintain the country’s position as the world’s largest copper producer.
“It’s still going to take time but I think there are really positive signals in terms of that OE environment opening up and potentially accelerating from here.”
A closer and more productive marriage of equipment and technology is another trend that is building and favouring Weir.
The company is keen to highlight case studies such as the £40 million Codelco Talabre tailings project, involving a large order of its Geho high-capacity pumps for thickened tailings transport but also its NEXT AI-enabled asset monitoring technology, and a big order from the Barrick Mining Corp-owned Lumwana copper mine in Zimbabwe for Esco iron plus Weir’s Motion Metrics sensing tech. It has also entered the growing Saudi Arabia market with NEXT.
“Success with NEXT was due to our unique combination of AI-powered digital technologies and deep product domain expertise, a model we will accelerate with Micromine, and reinforces our position as a trusted partner in digital transformation for the mining industry,” Stanton said.
Weir paid a whopping £657 million for Australian-based Micromine, said to have grown annual revenues (circa-90% software-as-a-service subscription) at 25% CAGR in the past four years to about £43 million in 2025. The buyer sees significant upside for Micromine in the Americas – “the key growth markets we see from here”, according to Stanton – where Weir Esco is strongly embedded.
Stanton says three months of integration had gone well and the company was recruiting to build Micromine’s Americas sales team. “We’ve got a warm pipeline of leads which the Micromine salespeople are able to pick up and convert to revenue,” he said.
The acquisition of Micromine and Florida-based casting firm Townley Engineering & Manufacturing for £111 million will take Weir to the edge of its 2.0x net-debt-to-EBITDA range by the end of this year. However, its net cash generation and overall funding capacity is expected to give Weir “ample headroom to carry out additional acquisitions over the next 18 months, if the right opportunity exists”, according to UK investment bank, Panmure Liberum.
“This is in contrast with the market narrative that it will lack the ability to supplement organic growth with further inorganic growth after the significant Micromine acquisition,” the bank said.
Stanton said: “The business is now in this cycle of continuing to throw off cash and the company is in such a sweet spot, in terms of the markets that we’re in [and] the organic growth opportunities that we’re driving through the broadening out of the solutions that we have for our customers and the new technologies that we’re bringing to market, so if we can find acquisition opportunities that accelerate that strategy than that’s what we’re going to do because I think it can add to the organic growth that we’re going to deliver over the next several years.
“The pipeline, our playbook, remains really strong.
“So we’re going to continue to activate and push forward the opportunities we have got in the playbook and, again, a willing buyer, willing seller is required, but our intent is that we will continue with the bolt-on acquisition strategy that we have activated very successfully so far this year.”
